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Comment by bargl | Hacker News Reader

We tend to want to lump people into camps so we don't have to go through and see all the various sub-categories and determine if they are OK or not.

Some states are restricting fishing and hunting... That's not a team sport and if I use a lure (edit: as in I don't even have to go to the store for bait) I'm not going to affect anyone else.

Some protesters want to get haircuts.... GET OVER IT.

I feel like both sides have some valid and various levels of invalid points. In the expedience of not needing to sort the chaff, i'd side with the stay at home crowd, but there really is some shit they closed down that seems.... a little too far.

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It's no surprise that a culture that didn't plan ahead or invest in public health infrastructure has haphazard and poorly defined processes.

Agreed.

I'd like to point out that some people equate "invest in public health infrastructure" with free healthcare.

The two aren't the same. To deal with a pandemic you need a pandemic response plan for the spike to the system. This can be done in even in the US under our current system. It'd just magnify the pros/cons of our any system in place.

I'm for state run healthcare, but the argument about pandemic readiness isn't about that (imo).

I agree that they are two separate concepts. But if a community ensures that homeless people are vaccinated and not a risk to those privately insured and also wants all children vaccinated, no matter who their parents are, that is a form of healthcare. Public health requires an investment in healthcare.

Healthcare is never free. Some cultures invest in it. Some don't.

But as we've seen from spots in Europe, you also have to invest wisely. I think (as harsh as it is to say) we can learn from this and pick healthcare models that work well even under strain.

The good news is that we don't have to learn everything ourselves the hard way. We can ask South Korea for advice and assistance.

> Some protesters want to get haircuts.... GET OVER IT.

People feed themselves and provide their family's healthcare by providing haircuts.

Everything is essential to someone. I wouldn't be so dismissive.

>Everything is essential to someone.

No, we've built our economy on non-essential work. That's good 99% of the time but it's definitely not essential. The government shutting down these small businesses means, it should (imo) maintain the business owners it shut down. But to call that service essential is not correct.

I'm speaking to the vanity of wanting to get your hair dyed during a pandemic, not the businesses that were shutdown. We should accept as a society that we incurred a great debt by shutting the economy down for the duration we have. And that we owe it to the businesses we shutdown, to keep them afloat.

Money to buy food is essential for the barbers. Not the haircuts. There is plenty of food and delivery machinery, thanks to the good people working on it, who deserve to paid funds they can spend later or on socially distant goods and services.

>Some protesters want to get haircuts.... GET OVER IT.

Maybe they just want to get the same haircut that the mayor of Chicago got the other week, long after the state lockdown...

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