“ ‘Just two weeks’ was perfectly appropriate!”
No!
(1) Data already existed showing low IFR. But panic spread conflation between IFR and CFR.
(2) “Just two weeks” hides within it sudden unchecked authoritarian powers and civil liberties violations.
(3) You can’t freeze an economy, even for two weeks. There would be massive economic damage, affecting lives and livelihoods, and disproportionately those with lower incomes.
(4) Anyone with common sense would have grasped that “just two weeks” wouldn’t even narrowly work.
(5) The true dangers in societies are from the things we rush to do to “help.” Where was the Precautionary Principle in the rush to “just two weeks”?
(6) Poking societal stability is a dangerous game, and “just two weeks” was a wildly authoritarian poke.
(7) Your fear and ignorance is not an argument for violating civil liberties en masse, but, rather, an argument for preserving civil liberties more strongly than ever.
If we walk away thinking “just two weeks” was “fine,” we have not learned the lesson. Never open the door to the ingenious schemes of authoritarianism, ESPECIALLY when there’s a perceived emergency.
This is fantastic analysis, Doc. Already retweeted several of these tidbits!
yes, it was stupid, dangerous and completely unjustifiable under any circumstances. at the time, i had been recently hit by a car and was in a wheelchair for two months, unable to leave my house for reasons that had nothing to do with the pandemic, so i barely noticed it. restaurants here were doing take out and my BF had a weekly rotation of places to go to get us food (i wasn't cooking).
i did listen to press conferences and saw pictures of ghost town NYC, which was surreal. my best friend was in columbia presbyterian where she walked to get a covid test, was raced onto a ventilator and died two weeks later, april 1, 2020.
i kept saying you just can't shut down entire economies every time someone gets sick! and if everyone stays inside forever, don't you think the virus or some virus will be waiting for humanity when they decide to come out?
the answer is to stick with the Constitution, no matter what. there's a reason the Constitution doesn't have an exemption for pandemics. if your solution violates the Bill of Rights, it cannot be considered, end of story, no excuses.
doesn't matter if the disease is deadly, if the vaccines are really safe and effective. if you use coercion of any kind, you are on the road to Auschwitz and the first step on that road is one step too many.
what good are your founding principals and your mission statements if you can find reasons to violate them?