Comment by hyperpallium2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hyperpallium2 | Hacker News Reader

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Sure, if you have no parents or grandparents or other relatives over the age of 55 that you care about. No friends, co-workers, doctors, mentors etc over 55 who you care about. And not caring about anyone over 55 in general, as fellow human persons.

And also not relying on anyone over 55 in an indirect sense - those working in and managing hospitals, legal systems, physical infrastructure, schools and universities, banking, agriculture, industry and so on.

If you truly are a person like that, for you there is nothing to be concerned about - and you are probably enjoying the reaction you are getting here.

I know "staying away from people over 55" seems logical, but it hasn't been possible in practice to segregate by age. The problem is transistive closure.

For example, in aged-care homes, the workers live in the general community, and if the virus is in the community, they get it and pass it on. Could the workers be segregated, in a bubble with the aged-care home? Their outside life would be cut off: the above social/services/supplies. Should their own families be with them in the bubble - or cut off from them? Where do you draw the line? Can it be drawn?

This same issue of transistive closure occurs for all over 55. Everyone is connected, and an epidemic follows those connections. This has been better put:

  No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
  is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
  if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
  is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
  well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
  own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
  because I am involved in mankind. 
  And therefore never send to know for whom 
  the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

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