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This well-stated argument shows how you're forcing other's social responsibility to protect themselves on me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681 htt

This well-stated argument shows how you're forcing other's social responsibility to protect themselves on me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681

shadowgovt 6y ago
Correct. This is SOP during a pandemic. It's something that happens sometimes when we live in a society and are faced with a disease with chance of permanent injury or death and no cure. In some cultures, a person who was sick had to live outside of town and yell "UNCLEAN!" to warn the uninfected if they had a transmissible disease. And hell, this country exiled Typhoid Mary to a relatively small island for the protection of everybody else. This disease isn't quite infectious enough to necessitate that, but a piece of cloth is a pretty simple and effective compromise until we have widely distributed efficient enough testing to know with some certainty in a short timeframe whether a person is infected or not. If it's too much a burden to bear, you can always remove yourself from the presence of mainstream society until such testing is available.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  Or, those vulnerable (and we cannot now pretend we don't know who they are) can remove themselves and not place the risk of their infection in the hands of others. Quarantine is where you lock up sick people. Tyranny is where you lock down healthy ones. And, as far as SOP during a pandemic, I disagree. This is the first time in the last 50 years (that I've been alive) that I've seen this happen in the US.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    > Quarantine is where you lock up sick people Due to the long asymptomatic infectious period for this disease, lacking a quick and accurate testing solution, we don't know who the sick people are. That's one of the major challenges of this particular outbreak. History's memory is longer than 50 years. The word quarantine derives from the practice of requiring that ships entering harbor from infected ports stay at anchor off the coast for 40 days. Unfortunately, in the era of modern air travel, and given the long incubation period for this illness, it passed the ports and got into cities and countrysides before it could be contained. You also continue to conflate quarantine with the simple public health practice of wearing a cloth to catch droplets in case you are sick. The two are not the same thing. nobody in the United States, at least, is going around welding people's doors shut to keep them at home (though it is, perhaps, worth noting that the countries that did that have already gotten back to life as normal ;) ).
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-changes-covid-19-testing-guidelines-will-kill-experts-say/3441828001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-ch...
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        > I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? Great question. The CDC is an arm of the Executive Branch and beholden to orders from their bosses; I have disquieting hypotheses (people want to pretend COVID-19 is a solved problem because masks and social distancing are inconvenient, it's an election year, being popular wins elections) but no hard evidence to confirm or deny such a hypothesis. It's unfortunate to observe that such positioning of personal political goals above public health has happened in the past; Philadelphia was the site of an unusually deadly outbreak of the 1918 flu (that killed so many people the city ran out of coffins) because the mayor decided not to cancel a military parade due to federal pressure. > No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. As we are a deeply-interconnected society, it's not that simple. People need food. They need medical care, they need trash taken out. They need repairs done to their homes. Plus, I think a case can be made that it's a lot more humane to spread the pain out a little by having everyone wear inconvenient masks for awhile than for most people to go about business as usual and a few to live like they're incarcerated. China and other countries did the latter, and Americans I talk to aren't a fan of the "your door gets welded shut and martial law is declared" solution. We like to think ourselves better than that. That's to say nothing of the fact that we're still not clear how at-risk anyone is. There's obviously a curve of probability, but it can strike young people down badly enough to cause permanent damage and, in some cases, death also (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-and-covid-19-younger-adults-are-at-risk-too https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...). It's unclear to me that we know enough about this disease for individuals to actually make an educated guess as to whether they're "at-risk." > And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. Hey, if there were a hard-to-forge mechanism for easily identifying people who already had the disease so that store owners and service providers could know quickly whether they're extremely low-risk to move around without a mask on, I'd be in favor of it. We should write our Congresspeople.

shadowgovt 6y ago

Correct. This is SOP during a pandemic. It's something that happens sometimes when we live in a society and are faced with a disease with chance of permanent injury or death and no cure. In some cultures, a person who was sick had to live outside of town and yell "UNCLEAN!" to warn the uninfected if they had a transmissible disease. And hell, this country exiled Typhoid Mary to a relatively small island for the protection of everybody else. This disease isn't quite infectious enough to necessitate that, but a piece of cloth is a pretty simple and effective compromise until we have widely distributed efficient enough testing to know with some certainty in a short timeframe whether a person is infected or not. If it's too much a burden to bear, you can always remove yourself from the presence of mainstream society until such testing is available.

Fjolsvith 6y ago
Or, those vulnerable (and we cannot now pretend we don't know who they are) can remove themselves and not place the risk of their infection in the hands of others. Quarantine is where you lock up sick people. Tyranny is where you lock down healthy ones. And, as far as SOP during a pandemic, I disagree. This is the first time in the last 50 years (that I've been alive) that I've seen this happen in the US.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  > Quarantine is where you lock up sick people Due to the long asymptomatic infectious period for this disease, lacking a quick and accurate testing solution, we don't know who the sick people are. That's one of the major challenges of this particular outbreak. History's memory is longer than 50 years. The word quarantine derives from the practice of requiring that ships entering harbor from infected ports stay at anchor off the coast for 40 days. Unfortunately, in the era of modern air travel, and given the long incubation period for this illness, it passed the ports and got into cities and countrysides before it could be contained. You also continue to conflate quarantine with the simple public health practice of wearing a cloth to catch droplets in case you are sick. The two are not the same thing. nobody in the United States, at least, is going around welding people's doors shut to keep them at home (though it is, perhaps, worth noting that the countries that did that have already gotten back to life as normal ;) ).
  - Fjolsvith 6y ago
    I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-changes-covid-19-testing-guidelines-will-kill-experts-say/3441828001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-ch...
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      > I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? Great question. The CDC is an arm of the Executive Branch and beholden to orders from their bosses; I have disquieting hypotheses (people want to pretend COVID-19 is a solved problem because masks and social distancing are inconvenient, it's an election year, being popular wins elections) but no hard evidence to confirm or deny such a hypothesis. It's unfortunate to observe that such positioning of personal political goals above public health has happened in the past; Philadelphia was the site of an unusually deadly outbreak of the 1918 flu (that killed so many people the city ran out of coffins) because the mayor decided not to cancel a military parade due to federal pressure. > No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. As we are a deeply-interconnected society, it's not that simple. People need food. They need medical care, they need trash taken out. They need repairs done to their homes. Plus, I think a case can be made that it's a lot more humane to spread the pain out a little by having everyone wear inconvenient masks for awhile than for most people to go about business as usual and a few to live like they're incarcerated. China and other countries did the latter, and Americans I talk to aren't a fan of the "your door gets welded shut and martial law is declared" solution. We like to think ourselves better than that. That's to say nothing of the fact that we're still not clear how at-risk anyone is. There's obviously a curve of probability, but it can strike young people down badly enough to cause permanent damage and, in some cases, death also (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-and-covid-19-younger-adults-are-at-risk-too https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...). It's unclear to me that we know enough about this disease for individuals to actually make an educated guess as to whether they're "at-risk." > And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. Hey, if there were a hard-to-forge mechanism for easily identifying people who already had the disease so that store owners and service providers could know quickly whether they're extremely low-risk to move around without a mask on, I'd be in favor of it. We should write our Congresspeople.