Given their track record of deeply flawed nutrition recommendations, enabling opiate distribution while making relatively safe substances like cannabis and psilocybin illegal, and more, what do you expect?
This isn’t a left vs. right or socialized medicine / single payer vs capitalistic selling of kidneys for profit thread. It’s a simple question about expectations.
Should you expect government officials to pass and enforce laws related to your personal health?
Many freedom lovers I know will clearly answer, “No! My body, my business.” I agree. And, I also recognize how my body has an impact on those around me. Unless you want to live in a bubble suit, eventually you will be impacted by the poor choices of others who spread 🦠.
So what to do about it, especially if lives are at stake? Arguing about the probability of danger becomes irrelevant if a close friend or family gets seriously ill or dies. Should government, the monopoly on the initiation of force in your country, be responsible in some way?
My more liberal friends may be quick to respond with, “Yes! Of course! That’s why I pay my taxes.” I wonder how many of them truly understand history and the 260,000,000+ deaths from democide. This should not be a quick answer if you care about human life.
So where do you personally stand? Are you responsible for your own health and will you live (or die) based on your decisions? Do you think others should be controlled (by force, if necessary) for putting people at risk with an infectious disease?
Where do you draw the line? Smoking, alcohol, sugar, lack of exercise, practices which harm mental health, etc, etc... if there’s an expectation of government (or even decentralized) enforcement, by what measure do we say, “Here, but no further”?
I am not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination but my belief is that the single best thing we could do for our economy in the US is 'Medicare for All'.
I think health care should be like bridges and tunnels and police. Infrastructure.
Business would benefit greatly without the payment of medical insurance for their employees. Having no 'dead beat' bills would certainly help the health care industry. No one would have to make their health decisions based on money.
Yes. There would be a huge cost. Yes there would be impacts. But it's the right thing.
And yes. I absolutely believe in personal responsibility and personal freedom. Health care should be available not mandatory.
The UK has a well known health service. A country does better with a healthy population as they can be more productive and less reliant on state aid or care, but nothing is perfect. Our system has suffered from the Tory party selling off and privatising parts of it as they believe private enterprise is always better. Personally I do not want to have to worry too much about the cost if I need treatment. Okay, so we can have insurance, but will poorer people prioritise that?
Governments can advise on healthy living, but it's hard to enforce and people will do what is easy and pleasurable. Smoking is expensive here, but people still do it. Mind you it's a lot less common now. A lot of less healthy foods are still cheap compared to healthier options. Manufacturers will load them with salt and sugar that make them more appealing. That's private enterprise working to maximise profit rather than public good.
People will abuse the system, but if you have people fearing illness for financial reasons in a wealthy country then it's not right.
I personally took back the responsibility of my own health a long time ago. It is my business to know what my body needs and to be intune with it, we become so disconnected and disempowered otherwise. It's a life long journey to maintain good health, because we are learning all the time how things affect us, everything changes and so must we. xx
I'm from Germany where we have a well organized health care system1. It's not free (a part of your salary will automatically go to fund it) but you have to have it. And I'm a fan of that. I remember when I was a poor student that I circumvented it for more than a year because money was scarce. When you're young, you're stupid like that. You don't realize that your health can change from one moment to the next.
The government should make some regulations. I'm definitely not trusting and believing everything a government or big company does ('Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' - a citizen's duty is to be informed, to form an opinion and voice it), but there are things that are the government's duty. We eradicated small pox - if the immunization hadn't been compulsory that wouldn't have happened.
It's a difficult situation the world is in right now and for the near future. I'm quite happy that I'm not in a position where I have to decide for a lot of other people. And I'm definitely happy that I live in Germany! And, an opinion my younger self would have been shocked with, I'm glad we have the present chancellor.
"My body, my business" ends where other people's bodies come into play. It's like driving under the influence: unfortunately all too often other people are harmed, too.
1 The social care system in Germany goes back to the late 19th century, when Otto von Bismarck established it as a part of his fight against socialism. Well, it didn't work long-term ;)
That is only partially true. Once you reach a certain high enough income per year, you are free from governmental health insurance payment. You are not coerced to take it. You can then pick a private health insurance company or live with the risk of not having one, but then to pay for eventual health costs out of your own pocket.
There is no watertight proof that vaccines are the mono-cause for getting over small pox. In fact, there are no monocausal answers whatsoever, no matter which topic you choose. Monocausality is a concept and it established itself only for the lack of more complex answers. There is common consensus about it, yes, but that also means that not all people go along with that consensus.
In case you also give credit to multi-causal considerations I, would like to ask you what other factors you might think of are relevant that a disease like small pox doesn't occur any more or in very small numbers?
So, having this insight, that you are not alone in the world, you think, you only got it because the government made it a law? Or did you have this insight long before any authorities told you so?
If I needed a government to see where my responsibilities lay I'd say that I have not grown up yet.
So my worldview tells me if you let people stay in their responsibilities and treat them as sensible adults they will behave sensibly. Exceptions confirm this rule.
What does your life experience tell you? Where did you make your best practices and best experiences? Was it not when someone else trusted you, gave you credit in advance and encouraged you in the notion that you will do fine and get along? Not always looking over your shoulder, controlling everything, correcting every step you take, but let you run free and stay tolerant towards mistakes?
Interesting questions you ask. I would like to give my answer.
No, no one, not the government and certainly not a single fellow human being should be my overseer. Nor do I want to be the guardian of others. If a disease is spreading, then it is spreading. Protecting me from the likelihood, or even the possibility, of falling ill is a futile exercise. Even the premise is wrong. There is no one to blame for someone else's illness or death. If the premise is culpability and we are talking about viruses, bacteria and parasites, then I need contact tracing. That in itself is a deeply hostile and damaging attitude that kills the social and the friendly. It is an unfriendly and irresponsible attitude to blame someone for being sick. There is nothing to interpret about this.
You say there is a difference between strangers and my family members or friends when they are infected by me. But it is never clear who is infecting whom, is it?
To believe that or even to even consider that is, as I said, a damaging premise. No one can answer that and no one shall want that, is what I feel.
In order to establish a completely flawless, faultless and totally reliable contact guilt, the individual should not be allowed to move around in everyday life. He would have to be observed day and night under laboratory conditions and then it would be clear that whoever approached this person could possibly be the trigger for an infection. This is of course a nonsensical setting.
Apart from that, nobody can answer whether the virus potential is always already inside us and becomes active through unknown, undefined and unconsidered factors. Eating and drinking are part of it and so, in order to exclude food intake as a cause of illness, one would have to feed the person only intravenously. But then one would have to ask whether the needles, tubes and all equipment with which a person comes into contact are not free of all microbes. And so on and so on.
So if my sister, my husband or my son get sick from an infection, then for reasons unknown to me, and the best I can do is to take care of them and not to grieve about it or make a killer pit out of my heart, whether maybe I could be responsible for it. It is an exaggerated presumption and self-centredness to believe that my existence is responsible for the death of another, because in doing so I make myself the master of my surroundings and pretend that everything is knowable and controllable.
Whoever does not want me to be close to them because they are ill and whose closeness I do not want is a decision that people can always make. But to extend this inevitably to everyone who meets in public space or at work, an undertaking that can only lead to misery and guilt and atonement. Ultimately to total loneliness and isolation. That is not life, that is lifeless.
The question I would ask you back is: Are you ready to die? Do you accept your death? How about imagining dying tomorrow?