The most often used justification from people who are supportive of government orders which abrogate guaranteed natural and enumerated rights is, to paraphrase, because your freedom does not extend to doing something that will make me ill.
While there is logic in that line, it fails for the same reason as the other side fails in claiming that authority has zero right to make me do anything which might temporarily infringe on a basic right. It is the problem of absolutes.
Understand from this example: We have not systematically, through government edict, deprived most people, in most jobs, of their right to work when they have a cold which is highly infectious. In fact, even though influenza is very contagious and hits the elderly and infirm so hard each year that over 10,000 Texans die from its complications, we have not generally interfered with basic freedoms and commerce nor have we forced folk to wear masks during highly active influenza outbreaks.
Now that we have actual, non-speculative, local, national and international data on the Wuhan virus it is clear that the harms it causes are not proportionate to the government intervention in freedom originally justified by purely speculative claims.
It is not that someone else’s freedom ends when it affects you, an absolute, as much as it is the probability and severity of harms you might incur from the actions of another. It would be long odds, for example, to prevail in a lawsuit against someone whose action caused you to swerve in traffic but caused no actual wreck simply because you claim it made you afraid to drive anymore.
When the Wuhan virus outbreak first began, credentialed people seen as experts, though most had no expertise with this virus, proffered nightmarish harms from the disease in both outcome and in how widespread it would be (qualitative and quantitative) which seemed to justify draconian action.
Now that we have actual, non-speculative, local, national and international data on the Wuhan virus it is clear that the harms it causes are not proportionate to the government intervention in freedom originally justified by purely speculative claims. Meaning: government should back off and out of our lives in the matter now.
Wuhan virus experience undermines justification of government actions
While there is logic in that line, it fails for the same reason as the other side fails in claiming that authority has zero right to make me do anything which might temporarily infringe on a basic right. It is the problem of absolutes.
Understand from this example: We have not systematically, through government edict, deprived most people, in most jobs, of their right to work when they have a cold which is highly infectious. In fact, even though influenza is very contagious and hits the elderly and infirm so hard each year that over 10,000 Texans die from its complications, we have not generally interfered with basic freedoms and commerce nor have we forced folk to wear masks during highly active influenza outbreaks.
Now that we have actual, non-speculative, local, national and international data on the Wuhan virus it is clear that the harms it causes are not proportionate to the government intervention in freedom originally justified by purely speculative claims.
It is not that someone else’s freedom ends when it affects you, an absolute, as much as it is the probability and severity of harms you might incur from the actions of another. It would be long odds, for example, to prevail in a lawsuit against someone whose action caused you to swerve in traffic but caused no actual wreck simply because you claim it made you afraid to drive anymore.
When the Wuhan virus outbreak first began, credentialed people seen as experts, though most had no expertise with this virus, proffered nightmarish harms from the disease in both outcome and in how widespread it would be (qualitative and quantitative) which seemed to justify draconian action.
Now that we have actual, non-speculative, local, national and international data on the Wuhan virus it is clear that the harms it causes are not proportionate to the government intervention in freedom originally justified by purely speculative claims. Meaning: government should back off and out of our lives in the matter now.