We have a right to education, a right to personal liberty, a right to family time, or we did before Covid.

[Treesofwood]

But not any more. So how do we decide when some people's rights (including right to life) mean that others lose their rights. There have always been people who could get very sick and even die if they were to catch anyone of a number of viruses that circulate every year. No one suggested everyone should give up their right to personal liberty to prevent that. There have always been people who are killed on the roads every year. No one suggested that non essential car journeys should be banned to reduce or prevent this. Why are people with cancer's lives seen as less worth saving than those who might catch Covid? Why are people OK with this? How can the government make it illegal for me to see my parents?

@Bluelinings I honestly don't understand why you would say that about refugees etc. This is all about protecting other people's human rights. Refugees are people. Like wouldyourather it is something I am passionate about and strongly believe in, also related to my work.
The more I travel through life I think people believe that if they think one way about one thing then those who agree with them will also agree with them on other points. Eg Left/right brexit/remain. Otherwise I honestly don't u derstand why you would say that.

@cbt944 I think that is my point. At what point is the greater good 11 million children's right to an education over 300 peoples right to life. For example.
If you take the greater good to the nth degree it also doesn't work. I could sacrifice myself and save the lives of 5 or 6 people with my organs. But no one us suggesting I do that. It still has measurements, subjectivity, and those applying it can be wrong.

You're "passionate" about refugees human rights but happy for them (or anyone else) to die of COVID ?

The good news as far as you concerned is that pandemics tend to work against the agents of authority. They are agents of social change. And look, you can now hide your identity in public without drawing undue comment. No more facial recognition via CCTV. A blow for liberty.

But it's millions more than 300 in the vulnerable category, OP. A very poor example.

Is it fair to them to ask them to withdraw from society? I don't think so.

I agree with you OP and yes,it's pretty terrifying how so many people are just rolling over and accepting our loss of rights from a Government who are breaking the law and have proved to be liars time and again. Where will they draw the line? We just have to hope the more restrictions they bring in,the more people may start to see.

Now I'm awake to the world. I was asleep before. That's how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress, we didn't wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the constitution, we didn't wake up then, either. Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

Porcupineinwaiting Obviously I'm not happy for anyone to die if anything. But we have all lived a life where we accept that the trade off for being free to travel in our cars, road travel etc is that approx 180 people a year are killed in our roads. Including children.

Not again. I'm really starting to question your motivation/agenda. You seem hellbent on stirring things up. Why?

Interesting thought about the masks.

Lasygoldendaysofsummer So you think saving 300 people from dying is less important than 11million children receiving an education? Everyone has a line. That is my point. People are not wearing masks to "save lives" in the large part, they are doing it because the government told them to. And I actually don't think the government are mandating it to save lives. I think they are doing it because they want to be seen to be doing something. The delay was, I think, as someone says up thread that BJ is at heart a libertarian.

So you think saving 300 people from dying is less important than 11million children receiving an education?

Perhaps I would if that was the case but it isn't. Most children are receiving an education, why are you implying that they aren't?

Baffling. Hypothetical nonsense is not reasoned debate.

@TheClaws

What if COVID, or a similar virus, killed children instead of the elderly? Would people be so quick to write them off so casually?

This.

Are we allowed to drive at any speed we like? Is anyone allowed to drive? I think people have to wear helmets on motorbikes.

We have fairly strict restrictions on driving compared to cycling or walking. We have to declare medical conditions to dvla and there are penalties for not following rules. You cannot drive for a certain time period after heart, attack, stroke, epileptic first.

The cancer treatment is a bit of a red herring - You can run clinics etc with the Covid restrictions. Actually locking everything else down and reducing infections, would probably allow more treatment to occur than less.

This is because lower transmission means less healthcare staff off with symptoms, less risk for the immuno-suppressed when they come into hospital. I was in a country with v strict rules and v low transmission. You might not have been able to see a particular consultant, but you got an appointment and were seen.

Ok then, let's talk education. In the UK, where we have accepted restrictions on our liberty to control COVID, children are back at school. In the parts if the US where even wearing a mask is considered an unreasonable restriction of liberty, many schools are closed and many parents are opting not to send their kids to school. So all those deaths and education is still being affected.

I agree with you OP. We seem to be blindly accepting this violation of our basic rights with no end in sight. It is a slippery slope and it is frightening...

UK does quite a lot to celebrate the effort the nation made in ww1 and WW2. weren’t these times really restrictive in terms of human rights? Would the country be able to do this again?

How would people feel if it was an Ebola outbreak? I guess the answer is - it all depends... I suspect that for a disease like Ebola, the public would be much more accepting of restrictions.

The difficulty is that corona- is high risk for a sector of the population.

People saying "what rights? Who cares about rights?" really scare me. If you don't care about your rights in a free society then you will lose them. And suddenly learn what the point of caring about your rights was. The horrible commandment "educate yourself" might be worth deploying here.

I think part of the problem with trying to talk about these issues is that a lot of well off middle class people haven't really suffered from lockdown. They get to work from home, they don't have large families they don't get to see, their kids have been privately tutored and are pretty much guaranteed to get into 'good' universities, waitrose delivers the shopping, the cleaner still turns up, albeit in a mask, they have a big garden to hang out in and really it's all quite nice. They aren't losing jobs and businesses, seeing their kids struggling with learning and socialising, losing their childhood behind a screen.

The other part of it is that most of us aren't experts and we have no idea what we're talking about, so we are relying on others to lead us. People don't want to face up to the incompetence or failures of that leadership because it's scary.

I have no clue what to do for the best, but I think it's important to be open and consider these questions of how we balance rights with safety, or how much we prioritise covid over other health conditions. I think we have to talk about it, raise the questions at least.

@Treesofwood

Hoping4onlychild Sweden have less deaths per million than us and a better economy though. We didn't use the Field Hospitals that were opened to much fanfare. It can't just be about saving lives or we would have made such sacrifices before in order to save people from dying. But we didn't.

Sweden is not at all densely populated and people there generally don't take the piss with more lax precautions and are still cautious.

Pointless to compare it to a nation of nearly 70 million on a small island.

@ohthegoats

Blinking Sweden. If ever there was a false comparison it's this.

I'm fed up with this one too.

Compare them to similar countries:

Deaths
Norway 265
Finland 337
Denmark 633
Sweden 5860

GDP % contraction 2020
Norway -3.51
Finland -6.4
Denmark -6.5
Sweden -8.3

So, you know...

The only way Sweden can be held up as any model is if they have limited cases through the winter due to herd immunity, while neighbouring countries really soar with a huge wave.

It's completely not comparable to the UK, give its sparsely populated and it hasn't just been carry on as normal either. There's still social distancing.

Not rt whole ft yet but your rights don't outrank other people's. Pre Covid it was still the case that you couldn't do whatever you wanted if that infringed upon another person's right to go about their own life in safety and peace.
Your right to see your parents at will, does not mean you get to kill mine (to put in in base terms).
Personally, apart from some leisure activities (which are hard to socially distance) I can't see what you've lost. You can still go about your life - you are just being asked to use hand sanitizer, wear a mask and not get up in people's faces. Just to exercise a bit of restraint, when you go about your business.

The only way Sweden can be held up as any model is if they have limited cases through the winter due to herd immunity, while neighbouring countries really soar with a huge wave.

Unlikely, they'd only achieved 15-20% with antibodies, at last report.

@cbt944 Can you explain why their cases reduced another way?

@cbt944

The only way Sweden can be held up as any model is if they have limited cases through the winter due to herd immunity, while neighbouring countries really soar with a huge wave.

Unlikely, they'd only achieved 15-20% with antibodies, at last report.

It's too sparsely populated to spread that much there for the most part and people are still cautious.

The price of alcohol.in Sweden means you are unlikely to see people getting shitfaced every weekend and ignoring social distancing.

@Treesofwood behaviour? Maybe the experience of the last few months has encouraged them to modify their behaviour to prevent spread?