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Comment by bosie | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question as i hear this argument quite often: "to maintain personal liberties". presumably infecting and/or killing other people would fall under this liberty? anyone outside their own home is considered to optimise his personal liberty and therefor ok with being killed?

if not, how do you include those who would like to maintain their personal liberties but don't want to trust others with their life in your proposed worldview (reckless behavior of others in terms of infections etc)?

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We accept a certain amount of risk in our lives no matter what we do. You personally had the liberty to go out and infect people who were at risk of death from colds, flu and any many others diseases before covid came along and that was never reason for a global shutdown.

Those who don't want to trust others with their lives are welcome to take the precautions that are being asked of everyone at the moment (no household mixing, complete lockdown) the only difference would be it would only be those at risk subjected to the lockdowns.

to a certain extent. hence i am not allowed to infect other people knowingly with HIV. or drive on a sidewalk. or fire guns at a school. or drive drunk. list goes on. not even sure about the flu/colds, presumably that is more a problem of proving guilt rather than liberty.

it isn't binary but a fine-tuned probability. i don't see a problem not allowing riskier than usual (i.e. increasing the probability of infection) behavior.

Actually even more complicated than that. Say we adopt the personal liberty premise. If I am at high risk, I stay in my house and have everything delivered etc. Then my furnace breaks in a way I can't fix, and its winter. If I don't want to freeze to death, I need to get it repaired. If the repairman was willing to "take their chances", I could be forced into exposure and infection.

It really is a group activity - individuals can not take their own risk without risking the lives of others.

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