5 ms·
The phone check in thing is for enforcing the two weeks home quarantine for returned travelers and close contacts of confirmed cases. While there are certainly
by adamjb 5y ago
The phone check in thing is for enforcing the two weeks home quarantine for returned travelers and close contacts of confirmed cases. While there are certainly slippery slope arguments to be made, let's not act like we've already slid down it.
- slowmotiony 5y ago> The phone check in thing is for enforcing the two weeks home quarantine for returned travelers and close contacts of confirmed cases. So the government can effectively just inprison you in your own house, with no proof, no recourse and no due process, because they suspect you were near some guy at some particular time some days ago. They don't even ask to get tested first! How can people on hacker news of all places not see this as a massive threat to civil liberty is beyond me.
- jezzzabell 5y agoWhen the alternative is thousands and thousands of deaths, most of us are willing to temporarily give up a bit of civil liberty.
- digitalbase 5y agotemporarily...almost always those measures stay in place much longer
- oblio 5y agoBased on what examples?
- kongin 5y agoWWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the war on drugs, the war on terror, now the war on covid.
- oblio 5y agoI'm trying super hard to decipher your message. Post WW1 didn't erode rights, it actually increased them. Post WW2, the same. Korea and Vietnam didn't leave behind any long term repression that I remember. War on drugs and terror, ok. Covid is a disease. We have vaccines, we'll have treatment. Just get vaccinated. We've had pandemics before, they always end and I can't remember any rights still taken away abusively after the Spanish Flu or SARS or HIV.
- kongin 5y agoYou are mistaking extending special rights to minority groups with citizens rights. We have been increasing minority rights as fast as possible with removing all the protections from dictatorships in the name of, I don't even know what. >Post WW1 didn't erode rights, it actually increased them. Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 >Post WW2, the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act And on and on. There are libraries written about this, but no one cares because there has been a bi-partisan consensus that citizen's rights need to be curtailed.
- oblio 5y agoDo you even read your own links? > As part of a sweeping repeal of wartime laws, Congress repealed the Sedition Act on December 13, 1920 The second wasn't a wartime act and even that was repealed. Talk about cherry picking.
- 9qlGq9aGgQMgaax 5y ago15 days to slow the spread
- oblio 5y agoAnd what would have done instead? Said 900 days to stop the spread? :-)
- 9qlGq9aGgQMgaax 5y agoSo, you are saying they were internationally lying and it was a good thing? Boiled frogs?
- slowmotiony 5y agoWell, I hope you won't be regretting it soon when you find out it's not temporary.
- Workaccount2 5y agoWhere are you going to post your retraction when it is just temporary?
- thesagan 5y agoI'm still waiting to post my retraction about the U.S. never repealing the Patriot Act. I'm pretty patient though.
- kongin 5y ago> When the alternative is thousands and thousands of deaths, most of us are willing to temporarily give up a bit of civil liberty. Don't worry, you'll be doing both and it won't be temporary.
- jezzzabell 5y agoPlease explain.
- kongin 5y agoThe death rate for Covid in even a fully vaccinated population is somewhere between 2 to 8 per million per day given Israel's current figures. Which means from 700 to 3000 deaths per million per year. And you won't be getting the freedoms you gave up back, since the police are already using your location data to arrest you: https://theconversation.com/police-access-to-covid-check-in-data-is-an-affront-to-our-privacy-we-need-stronger-and-more-consistent-rules-in-place-167360 https://theconversation.com/police-access-to-covid-check-in-...
- dougmwne 5y agoWe are way past temporary here. Australia is not as far along in vaccinations as other countries, but at this point the most vulnerable have had ample chance to be vaccinated. The virus can't be eradicated, will continue to mutate, and herd immunity by vaccination alone is not likely. At some point, Australia, New Zealand and China will need to join the rest of the world in the new normal, unless they want to become virtual prison states.
- jezzzabell 5y agoYeah, and that point is when we have enough people vaccinated. Which should be done by December. Then we can join the new normal. I would classify that as temporary.
- antattack 5y agoCan the quarantine be shortened with negative PCR test?
- adamjb 5y agoUnless the exposure site is identified as a low-risk one where contacts are directed to isolate until they get a negative test, no. You have to do a test when going into iso and you have to get a negative test on day 13 to leave it. There have been plenty of cases where the day 13 test is positive, even when the test at the start was negative.