Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses • Hacker News Board

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#121

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

Thriptic wrote: post #107

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, if deaths going down isn't the end condition, what is? Surely there has to be some point soon where the legislature gets to determine the laws of the state again.

A plausible plan for actually solving the root problem, namely a realistic strategy for mass testing, contact tracing, and non-voluntary quarantine; or a functional vaccine. Right now we have neither, so getting people back out simply puts us back into the same situation we were in before initiating the lockdown.

Contact tracing has had poor rates of people opting into it, vaccines are quite a ways out and it's pretty hard to legally mandate and enforce quarantines.

You can't keep people in their homes forever while they lose their jobs.

We aren't seeing a rise in cases in states that have been reopening for more than two weeks. The rate of decline may be lower but they are still in decline.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#122

Post by jeffbee » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

apostacy wrote: post #100

asabjorn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the legislature resists, or the court doesn't grant the stay, that sucks, the bars and restaurants will open, people will get sick and die. Or maybe the Republicans will turn out correct and everything is fine. This assertion needs a citation. If this should be true either hospitalization must be so high that it overwhelms the health system, which was the original justification for the lockdown, or death rate mu…

Meanwhile, Sweden never had shelter in place orders, and they did not fare worse than France or Ireland.

According to EuroMOMO, Sweden's excess mortality rate this year is "high", France's is "low" and Ireland's is "no excess".

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#123

Post by ajmurmann » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #115

ajmurmann wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We make our own choices, and if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences I am all for this! How can we make this happen? Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Let's do it!

> Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Who says what counts as "no essential reason"? How do you know whether I infected anyone else? Not everyone without a mask is an asymptomatic COVID-19 carrier. If you're basically arguing that the government needs to have invasive surveillance and micromanagem…

So how does your "if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences" get enforced in practice and doesn't turn into a situation where a few people who don't take care to not infect others will kill millions?

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#124

Post by thisiszilff » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #110

singlow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government does not have to protect its ability to ban potentially harmful actions by banning every possible harmful action. The purpose of the legislative representatives is to make judgement calls about which things have enough potential harm to warrant restriction. I really don't understand the argument here that because not all harmful actions are banned, that banning harmful actions is not constitutional. Am…

> The purpose of the legislative representatives is to make judgement calls about which things have enough potential harm to warrant restriction. That's what they currently claim, but it's not what they're supposed to be doing. We made a huge mistake when we allowed the government to morph from "enforce the minimum basic rules that are necessary to have a civil society" to "solve everything that anyone thinks is a pr…

Do you have some specific examples of the latter?

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#125

Post by willis936 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

apostacy wrote: post #100

asabjorn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the legislature resists, or the court doesn't grant the stay, that sucks, the bars and restaurants will open, people will get sick and die. Or maybe the Republicans will turn out correct and everything is fine. This assertion needs a citation. If this should be true either hospitalization must be so high that it overwhelms the health system, which was the original justification for the lockdown, or death rate mu…

Meanwhile, Sweden never had shelter in place orders, and they did not fare worse than France or Ireland.

What’s your metric? I can’t find a country doing worse than Sweden. Even the US has slowed its growth rate by a large amount more than Sweden. Just look at the plots, dude.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#126

Post by wyldfire » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #16

aegis4244 wrote: post #9

The Republicans who brought the lawsuit argue that, in part, continuing the lock down isn't appropriate because deaths from covid19 are going down. They don't connect the declining deaths to being locked down. You would think they would notice.

The question is, if deaths going down isn't the end condition, what is? Surely there has to be some point soon where the legislature gets to determine the laws of the state again.

Ultimately: risk. Scientists can model infection and suggest whether it makes sense to continue restrictions or not. In fact, they do just that and executives like Governors consult experts for matters like this one.

Risk can go down if: (1) much of the population becomes immune [after vaccination or recovery from infection e.g.], (2) treatments arrive that mitigate the impact of sickness, (3) some novel isolation equipment/methods arrive that reduce the spread of disease.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#127

Post by asabjorn » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #122

apostacy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, Sweden never had shelter in place orders, and they did not fare worse than France or Ireland.

According to EuroMOMO, Sweden's excess mortality rate this year is "high", France's is "low" and Ireland's is "no excess". https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Sweden is doing better than NYC without the catastrophic economic consequences NYC is experiencing https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/sweden...

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#128

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 AM UTC

This is where culture really matters. Almost every jurisdiction in the western world has faced this issue. Governments are issuing orders that, when push comes to shove, might not be 100% legitimate in the eyes of a court. In most countries that hasn't mattered. People acknowledge the covid problem and are obeying the "orders" despite them, perhaps, not having legal teeth. This requires trust. Like the current politicians or not, most populations respect their governments and are willing to support emergency measures in the short term. Whether they voted for them or not, they trust that their leaders are not evil.

But what about the US? If all government is corrupt, if all taxes are sin, if all leaders on the other side are traitors to the cause, the people will never respect those in charge. The people don't obey the "orders" nor follow advice. Then they wrap themselves in the flag and actively work against the measures in the name of freedom. That cultural chicken has now come home to roost.

This state supreme court could have delayed. Cases take years to get to state supreme courts. They could easily have pushed this case until after this disease has come and gone. Instead they pushed this through in order to get a quick victory over a governor with whom they disagree politically.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#129

Post by jb775 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #109

asabjorn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the legislature resists, or the court doesn't grant the stay, that sucks, the bars and restaurants will open, people will get sick and die. Or maybe the Republicans will turn out correct and everything is fine. This assertion needs a citation. If this should be true either hospitalization must be so high that it overwhelms the health system, which was the original justification for the lockdown, or death rate mu…

1 in 400 New Yorkers have died from this in the past 2 months. The flu doesn’t do that.

That argument loses steam when you find out the 1 in 400 got hit by a bus and the hospital flagged it as a covid death because that person tested positive on a previous covid test.

Listen to the Joe Rogan podcast from last week w/ Elon Musk, he agrees with my statement.

EDIT: Is it just me or is HN becoming more and more of an echo chamber where people downvote anything that goes against their own politics and yet they have no rebuttal or critical response. Lost a lot of respect for HN over the past few months. And for what it's worth, my original comment here is literally what's happening right now. Take your heads out of the fucking sand.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#130

Post by pdonis » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:47 AM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #123

pdonis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Who says what counts as "no essential reason"? How do you know whether I infected anyone else? Not everyone without a mask is an asymptomatic COVID-19 carrier. If you're basically arguing that the government needs to have invasive surveillance and micromanagem…

So how does your "if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences" get enforced in practice and doesn't turn into a situation where a few people who don't take care to not infect others will kill millions?

> how does your "if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences" get enforced in practice and doesn't turn into a situation where a few people who don't take care to not infect others will kill millions?

By looking at everyone's choices, not just the one person you want to pick on.

Suppose Person A is an asymptomatic COVID-19 carrier and doesn't know it. They go to the grocery store without a mask. Person B also goes to the grocery store without a mask, and gets infected by Person A.

You could say Person A is responsible because they should have worn a mask. But you could also say Person B is responsible because they should have worn a mask. Yes, if you know there are a lot of asymptomatic carriers, you should take into account the possibility that you might be one. But you should also take into account the possibility that someone else might be one. So the appropriate rule in this case is that anyone who doesn't wear a mask in a public place where they can't social distance takes the consequences if they get sick. Someone who gets infected because they didn't wear a mask can't pawn off the responsibility on the person who infected them that also wasn't wearing a mask.

In other words, your scenario where "a few people who don't take care not to infect others can kill millions* simply cannot happen unless those millions of other people also don't take care not to get infected. So putting all the responsibility on the person who unknowingly infected someone else, instead of sharing it equally among all the people who didn't take common sense precautions, is wrong. Justifying invasive surveillance and tracking of everyone on those grounds is basically saying you want the government to make sure you don't have to take any prudent precautions or exercise any common sense at all in your daily life in order to avoid having anything bad happen to you. That's not reasonable.