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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

What percentage of people who get the flu are asymptomatic?

I think the biggest issue with covid is people spreading it who don't even know they have it. A friend of mine just happened to get a test and was found positive. The only symptom they had was a headache.

Who can take a day of work because of a headache?

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Stories like this are the reason for all the social disrancing measures and work from home. Not everybody can follow this of course. But those jobs that can be done from home should be done from home. And social distancing should be followed as much as possible. Sadly, people have to be forced to do so it seems.

The only really sad thing is that so many people believe others should be forced (through the use of the monopoly of force the state holds) to do whatever they believe is "right"

eh, welcome to living in a society. Also there's a lot more going on behind the anti-mask/social distancing nonsense than freedom. Trump supporters chanted 12 more years at a rally the other day, that doesn't sound like a group that's actually concerned with authoritarianism. So what is it really? I don't know. But stop chanting freedom while flaunting public safety.

It's generally illegal, outside of narrow circumstances, to fire guns in populated areas largely because stray bullets will kill people.

Stray respiratory droplets exhaled by people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will also kill people.

Presumably you're OK with rules that prevent people from firing guns in public. Why are you not OK with rules that are intended to reduce the risk of people unnecessarily spreading fatal infectious droplets in public?

Your right to shoot firearms ends at my body. Why should your right to spread a fatal disease extend into my lungs?

And, before you say that I should take some 'personal responsibility' to protect myself against infection, should that premise extend to wearing type IV body armor in public just so others can shoot guns in populated areas?

While I'm not against the lockdowns for covid, following this line of logic would justify a lockdown 100% of the time due to influenza, which is also a fatal disease spread by respiratory droplets. The hard question is where to draw the line.

True. I don't dispute that absolute safety is impossible.

I'd argue that the socially accepted response to influenza in the west is an awful lot weaker than it should be, however. People who have flu should be self isolating and wearing masks if they must be in public.

The idea of a "causal nexus" is not accepted in any law system (natural or positive). The fact something can happen due to your actions can't be used as an ethical argument to limit your freedom of action.

From the perspective of individual freedoms the ban of guns is unacceptable under the pretense they might end up harming others by chance; if that's the case, the police and the military themselves shouldn't have guns. Besides, populations that live under strict gun control surprisingly have more people being harmed by guns than populations that don't have strict gun controls (case in point: criminals don't care about laws, by definition).

Also under the perspective of individual freedoms, the enforcement of masks is not justifiable. If you feel unsafe due to a potential virus outbreak, take your precautions but don't force others to do whatever they want to do. Otherwise, we'd fall into authoritarianism.

Yes, this is why there are so many shooting deaths in the UK, because they have strict gun control laws /s. I see this argument all the time from otherwise intelligent people and its amazing to me. Why bother making murder illegal? It will only stop law abiding people from killing anyone, and criminals will still murder people! Yes I know this is a reducto fallacy, however the argument you're making is fundamentally that no laws should ever be created for anything since some people are going to end up breaking them. The argument I hear commonly sited is that guns are easy to get in Chicago, or Mexico, which both have very strict gun restrictions. Although this is true, it fails to take into account that the guns are so easy to get because of the incredible lax rules in the nearby suburbs/across the boarder. The reason guns are being used to kill people in Mexico is because how stupidly easy it is to get them in Texas.

The police in the United Kingdom DONT HAVE GUNS, because the general populace dont have them and the number of per capita gun deaths is < 1/1000 what it is in the US [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

The only equivalent discussion to gun control I know a speed limits on the German Autobahn. Basically the same arguments.

That being said, governments are already restricting "freedoms": you are not allowed to drive 100 mph in towns, police and emergency services theoretically are. Ref traffic lights, obligatory insurance for cars and so on. All of these traffic rules are in place for safety purposes. And all of them commonly accepted. Personally, I can live with some COVID-19 related restrictions for safety purposes until this thing is sorted out.

What if I disagree and at the same time I don't harm anyone? Would you live with the idea that I may have my freedoms and property arrested by the government in order to make you supposedly safe?

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

Not up to date on the gun control issues in the U.S., but just wanted to comment on this:

> Why bother making murder illegal?

I think having consequences for murder is very different from restricting someone's freedom.

My freedom is not infringed on by the fact that murder is illegal. Why? Because I can still go out and murder someone (not that I would, lol - just making a point). Totally up to me. Feel like murdering someone today? I just go out and do it.

The "restricted freedom" version of outlawing murder would be if my hands were cuffed behind my back every time I left my house, just so I wouldn't be able to murder someone if I felt like it.

I hope I'm getting my message across (not a native speaker). My point is that, to me, there's an ocean of difference between forcing me to do something in order to prevent me from possibly doing X (no matter how likely / unlikely it is that I would do it), and having consequences in place for actually doing X. The former is a violation of my freedom; the latter is justice.

Bullshit, not only the bit about enforcement of restrictions to your freedom to prevent you from harming others (can't drive at 200kph, can't drive drunk, etc), but also the bit about gun controls is objectively wrong.

To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an answer.

Might I suggest that you take advantage of open course syllabi from a major college/university and do some undergraduate readings on the history and moral foundations of law?

There is far more to philosophy and jurisprudence than Ayn Rand.

I'm not sure why would you mention Ayn Rand in this context. Since you proposed some studying, here are a few books on the subject that I'd suggest to you:

Lysander Spooner, No Treason The Constitution of No Authority https://oll-resources.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/2194/Spooner_1...

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44800

Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty https://mises.org/library/ethics-liberty

I think you might find The Road to Serfdom interesting:

http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files...

There's a long tradition of the notion of collective responsibility in conservative thought. Even Hayek agreed with this.

Stuff like Spooner and Rothbard is very much fringe and likely would have no audience if not for heavy promotion by Koch-like entities.

So you mean that all libertarians are "very much fringe" and "Kock-like entities"?

Also, Hayek was not a collectivist. Maybe you should read The Road to Serfdom again, as he refers to "collective responsibility" in the localist sense of "collective", not in the sense of a government.

Libertarianism is very much a fringe ideology propped up by billionaires who find it useful to promote an ideology that justifies their refusal to give back to the society that made them rich.

I wonder if you're a troll or if you really believe in what you wrote

Ignorance is no excuse. Fortunately, it is curable.

"There are 609,234 voters registered as Libertarian in the 31 states that report Libertarian registration statistics and Washington, D.C." [0]

"Koch-funded think tank offers schools course in libertarianism." [1]

"Koch foundation proposal to college: Teach our curriculum, get millions."[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_Stat...

[1] https://publicintegrity.org/politics/koch-funded-think-tank-...

[2] https://publicintegrity.org/politics/koch-foundation-proposa...

> populations that live under strict gun control surprisingly have more people being harmed by guns than populations that don't have strict gun controls

Last time I checked the US was firmly at the top of the charts for homicides within developed countries.

"Also under the perspective of individual freedoms, the enforcement of masks is not justifiable. If you feel unsafe due to a potential virus outbreak, take your precautions but don't force others to do whatever they want to do. Otherwise, we'd fall into authoritarianism"

How about a slight rewrite:

"Also under the perspective of individual freedoms, the enforcement of restrictions on release of toxic or radioactive substances is not justifiable. If you feel unsafe due to a potential radiation release, take your precautions but don't force others to stop releasing radioactive substances into the environment. Otherwise, we'd fall into authoritarianism."

You understand that masks are meant to protect others, not the wearer?

"Besides, populations that live under strict gun control surprisingly have more people being harmed by guns than populations that don't have strict gun controls (case in point: criminals don't care about laws, by definition)."

People in Germany, France and many other countries would probably not agree with that.

Except that the release of toxic or radioactive substances cause definite harm, as opposed to walking around without a mask, which doesn't cause harm (unless you assume all people are sick and/or everyone carries viruses and are vectors to transmit them). Also, masks are proven to not be effective to protect the spread of viruses, according to the CDC.

The state is forcing people to go to work so much in the first place, via the debt treadmill. If most people were allowed to accumulate savings, and so could take time off without losing the roof over their heads, then it would make sense to talk in terms of voluntary choices.

It doesn't seem remotely possible to enforce measures like these--even in an authoritarian state with martial law, strict curfews, etc., the ratio of police to population is way too low to enable such microscopic control of individual behavior. Some percentage of people are going to do as they wish without regard to law or the interests of anyone else.

Not even in brutal military occupations can anything approaching this level of control be achieved, and even if it were possible, the totalitarian infrastructure required would have far worse consequences than a disease.

The best bet seems to be unified messaging and economic safety net programs that allow everyone who might be willing to comply under the right circumstances to do so. The US response has been a spectacular failure in both of these areas.

Most influenza infections are asymptomatic.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

If only it were only that. In the UK at least, they reckon 80% of people with a positive test aren’t isolating at all.

The study is here [1]. The relevant passage is:

"Of those who reported having experienced symptoms of COVID-19 in the last seven days,

only 18.2% (95% CI 16.4 to 19.9) said they had not left home since developing symptoms."

There's a big difference between complete noncompliance (not isolating at all), or incomplete compliance (reducing social contact but not strictly complying with the guidelines).

They don't seem to try to measure the extent of the behavioural change amongst the 82% who left the house.

[1] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/effective-test-trace-and-isolate-...

A large fraction of disease transmissions are occurring in private homes. UK homes tend to be smaller than in other developed countries which makes it difficult to effectively isolate an infected person.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8201900.stm

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