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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

Alternatively, the US has not taken influenza seriously enough to more strongly recommend vaccination and reduce transmission by the unvaccinated. It is a pretty good hypothesis that the measures, like mask wearing, taken against COVID have also been effective against flu.

It is also astonishingly selfish for those who do not take measures to reduce their chance of transmitting diseases to moan about their freedoms. Freedom is fully available to you in ways that many truly unfree people cannot access. False victimhood is an ugly thing.

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Living is dangerous, you can die from it. 80% of the workforce cant work from home to make a living. We live with dangers all the time, beginning to call people irresponsible and immoral for not micromanaging all potential risks they could inflict on others create a system far worse than what its trying to mitigate.

Driving is dangerous. Annual deaths from driving are comparable to deaths from influenza, and half those deaths are cyclists and pedestrians. You can bet that if there were a "vaccine" that reduced driving deaths as effectively and COVID and flu vaccines prevent deaths from those diseases, it would be required for a license and/or insurability. Being a dick that endangers others is not "freedom."

set really low speed limit and you are reducing the deaths, thats the point. We don't have a perfect vaccine for flu either. You are creating inhumane standards that will lead to more suffering and you are ironically removing personal responsibility from humans by not allowing them to find the equilibrium themselves in their own communities. Thanks but no thanks

Speed limit 20.

Exactly. We only restrict society to the point where it's practical. And this is where we run into issues with Covid restrictions. Some arguments sound just like this, that we should lower speed limits to the point where practically no one dies in traffic anymore. Actually this is probably what would happen if we put health officials in charge of traffic policy.

Really 80%? A joint paper by the Norwegian Trade Association (NHO) and the main trade union organization (LO) concluded that about 50% of the working population could work from home.

yes really, and “could work” is meaningless. Speculation is not reality.

So both our comments are not reality then.

I really liked this observation: “Individual freedoms exercised without care for others are not really social freedoms, just micro-forms of domination. That’s the essence of the distinction.” —David Wengrow

https://twitter.com/davidwengrow/status/1456180588298346499?...

That quote is overly hyperbolic. It compensates for not invoking responsibility (ie assuming the socially-successful outcome) by playing up the dishonor of social breakdown.

I think it has been better put - "Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.". I exercise(d) my freedom by wearing a proper respirator, both back in March 2020 when the government was pumping out misinformation about the utility of respirators, and continuing today with these garbage "masks" being the social standard.

Of course like anything, the quote I referenced can be twisted for abusive ends. But I think it's quite apt regarding Covid. Ignoring its wisdom is the path to more authoritarianism - if you do not act like an adult, you will inevitably be treated like a child.

These are buzz words. What are "social freedoms" and why do we care if individual freedoms, which contain a fundamentally different modifier (individual), are really social freedoms? Is one type of freedom more important than another? I would posit that, in America, individual freedoms are to be considered more important historically.

This tweet reeks of pseudo-psocyhology.

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