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

#141

Post by achenatx » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #130

ajmurmann wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

exactly this. Somehow a large proportion of people only want to focus on a hypothetical infectious person going out and infecting high risk people. But if the high risk people are not out they cannot get infected. In fact, everyone who is out has agreed to the shared risk. I plan to continue to minimize my outings, but Im fine if everyone who is out shares the risk of getting infected.

I do think that people who are at risk should be able to get unemployment so that they are not forced to work.

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

#142

Post by AbrahamParangi » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #128

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 politi…

If it makes you feel any better, the lockdowns probably don't matter in the limit.

1) Individual behavior changed prior to the lockdowns (people don't want to die)

2) The government appears generally too incompetent to figure out how to lower R0 low enough to eradicate the virus

3) Since everyone can see that the govt is fucking this up, the marginal utility of hard lockdowns becomes less than the marginal pain. Some people will socialize, go to restaurants, etc. but...

4) It probably won't be more than a 50-75% return to normality because people don't want to die, and risk preferences vary so some will remain cautious. This will, crush small businesses, restaurants, bars, leisure, etc.

So since the govt is too incompetent to bring the virus to actual 0, then formal lockdowns don't matter because you're not getting rid of the virus anyway and raising them doesn't matter much either, because you're not going back to normal.

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

#143

Post by cryptonector » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #95

“If a forest fire breaks out, there is no time for debate. Action is needed. The governor could declare an emergency and respond accordingly. But in the case of a pandemic, which lasts month after month, the governor cannot rely on emergency powers indefinitely,” Roggensack wrote for the majority. Refreshing to see some pressure for democracy to resume.

The legislatures have not been wiped out by covid-19. Elections are still being held too. If the legislatures wish to pass laws requiring various establishments to close down, they can pass them, and if Governors wish to have such laws on the books, they can request them of their respective legislatures. Similarly for the Federal government: Congress is still sitting, and they call their own sessions -- it can pass whatever laws are needed, and even override the President's vetoes if he does.

In the U.S. it's well-accepted, long-established constitutional law that presidential executive orders simply do not and cannot have the force of statutory law without connection to an enabling statutes. The Republican Guarantee clause of the Constitution means that the States have to have separate legislative and executive branches of government, and by extension that gubernatorial EOs also can't have the force of statutory law without the support of statutes -- otherwise Governors could rule without legislatures, as kings, which would be decidedly not a republican form of government.

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

#144

Post by kenjackson » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #105

organsnyder wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When our actions can harm others, the government absolutely has the right—and the obligation—to step in.

> When our actions can harm others, the government absolutely has the right—and the obligation—to step in. No. When our actions have harmed others, then the government has the right to step in--because we delegated that power to them. But the government does not have the right to step in just because some government official things our actions "can" harm others. That's not their call to make. We are adult human being…

Wait. I can drive drunk now? Those checkpoints are actually illegal? All those people in jail for DUIs shouldn’t be there?

Has anyone taken these laws to the Supreme Court?

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

#145

Post by pdonis » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

thisiszilff wrote: post #124

pdonis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Do you have any specific examples that aren't the latter?

That sounds facetious, but I'm being serious. Go read the United States Code, or the Code of Federal Regulations, and tell me how many of those laws and regulations you think really are within the limited powers granted to the Federal government by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Go read Supreme Court decisions like Wickard v. Filburn or Kelo v. New London, or for that matter even Brown v. Board of Education or Roe v. Wade, and tell me whether those decisions really are in accordance with the limited powers the Federal government is supposed to have.

Yes, you can argue that some of those laws and regulations and decisions were good from a public policy standpoint. (Although it would be hard to make a case that our public schools are really any better more than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education than they were before. And not everybody agrees with current jurisprudence on abortion.) You can also argue that some of them plainly weren't. (Is it really a good idea to restrict what a farmer can grow on his own land, for his own use, in the name of regulating "interstate commerce"? Is it really a good idea to have the government artificially manipulating the market for food in the first place, especially when it's being done at the behest of large corporations and their lobbyists? Does evicting people from their homes and handing the land over to a private development company really count as a valid use of the government's eminent domain power?)

But in either case, you're arguing from an implicit assumption that the government is supposed to fix problems, and you're arguing about whether it did a good or a bad job. Nobody ever even asks why the government is intruding in all these activities in the first place, if it's just supposed to be enforcing the basic rules needed to have a civil society.

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

#146

Post by cryptonector » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

Narkov wrote: post #140

mchusma wrote: post #95

“If a forest fire breaks out, there is no time for debate. Action is needed. The governor could declare an emergency and respond accordingly. But in the case of a pandemic, which lasts month after month, the governor cannot rely on emergency powers indefinitely,” Roggensack wrote for the majority. Refreshing to see some pressure for democracy to resume.

Democracy to resume?? By striking down a democratically elected officials order?

Yes. Courts do that a lot in case you've not noticed

(EDIT: Though not in this case! From the opinion: "This case is about the assertion of power by one unelected official, Andrea Palm, ..."[0].)

But in this case the issue is that a governor cannot impose law without the legislature. Wisconsin's legislature still sits -- if not in session, perhaps the governor could call it into session -- and can pass legislation.

[0] https://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?cont...

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

#147

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

jb775 wrote: post #129

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by asabjorn » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #138

asabjorn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Sweden benefits from being very moderate in density compared to NYC. Stockholm is comparable in size and density to Washington, DC. The death rate in Stockholm is about 5 times higher than DC.

3,3k has so far died in Sweden and the population is 10 million. I believe 22k has died out of 8.3m in NYC, so NYC seems clearly worse.

The strategy was to face more infections short term in favor of quick herd immunity so it’s actually a very positive sign for the strategy that the death rate is not higher than NYC.

Considering that the curve has flattened and herd immunity is projected in a couple of weeks, it is not clear the total deaths in virus lifecycle will be bad.

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

#149

Post by carlivar » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

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.

Declining current deaths. Now, how many deaths long term from economic damage? We don't know. More than zero. This isn't a yes/no decision.

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

#150

Post by tfehring » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

jb775 wrote: post #129

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The baseline mortality rate for an 80 year old is about 0.5% per month. The mortality rate for an 80 year old with coronavirus is about 15%, with nearly all deaths occurring within a month. So treating all deaths in coronavirus patients as being caused by coronavirus would only overstate the true case fatality rate by 3% or so. The ratio is similar for younger ages. Not sure why Joe Rogan or Elon Musk’s opinion would be relevant here.