AF wrote:
By this logic, it’s time to start locking up HIV positive individuals then…
HIV is a great example! Lockup is not the only possible restriction of freedom.
If you have HIV, every behavior that puts others at risk of acquiring it w/o their explicit consent to such behavior is absolutely forbidden! Massive restriction of freedom! (btw. such behavior is also forbidden for people that don’t have HIV but that doesn’t matter here…)
kwlf wrote:
Is your feeling that he should have been locked up when he was first diagnosed, after he had deliberately infected someone, or not at all?Anyone who carries HIV has a choice of whether or not to risk infecting someone, or even to infect them deliberately. We don’t lock people up for crimes they might have committed, but only for crimes they have committed. Carrying HIV is not a crime.
I think a far more interesting issue is people who are carriers of Typhoid, of which there are still a number around. Typhoid is very different because carriers are always shedding bacteria and putting other people at risk. Even then, at least in the UK, they are only currently restricted from taking jobs preparing food. Is that unreasonable?
I’m not advocating for locking sick people up at all. I’m saying that you are.
You’re also deciding who gets locked up, where, and for how long based on your concept of the severity of outcome.
I’m advocating the opposite. Let people be free until they’ve demonstrated that they aren’t responsible enough to handle full freedom.
You’re saying people should be locked up until such a time as you feel it is safe to let them out.
Forcing people to stay in their homes or not have relationship is a form of imprisonment: it is the removal of freedom.
I fail to understand how you can separate someone who is HIV positive (a far more dangerous element than Covid19) from someone who has never been exposed to C19 at all.
So I’m trying to understand your rationale in a way that makes sense on a legislative level.
In other words… people make laws, and therefore ‘crimes’. To say something is a crime just means that people have decided they don’t want that activity do be conducted in their culture. Much like islamic countries hate homosexuality, or European countries hate bribery.
Someone must define the crime, which is what I’m trying to understand.
From what I read, it seems to me that there is a great outcry that it should be criminal to walk around the streets in public with no mask on during the C19 pandemic.
Yet you don’t advocate having a list of HIV positive individuals and making it a crime for them to have relations which put others at risk?
This makes no sense to me, which is why I made the comments I did, as logically, those two are joined.
Please show me the error in my understanding. I would really like to understand where you’re coming from and how this could be carried out in a way that maximizes freedom, while minimizing human loss.
edit: @Malibuflyer how does that work though? How do you codify these things? This is my point of debate… I don’t understand how you can draw these lines…
For example, should HIV positive individuals have to carry some form of ID that lets everyone else know they are HIV positive?
Or is it simply a matter of if they infect someone else, then they’re liable.
In other words, if I walk around all day C19 free, and have no mask. I’m guilty of no crime.
If I walk around spreading C19, then I’m guilty of a crime, right?
AF wrote:
@Malibuflyer how does that work though?
At least in Germany (and other parts of Europe), having sex with someone w/o the consent of the other party is a crime.
At least in Germany (don’t know about other countries) when you know you are HIV positive having consensual sex with someone w/o telling them that you are positive is also a crime.
At least in Germany poking others with needles you used w/o their consent is a crime.
So every behavior with that you put others in danger to infect with HIV is already a crime – not only if you actually infected them!
Difference between corona and HIV is that by “having a relationship” or “getting close to each other” you do not put someone else at risk of infection with HIV. So in the analogy to HIV we would have no problem with corona (and would not need any corona specific rule" if we would just throw everyone in jail who gets closer than 1.5m to someone without prior consent of this one – not only impracticable but also a much more severe restriction than current lockdown…
AF wrote:
I fail to understand how you can separate someone who is HIV positive (a far more dangerous element than Covid19) from someone who has never been exposed to C19 at all.
Please show me the error in my understanding.
If we work in the same office, I can protect myself from you infecting me with HIV by not having sex with you, or by wearing a condom. The risk of ‘catching’ HIV is practically zero. If we work in the same office shoulder to shoulder and you come in with a Covid infection, it is almost certain I will catch it, and very little I can do about it.
But nevertheless, the curtailment of freedom clearly is disproportionate in many cases.
For example – closing restaurants. Eating out is voluntary, so if I go to a restaurant when Covid is around, I voluntarily take a risk. The restaurant staff can also decide if they want to take that risk (young and healthy) or not. Yes, they may have an economic problem, but not worse than if the restaurant is shut completely.
The same argument applies to schools, football matches, hairdressers, gyms.
There really are very few places most people could not easily avoid to go to – work, shops, public transport – and only there some protection should be mandated.
I said I’d keep off-topic to minimum, but will respond to these because they’re responding directly to me.
Cobalt wrote:
If we work in the same office, I can protect myself from you infecting me with HIV by not having sex with you, or by wearing a condom.
Someone with HIV can easily get a papercut and bleed on you. HIV isn’t all about sex.
If you travel with people, you can easily get into a car accident, and same fate.
Businesses can mandate PPE, as it is their responsibility to maintain the safety of their workers. Work is a consensual engagement, so one can always quit if they don’t feel the employer is looking after their best interest.
No government oversight is required here.
- to drive that home, someone is currently being fired because the company can’t even open. I think it’s better that the employee has the choice to work there or not, given the risks, rather than being outright fired, as they are right now.
Malibuflyer wrote:
At least in Germany (don’t know about other countries) when you know you are HIV positive having consensual sex with someone w/o telling them that you are positive is also a crime.
Yes, that’s my point, actually. Should one who is not C19 infected be quarantined when someone who is HIV positive is not?
The HIV positive is responsible for their actions, but are not restricted from having sex… only responsible for the consequences.
Shouldn’t the same be true for C19?
Final thought: which is really costing more loss of life, the lockdowns, or C19?
food for thought
Very relevant to this discussion AF
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CCZiTORHV5l/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Malibuflyer wrote:
Difference between corona and HIV is that by “having a relationship” or “getting close to each other” you do not put someone else at risk of infection with HIV.
Also, if a majority of society consents to exposing themselves to each other despite C19, then there is no difference between that and positive HIV and consent between two individuals there.
Perhaps that’s the big argument going on. Part of the populace doesn’t consent to relationship and part of it does.
I consent to exposure to humanity in the face of C19.
Perhaps we should have a vote!
We did, our leaders make these decisions based on us voting them into office. So cool! Democracy at work!
@BeechBaby very relevant.
Unrelated posts moved to the usual place.
Please don’t create work for me.
AF wrote:
Someone with HIV can easily get a papercut and bleed on you. HIV isn’t all about sex.
If you travel with people, you can easily get into a car accident, and same fate.
That is just plain silly. This is not a significant risk in any way.
Frankly, I think that making these easily refutable arguments completely devalues your perfectly valid point, that the recent impositions by many governments are disproportionate and often arbitrary.
You’re saying people should be locked up until such a time as you feel it is safe to let them out.
In the context of HIV I’m certainly not saying that. My position is that any restrictions should be proportional to the threat they are addressing, and minimally restrictive. HIV has been kept in check without resorting to locking people up or even stopping people having sex, so there is no reason to advocate doing so. In fact, it would be counterproductive because people would be less likely to get tested if they knew what the consequence of a positive result would be.
I fail to understand how you can separate someone who is HIV positive (a far more dangerous element than Covid19) from someone who has never been exposed to C19 at all.
I would probably rather be infected with Covid than HIV, but my chances of getting COVID are much higher and I have less control over whether I do so. If we let COVID run rampant it would kill far more people (including younger people) than HIV has ever killed within the UK, so I would disagree strongly with your premise that HIV is more dangerous.
From what I read, it seems to me that there is a great outcry that it should be criminal to walk around the streets in public with no mask on during the C19 pandemic.
Yet you don’t advocate having a list of HIV positive individuals and making it a crime for them to have relations which put others at risk?
A while ago within the UK there was a man who infected a number of women by having unprotected intercourse without telling them that he was HIV positive. I believe it was successfuly argued in court at the time that the women ought to bear some responsibility as, having chosen to have unprotected intercourse with strangers they were accepting a high risk of contracting HIV. I understand the argument though most people might feel that what he did was reprehensible.
I notice you did not discuss whether preventing people with Typhoid from working as chefs was proportionate.
Another scenario to consider might be an aircraft full of people returning from an area with an Ebola outbreak. Statistically you know that several people on the plane are likely to be incubating Ebola, but you don’t know who. To your shock and horror, when they all decide en masse to skip quarantine and go to Glastonbury music festival! Would you consider that it would be disproportionate to detain them all for a week or two to see who develops a fever? What about forcing people to take tests before letting them out? Remember that to be effective you would have to force these restrictions on people who only might be carrying the virus – not just to people who are sick or about to become sick.
Personally I find that many aspects of the COVID lockdown, including mask wearing, seem disproportionate or ill thought out. But it does seem clear that the whole ‘package’ of measures has been effective. I’m very open to argument that such or such a measure is wrong.
All I’m trying to argue against here is the absolutist position that no restriction on individual liberty, no matter how small, can be tolerated. If this is a misunderstanding of anyone’s views, as the idea that we should be locking up anyone with HIV was a misunderstanding of mine, then I apologise.
