You’re comparing apples to oranges. You can’t forbid me from driving because I might drive drunk. Have you ever driven a car? Look around, there are other drivers all over the place. They aren’t prevented from driving until they exhibit signs of being impaired. Anything could happen to anyone. You can’t tie everyone to their beds just because they might do something to you.

Don’t fool yourself that you’re a forward thinker because you advocate dictatorial, one-size-fits-all punishment of the infected and non-infected alike. That kind of thing is great for sheep and submissives Just don’t force it onto the rest of us. Even in biblical times when leprosy was raging, the healthy people could still go outside

As for the Publix and UPS workers, they made a choice. Everyone knows the risks by now. No “essential business” is worth dying for, is it? They’re adults, let them decide. If they don’t want to risk the virus, they can stay inside. But if they are willing to take the risks in order to continue getting a paycheck, then they have to accept the consequences.

It’s not your job to save everyone, especially those that don’t want your efforts. Worry about yourself and your loved ones. If you stay in your crypt until you get the all clear, you should be fine. And if not, then these lockdowns didn’t work anyway.

By the way, there’s no such thing as “the public good”. There is only the individual good. Just like there’s no such thing as public health. Health is individual too. Public good would imply that we all agree on what good is, and since that’s not the case, worry about yourself and don’t affect the way others choose to live their lives.

“Haha freedom is a fringe belief? ”

No, the belief that if *you* go out and get exposed then *you* are the only person you are putting at risk. It’s a fringe belief because it is a deeply flawed understanding of the science of disease transmission. It is a fringe belief in the same way that the world is flat, or climate change is not real is a fringe belief.

“But it’s not in any way a reason to prohibit people’s freedom of movement, or force privately owned businesses into bankruptcy.”

We restrict freedom of movement all the time. You cannot hitchhike on the interstate, drive down highway 90 going 120 mph, or drive drunk. We do all of those things for the common good.

“Who are you to determine what is righteous?”

Encouraging people undertake behaviors known to increase the risk of a pandemic is the opposite of righteous, I know that much.

“Do you try to force others into your religion too?”

I have no religious affiliation. For what it’s worth, I don’t think churches should be tax exempt, either. Wanna pray to Santa Claus? Go ahead, what do I care?

” If “righeous” means you get to force businesses to close and force people out of work, what do you consider unethical?”

Desperate times call for desperate measures. We aren’t doing this for no reason, we are doing it to keep our hospitals from being over run. Unethical would be intentionally doing things known to make the situation worse; i.e., ‘open everything up’.

“If the lockdowns are a “good method at stopping the disease”, and your family is locked down, how could anyone in your family possibly get it? What you wrote makes no sense.”

For starters, you don’t seem to understand people I might care about could extend to people who are not my family. What if someone I care about (or someone in my family) works for a grocery store, or drives for UPS, or works in an elderly care facility? What then? In those situations, if a small number of people are interacting, it *reduces* the chances of those people working in essential services from catching the disease. If a large number of people are interacting, it *increases* the chance people working in those industries catch the disease. What a classic Conservative thought process though, complexly unable to process there might be people other than myself that I might care about while being 100% ignorant about the rudimentary science underlying disease transmission. Also, ‘Tyranny!’

“And even if it did, why does your family trump anyone else’s?”

We are doing this for *everyone*, not just for me. You don’t think I am being inconvenienced? You don’t think I’m losing money? I happen to be able to think that we are in this together, not as a set of rugged individuals.

“How many of those ways should cause me to lose my freedom to go where I choose, or friends of mine to lose their business?”

When they are acting recklessly in a manner that is likely to cause *people to get sick and maybe die*. Jesus Christ, is it that hard to understand? I’m not happy anyone is losing their business, but please stop pretending that the right of the individual to sell whatever service is more important than the social good. This is why, for example, we have child labor laws, or driving drunk is against the law, or we have no strip clubs in Leon county; because while it does infringe on someone’s freedom to some extent, the benefit of the law outweighs the cost of personal freedoms being curtailed.

“Tyranny is restricting the movement of healthy people.”

Don’t you understand that people are asymptomatic, but capable of spreading the disease for days?

“Why can’t you show others the same courtesy?”

Imagine I told you I just wanted to drive drunk, and since you will be home on Friday nights, it won’t affect you, so just be courteous, and let my freedoms be. Being courteous does not entail giving equal credence to beliefs that are contradiction to what the scientific method tells us about disease transmission. Being courteous does not mean you get to put the entire community at risk because otherwise you think you are under ‘tyranny’.

@Jason –

“Just because every other country is doing lockdowns doesn’t make what he said incorrect”

Yes, it *does* make it incorrect, namely, the idea that this is a ‘ruse and manufactured hysteria designed to destroy our economy and Republic.’ Think about how stupid an idea this is; that every industrialized country has shut down their economies as a ‘ruse’. This is a fundamentally incorrect statement, and believing otherwise is absurd.

“Just because we have gone down the big govt path that every other country has and now that we have a govt that is allowed to deprive us of our freedom under the guise of “helping” us doesn’t make doing so righteous or smart.”

Mitigating the spread of disease is smart though. Reducing the number of people who die is righteous though. I mean, ‘just because *every single other country* has done something doesn’t mean we should because my fringe belief system is superior’ is a horrible argument.

“But regardless of whether you believe lockdowns are a good method and the previous poster may not, why not just live and let live?”

They are a good method at stopping the spread of disease. To believe otherwise is to ignore an abundance of medical and biological knowledge. Why would we do otherwise?

Why not ‘just live and let live’? Because if people in Tallahassee follow his advice, someone I know *might die*. That’s why. Because his advice is a good way to insure *more* people get COVID, and one of those people might be someone I care about.

“Why is it right if the rest of us are forced to follow your example, in much the same way that you want America itself to follow the example set by other countries?”

Because this is what application of the scientific method tells us, as opposed to a first graders recitation of American Exceptionalism. This is the way to reduce the number of people being infected. Because if you are in a group of a hundred and fifty people and you are the only one doing something that everyone else thinks is dangerous, it isn’t because you are edgy and exceptional and a rugged individualist, it means you are acting recklessly.

“And as for being a dumb hill to die on, just allowing the govt to use this virus as an excuse to destroy our freedoms without at least raising a questioning voice doesn’t sound very smart either.”

There is a difference between ‘raising a questioning voice’ and ‘spouting out nonsense that is easily observed to be false’. Want to have a voice at the table? Don’t argue that the Earth is flat, that climate change isn’t real, or that COVID is a big ‘ruse’. If you want your ideas to be taken seriously, they can’t be intellectually bankrupt.

Just because every other country is doing lockdowns doesn’t make what he said incorrect, nor does it make doing them here any less immoral or unconstitutional. America used to be different than every other country. Just because we have gone down the big govt path that every other country has and now that we have a govt that is allowed to deprive us of our freedom under the guise of “helping” us doesn’t make doing so righteous or smart. It’s not surprising that we’re subscribing everyone else’s method because there isn’t much different between systems any more.
But regardless of whether you believe lockdowns are a good method and the previous poster may not, why not just live and let live? If you want to seal yourself in your house to be safe, no one will stop you. Why is it right if the rest of us are forced to follow your example, in much the same way that you want America itself to follow the example set by other countries?
And as for being a dumb hill to die on, just allowing the govt to use this virus as an excuse to destroy our freedoms without at least raising a questioning voice doesn’t sound very smart either. Govt kills way more people than the coronavirus ever will.

Some people are just odd. Ignore them. While this is likely to be no worse than any other virus generally, that could also be because we took drastic measures. Hopefully people learn from this and become healthier and more stable in their finances and business. I doubt the politicians will learn anything.

@Edward Lyle –

Have you noticed that *every other country on the planet* is also doing lockdowns? Do you really think they are all under the influence of taxpayer-funded, grant-dependent “scientists”? Are you the sole voice of sanity for all of the governments? All of them? It is simply mind numbingly stupid to think this could be the case. This is the dumbest hill to die of all time, and yet you persist. Why?

No one should believe or react to any of this nonsense. No Informed American should accept any of this until we’re shown empirical data and a side-by-side comparative chart that depicts and compares the “real” year-to-date number of deaths “caused by” Covid-19 here in America… to the year-to-date number of deaths from the common flu, car wrecks, diabetes, cancer, abortion, trip and falls, et al…

But this will never happen, lest we expose the ruse and manufactured hysteria that is designed to destroy our economy and Republic. Wake up America!

May God continue to bless and protect America, Her President, Her Constitution, Her Laws, Her Sovereignty, and Her Citizens.

Should we blame those on the Guv & Trump too?