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

Admittedly I've not read it -- I assume it's reasonable, as I find the majority opinion to be. That's the thing with these court decisions: often you can justify either outcome in reasonable ways. There's no need to vilify anyone here -- it's truly distasteful what's been on display regarding this decision.

It's still unrelated to my comment. In fact, to the extent that you're trying to tie them together, it proves the opposite of the claims you're making.

My original parent was contrasting the two states, with the following:

>New York is such an outlier in terms of death rates that it should be a totally separate conversation.

My point was that NY shouldn't be a "totally different conversation", but that we should look to NY as a cautionary tale WRT potential outcomes without sufficient mitigation. The fact that hospital capacity was not overrun in either state underscores the validity of the comparison.

>many stories of incompetence and mismanagement...it’s a question if lack of proper care for a non covid preexisting condition...not seeking care out of fear is often the true cause of death".

This and the rest of your comment are, frankly, pure conjecture that seems to start with your conclusion. However, we know the virus is deadly and that COVID would likely be a serious contributing factor to deaths, even in the presence of pre-existing conditions. It's no secret that pre-existing conditions are a prime COVID risk factor and, as it happens, this country has a high incidence of pre-existing conditions. This was an openly stated primary force in our mitigation efforts. But, here you seem to be presenting it as some previously hidden revelation over which we should dismiss these deaths.

In sum, it's disingenuous to parse out all of the knowns and unknowns into an overall conclusion that lockdowns were somehow unnecessary. We know enough to know that stopping the spread of the virus prevents large numbers of unnecessary deaths--even (and especially) among at-risk populations.

> The democrats have always banged that drum on domestic issues

So the Democrats are usually the ones in favor of authoritarian War on Drugs measures to prevent domestic overdose deaths? Mandatory employee drug testing? Having the police arrest inconvenient/"unsanitary" protesters?

> the republicans have always prioritized businesses over public and worker safety

Walmart, Pfizer and Netflix are doing fine. The airlines are screwed, but that's already done, they can't go bankrupt twice at once and people aren't going to want to get on a plane for recreational purposes anytime soon even if we reopen.

It's workers who are suffering the most from continuing to not have a paycheck. If you look at what labor unions are saying, it's more along the lines of "here's how we think we should reopen" and not "we don't want to reopen" -- is it normal for Republicans and labor unions to be on the same page?

Thank you, I was genuinely curious as to what you had in mind -- I came up with a lot of possible examples, hence the question.

I think it's going to come down to definitions unfortunately. For example, what do we mean when we say

> enforce the minimum basic rules that are necessary to have a civil society

One could argue that Brown v Board of Education had little to do with policy and more to do with basic rules for civil society. For your other examples, I can see compelling arguments for why the federal government took this actions (with a justifiable reason). Many of them fall under the fact that the government is ultimately a forum for resolving large scale organizational challenges that the market is not properly incentivized to tackle.

Yes, these powers can be abused, and while restricting the government from acting in certain ways may be a method of curtailing those abuses, it would be a tradeoff in terms of the government effectively being able to accomplish its purpose.

> 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.

It builds down to a tension between "fix problems" and "enforce basic rules needed to have a civil society." Even in the situations you cite, the two can be in conflict. I suspect a lot of the people that one perceives as trying to use the government to "fix problems" may very well be seeing themselves as "enforcing basic rules needed to have a civil society."

Your analysis is riddled with errors.

Foremost, it's far too early to make the call on the effects of "re-opening".

Another misleading assertion is the idea that our "re-opened" state is anything like the state of affairs pre-lockdown. That is, many, many people are still virtually locked down--voluntarily.

Yet another issue your analysis overlooks is the measures we actually did take prior to full lockdown, wherein we in fact suggested that vulnerable populations self-isolate. This was not effective in slowing the spread; hence, the lockdown escalation.

Still another issue is your somewhat facile assessment of Walmart and other retail scenarios. The relevant metric here would not be closure of stores but transmission of the virus, as many people would be asymptomatic including, likely, workers. Yet, they may still have transmitted the virus.

But the real problem is that you omit the fact that measures we took to limit store hours, numbers of concurrent shoppers, in-store distancing, etc. and the resulting behavior changes (including fewer trips) meant bodies per store were dramatically reduced, helping to undercut transmission. And, the point there is that accommodations for essential trips to the store under such prescribed conditions were provided as part of the lockdown. So, you are trying to use the lockdown design itself as proof that the lockdown was unnecessary.

TLDR; This is frequently the story with these anti-lockdown claims: a revisionist look back at why the lockdown was "unnecessary", using precisely the design and benefits of the lockdown itself to make the case.