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Comment by alyx | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think you read his post.

You are endangering others‘ lives each time you drive. And yet you’re not inline at the DMV surrendering your license, why?

Seasonal sickness also isn’t new. My coworker gave me the flu and I gave it to my grandmother. Who’s at fault there?

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Covid-19 is not like the seasonal flu.

Or, yeah, maybe it is just like the flu, except (1) covid-19 is more contagious, (2) Covid-19 is much more likely to kill you if you get infected, and (3) much of the population has immunity so seasonal flu, while almost nobody has immunity to Covid-19,so it would run roughshod over a population if people didn't social distance (unless testing/contact tracing infrastructure was in place to keep it in check).

Take a good read through this article and tell me why you want to continue comparing Covid-19 to the flu:

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/not-like-the-flu...

Settle down. They're not comparing COVID-19 to the Flu, they're using the Flu as an example to talk about transitive infections.

That's completely tangential to the discussion. No one's trying to figure out who to blame for spreading the virus.

The point I was trying to make was, restrictions on personal freedom are reasonable in this case to keep the broader society healthy.

False equivalence. Car accidents are not transmitting at viral rates. Cars are not infecting other cars even when they are working perfectly well. Seasonal flu is not killing 2% of those infected, and even then we take necessary measures to avoid the common flu.

When you say "viral rates" please cite your model.

Here is the latest out of California,

https://pressroom.usc.edu/preliminary-results-of-usc-la-coun...

Making the effective death rate like 0.1% - 0.3%, if confirmed.

This paper has been widely criticised as likely being completely wrong, as it incorrectly accounts for false positives.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaw...

> You are endangering others‘ lives each time you drive. And yet you’re not inline at the DMV surrendering your license, why?

You are endangering other drivers' lives with their consent; any time they get behind the wheel, they acknowledge the risk to themselves from other drivers as well as themselves. You're also required to carry insurance to help cover the cost of screwing up and hurting or killing other people.

Please tell me how other people are consenting to your risking of their lives because you want to go get a haircut. Also please let me know which insurance company will pay out in the case that you directly and recklessly infect someone and they die.

> Seasonal sickness also isn’t new. My coworker gave me the flu and I gave it to my grandmother. Who’s at fault there?

Not sure what this has do to with anything. I'm trying to assume a charitable interpretation of what you're asking, but this just sounds like trolling.

Some of the UK/US response was supposedly based on this study [0], which predicted maybe 250,000 deaths if there was no lockdown. That's something like 140 years worth of traffic deaths for the UK, in one go. So yes, we take calculated risks all the time, but the comparison to driving isn't useful IMO.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/16764a22-69ca-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcc...

If it was just about throwing around numbers, you can compare it to 480,000 tobacco deaths per year [0] in the US.

Of course it’s about taking calculated risks everywhere.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...

Smoking isn't a fitting example. You can do whatever you want to yourself in your own home, but it is significantly restricted in public were it effects other people. It's obviously about calculated risk, but that is weighted very different once others are involved.

An interesting other aspect is the change to the status quo. To stick to the better example: Humans accepted that some traffic deaths will happen. But lets imagine that for unknown reason all around the country, car tyres start to just suddenly burst, steering cars into incoming traffic. I'd not be surprised if driving would be restricted until we got to the bottom of such a phenomenon. Even if the average chance of dying on a given day for the average citizen didn't increase manyfold.

Now that I've written that... kind of reminds me of a certain Boeing plane.

The DMV that exists.

The license you are required to have to drive.

You're endangering peoples' lives by driving yes, but it's more like a few persons at most and huge inconvenience for a whole lot of people.

COVID-19 could end up sickening tons of individuals at once and contributing much more death.

All the comments in response are clear then that it is a question of degree. At x deaths caused, we stop permitting this. That means the discussion is only moved to determining what that threshold x is. And so the right thing is to move past that to find what the cost-benefit analysis is.

X is the number of people who would overwhelm your local hospital system. If the cost of you getting a haircut is that it renders healthcare inaccessible for your region, such that they cannot care for people who need it (e.g. people who get in car accidents) then that cost is too high.

What car driving kills one in twenty 70-year-olds you drive near?

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