> My approach that I explicitly said was great we have the right to dissent, but should choose where when to use it? Yes... > Yes, free speech should be prote

> My approach that I explicitly said was great we have the right to dissent, but should choose where when to use it? Yes... > Yes, free speech should be protected, that doesn't mean I can call my mum a the C word and be free from her being offended, ...but the government is not your mum. Also... > because muh freedom of speech. ...most of the dissent I see does not come from people who speak like that - this is not a dispute between "uneducated rubes" and "enlightened followers of The Science™", nor is it clear which of the positions leads to the best overall results. From what I gather comparing the outcomes in places with severe restrictions - The UK, New Jersey, New York and California come to mind - with those where the approach is more based on personal responsibility - Sweden and Florida are two examples - there is no clear "winner" [1,2]: the UK has a higher death rate than Sweden, New Jersey has the highest death rate in the USA, Florida and California are comparable while Florida has a much older population and as such would be expected to rank higher. The core of the dispute is whether people can be trusted to look after themselves or whether they need some authority figure to tell them how to behave. Given access to means of protection - vaccines, behavioural changes, PPE - the results seem to show that there is no significant difference in disease-related outcomes between the former and the latter while the former retain a larger amount of freedom compared to the latter. As to whether this larger sense of freedom translates in a higher trust in authorities is unclear, at least here in Sweden where the rather soft-handed approach is often portrayed as being due to incompetence and lack of direction. Something which is clear is that places which are or have been under severe lockdown will suffer in other ways with children who have not seen their friends for months, small businesses which have been forced into bankruptcy while behemoths like Amazon thrive, social cohesion taking a hit due to the fact that people are starting to see others as sources of infection first, people second, substance abuse increasing, lack of exercise due to restrictions leading to worse health which directly increases the severity of any SARS2-infection, etcetera - the list is far longer than can be discussed here. Suffice to say that - when regarding liberal western societies - I see the authoritarian approach as the wrong approach which will end up doing more damage to society while not significantly reducing the impact of SARS2. [1] https://c19.se/global https://c19.se/global - sort the table on deaths per million [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...