> The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt.

This commonly brought up example is a complete garbage. It was first brought into American jurisprudence during WWI

In fact, this case illustrates exactly why we ought not to criminalize speech. The phrase first entered American jurisprudence in Eugene v Debs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs), in which the government tried to prosecute an anti-war protester. Do you think the anti-war guy was popular in his time? Do you understand now why the government has no business policing speech?

In the United States, short of direct threats, you can always say whatever you want. It's a fundamental human right, and frankly, no government has a moral right to take that away. This idea is foundational to American democracy. FFS, civil rights group will defend your right to proclaim 'hate speech' in

> In the United States, short of direct threats, you can always say whatever you want.

This isn't the case. There are many exceptions to the 1st Amendment's protection of speech, beyond just true threats.

> The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt.

This is legal [0], and is a misunderstanding. The case where this came up was overturned as telling fire falsely is crime depending on the circumstances. And yelling fire truthfully is never a crime.

If there’s a fire in a crowded theater, you definitely want people yelling fire. And trying to limit them will lead to more deaths, not less.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

This case almost seems more like there is an actual fire in the movie theater and the firemen run in, but now they are banned from telling the theater operator to shout "FIRE" over the public address system?

Fraud and intent to kill are all reasonable things for the government to fight. Forcing consensus on all speech surrounding a new and unknown virus doesn’t seem to fall into those categories. There’s plenty of gray area, and probably some intentionally harmful misinformation was disseminated, but on the whole, I’d prefer to err on the side of liberty when dealing with gray areas.