Comment by coding123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coding123 | Hacker News Reader

The entire point of civil society is to allow people to exist with one another. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that wearing a yellow shirt in public instantly kills 5% of the population. I think that anyone would agree that it would be a good law to make it illegal for someone to wear yellow shirts. In fact we would probably make it just as illegal as pointing a gun at someone and shooting them in cold blood. Because, well, that's what you would be doing wearing a yellow shirt (except even more people would die from the shirt).

So if society's main goal is to make it so that we can live peacefully amongst each other. Then by golly we should have the ability to make it illegal to walk around with a yellow shirt on. In fact it would be so insane to put on a yellow shirt we should have no fear in telling cops (the ones that survive the yellow shirt murderer) to arrest, incarcerate for life said person.

Now, I get that society is hard to change. In this so called Yellow Shirt Means Death world, the meaning and outcome of wearing a yellow shirt has existed forever. So it would be ingrained in everyone. Yellow shirts = fucking bad news.

So let's alter this and present a challenge: Yellow shirts didn't start causing this problem until March of 2020. And to make it even stranger, the death happens 30 days after being in the presence of a yellow shirt. But still 5% die. And now you have all sorts of wacko people that don't fucking care and put on yellow shirts anyway.

Some percentage of society has never seen one of these people die, so they don't believe the yellow shirt causes it. Some of them wearing yellow shirts may have killed people but the person that died 30 days later so it has no effect on them. They don't even know they killed someone.

Anyway, if you didn't read between the lines, I'm saying arrest and jail those that don't wear a mask - because at this point, everyone knows what happens.

I don't like the analogy or the oversimplification of 5% @ 30 days, but I absolutely agree with the general notion. A person could be forgiven for not wearing a mask under innocent circumstances, but if somebody is willfully not wearing a mask due to identity politics, then not only are they are willfully endangering people, they're also doing it for incredibly petty, hateful reasons. There's not much worse behavior than that in civilization.

There is an important distinction to be made between 'should' and 'must'. A lot of laws are written around what people should do, then have unintended consequences because laws aren't advisory, they are requirements.

So in this case; I totally agree on what should happen. Everyone should be wearing a mask until there isn't a risk of hospitals being overrun. But it is extremely reasonable to push back when something transitions from "should do" to "must do". Particularly when the decision is precisely that the government is telling people how to dress.

And your analogy isn't a particularly good one, because the risks there are all substantially higher than the risks surrounding COVID-19.

It's more like 0.5% if everyone gets infected and a large chunk of them will die anyway. Might as well arrest everyone who drives a car. The virus really isn't that deadly.

Well, don't know what we don't know. We DO know that 10M people have had it, and 500K have died. That's 5%. We're still guessing everything else.

This is nonsense. There have been multiple studies where everyone in a place was tested to eliminate the dark figure.

> We DO know that 10M people have had it, and 500K have died. That's 5%. We're still guessing everything else.

No, the only thing we know is that 500K have died. At least 10M people have had it. 10M is the lower bound. The upper bound could be 30M+. How many cases are asymptomatic, or otherwise just untested/unreported? 5% is the upper bound for the mortality rate. Actual mortality rate is going to be significantly lower, perhaps even <1%.

Before callously assuming the victims will die regardless of the virus, consider that many more may have permanent lung damage for life.

I've already heard that rumor. Numbers would be more interesting.

Your premise is flawed. Yellow shirts don't kill people. Not wearing a mask does not kill people. Letting a TSA officer fondle your groin doesn't save people's lives. It's all security theater.

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

>> Not wearing a mask does not kill people.

This is demonstrably false, as we now know for a fact that wearing a mask does reduce the risk of both catching the virus yourself and transmitting it to other people. Even if you don't care about your own well-being, common courtesy dictates you should care about the well-being of others. Failing to do so may indeed get them killed.

It's a mask! Not handcuffs!

Cut the clichés.

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

Whether or not you think masks help, this is wildly over-dramatic thing to say about an order to wear a mask in public temporarily. I'd even say it disrespects the quote.

Your response is flawed. Not wearing a mask is not an essential liberty.

And yes, if large numbers of Americans don't wear masks, that will kill more people than would die if we all wore our masks. It's not theater.

We also have a society that requires clothing. And that doesn't even KILL people. Yet we handcuff -> jail nudists anyway. One major exception is pretty much 97% of the state of Oregon, where that is 100% legal.

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