In this case, the consequences extend beyond merely contracting COVID-19. The consequences also include society-wide social and economic impacts that are amplified disproportionately by people who make "poor decisions".

> We don't have roadblocks everywhere with cops forcibly administering breathalyzers to all drivers to make sure none of them are drunk.

We absolutely do. You probably live in one of the minority of states in which they are not legal.

Which are not the result of individual people's poor decisions, but of our society's extreme overreaction to any kind of risk.

> We absolutely do.

Where? Please point me at the states where cops are doing this routinely. I have driven in many states and have never seen it done except at particular special events.

If you go to a tourist destination over the summer, there is a good chance you'll see it in a few states. Ive personally driven through them in California.

But, they are not "required" in the sense that you can technically make a (legal) U turn to avoid them and go a different direction.

Here is a link with a bit of info about them. https://dui.laws.com/checkpoint

Thanks for the information. This is still only in certain places (I notice you mention tourist destinations--yes, that's the kind of place I would expect this to be done), not "everywhere", and it certainly doesn't mean that you or I as sober drivers can relax and believe that we are not still at risk from other drivers possibly being drunk. But I agree it does go beyond only enforcing the laws when someone has already made a mistake (unless you count "driving into a visible DUI checkpoint when you know you're drunk" as a mistake).

I'm having trouble reading this in any way where it isn't obviously false.

Unless there's a secret source of hazmat suits I haven't heard about, other people's poor behavior in a pandemic creates a measurable, deadly risk to the people who follow the guidelines.

How much of a risk, compared to all the other risks we all undergo every day?

Also, how much of the risk is not there if you really, truly follow the guidelines? I see a lot of people who might think they are, but they're not. They don't wear their masks properly, or they wear a loose weave cloth bandana or scarf instead of an actual mask. They don't actually social distance--for example, I routinely see people in the checkout line at the supermarket not even making use of the 6-feet-apart markings that the store has put on the floor. They don't avoid crowds. They don't minimize the time they spend in indoor spaces that aren't their home.

In other words, you don't need a hazmat suit to mitigate the risk. But you do need to pay attention to detail and understand what properly following the guidelines actually means.

For a single didactic example-- someone with diabetes walking in to pick up a take-out salad from a bar filled with unmasked people is normally a very low risk activity.

That same activity in a pandemic where percentage positive is approaching uncontrolled spread is prohibitively risky.

Am I missing a hidden premise here that's causing you to dig in your heels? It feels legitimately odd to need to explicitly defend the idea that there exist inescapable negative consequences for the wider community when a critical mass of people actively shirk their responsibility to be safe during a pandemic.

Edit: clarification

Can simply not do that in the current high risk environment. There are plenty of places offering take out food that don't require you to go into a room full of unmasked people to pick it up. So voting with your wallet seems like a perfectly viable option to incentivize businesses to take proper precautions and ensure that their customers do.

Also, are you assuming this person with diabetes is properly following all the guidelines? Are they wearing an appropriate mask, and wearing it properly (covering both their mouth and nose with a good seal all around)? Are they washing their hands right afterwards? (Or wearing gloves--my wife and I do that in cases where we can't be sure about whatever we're going to have to touch.) Are they minimizing the time they spend in enclosed spaces that aren't their home? Those are all things you can do to mitigate risk in situations where you have to go somewhere, such as the grocery store.

> It feels legitimately odd to need to explicitly defend the idea that there exist inescapable negative consequences

They're not "inescapable". That's the point. If you know you live in a society where a lot of people are not taking proper precautions, then you can take that into account in planning your own life and taking your own precautions. My wife and I have been doing that since the end of February 2020. It's doable. And since it's doable, I don't buy the claim that there are "inescapable" negative consequences.

You can see someone drink a beer. You can see someone acting as though they were drunk.

You can't have a free society without assuming a high degree of risk, period. That's part of the deal. You want a large amount of freedom, you have to accept a large amount of risk. People who can't cope with that need to realize America is not the place for them. I will actively work against people who want to reduce freedoms in America - of all kinds. Freedom is hard, requires work, and sometimes sucks. That's part of the deal.

This particular problem, though, seems like the kind of problem that is amenable to a techno-solution. If there were a quick way to scan someone to see if they were shedding SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, you could see who was infected, or at least who was contagious, which is the thing to be worried about. Attempts to, for example, take people's temperature before entering a hospital or nursing facility as a visitor are attempts at this sort of technical solution, though of course they are much less accurate than a hypothetical "who is shedding virus particles" detector would be.

So this case would seem to go against the point of the article that started this thread discussion; in a free society, technosolutionism is often the best fix.

That depends on the law correctly defining a line that separates a “mistake” from everything else. All we have to do is look at 26 years of the 55 mph speed limit to shatter that naive view.

That line isn't defined by the law--that's my point. If you drive with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit, even if you don't cause an accident and don't do anything erratic that gets a cop's attention, you are still breaking the law, just as if you drive at 56 mph in a 55 mph zone. But everybody knows that the actual law is not enforced as it is written, because it can't be. Instead we rely on vague limits imposed by the resources available to the police and their individual judgment about what counts as behavior that is abnormal enough to get their attention. And we also have to put up with the fact that the cops can use the letter of the law as a revenue source if they want to; they can always post some extra cops with radar guns in places where they know people routinely speed, and harvest a bunch of tickets any time they feel like it.

Personally, I would prefer not having laws that can't be enforced as written in the first place. Everyone knows it's impossible to catch everyone who exceeds the speed limit on a highway--so the speed limit should not be a law in the first place. It should be advisory; the actual law should be something along the lines of "the posted speed limit is the government's best judgment of a maximum safe speed; just exceeding that speed, by itself, does not violate any law, but if you cause an accident and are found to be exceeding the posted speed limit, you are presumed to be at fault and face greater legal liability". A similar provision would apply to drunk driving: just driving with BAL over the limit would not break any law, but if you cause an accident, you are presumed to be at fault and face greater legal liability. That way the actual law could be enforced as written, and the vast majority of people who break the letter of the law as it is written now but never cause any actual harm wouldn't have to worry about playing cat and mouse games with cops.