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Comment by erfgh | Hacker News Reader

I'm suprised by the number of people arguing for and against the lockdowns using just deaths statistics.

Lockdowns of the duration that we experienced should be illegal because they take away the citizens' liberties to an extent that no government should be able to take them away. It has nothing to do with health.

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>Lockdowns of the duration that we experienced should be illegal

I fully agree with you. If people want to sit at home it should be a personal choice. However people do like to control other peoples lives, that is the bottom line and they will use any argument to justify it.

The thing is though that, by and large, there never were "lockdowns" in the US. I'm sure there are exceptions but most people were free to go out in public if they wanted to (perhaps with masks/distancing), many types of "essential" businesses remained open, etc.

I know in my area, there was zero enforcement of travel restrictions, zero enforcement of stay-at-home, zero government enforcement of mask wearing (shops generally had to kick people out), and very spotty enforcement of business closures. There was no lockdown. It was totally voluntary, and luckily enough people voluntarily did the right thing that hospitals didn't overflow.

Or people voluntarily did things like wearing masks/distancing indoors that presumably helped. I was more conservative personally but I'm not sure how much, say, driving to adjacent states for outdoor activities made a difference.

If I read your comment correctly, whether or not the lockdowns are legal should Not have anything to do with health. So what you are saying is that you don’t care if it’s a health risk - nobody should ever be able to order you to stay in your home by fear of fines or imprisonments etc.

IMO that would be fine so long as we had a citizenship that was well educated and the topic of virus spread had not been politicized to the point that certain groups believe the virus itself is a conspiracy.

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