The cowboy sits at his table in the saloon.\u00a0 He pulls a bullet from his pocket.\u00a0 He pulls his six-shooter from it’s holster.\u00a0 He loads the bullet into the barrel.\u00a0 He spins the barrel.\u00a0 He points the gun at his head.\u00a0 He pulls the trigger.<\/p>\n
<click><\/p>\n
No harm done.<\/p>\n
“Russian Roulette” as portrayed in the movies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But even if it had been <bang> and the cowboy died, no physical harm would have come to anyone else.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watching social media as the coronavirus pandemic unfolds I have seen some people indignant at the suggestion that they can be told what to do in any situation.\u00a0 Stay home.\u00a0 Not congregate.\u00a0 Not “have fun.”\u00a0 Not see their friends.\u00a0 Get a haircut.<\/em>\u00a0 Indignant that anyone, especially “the government,” tell them anything like that.\u00a0 They exhibit their indignation under the banner of “personal liberty.”<\/p>\n Now imagine the same cowboy.\u00a0 He pulls out his bullet and his gun, he loads the gun, he spins the barrel, and this time he stands up and starts waving the gun around at the other patrons of the saloon and pulls the trigger.<\/p>\n <click><\/p>\n No harm done?<\/p>\n Wrong<\/em>.\u00a0 Plenty of harm done.\u00a0 Nobody got hurt or died.\u00a0 But they could have.\u00a0 There was a 1 in 6 chance that the gun would fire.\u00a0 A 1 in 6 chance that someone could have died.<\/p>\n As a society we consider that unacceptable.\u00a0 It is unacceptable that someone brandish a loaded weapon in public, even if it is likely that it will not fire.\u00a0 We prosecute people who do so and we (sometimes) remove them from society by sending them to jail.\u00a0 Your personal liberty ends when your choices harm or have the potential to harm others.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In a pandemic we are all cowboys, and our hands are guns.\u00a0 But the bullets are invisible and undetectable.\u00a0 There may be a bullet.\u00a0 There may be 6.\u00a0 There may be none.\u00a0 We have no way of knowing.\u00a0 If someone waves a gun around in public they are punished for it.\u00a0 We are asking people to minimize activity that will turn their hands into loaded guns.<\/p>\n Someone explain to me why that is unreasonable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The cowboy sits at his table in the saloon.\u00a0 He pulls a bullet from his pocket.\u00a0 He pulls his six-shooter from it’s holster.\u00a0 He loads the bullet into the barrel.\u00a0 He spins the barrel.\u00a0 He points the gun at his head.\u00a0 He pulls the trigger. <click> No harm done. “Russian Roulette” as portrayed in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3853,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850\/revisions\/3853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}