Thread by @lymanstoneky

look, women being able to vote is barely a century old, and since women might socialize more than men, it's really not to much to ask, for the sake of public health, that we suspend women's suffrage

your great-grandma didn't need to vote, why do you?

https://twitter.com/EpiEllie/status/1429156161614405634

also to be clear mandatory schooling is much more than a century old in many states

non-white people have been infected by covid at higher rates; they are clearly a problem population; civil rights for non-whites are not even a century old, so why not suspend them for a few months while we get things under control?

that's literally the argument here

except that in this case, minorities in America *actually are* an vulnerable population with a lot of potential excess deaths which could occur among them, whereas school kids have vanishingly low rates of death from COVID.

it would in fact make more *public health* sense to abolish freedom of movement and privacy rights in high-infection neighborhoods (disproportionately non-white) than to cancel school.

of course, both are stupid policies violating the basic rights of the people in question.

cancelling school in spring 2020 made perfect sense. We didn't know what it would be like for kids and protecting kids is an extremely high-value activity; plus cancelling school creates "de facto lockdowns" which was useful early on.

but no? this is all pointless nonsense.

adults in indoor environments around other people should wear masks. everybody should get vaccinated. testing at international borders is reasonable. imposing a 15-minute rapid test on anybody entering a nursing home is extremely wise.

literally nothing else passes a C/B test.

if we get a scary new variant, we should ground all 99% of flights and turn away 99% of land border travelers for about 2 weeks while we collect more data and info. but again, nothing else is necessary.

(and the data to be collected is basically just "do the vaccines still prevent death?")