There seems to be a great deal of misconception about what the government should be doing during this crisis and why. Let's be clear, it is not the government's job to keep you from being infected. It is also not the government's job to prevent grandma from ever dying of covid. Most of the expressed thoughts of people everywhere seems to be that if we allow government to crush civil liberties and the economy in whatever manner they wish for the moment, we will prevent infections and deaths in some absolute manner. Government does not have that power. Biology and history suggest we don't want them to have that power.
Our greatest weapon against this virus and, in fact, all pandemic-capable "microorganisms" is our collective immune system ("herd immunity"). Therefore we need a significant number of people to get the virus, mount an immune response, and then carry on with their lives. They are the buffer by which the virus becomes less able to spread through the population next time it comes around. They are the reason these things always subside and life goes on. The people in charge seem to understand this. This "flattening the curve" they describe is not a method to prevent you from ever getting infected. It is a method of stretching out the infections temporally so that in any given moment we can treat the worst cases and save some lives. People will still die even if they have access to the best care at that moment. The area under the curve in both situations is approximately the same. This means about the same number of people will be infected overall in both situations.
If you advocate that government should crush civil liberties and the economy in the moment to prevent you from ever being infected you are advocating something that has never been done for a pandemic-capable virus like COVID-19. Perhaps we are close to a time when we could react to a new infection in this manner. When government could temporarily grind society to a halt and science could quickly develop a vaccine. We could then replace the herd immunity provided by recovered infections with that provided by the vaccine. We are not to that point yet.
This notion is dangerous. It is dangerous because it is a vehicle to allow government to bypass the normal checks and balances on limiting our liberties. To advocate methods to slow down infections can be effective and constitutional. To advocate methods to prevent you or grandma from ever getting infected is irrational and most assuredly NOT constitutional.
