Day: April 30, 2020

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You know, I’d like to go hang with a friend…

I’d do it too.

After all, there’s a 92% chance that a friend and I would survive Coronavirus even if  we got it. Shouldn’t we as adults be able to make that decision?

In fact I’m pretty sure that at least a couple of my friends would say, “Screw this,” and we’d sit outside have a couple of beers and laugh & talk.

After all, being adult is supposed to be about making your own choices and accepting the consequences of your actions isn’t it?

Yeah, you’d think that was true. But is it? 

We live in really strange times.

We have free speech (as long as what you say conforms to the party line.) One has only to look at the way people with dissenting opinions are shouted down. Two Bakersfield ER doctors are a recent prime example. Banned and censored by Google/Youtube but their video is still available here

We have the right to privacy, except online, (or during the lockdown. Then your neighbors may call the cops if you’re seen with someone else, even outside your home while maintaining social distancing. Some place encourage your neighbors to rat you out.) 

We have the freedom pursue happiness,  (Unless during the lockdown that happiness is alone, in a motorized boat on a lake in Michigan, fishing, or if you’re paddle boarding 80 YARDS offshore in California.) 

We have the freedom to go outside and get some exercise, during this lockdown (Unless that exercise takes the form of tossing a football in a park.) These kids found this out in New Jersey. 

I’d take the risk of Coronavirus to go hang out and have some social interaction.  What I & my friends won’t risk is authoritarian police busting and arresting us for making an adult choice accepting a certain amount of medical risk.

I can stay home in my bed for a week or two to get over a virus. My friends and I cannot afford to be arrested, and fined while we’re unemployed.

So the authoritarians win.

I can see some aspects of the lockdown for the sake of the common good. The being said, I am developing serious concerns about longer term damage to our freedoms.

With the new “normal” how much will we lose, and how much will we be willing to call acceptable losses?