Maybe, but privacy is worth protecting, more than ever.
But even if it were true, yes, over lives. People already died fighting for my liberal rights, I'm not willing to trade any of that for some temporary safety.
I'm from a Warsaw pact country. Seeing westerners so willing to give up their rights these days is so deeply disappointing.
The alternative to not giving up privacy for contact tracing or similar measures is to be locked into your home medieval style while the plague runs wild in the streets, which is a significantly stronger limitation of freedoms.
The choice isn't between liberty or safety, just as it isn't between economic health and lockdown, it's between intelligent and proactive measures or carnage. Without public health there's no liberty. If our systems fail to protect the health of our populations those rights will go out the door sooner or later because it proves that those values are useless.
It's completely paradoxical to argue that I'm free although I can't go to work, I can't safely go to the restaurant, I can't meet my friends without being afraid of contracting a deadly disease, but I'm free because I have privacy.
I'm not arguing against public health measures, when the cost to me is low or when accompanied by evidence.
So where's the evidence that tracing apps work? That South Korea does it and South Korea manages to keep Covid-19 under control, that's not evidence. Plenty of confounders like the massive testing they did, their discipline in wearing masks, etc.
And note that I'm not a denier. I do think 1% mortality is unacceptable, plus it appears that's not the only problem. High hospitalization rates, permanent heart and lung damage, etc.
Still not willing to trade my privacy away, sorry.
You're free to do that but I'm willing to fight for mine.
That's the wrong trade-off I'm talking about. Yes, the lockdowns and measures hurt both privacy and economics, but not dealing with it hurts people more, both privileged and non-privileged, there are no winners.
Imagine in a country with 300 million people, if covid is not controlled it will cause tens of millions of hospitalizations, heart/lung damages, millions of stroke victims, the damage to liberty and prosperity is immeasurable. In a country like India there will not even be resources to appropriately care for everyone.
I also don't have a strong opinion about the apps in particular, just the general point. In Taiwan they gave everyone phones and manually checked on them every day. Quick, temporary restrictions have already enabled them to go back to normal life.
For western countries, we agree, economists are pretty much in agreement that the lockdown measures have been good (although the long term outlook isn't looking good).
For poorer countries, like India, that's simply not true.
When you've got a country of young people that are literally dying of hunger if they can't go to work, a 1% fatality rate starts to sound pretty good ;-)
And this is even true for the poor in the US as well. People are freaking out because they lack a social safety net and even the less fortunate in the middle class have burned through their savings. Good luck explaining to them that it's for their own good, because it isn't. It's for your own good, not theirs. It's privilege because you and I can afford to stay at home. People also judge such measures via what they can and can't afford. It's not bad to be privileged, but we need to recognize the position we are in.
And if you want to force people to stay at home, fine, but be prepared to pay the bill for it ;-)
Sometime there are no clear evidences, just suppositions - or the individual cost is not insignificant.
In that case you should not be surprised to be forced to stay at home, similarly to not being allowed in a school when not vaccinated.
You decide to pose a risk to society - you must face the consequences.
My wife is immuno-depressed so people, for their comfort and freedom decide to be a danger are my personal enemies. I want to make sure they are forced to stay at home with their liberty with them.
Only when you cooperate with society "for the greater good" then you are free to express your freedom publicly.
This is not something philosophical - it is life at stake for some people.
But that's still not a reason to have my privacy traded away.
And if you're going to treat me like the enemy, willing to trade my freedoms away, for your safety, then don't be surprised if I'm going to treat you like an enemy too.
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I'm totally fine with vaccination btw. That's a really poor analogy b/c vaccination is the best evidence-based strategy we have for fighting viruses and it's a one time cost to pay.
To be honest, even if contact tracing apps had evidence that they work somewhat, I'd still not trade my privacy away. I only pointed out the lack of evidence because it is absurd to give up your freedoms on something that may or may not work.
In any case, I'd rather catch the virus.
Yes of course, this is normal. And that's why I am actively working for a legal framework to coerce people into staying at home in these cases. I highlight the word "legal" as otherwise it will be chaos.
> That's a really poor analogy b/c vaccination is the best evidence-based strategy we have for fighting viruses and it's a one time cost to pay.
In some cases we need to be proactive without string evidence. In the case of COVID-19 this is not a matter of being psychologically comfortable (as opposed to, say, religion where anything goes for me, at least until it does not directly hits others). It is a matter to use that until we have better solutions.
> In any case, I'd rather catch the virus.
This is your choice. Please just make sure to keep it to yourself and also to realize that you will be using a medical facility overloaded by people who not only caught it willingly, but also those ones who did not.
But no matter what I really do hope you will not catch it :)
To the contrary, lives sacrificed is necessary for liberty.
Personally, I would rather die of covid (or terrorists) than be locked in my house (or have my movements surveilled) by a government that fetishizes safety above all else. To hell with safety.
As can be seen in slumping economic stats many people are avoiding that risk which makes complete sense. It's absurd to frame this as a 'choice', it's a gigantic societal and civilisational failure to not be able to stop this disease.
In particular in the US though framing collective failure of preventable harm as cost for freedom has become the norm. You can pick anything that doesn't work or that could have been prevented and within five seconds someone will tell you it's the price for freedom. I think the real explanation is much more sinister. As a society people have given up, so now every harm or burden is rationalised in this way.
True. If you're younger (really, under 60) and healthy it's much less than 1%.
1/3% of those who didn’t die seem to have debilitating persistent problems
Unclear if you mean 1/3 of all infections, which is far too high, or 1 to 3 percent, which is possibly reasonable, although again it's going to be skewed towards older and unhealthy people.
even if everything is fine with you, you can pass it to someone who passes it to someone who dies from your unwillingness to act for the greater good
At some point people have to be responsible for themselves. If you're severely allergic to peanuts, then that's something that you have to watch out for; we don't ban peanuts for the general public. If you're at high risk for COVID then you should take appropriate precautions, but it's unreasonable to demand that everyone else be forbidden from seeing their friends and family for months or years.
Your statement seems to emphasize that the focus should be on the youth, who are also dying of this disease. But the careless nature of dismissing the fatality rate of those over 60 or with co-morbidities is really unbelievable. So my parents, who are otherwise healthy and I expect to live for DECADES more should die now so you can go out and see your friends? Or those who are young with diabetes that might otherwise have an entire full life? The level of selfishness of such a statement is just off the charts.
If you were to kill just ONE person and be caught you’d be in jail for many years, purposefully (murder) or by accident (manslaughter). Yet passing a disease that has brought the world to its knees around is somehow ok? When did those who get affected by your actions get to weight in and vote on this? Or do you feel you can just unilaterally decide that it’s fine for others to die _unnecessarily_? And for businesses to suffer because the disease keeps going and others DO care about their own safety and those around them?
Furthermore, the CDC just acknowledged it may be as high as 1/3 of those recovered with persistent issues [1]. Even if it were 1-3%, why is that ok for that 1-3%? 1% of the global population is approximately 80 million people. How many of these would have solved climate change, found a cure for covid, or otherwise positively impacted the planet? That’s worth not just saying indoors collectively for a short period to prevent? It keeps going because people DON’T do what’s in the best interest for all of society, or even their future self.
You’re basing your assumptions on an extremely short time span of data, but we know that many viruses can strike far later in life with devastating consequences, or a lifetime of flare ups. We simply don’t know, but Dr. Fauci has repeatedly warned people about such a possibility. How can you calculate such risks when they’re unknown?
Peanuts are something that can be easily regulated and limited to those who are allergic. They pose no global threat, and don’t hop between people. Those allergic can also carry epipens. There is no epipen for covid (yet?). Until then we have an unusually highly contagious virus that spreads from a very high percentage of asymptotic carriers.
Already in the US over 1/3 of Americans who died in WWII have died since March that largely wouldn’t have otherwise [2]. It’s July. Please reconsider your actions.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Exactly the opposite. By pushing the narrative of everybody being roughly equally vulnerable, we've failed to protect those who are most at risk. In a reasonable world, we would have locked down nursing homes immediately, with workers quarantined on site. (And paying them a ton of money in compensation). We also would have said that nobody over 60 or with health complications should be working outside of the home, even in essential businesses. Instead we panicked over young people going to beaches.
So my parents, who are otherwise healthy and I expect to live for DECADES more should die now so you can go out and see your friends?
Your parents, like mine, should take appropriate precautions. I'm not going to visit them or anyone else at elevated risk without a recent negative test, nor should they allow me to. But it's not reasonable to transitively extend the moral blame for infections back to patient zero.
The level of selfishness of such a statement is just off the charts.
Lockdowns cause massive harm to mental health, children's education, and people's livelihoods. And even physical health, as "elective" procedures like cancer screenings are cancelled. I could say that you're selfish for ignoring them, but instead I believe that we're all trying to do the best we can, and we have different conceptions of the costs and benefits of various actions.
Or do you feel you can just unilaterally decide that it’s fine for others to die _unnecessarily_?
Every day everyone does things that indirectly raise risks for other people. Do you quarantine yourself during every flu season? Do you ever take unnecessary car trips, thereby increasing the risk of other drivers and pedestrians suffering a fatal accident? If you want to argue that the current situation requires placing the entire country under house arrest indefinitely, you're going to have to show your work.
Furthermore, the CDC just acknowledged it may be as high as 1/3 of those recovered with persistent issues
"Persistent" as defined in that study is 2-3 weeks, which is not an unusual amount of time to recover from the flu.
That’s worth not just saying indoors collectively for a short period to prevent?
If I believed that a strict one month lockdown would eliminate the virus, I'd be all for it. I don't.
Source? All I've seen so far has been anecdotal evidence.
> There’s plenty of data out there suggesting many people are experiencing more potentially permanent effects / damage.
Since you already know that data, would you please tell me where to find it?
A Google search will yield many results. It’s not hard to find.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/two-months-after-inf...
https://www.prevention.com/health/a33432800/long-term-covid-...
https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2020/07/24/open-letter-cov...
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/health/2020/07/25/cov...
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-it-means-to-be-a-cor...
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/06/09/long-haul...
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/21/covid-19-long-hau...
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-tail-coronavirus-prol...
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-19-long-hau...
https://www.today.com/health/covid-19-long-haulers-doctor-ta...
Satisfied now?
We saw the same pattern with far bigger studies with SARS. The fact of the matter is this is all very new, and conclusive data will take time. But there’s plenty of evidence already to suggest that for some it behaves like SARS and that’s very concerning. We also don’t know if this will behave like herpes or chickenpox and cause problems later in life even for those who “recovered.” There’s a reason why the world world is taking this seriously.
But hey, spamming links is a step up from "Google yourself, there's plenty of evidence [I don't bother to cite].
I very much do not want to become China—yes, even at the cost of lives—but it’s worth looking seriously at what we’re giving up, and where we might (!) meet in the middle in times of extraordinary crisis.
This is more like tailing people who buy bombs and visit crowded public places with them.
As the first generation to live in freedom after dictorship, I rather vote for privacy.