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Comment by jayspell | Hacker News Reader

We are going on a year with COVID and the death rate is not what was advertised at the beginning. Everyone has to live their life, part of life is risk. Personal choice is BS? What in the literal hell!!! You want to take freedom away? You want to remain under house arrest fine, stay in your bubble, the nut house is a warm safe environment.

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Freedom is not absolute. As Hobbes said, without government to help organize us, life is "nasty, brutish, and short." Obviously there is such a thing as too much control, but there is also such a thing as too little.

Situations such as this are extraordinary. We have a virulent and serious disease we're trying to control the best way we can. The best leaders are making difficult decisions using the best science we have to guide them.

Protecting the innocent and the vulnerable -- and valuing life in general -- is a tenet that our society has chosen to adopt. How do we do that? By balancing freedom with measured restrictions that are consistent with that tenet.

We can argue about whether the measures taken are effective, or whether they restrict too much freedom. But to just say "Fuck it all, absolute freedom for everyone! Everyone toss out their masks and get together indoors!" during this crisis goes much too far in my view.

I said nothing about masks. This thread has people advocating murder charges for going to a wedding and spreading to someone who dies afterwards. WHO said lockdowns should not be primary method of stopping the spread. Lockdowns harm as much as help, loss of jobs at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, cancer screenings delayed, mental health issues related to isolation, and we don't know the huge cost of what has already occurred. Quite a few want to look at one thing and not the entirety of a situation. The stats show that this virus is no worse than the Hong Kong flu (1-4 million people died in 1968 / 1969). We went to the freaking moon and held Woodstock during that time. You don't value life by not living it.

Slight difference is that this disease is fifty times more deadly than the HK flu. Just about everyone in the US got that one and about 50,000 people died. We are at 5 times that level already and only 10% of the population has been exposed. (Also the value placed on old people’s lives has increased drastically... you might not like it but it is social consensus to spend millions to extend the lives of 75-year-olds by a few more years. )

Where do you see it as being fifty times more deadly? Wikipedia lists Hong Kong flu deaths in US as upwards of 100,000 with 100m less people in the country. Even at fifty times more deadly it is not greatest cause of death this year. Heart disease and cancer have killed far more (over a million collectively). The response is way out of proportion to what we have seen. I believe the initial response was appropriate given the projections (which turned out to be a complete fabrication) of millions dead in US alone. We've seen what this virus is, it's not millions dead. We can't cancel life for a couple of years waiting for this to go away, everyone needs to get on with their lives, getting married, seeing people over the holidays. This continued fearful response is preposterous.

>> This continued fearful response is preposterous.

Careful pal. The Emperor's new suit is made of the finest hypothesis.

What's the death rate right now? How many people have died over the norm?

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