I am not supporting or condoning this.
But the group's leader made a money quote:
Quarantine is when you restrict movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people...It is worth emphasizing that the world was surprised back in January when China locked down healthy people. This was surprising because [and I am certain that I mentioned this in class as well as in this post] quarantining is what you do with the infected people. What China did was not a quarantine.† There simply was no epidemiological evidence prior to that Chinese policy of any government ever trying that, much less having it be effective.
So, it is worth pointing out and remembering that we still don't know if this is a good idea or not, on net.
† They are called SEIQR models because the population progresses from left to right, and quarantine comes after infection.What comes before infection, susceptibility and exposure, includes nothing about social distancing or quarantining healthy people.
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My personal opinion is that social distancing and shutting down much of the economy is working, and I support it. So I'm angry at protesters like those in the linked article.
But I will also admit that I do not know or have evidence that social distancing will work, and my feelings on this could be wrong. Lots of policymakers around the world would benefit from realizing this.
Also, paying close attention to the countries (say Sweden) and states (say South Dakota) that are doing things differently is warranted. Recall from basic regression analysis that it is the observations that are not like all the others that have the most explanatory power.
I added the two highlights in green about 12 hours after initially posting this.
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