5 Responses to “The fundamental human right to go to a restaurant”

• #1

  Skeletor

  March 22, 2020 at 8:18 am

  You can’t take our freedumb!

  Judge Napolitano often has interesting things to say, including some things in the linked article, but he’s a theoretical libertarian to the nth degree, never letting real-world experience get in the way of purity. It’s just nuts to think freedoms temporarily take away during a pandemic were never really freedoms at all then. Yes, they were. They were just temporarily taken away during a pandemic.

  I have an elderly relative who understands the crisis and agrees with the need for strict measures to be taken, but they don’t think “the government” should be doing it. They kept repeating, “This isn’t the USA! This isn’t the USA!” Apparently “the USA” should let the disease spread among all the freedumb lovers if they so choose, and too bad about the impact on everyone else.
• #2

  Artymorty

  March 22, 2020 at 8:43 am

  It’s particularly alarming as the consensus seems to be building that we need to lock down even harder in the short term as that’s likely the only way to avert mass deaths and economic catastrophe. (Do read that “Hammer and the Dance” piece at Medium that’s going around if you come across it…)

  And this piece at ProPublica about what it’s like to get the virus is a must-read, but it’s very frightening.

  https://www.propublica.org/article/a-medical-worker-describes–terrifying-lung-failure-from-covid19-even-in-his-young-patients

  “I have patients in their early 40s and, yeah, I was kind of shocked. I’m seeing people who look relatively healthy with a minimal health history, and they are completely wiped out, like they’ve been hit by a truck. This is knocking out what should be perfectly fit, healthy people. Patients will be on minimal support, on a little bit of oxygen, and then all of a sudden, they go into complete respiratory arrest, shut down and can’t breathe at all.”

  …“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we’ve had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe. When you’re in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don’t know when someone is trying to help you, so you’ll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning.

  …“Before this, we were all joking. It’s grim humor. If you are exposed to the virus and test positive and go on quarantine, you get paid. We were all joking: I want to get the coronavirus because then I get a paid vacation from work. And once I saw these patients with it, I was like, Holy shit, I do not want to catch this and I don’t want anyone I know to catch this.
• #3

  Bruce Coppola

  March 22, 2020 at 9:29 am

  Fuck, that’s scary. I’m 66 in good health and, along with my sister, am caring for our 88 y.o. mother in my home, a stroke survivor with multiple pre-existing conditions. Before I was just worried about her getting Covid-19. Now I worry about me and/or my sister getting it and being unable to care for her or dying.
• #4

  Naif

  March 22, 2020 at 11:12 am

  Is is then ironic that Rand Paul has tested positive?
• #5

  Ophelia Benson

  March 22, 2020 at 11:20 am

  Yes.