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Comment by roughly | Hacker News Reader

Nobody thinks those things are trivial, but they do think stopping the pandemic is more important.

If I told you to leave your house because it was on fire, would you accuse me of trivializing your daily routine?

It’s more like somebody else’s house is on fire, I thought my taxes paid for firefighters, but it turns out those firefighters never bothered to purchase firefighting equipment, so you’re forcing me to spend months putting out other people’s fires using cups of water from my own kitchen while firefighters shout on TV that this is the only possible way things can be.

I think a more accurate analogy is "there's a wildfire and firefighters asked you to conserve water so they can fight it, but some people decided to run their taps 24/7 out of spite and now there's rationing"

I think this is closer, but perhaps needs a slight change. I don't think it's out of spite; it's not like people are taking _more_ risk AFAICT. So maybe something like:

"there's a wildfire and firefighters asked you to limit water use to only drinking water, but some people decided to keep taking long showers, washing dishes, etc"

While on paper that analogy is sound, I feel in practice the asks being made are more extreme and disruptive than short-term water conservation. Others may disagree.

Yeah, and again, the issue isn't that your house is on fire or that there's a wildfire, it's that there's a global pandemic that in absence of any "conservation" measures on your part displays a superlinear growth path - so, yes, the asks being made are much more disruptive, because the event that's occurring is much more dangerous.

False equivalence

how/why? it's exaggerated to make a point but it's not altogether wrong

If your house burning down meant 0.3% chance of death and no property damage then sure, its the same.

You're super confident of your number stats while this disease is still not clearly understood.

You should see that as a problem.

You know, your house being on fire doesn't necessarily mean it's going to burn down. Quick response from firefighters can really do a lot to reduce the amount of long-term damage. Sure, you'll have some water damage to deal with, but that's manageable too.

Of course, if you just arse around in the house and don't get out of the goddamn way of the firefighters, it's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to put out the fire and I imagine there's gonna be a lot more damage before all's said and done.

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