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Comment by LudvigVanHassen | Hacker News Reader

All of this is correct. Many on the left seem forcibly unable to view the nuance described here.

Freedom of choice is an American value that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world to the degree that it does here. Freedom to decide what you do with your body trumps public health. Half of Americans believe this, and the other half doesn't.

Finding the compromise between those two viewpoints is exceptionally challenging. Each group has the temptation to view the other as being "willfully evil," whether for being selfish or for imposing tyranny.

I hope the solution is that our high vaccination rate of 70+% of adults and the prevalence of the spread of Delta (which creates natural immunity) will combine to reach herd immunity and we can get out of this craven, horrible timeline we find ourselves in.

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"My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins."

Your freedom to catch and spread covid to me is not supported by established law. It's also why we don't allow smoking in restaurants, etc. And it's also related to seat belt laws. George Washington forced our soldiers to take a smallpox innoculation and it was pivotal to us winning.

In 1905, in Jacobson v Massachusetts, the US Supreme Court upheld the Cambridge, Mass, Board of Health’s authority to require vaccination against smallpox during a smallpox epidemic. It ruled that the public health trumps your ability to freely engage in society if you will endanger it.

You'd like to reach herd immunity, but you didn't offer a solution; instead, you gave a hopeful outcome if we do nothing. We have millions that refuse to vaccinate yet wish to move freely in society. They are clogging hospitals and costing our society an estimated $6B, and climbing. Reaching herd immunity while using your version of freedom means that long covid disabilities and deaths are just an inevitable that we're hopeless to prevent.

> Your freedom to catch and spread covid to me is not supported by established law.

No all freedoms are given by eastablished law, many are implicit. Then later some freedoms can be restricted by the law.

Is there a law banning catching COVID or spreading COVID? I don't think so.

> It's also why we don't allow smoking in restaurants, etc.

Some establishments do allow it. It's your choice, if you want to visit them or not.

> And it's also related to seat belt laws.

It's not.

> George Washington forced our soldiers to take a smallpox innoculation and it was pivotal to us winning.

Yes, soldiers usually submit to wished of their commanders because otherwise their stance in the military deteriorates. Most people do not submit to military organization.

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