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Comment by nicetryguy | Hacker News Reader

Anti-mask sentiment on HN is shocking and disappointing. They save lives. Should seatbelts be a personal choice too? Do they infringe on your "liberty"? If you want data, look at the recent case numbers of all of the southern states fighting the masks tooth and nail.

EDIT: Flagged? ...really? Highly disappointing.

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Yes - I believe seatbelts should also be a personal choice. Infinite safety was never a goal - and never should be. If it were, our speed limits should be 5 mph everywhere - then nobody would die in car crashes but oops, it causes too many other problems - it would be a bad tradeoff. And lost freedom is a cost that is unacceptable to many people.

What an awful argument. Your black and white thinking is unfathomably ignorant. I'll take a separated shoulder and a broken rib over death or a permanent head injury thank you.

I argued nothing black and white at all. I said that these things are tradeoffs. In this case - it is something along the lines of a freedom <--> safety tradeoff. And why aren't people allowed to draw their own lines on that spectrum. I was just stating that I draw my line in a different place than some.

Why bother locking your doors if a criminal can just carry a crowbar and pry it open anyway? Gray areas exist.

If you decide to drive drunk and hit me while i am driving while i'm wearing a seatbelt you could kill me. If you decide not to wear a mask in public and are an asympomatic carrier of COVID and i am immunocompromised you could kill me. This has nothing to do with personal choice or liberty, it is a legitimate public health and safety concern. Your selfish tunnel vision is truly disgusting.

We allow people to make personal choices all the time that negatively impact others. I am acknowledging the gray area and have been the entire time. I'm saying that on the particular issue of seatbelts (and mask wearing) - I prefer to let people make their own choices being fully aware that it could cause some amount indirect harm to others. Maybe I hate the color yellow - people can still have yellow cars. I hate breathing in second-hand smoke, but I don't think people should be disallowed from smoking everywhere. I pay into entitlement programs that help support medical costs for people that voluntarily engaged in unsafe activities that caused their health problems. I still think those people should be allowed to make those choices.

> I prefer to let people make their own choices being fully aware that it could cause some amount indirect harm to others.

Some indirect harm? This is life or death for older and immunocompromised people. You are a monster. I can't fathom your inhumanity.

You really want covid to be categorically different than things we engage with every day and have since humans first began to walk the earth - but it really isn't. We make these sort of tradeoffs and engage with this sort of dilemma constantly. Nothing new or earth-shattering.

>Should seatbelts be a personal choice too? Do they infringe on your "liberty"?

Yes and Yes. Now you get it.

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