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Comment by fivea | Hacker News Reader

> People are adults.

No, not really. Not all, at least.

I vividly recall from the start of the very first lockdown, when the only people expected to be outside were those attending pressing matters like restocking provisions on supermarket, the local police caught a middle age man who was avoiding the lockdown by strolling around repeatedly with the same days-old loaf of bread under his arm. He didn't even bothered to actually spend a few cents on his scheme, and reused the same loaf of bread every single day to go for a stroll.

And let's not get started on refusals to adhere to simple basic personal higiene measures such as washing hands and wear a face mask, let alone vaccination rates.

People might have the age of an adult, but too many people do not have the personal responsibility expected from adults.

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You've sorted people who disagree with you into the category of "not adults". Should they be able to vote?

The example you chose is funny because, in my view, it's utterly insane that we ever had lockdowns preventing people from "going for a stroll". That you think any reasonable person ("an adult," apparently) agrees with you just shows how far off the reservation you've wandered.

> You've sorted people who disagree with you into the category of "not adults". Should they be able to vote?

No, I'm the kind of person who is well aware that reaching adulthood is not a magic elixir that automatically grants everyone the ability to act responsibly or rationally, let alone a sense of common good.

Throwing adulthood around as if it implies everyone will do the right thing is blatantly unrealistic.

People disagree about things. It's not a good solution to put everyone who disagrees with you in the category of "child". It is, ironically, childish.

There was never any justification for banning people going for a walk. You've been seriously misled.

Yeah, I remember a thread elsewhere. Someone was complaining about a large party early in the lockdown. The homeowner (note: very expensive area) felt that they were only risking themselves and thus it wasn't anybody else's business what they were doing.

Among the various objections people made to this I pointed out that my wife is in the medical field, albeit not on the front lines--his recklessness is a risk to her. His opinion was that doctors knew what they were signing up for, it didn't matter. Unfortunately, the moderators zapped the thread before I got a reply to my pointing out that she had not signed up for dealing with reckless idiots in a pandemic.

There was never any valid justification for the police to harass a man going for a stroll. Real adults actively resist overbearing authoritarian governments instead of meekly submitting.

> There was never any valid justification for the police to harass a man going for a stroll.

Have you been living under a rock for the past two years?

There was a pandemic killing hundreds of people per day, and the only effective way to stop it from continue growing exponentially was to ensure everyone stayed put for a few days.

How is that "not a valid justification" ?

I mean, think about it for a second: law enforcement impose lockdowns on neighborhoods when a shooter is on the loose without any complain, and asking everyone to stay put to avoid hundreds being killed is not "a valid justification" ?

How many days is "a few" exactly? Do you mean two days? Two weeks?

There is no actual proof that forcing everyone to "stay put for a few days" actually saved any lives. Your comment is a complete non sequitur. And, hypothetically, even if it did save lives that is not valid justification for violating the fundamental human right of peaceful assembly. (And no, there is no human right to be protected from risks.)

>There was a pandemic killing hundreds of people per day, and the only effective way to stop it from continue growing exponentially was to ensure everyone stayed put for a few days.

...it didn't stop it. Lockdowns didn't do anything. We had 14 days to stop the spread, and that was roughly 700 days ago. There isn't any evidence that lockdowns work at all.

Wow. There was a man? Outside? Walking around? Without your explicit permission?

Why are you a fascist?

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