Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan on the rallying cry of the Karens of all genders:
In times of crisis, politicians want to look like they’re doing something, and don’t want to hear about limits on their authority. In times of crisis, people want someone to do something, and don’t want to hear about tradeoffs. This is the breeding ground for grand policies driven by the mantra, “if it saves just one life.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo invoked the mantra to defend his closure policies. The mantra has echoed across the country from county councils to mayors to school boards to police to clergy as justification for closures, curfews, and enforced social distancing.
Rational people understand this isn’t how the world works. Regardless of whether we acknowledge them, tradeoffs exist. And acknowledging tradeoffs is an important part of constructing sound policy. Unfortunately, even mentioning tradeoffs in a time of crisis brings the accusation that only heartless beasts would balance human lives against dollars. But each one of us balances human lives against dollars, and any number of other things, every day.
Five-thousand Americans die each year from choking on solid food. We could save every one of those lives by mandating that all meals be pureed. Pureed food isn’t appetizing, but if it saves just one life, it must be worth doing. Your chance of dying while driving a car is almost double your chance of dying while driving an SUV. We could save lives by mandating that everyone drive bigger cars. SUVs are more expensive and worse for the environment, but if it saves just one life, it must be worth doing. Heart disease kills almost 650,000 Americans each year. We could reduce the incidence of heart disease by 14 percent by mandating that everyone exercise daily. Many won’t want to exercise every day, but if it saves just one life, it must be worth doing.
Legislating any of these things would be ridiculous, and most sane people know as much. How do we know? Because each of us makes choices like these every day that increase the chances of our dying. We do so because there are limits on what we’re willing to give up to improve our chances of staying alive. Our daily actions prove that none of us believes that “if it saves just one life” is a reasonable basis for making decisions. Yet, when a threat like the coronavirus emerges, we go looking for an imaginary cure that will save lives without tradeoffs.
I would love to repost this to my Facebook so family and friends can see some reasonable arguments, but I keep getting attacked by so many of those same family and friends for being cold, and heartless.
Fear makes usually reasonable relatives unreasonable. Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada doesn’t help either. And when the dust settles and you point out that the latest CNN attack is crap, they don’t want to hear that, and they move on to the next sh*t storm the media is cooking up. I had one cousin arguing with me over the “inject disinfectant” thing. I asked him to point out in the rambling questioning where Trump told anyone to do anything. All I got back was “Trump just needs to shut his mouth”. This man is usually reasonable, polite, is well educated, but he turns raving loon at times. As the day following show more and more Trump is right, as seen from the Healight thing, they just ignore the proof and chew on the next crap sandwich served up by CNN, MSNBC, CBC, and CTV.
Comment by Dwayne — April 29, 2020 @ 20:03
Fear really does drive a lot of this, and it’s a very effective tool in the wrong hands.
Trump is very far from my platonic ideal of the “leader of the free world”, but he’s done a far better job than I think Obama, Bush, Clinton, or Bush the Elder would have done under similar circumstances. Oddly enough, I just had a conversation at the dinner table about whether Trump should just shut up, as apparently Ben Shapiro has called for. I pointed out that if he does shut up, then all we’ll hear through the garbage media is what the garbage media wants us to hear. Trump is the dictionary definition of a bull in a china shop (pun unintentional, I assure you), but at least they have to do a minimum amount of relaying what he’s actually said, as opposed to putting their own choice of words in his mouth as they would if he didn’t keep talking and tweeting.
Comment by Nicholas — April 29, 2020 @ 20:18