That feels very much like an erosion of civil liberties to me.

I think it would be sort of a waste of time to compare 9/11 to Covid with regards to government overreach. Off the bat, the threat is of a completely different nature, we understand the threat in a completely different way, the threat is taking place within our borders and, of course, globally.

The measures are not broad, relatively. They are explicitly intended to be short term. They are being discussed out in the open.

I don't know, I could probably spend the whole night listing differences but it's so obvious I really don't think I will. Unless you're simple enough to boil both responses to "well it's a thing that a government did", idk, the similarities end super quickly.

Please, forgive my doubt. It's seeded in deep levels of trauma. I even bought into the whole "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" meme, thinking I was clever.

> measures are not broad

I would call trillions of dollars of stimulus injections and virtual lockdowns quite broad. However my point is more that while a panicked, fearful public is distracted with the News of the Day, governmental agencies, lobbyists and others will play. "You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste."

To be fair there are many on the 'net who are die-hard and staunchly rooted in the anti-governmental camp. I'm rational and seeking discourse to expand my knowledge and evolve a complex, multi-faceted worldview; many others are not.

The people who are doing this are mostly well-off enough not to feel the direct consequences of their actions (yet), which is why they do it.

It’s the same moral hazard that leads politicians into war: gauzy moral sentiments can be very compelling when you’re paying with someone else’s lives.

How was it different? One of the main points of flattening the curve was to minimise the risk of overwhelming (particularly) health services by ensuring that pressure was spread out over time. Overwhelmed health services = people dying, and not just because of the virus.

Now you may think that argument is wrong, but if so it would be better to understand the reasoning (or if you understand it then at least respond to it, rather than misrepresenting it) before dismissing people who argue it as "panicky".

You are illustrating the problem perfectly: the goal of this is not (and was never) to prevent ”people dying”. It was only to prevent “collapse of the healthcare system”. To the extent that we have accomplished this goal, it is a moral imperative to move on to less drastic interventions, even if continuing might save additional lives.

Any scenario where you think that shutting down for longer “saves more lives” creates a moral hazard, and shifts the goalposts from the original intent of this drastic approach.

Country dependent obviously, but it is very preliminary to think we have anywhere near accomplished it.

it is a moral imperative to move on to less drastic interventions, even if continuing might save additional lives.

I'd agree that the next steps will be phased but am not as optimistic as you on time-frame; also I'm still not clear how you adopt such an assured understanding of the situation to consider the loss of additional lives to be worth relaxing the constraints and to be dismissing the opinions of others, the point of my original response?