[2006alum]

I've said this before and I'll say it yet again: your hypo is not an accurate reflection of the cost-benefit analysis, because diseased individuals are not just a risk to themselves - they are also a risk to others in the community, including the medical providers who must care for them, as well as those who work in essential services and do not want to fall ill and die.

So I will return back to my top-line conclusion I raised a while back: the only way we can responsibly permit individuals to take on this risk as you have proposed, without greatly enhancing the risk to the community at large, is:

Test them any time they go out in public; immediately isolate them if they test positive; and once they do, give them 20 ambien to take if/when their symptoms become unbearable, so that they are guaranteed to pose no burden to medical providers.

And for those of you who want every individual to be able to exercise this choice themselves, I sure would have thought you'd be more outraged that the federal government has shown no interest in prioritizing widespread testing and implementing social contact tracing and isolation protocols (and staffing) on nationwide basis. That's what it's going to take for this to work, and I have seen very, very little evidence it's happening.

And despite what you say, we are all in this together when it comes to maintaining functioning medical infrastructures. All of us depend on being able to walk outside and call an ambulance if we get hit by a bus, have a heart attack, etc.

[2006alum]

I've said this before and I'll say it yet again: your hypo is not an accurate reflection of the cost-benefit analysis, because diseased individuals are not just a risk to themselves - they are also a risk to others in the community, including the medical providers who must care for them, as well as those who work in essential services and do not want to fall ill and die.

So I will return back to my top-line conclusion I raised a while back: the only way we can responsibly permit individuals to take on this risk as you have proposed, without greatly enhancing the risk to the community at large, is:

Test them any time they go out in public; immediately isolate them if they test positive; and once they do, give them 20 ambien to take if/when their symptoms become unbearable, so that they are guaranteed to pose no burden to medical providers.

And for those of you who want every individual to be able to exercise this choice themselves, I sure would have thought you'd be more outraged that the federal government has shown no interest in prioritizing widespread testing and implementing social contact tracing and isolation protocols (and staffing) on nationwide basis. That's what it's going to take for this to work, and I have seen very, very little evidence it's happening.

And despite what you say, we are all in this together when it comes to maintaining functioning medical infrastructures. All of us depend on being able to walk outside and call an ambulance if we get hit by a bus, have a heart attack, etc.