Would you be willing to be put under house arrest in order to save lives?

[Treesofwood]

Just that really. Would you be willing to go to prison to save lives? Would you be willing to give up your children's right to an education to save lives? This whole situation brings up many philosophical questions for me, and my theoretical response is not actually the sane as my response when faced with the reality.

[NotStayingIn]

Just to clarify I don't actually think people were moaning on this threat! But I'm sure my post will attract them

[Noneformethanks]

This is now becoming a kick those who can’t wear masks thread.

I have every right to go out without a mask. No one has the right to challenge me in any way.

And am Absolutely Scunnered having to defend this.

[RealityExistsInTheHumanMind]

@Inkpaperstars

The 'vulnerable' are not small section of society, they include anyone over 50 for starters. And that does not mean that under 50s with no preexisting health conditions are guaranteed a good recovery.

But let's set all that aside and imagine that we had a population in which no one was in the official 'vulnerable' groups. It wouldn't change much. The nature of the exponential growth of a new virus is such that even without that section of society, so much illness, including severe and life threatening, would occur at once that businesses and services could not function.

This obsession with the 'vulnerable' is a bit of a red herring.

When it comes to people only now prioritising their own family, I get it and they can do that. But if too many others do the same, the consequences are coming for all of us.

and it certainly doesn't mean that anyone over that age is condemned to death or lingering illness if they get it.

[RealityExistsInTheHumanMind]

@HesterShaw1

Like everything in life these days, it's all so bloody binary isn't it? You're either for us or against us, you either want grannies dying in the street or you want lockdown indefinitely. Nuance and subtlety is dead, it seems.

However I'll try. Most people will put up with mask wearing in shops, for the greater good. Most people will adhere to a sensible level of social distancing and adjustments, for the greater good. Most people are more than willing to be more scrupulous about hygiene for the greater good.

However what an increasing number of people are not prepared to do is stick to arbitrary, restrictive rules which drastically and negatively affect their and their families' wellbeing indefinitely. They are certainly not prepared to live like we were in March and April, indefinitely when they can see that deaths and hospitalizations from Covid are so low now. And when they can see that all those things they were told would cause second waves, spikes, thousands of deaths etc have manifestly not happened

They're especially not prepared to be nagged, hectored, shamed and berated as being "selfish", simply because they want to regain some semblance of normality for themselves and their families, by someone on MN who they have never even met (and quite frankly, if you want people to care about you, you need to be a little, well, nicer. You know, try displaying some of that empathy you speak of.)

No. Enough.

I 100% agree with you

And I 100% admire your patience in continuing to put the a rational view when so many others are making it so binary and trying to say that their opinion is fact.

For some people there is so much cognitive dissonance it beggars belief.

For others, presenting their own ideas as FACT, when ... well ... err ... I think if they were anything like correct we may as well all be lemmings. Ohhh! hmmm!

[Drivingdownthe101]

@HesterShaw1

Like everything in life these days, it's all so bloody binary isn't it? You're either for us or against us, you either want grannies dying in the street or you want lockdown indefinitely. Nuance and subtlety is dead, it seems.

However I'll try. Most people will put up with mask wearing in shops, for the greater good. Most people will adhere to a sensible level of social distancing and adjustments, for the greater good. Most people are more than willing to be more scrupulous about hygiene for the greater good.

However what an increasing number of people are not prepared to do is stick to arbitrary, restrictive rules which drastically and negatively affect their and their families' wellbeing indefinitely. They are certainly not prepared to live like we were in March and April, indefinitely when they can see that deaths and hospitalizations from Covid are so low now. And when they can see that all those things they were told would cause second waves, spikes, thousands of deaths etc have manifestly not happened

They're especially not prepared to be nagged, hectored, shamed and berated as being "selfish", simply because they want to regain some semblance of normality for themselves and their families, by someone on MN who they have never even met (and quite frankly, if you want people to care about you, you need to be a little, well, nicer. You know, try displaying some of that empathy you speak of.)

No. Enough.

And amen to that 👏

[ChavvySexPond]

@Treesofwood

Just that really. Would you be willing to go to prison to save lives? Would you be willing to give up your children's right to an education to save lives? This whole situation brings up many philosophical questions for me, and my theoretical response is not actually the sane as my response when faced with the reality.

Yes.

[MaxNormal]

But hundreds of thousands of children die, quite preventably, of poverty and infectious diseases every year.
Why has no-one been prepared to make great personal sacrifices to stop those deaths?

[InDeoEstMeaFiducia]

@MaxNormal

But hundreds of thousands of children die, quite preventably, of poverty and infectious diseases every year.
Why has no-one been prepared to make great personal sacrifices to stop those deaths?

Because they're not covid. People will come along to give you some strawman justifications and the usual me-railing suspects will come back.

[chickenyhead]

I would happily make sacrifice for them if the government made laws that forced the entirety of society to do so. I don't really understand your point. Sorry.

[Drivingdownthe101]

@chickenyhead

I would happily make sacrifice for them if the government made laws that forced the entirety of society to do so. I don't really understand your point. Sorry.

And I don’t understand yours...
So you’re only willing to save lives because the government have told you that you should be?

[iVampire]

Why has no-one been prepared to make great personal sacrifices to stop those deaths?

What sacrifices do you have in mind?

I would like to see the aid budget increased, and less consumption by the west. Inequality is a huge problem, and the differences are much starker when you look at a global level- we are one of the countries with the broadest shoulders and you’re right we should be carrying much more if the load.

Especially as those countries are also being hit by Covid - it’s almost an existential threat in places

And never forget the 90,000 newly deshielded DC here in Britain

[chickenyhead]

that's not what I have said or what the OP question asked.

If i personally could save those children by being on house arrest, I would. Just me. Not everyone.

Who are you angry at? Everyone?

[Noneformethanks]

@chickenyhead

I would happily make sacrifice for them if the government made laws that forced the entirety of society to do so. I don't really understand your point. Sorry.

And if the government allowed exemptions would you be happy about that?

[Drivingdownthe101]

@chickenyhead

that's not what I have said or what the OP question asked.

If i personally could save those children by being on house arrest, I would. Just me. Not everyone.

Who are you angry at? Everyone?

I’m not angry at anyone. I was responding specifically to you saying
I would happily make sacrifice for them if the government made laws that forced the entirety of society to do so. Which implies that unless the government asked you to, you wouldn’t.
That’s not anger, it’s questioning.

[Inkpaperstars]

It drives me insane that cancer patients are not being treated.

I agree with you, there must be a way to prioritise and organise that would allow this. Having said that, the only people I have known with cancer have all been treated without any interruption during this. I appreciate that is just a small sample, but some diagnosis and treatment has been continuing.

Presumably thoug, some people on here would class cancer patients as 'vulnerable' and say they aren't willing to put their social lives on hold to help save them....

[hopsalong]

Depends whose lives it was. Assuming the lives of people that I don't know: for children, yes, for old and sick people, no way.

As a moral principle, I appreciate that being under house arrest is a minor issue compared to dying. But the well-being of people I have never met is less important to me than the well-being of my own children and family. House arrest is a seriously unpleasant idea to me and my children would struggle, so I wouldn't be willing to do it unless it was to save the life of another child or young person.

[chickenyhead]

@Noneformethanks

Of course. Because not everyone has the same circumstances. But I fail to see how a question about the willingness to make personal sacrifice would apply to anyone else.

This thread is so full of hate, but its unclear who people are angry at because this thread isn't about another lockdown. Or is it.

[Skyla2005]

No the vulnerable can isolAte if they want Everyone else needs to get on with it

[Worldgonecrazy]

@IcedPurple

It hasn't always been that way, though. It really hasn't. Most people accept that other people matter and don't think they are more important than anyone else.

Virtually everyone puts themselves, their families, their close friends ahead of strangers. That's how it's always been and always will be. I'm willing to bet a great dea of money that you do too.

100% agree. We see it in all areas of our lives. If it’s people we don’t know, or people in other countries we turn a blind eye. (Unless it’s Covid related!)

How many of us would be willing to give up gold jewellery? It’s frivolous and unnecessary and causes thousands of deaths and much easier to give up than being put under house arrest, or is it only Covid deaths that count?

[isabellerossignol]

I think the opposite, I think people are far more willing to look at the greater good and be altruistic than they used to be. It's only about 100 years since poor and sick people were blamed for their own misfortune and shoved in a workhouse, it's only a couple of hundred years since buying and selling actual humans was a perfectly respectable way to make yourself rich.

[Treesofwood]

Worldgonecrazy exactly. People don't usually behave altruistic truly, they step over homeless people in the street. Ignore the trafficked people working in their nail bars. Maybe donate a tin of beans to the food bank, but don't think of the reasons for food poverty and suffering here.
Giving up education impacts children's whole lives. Damages their life chances. People losing their jobs in their 60s leads to lives led in poverty and a struggle, to find work.
I struggled to keep up with this conversation. But I just don't get the sea change in expectations of giving up personal freedom. Freedom is massive.

[Treesofwood]

Isabelle, poor and stick people still are blamed for their own misfortune. We could always have saved lives by staying in we are slightly unwell, sanitising hands, wearing a mask as if it works for covid, must work for other viruses. People who have depleted immune systems couldn't mix, but noone cared enough to do anything.
There is still the belief that people choose to be homeless or live in areas where social problems and poverty are rife.
People still believe that others who have lots of money deserve it because they work hard.

[isabellerossignol]

Isabelle, poor and stick people still are blamed for their own misfortune.

Yes, you're right. As soon as I posted that, I realised I had been overly simplistic.

I do think that, in general, most people are fairly compassionate towards others suffering on an individual level, if that makes sense, but maybe not at the level of society? When they see a neighbour, and her husband leaves her for a younger woman, and her four children are small, and then she becomes ill and reliant on the benefits system. Neighbours will look at her and think 'poor X, she's having a tough time'. Yet simultaneously they could pick up the Daily Mail and see a story about a stranger who has four children and is too ill to work and they'll assume she is lazy freeloader.

[PhilCornwall1]

People still believe that others who have lots of money deserve it because they work hard.

If a person has taken a risk, started a business and has made a lot of money out of it, do they not deserve that? They took a risk that could have easily gone the other way.

The person that started the business I work for took a massive risk, but it paid off. The business now turns over in excess of a billion pounds and employs thousands of people. He is a multimillionaire, but he took the risk, does he not deserve that?