I recall folks on the left mocking those who wanted the economy to partially reopen as “valuing a haircut more than human lives”. They mocked with derision the very real depression that I, and many other people here on HN, had as a function of being stuck inside 24/7 while watching businesses and jobs implode while COVID cases explode.

I heard this phrased another way: a wealth adviser stated (roughly) that

"The question each individual faces is 'Would you give up all the money in your IRA so that some old person you don't know will not die?"'

I think that question captures the essence of the situation better than the "haircut...lives" phrase.

The answer is no.

Interacting with other humans inherently carries risk that you could harm others. I could get distracted by my children in the car and kill someone when I cross the center line.

That doesn’t make me evil or selfish for wanting to own a car and drive it.

It also doesn’t make someone selfish for wanting to support their family in normal commerce, in the rare chance that their very legal and very normal economic activity may inadvertently harm someone.

Nope because we're not saving any net lives. We're only exchanging lives during this whole thing. Exchanging mostly older folks for others. The whole quarantine can be described: If you have covid your life matters more than someone who has cancer or another illness.

When all of our children become serial killers and cancer death rates rise we'll look back on this time as the worst decision the world has ever made. Being a human means excepting risk. You wake up everyday and take on risk. Yes some people are willing to take more risks than others. I'm an avid skydiver. To those people who don't like risk: Stay at home and get someone to deliver groceries and live your miserable life by yourself at home. Thanks.

Don't you think that the people in Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Portugal,etc, are better of for having accomplished an effective and relatively short-lived quarantine? In the US the choice did not have to be between indefinite home detention and 1/4 million excess deaths. We fucked this up.

What's worse is the Left's then about-face to let's pack tens of thousands of people together to protest exposing untold numbers more to the very virus they professed to oppose. The political "side" I once found myself cheering on has turned into a outrage-fueled hypocrisy-machine where the greatest victim wins.

I really don't think that's a totally fair take on the situation. The theme of the BLM protests was people taking on huge personal risk to seize an opportunity for change that might not present itself again. I don't think anyone was trying to argue that joining a crowd in a pandemic and standing opposed to police in riot gear itching to use it was a safe thing to do.

And no one principled would object to that if the risk was indeed personal. It is not, obviously, and the people protesting surely know it, so if you have a shred of intellectual honesty that noble narrative cannot possibly hold. The real truth is that these people weighted the risk of infecting themselves and others and decided on behalf of us all, that it was worth it.

See that sounds good but that applies to everything anyone does right now. If you leave your home at all at this point you're making the choice that whatever you doing carries a risk of harming yourself and others. There's really no way to isolate the risk to just yourself.

And so yeah, that was a real choice that made. Like my friends and I had to decide if worth it to join the protests and we were pretty firmly on the side of this was too important to not do. And so you're absolutely right but I feel like it's hard to be measured when the argument is "look the left is going out to march in a civil rights protest but doesn't want hair salons or schools to open -- the hipocrits!"

There need to be some nuance here. I think most people agree that grocery stores and hospitals needs to be open and that chuck-e-cheese probably doesn't. I don't think it's at all hypocritical to take a stance in the middle. Of course there's going to be lots of disagreement about what falls on what side but that's the argument to have.

First of all let me say I appreciate your civility and candor and that I believe you, and your friends, truly believe that your choice is honorable and just. However, consider that many, many people do not have the same privileges of the typical young, affluent and still comfortably employed HN audience. Many people, who worked incredibly hard to buy their chuck-e-cheese franchise or their hair salon are middle aged, have a family to support and no way to do it. Many of them will never recover from this. They are too old, too broke, and do not have the sort of mind that can give them access to the highly paid jobs that we take for granted. Their protests strike me as at least equally noble and justified. Its a big country and tragedy abounds. You can weave true, heartbreaking narratives about almost any group. The question of which of those are worthy enough to justify spreading this germ seems to me, at present, ridiculous. None are. Protests in the streets now just increase our division, make it impossible to take appeals for a lock down seriously and will ultimately just plunge us, all of us, deeper into the hell we are already in.

> See that sounds good but that applies to everything anyone does right now. If you leave your home at all at this point you're making the choice that whatever you doing carries a risk of harming yourself and others.

It's a poor comparison: the risk of transmission when gathering huge numbers of humans together is exponentially higher than leaving your home to buy groceries.

Have you seen the fly-by drone footage of Hollywood Blvd on July 7th of the BLM protests [1]? It was outrageously reckless and not just to the lives of the people who took part.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/iSlH3SG.gifv

Of course the risk isn't equal, it's just that the argument "look at these people risking the live of others by going out" can't hold absolutely because even going groceries is risking the lives of others so the argument needs to take into the risks and reward to decide if it's reckless or not.

So yes BLM protests are high risk, but to the protesters they're also high reward if they manage to affect change which, largely, they are!

Reckless would be going to a music festival right now, and in my opinion, opening schools. The reward just isn't there. Kids will be happy to have an extra long summer break.

I have an opinion of course, but I am not interested in debating which side has done dumber things. It is impossible to discuss that issue productively.

Kind of pointless to bring it up then, huh?

Bring what up? That we are being pushed into suicidal stupidity by our allegiance to our political team? I rather think it is worth to bring it up, so that perhaps we all can do it a little less. Debating who exactly is the most to blame is counter productive to that goal.

I don't think it's particular productive to suggest that the problem is some kind of tribalism or reflexive rejections without providing any kind of rationale, argument, or support.

The context matters. The actual actions matter.

I don't think the parent's point is that on any given issue both sides respond stupidly, I would guess they think two sides respond stupidly in different areas.

As a representative of a minority within a minority - libertarian gay atheist immigrant - both sides have been completely crap about it. For different reasons...

Such as - banning testing for COVID by nursing homes upon (re)admittance in NYC.

If anything should unite Americans now is utter and universal contempt for the institutions that failed us in navigating this crisis. The government, the media, the opposition, even parts of the medical community. The health of both the people and the economy was treated not as the prime concern but as an opportunity to pursue other agendas. A terrible reckoning is due, but we are too blinded by hatred towards each other to demand it. What a sad, sad epilogue to the American story.

It strikes me as nonproductive to call it "stupidity" or debate whether there's a precise equality. Both halves of the country have made it clear, in word and in action, that they think some causes are worth spreading the pandemic.