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Originally Posted by ianch99
My point was that they both were not against the law at one point and so only required only people to use their "common sense".
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So, are you saying that Covid no longer represents a serious risk to the vulnerable e.g. immunocompromised, etc. ? If not, then surely mandating that an infectious person remain isolated is the only sensible & moral choice to make.
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If you’re going to make an argument from morality then you have a duty to be much more thorough than you have been here. Asking whether covid presents a serious ongoing risk is a valid starting point but if that’s all you’re asking then you aren’t going to arrive at a morally defensible conclusion. Covid isn’t the only risk to immunocompromised individuals and it must be evaluated alongside those other risks, which offer some valuable context. Our long-term response to it must be calculated with due regard to the way we have historically mitigated those other risks.
For example, I was at university with an immunocompromised person (due to medication) and when they were in the middle of a course of those drugs they requested that the rest of us be especially careful about coming too close if we had so much as a sniffle. This was how those responsible for this person’s medical care proposed the risk be managed ‘in the wild’ - a generous dose of personal responsibility on this person’s part, augmented with a polite request for additional caution from those they spent the most time with.
Covid is going to become endemic, just like flu and the common cold, and it will continue to pose an abnormal risk to certain individuals, while most of us shake it off. We have never considered it immoral that there are no laws forcing people to self isolate with these viruses, though as a society we do frown on those who sneeze all over others and, for the most part, encourage personal responsibility (though I think some advertising around cold and flu remedies has bordered on irresponsible in the past).
Using the law to shortcut anyone’s personal responsibility and especially to curtail their freedom should be an exceptional response to extreme circumstances, yet I worry what we’re seeing here is a far too eager slide towards using legislation to enforce everyday morality. This is not good; as well as infantilising people it also creates an authoritarian streak in government that once established, may not easily be removed.