I sincerely hope for your swift recovery.
With an app like tracetogether, you can just uninstall it after the pandemic, right? No need to surrender your rights forever.
We already have NSA / Tech company "collaboration" so this is hardly a huge step in terms of tech or privacy invasion. It would just be the next step.
Of course, 'you can only surrender your rights once' and 'you can only die once' aren't equivalent either. Once a nation of people surrenders their rights, nobody ever has those rights again (even if the loss of those rights costs lives). A person, or a group of people, becoming ill or passing away doesn't take away the lives of the next generation.
If you think back on the experiences of the last century, how much harm would be done if we couldn't freely assemble because a government decided to intervene? We'd have stayed in Vietnam longer, black folks may not have ever won their civil rights, and its possible women would be unable to vote.
For the record, I don't downplay the suffering of illness. I've lost a parent to cancer, as well as many other family members. Everyone else alive is in the same boat. We're all mortal.
If I did, though, I suspect I would want them to live.
I disagree with "you can only surrender your rights once"; unlike life, rights can be won back. There's plenty of places on the planet in which you couldn't freely speak or assemble just a couple decades ago, but now you can. Things aren't going monotonically from bad to worse (though I admit, there's a strong directional pressure here; maintaining rights feels like fighting entropy).
I am a parent, I want my child to live in a world where the government doesn't abuse and spy on them, but where that government is also capable of containing an infectious pathogen (whether natural or purpose-made) pretty much as soon as it registers. There is a practical balance to be found there.
(And if we're trading imaginary worlds: I want my child to live in a world where private entities don't spy on them and sell private information, a world where adtech doesn't exist.)
My comment regarding illness is only to reinforce the point that everyone is mortal, and the vast majority of us have empathy for others and value the lives of at least one other person.
> unlike life, rights can be won back
This costs lives. How many wars have been fought to overthrow evil regimes? How many journalists or 'other' people are killed or enslaved in the world today by evil regimes?
Already had the virus, it was a bad cold.
Liberty or death.
The weak ones we shouldn't be prioritizing over the strong. Harboring weakness is just asking to be taken advantage of. It may seem empathetic at first, but all you end up doing is undermining the individuals growth and selling out the security of future generations. If you're an adult, you need to come to terms with death, and recognize that extending your life isn't worth stealing from future generations. They deserve more freedom than we've had. Not less.
edit: Well, you won't be held to it assuming we haven't reached a need for sufficiently severe triage, I suppose. Otherwise, you might get a chance to quite literally put your life on the line for the principle you've just espoused! I wish you joy of it.
> I wish you joy of it.
That was straight-up evil. Whatever empathy and respect you may have had just went out the window. I'm almost in disbelief that you would edit your post just to literally wish someone the "joy" of having a chance to die.
No, I don't think the unfortunate should be harmed or taken advantage of. I also don't think anyone should be forced to surrender their rights to governments, period. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to prosper in this world. That is impossible so long as there's some 'higher power' manipulating the system to the advantage of one group or another.
I hate war. I hate when the police enforce evil policies and eviscerate the lives of innocent people. I hate when governments play god and overthrow other governments for the financial gain of a select few.
You know what else I hate? When governments cover up the truth and cause massive pain and suffering. The Chinese government spies on their people, they used that system to silence the story about this virus which is now infecting people around the globe.
Giving up your right to privacy, speech, and defense is [1]literally exactly how this happened in the first place.
If the truth had gotten out sooner, it could have been contained. Instead, the world economy is grinding to a halt and people are dying. All thanks to a government spying on its people's cell phone
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/whistleblower-...
Is that a choice they all individually made? Of course not. There are penalties for noncompliance, same as for laws here in the US, whether you agree with them or not. Did that also, though, save a lot of lives? Ask again in a year, I suppose; it's too soon to tell.
But by the same token, it's too soon to call that a failure, at least if lives saved is a figure of merit.
I think it should be. I'm not averse in concept to the sacrifice of life in defense of principle, but I am very much averse to the sacrifice of some life in defense of others' principle.
You spoke earlier of the horrors of dictatorship, of totalitarianism, and the like? As far as I'm concerned, every one of them starts right here. If you want to die on behalf of whatever principles you hold dear, you're welcome. That's your life to spend. It is the only life that's yours to spend.
Totalitarian regimes start with the people being stripped of their freedoms. In every case throughout history, they have stripped people of their rights to speech and defense.
> I am very much averse to the sacrifice of some life in defense of others' principle.
Then advocate for a better healthcare system and government accountability. They don't need to have the system to track people in order to provide healthcare, restrict foreign travel, or issue public guidance on how to handle the situation.
Besides, most people would happily volunteer the information, assuming it was on their terms and reasonably secure. But it never is.
> lives saved figure of merit
I agree, it should be. But you're not counting the lives lost or destroyed by the choice you favor. The "compromise" isn't to give up rights, it's to improve healthcare and preparation for situations like this.
Evil regimes killed 100+ Million people in around a 100 year period. Not allowing governments the power to do that level of evil saves more lives than the coronavirus could ever take.
Yes. But failing that, I'll take contact tracing and risking fines for breaking quarantine - which I would now be liable for, assuming I had also even been able to be tested in order to become a confirmed case, which is apparently too much to ask at the moment - over the combination of adtech surveillance for no greater point than to make money, and incompetent government response that seems all but guaranteed to end five or six figures' worth of lives minimum, that we have now.
It's unfortunate that you're a coward.
Death is not something to fear, and with a stock of strong pain killers neither is dying.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments here generally. You've done it repeatedly, and we've already asked you not to.
Congratulations on having gotten over this pandemic virus. Good luck with the next one!
But of course we can't have that freedom.
I regret that - assuming my own ongoing case of COVID-19 resolves without fatal complication - I'm quite likely, I think, to have that curiosity satisfied. I regret it because this isn't a cause for change of perspective which I would wish on anyone. But everything I'm seeing suggests it's a cause for change of perspective that many millions of people are going to have.