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Comment by lucidone | Hacker News Reader

I am Canadian, and I considered myself an advocate of privacy up until COVID-19 made me realize I'd pretty much give up all my civil liberties if it meant my immunocompromised parents were less likely to fall ill and potentially die as a consequence. Trudeau can enact marshal law for all I care, I just don't want my folks to die.

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I think you have to accept that your parents are going to die one day, whether we contain COVID-19 or not. But you and your (future?) kids are going to have to live with the political consequences of this crisis for many years to come.

The other side of that argument being that people in the future can always fight for their rights, whereas we can never get back lost time with our loved ones.

Such a selfish argument

You're absolutely right. Thankfully, in reality, I don't think the measures taken will be as strong as dismantling our civil liberties. However, if the dichotomy was either our civil rights at large (expand this to the economy, whatever you want) or the lives of the sick and elderly, I'd opt for saving human lives every time. I even think there is a Trek episode about this. Not very utilitarian of me I realize, but it's a trade off I'd make without hesitation.

All of your civil liberties? Really? That seems to be a very high price to pay given we all die someday.

I'd rather live in a world of risks than one without liberty.

My mother is older and has chronic health issues. We both rather risk it and have choice in how we live our lives while we are still here.

"Given a choice between preventing the spread of disease and avoiding mass casualties that are bound to result, and living our lives in ignorance, we chose ignorance."

You're like someone who's complaining their rights are being trampled because the fire department is yelling at you to leave a burning building.

Not even close.

This is a preventable catastrophe, but prevention requires extraordinary measures.

If we want to handle this crisis, let's not create a yet larger crisis in the process. I'm not ready to go weapons-grade nuclear on civil liberties.

Don't worry, your parents will live forever. Trudeu will take care of that. Don't mind the life they/we gonna live. More is better, right? Imagine if the government could put us in some little cages, feed us and keep us away from any harm we or others could inflict upon us. Everything would be safe and we would enjoy a long life! Our purpose in life is to live as long as we can. No brainer!

I'm uncertain what motivates you, but my family is my utmost priority (i.e., above anything else, including politics).

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

In this context is easy to understand that one can’t enjoy neither of those rights when dead. In a perfect world everyone would relate to that fact, respect the quarantine for a dozen weeks, and get back to work rebuilding everything as quickly as possible. Some people can’t reason and that’s why we all can’t have nice things.

I'm sure you are exaggerating somewhat. Like, you probably wouldn't permanently give up your freedom of movement or the vote to stave off your parents' deaths two days or whatever. There are tradeoffs to be made here, and a temporary reduction in privacy might be worth it for the lives that could be saved. I personally think so. Probably most of the population agrees. The people on this site skew privacy-oriented, so you'll probably get less agreement here than in the population writ large.

I get your point. But does that mean others should give up their civil liberties? Or others should be locked up like prisoners?

Nobody has a right to live forever!

> I'd pretty much give up all my civil liberties

Okay, but you have not right to do the same to other people's civil liberties.

Thanks for being honest. Many here are in denial or are at best just fair weather liberals.

This being said, we are at the beginning of this, so it's more likely to be a temporary state and that things will return to normal than we enter a state of always being at war against covid19.

But this event will make many people wonder about what people will do if you convince them enough. The thing doesn't need to be true or not, just that people only need to believe you to do horrible things. That is the warning of history.

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