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> Most people sensibly realize that a lock-down in the face of a pandemic is not a regression in our fundamental rights as US citizens, but just a temporary measure to save lives.

The problem is that it may not be temporary due to legal creep. See: U.S. Patriot Act.

Very little about this feels like the Patriot Act. I also don't really see why the government would want to tank its economy. I mean, I can think of some really out there reasons, but I don't really feel it's worth entertaining given the far more reasonable reason for lock-in during a pandemic.

edit: When I say 'this' I mean enforced lock in, specifically.

What feelings did you feel in October 2001?

Not much, I was a child.

I think it would be sort of a waste of time to compare 9/11 to Covid with regards to government overreach. Off the bat, the threat is of a completely different nature, we understand the threat in a completely different way, the threat is taking place within our borders and, of course, globally.

The measures are not broad, relatively. They are explicitly intended to be short term. They are being discussed out in the open.

I don't know, I could probably spend the whole night listing differences but it's so obvious I really don't think I will. Unless you're simple enough to boil both responses to "well it's a thing that a government did", idk, the similarities end super quickly.

You'll have to excuse my skepticism. My government has a pretty poor history when it comes to the interests of its people, having sent yet another generation of its children to war on the other side of the planet based on false statements...I'm jaded, I'm biased and I'm most likely ignorant-as-fuck.

Please, forgive my doubt. It's seeded in deep levels of trauma. I even bought into the whole "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" meme, thinking I was clever.

> measures are not broad

I would call trillions of dollars of stimulus injections and virtual lockdowns quite broad. However my point is more that while a panicked, fearful public is distracted with the News of the Day, governmental agencies, lobbyists and others will play. "You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste."

To be fair there are many on the 'net who are die-hard and staunchly rooted in the anti-governmental camp. I'm rational and seeking discourse to expand my knowledge and evolve a complex, multi-faceted worldview; many others are not.

I’ll jump in. I was considering joining the Army, ready to fight our enemies, and 100% for helping recover in any way we could. But I was also annoyed by security “Theater” and the “See, what did we tell you!” attitude towards racial profiling as though it would have helped prevent anything.

Nobody wants to “tank the economy”, but lots of panicky people are on HN and reddit, every day, calling for extensions of these lockdowns “because people are dying!”, even though the original pretense was quite different (“flattening the curve” doesn’t change the area under the curve). The premise of the thing is shifting, and censorship of contrary opinions is growing (as you can see from reflexive downvoting of comments here).

The people who are doing this are mostly well-off enough not to feel the direct consequences of their actions (yet), which is why they do it.

It’s the same moral hazard that leads politicians into war: gauzy moral sentiments can be very compelling when you’re paying with someone else’s lives.

Lots of panicky people are on HN and reddit, every day, calling for extensions of these lockdowns “because people are dying!”, even though the original pretense was quite different (“flattening the curve” doesn’t change the area under the curve).

How was it different? One of the main points of flattening the curve was to minimise the risk of overwhelming (particularly) health services by ensuring that pressure was spread out over time. Overwhelmed health services = people dying, and not just because of the virus.

Now you may think that argument is wrong, but if so it would be better to understand the reasoning (or if you understand it then at least respond to it, rather than misrepresenting it) before dismissing people who argue it as "panicky".

”One of the main points of flattening the curve was to minimise the risk of overwhelming (particularly) health services by ensuring that pressure was spread out over time. Overwhelmed health services = people dying”

You are illustrating the problem perfectly: the goal of this is not (and was never) to prevent ”people dying”. It was only to prevent “collapse of the healthcare system”. To the extent that we have accomplished this goal, it is a moral imperative to move on to less drastic interventions, even if continuing might save additional lives.

Any scenario where you think that shutting down for longer “saves more lives” creates a moral hazard, and shifts the goalposts from the original intent of this drastic approach.

To the extent that we have accomplished this goal

Country dependent obviously, but it is very preliminary to think we have anywhere near accomplished it.

it is a moral imperative to move on to less drastic interventions, even if continuing might save additional lives.

I'd agree that the next steps will be phased but am not as optimistic as you on time-frame; also I'm still not clear how you adopt such an assured understanding of the situation to consider the loss of additional lives to be worth relaxing the constraints and to be dismissing the opinions of others, the point of my original response?

We have governor's calling for detention of people who have comitted no crime. We have officials suspending HIPAA. The president is claiming he has total authority and isn't limited by the constitution.

That feels very much like an erosion of civil liberties to me.

> Most people sensibly realize that a lock-down in the face of a pandemic is not a regression in our fundamental rights as US citizens, but just a temporary measure to save lives.

But that's not what we're talking about here. Facebook isn't going to an event and shutting it down, they're preventing people from discussing having an event.

There is also a bit of a different trouble with the government shutting down the event itself:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Going to a public event right now is dumb. But some of the things people have a right to do are dumb and they still have a right to do them.

And this is unusually problematic when the purpose of the event is to discuss the lockdown. It's like saying you can't have a public debate on something because the thing you're debating has already been decided against you before you get a chance to make your case. How are you supposed to organize the movement against that decision then?

Maybe they have a point and the only reason we don't agree is that they haven't been able to organize into a group that can effectively convey their message.

> The role of our government is not to provide data but then otherwise let people do whatever.

They should try it sometime. Most of the evils they aim to prevent come from people not having the right information to make a good decision. Just having a strong record of making good recommendations that people can trust would cause nearly everyone to follow them, since people would learn that following them is easier and leads to better outcomes than not. Whereas if they have a record of making bad decisions then how is it better for those bad decisions to have the force of law?

> The government stepped in with license requirements, manufacturing requirements, etc.

There is some evidence that this has caused the rate of improvement of vehicle safety to slow because they basically hard-coded a lot of 1970s-era technology which is now required even if incompatible with something better, and license plates have turned out to be a mass location privacy violation as a result of ALPR.

Now compare this to the alternative where they don't mandate anything but still publish vehicle safety ratings so that customers know which vehicles do the best in crashes and making a safe car is thereby something manufacturers have to compete on to win customers.

fb is a private company and can do whatever they want. their job is to make money. so many people are swayed by lies and propaganda.

Facebook is unambiguously being threatened by Congress with unfavorable legislation over not doing things like this.

> Most people sensibly realize that a lock-down in the face of a pandemic is not a regression in our fundamental rights as US citizens, but just a temporary measure to save lives.

This way many of the rights in the Constitution and Amendments were slowly eroded (reduced), permanently. Technically, it is a slippery slope even if it is driven by good intentions. One day there will be nothing left, because this is how lives were saved, think of the children, etc. The only thing that I can think of in this context is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

> think of the children,

How is this any different than "think of our freedoms!" which has been used endlessly to oppress other nations and peoples, and, ironically, our own.

Can you please provide a such example? I really have no idea what you are talking about.

Operation Enduring Freedom, the Iraq War, the Patriot act, etc, were all based on the premise of defending our freedom, when the reality is Iraq nor Al-Qaeda posed any existential threat to it.

The reason freedoms are often infringed upon in times of crisis are because it is often pragmatic to do so. Also, most of these protestors have little to any idea how the US government works, let alone how its founding father's intended it to. Many would probably be upset at what they read.

No, they are not. Maybe someone said that, but it is quite obvious you don't go to fight in Afghanistan to protect your free speech or the right to bear arms, is it?

That someone is the entire US military. Operation Enduring Freedom.

As for the patriot act, from justice department:

> the Patriot Act has played a key part - and often the leading role - in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists dedicated to destroying America and our way of life.

I just learned that Facebook censors gifs from Team America World Police, so I’m not sure that it should be relied on for a conversation about anything critical.

America is strange. The idea of censorship seems to rile up more than the practicalities of it. Facebook is hugely censored, and has been for years. There's a distinct lack of gore, of child porn, or even just porn in general. There aren't torrent links to download the latest TV show or video game. And, dare I say it, it's better for it.

That is not censorship but removal of illegal content (with the exception of non-child porn)

Really, you mean I can't post an "America, Fuck Yeah" gif, but it's not because of the language? FB usually has a rationale for something, do you know the reasoning here?

It was an “I’m ronery” gif. It claimed it was spam but ... really?

Who do we trust, when everyone is pointing fingers at each other?

Ah, I skimmed your comment history. I'm opting out of this conversation. I think we disagree too much to find common ground here.

Unfortunate for me. :( I'm sincerely uncertain. I'm probably closer to the middle of the Bell-curve of smarts than the majority of this board, which is why it's the only community I try to engage with.

I don't know how to filter the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, when it comes to the online fire-hose of (what seems to be) an increasingly loud amount of ignorance, vitriol, panic-porn, condescension and misinformation.

I sincerely ask "who do we trust, and why," because I'm simply exhausted. Maybe HN has a solution that's not overly taxing on my mental energy? Do we vet every single argument, by every news outlet or institutional press release? Do we all become epidemiologists? Am I missing a fundamental life-skill?

Maybe another commentor can help placate my (certainly over-inflated) discomfort of existing in the modern info-sphere.

The discomfort is probably the one and only thing you should really trust.

IMO, fall back on first principles. Trust no one and err on the side of caution. Weigh your actions as if you will be turned away at the hospital if you do get sick.

Trying to choose between one size fits all top down solutions is the path to madness. State shutdown orders are really just a crude response to an economic treadmill meant to push everyone into working. They're imperfect, as all one size fits all solutions are.

If you do need to continue to come into contact with others to take care of yourself and family, consciously accept the risk and do the prep work to minimize it rather than going full cognitive dissonance and backfitting justifications as to why it's perfectly safe. We've seen enough twitboast->obituary pairings.

Re: discomfort.

If you're exhausted, take a break. Recognize that information for information's sake isn't just unhelpful, but actively harmful to your own psyche right now. Don't drink from the firehose unless you have a very good reason. Intellectual curiosity isn't a good enough reason.

Some amount of unease aso comes from the fact that we don't know much about COVID-19, and in this day and age, that's hard to live with. The amount of scientifically-prove, peer-reviewed information about Covid-19 is vanishingly small so personally until there are peer-reviewed papers upon which to act, I'm learning to be comfortable with not knowing things. Trying to divine a fatality rate when there's a dearth of rigorous studies, globally is recipe for a descent into madness. (I stop reading threads when there's yet another re-hashing of how the Diamond Princess does/doesn't apply.)

Don't blindly trust a "who", but trust that the truth will emerge. It may take some time, however.