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Comment by everybodyknows | Hacker News Reader

After they leave the drum circle, they transfer the health risk to all the store clerks and medical personnel they approach. If they end up in the hospital, they transfer the financial burden to the insurance, hospital, and public aid systems, at a rate of however many thousands of dollars per day.

They have no right to do this to the rest of us.

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I agree with you.

As a human rights advocate, though, curious: where is the line, in everyone's mind? Can we use the law on people who don't wash their hands after they use the restroom? Etc

Your response is to do nothing because of an extreme edge case?

A law that everyone has to wash their hands after using the restroom seems less severe, to me, than a law that nobody's allowed to gather in public.

I agree in principle. That said, a law about washing hands would be impossible to actually enforce without some kind of highly intrusive surveillance, which itself would be a severe downside. But a law that wasn’t actively enforced and only existed so posters could say “wash your hands - it’s the law!” would be… fine, IMO… though I doubt it would produce much if any actual increase in handwashing.

We’ve never thought that way about flu’s.

> We’ve never thought that way about flu’s.

We certainly did about the 1918 pandemic, where all kinds of limitations were imposed to attempt to control the spread. The cost/benefit with typical seasonal flu is, obviously, not the same.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for people that are afraid to stay isolated? Why force everyone to change their lives to keep them safe?

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