> In preparation for responding to your response, I spent a good amount of time reading many of your other comments/responses on HN. As best I can ascertain from that reading, you are highly, highly intelligent.

Greetings. Don't know how you've got to that erroneous conclusion, but I'll go with it :-)

> 328.2 million in the US have serious issues / death or eventual death -- DUE TO OLD AGE. That is, we are not biologically immortal.

Sure. How is that relevant though? We're talking about premature deaths here due to an illness.

The fact that we're not immortal doesn't stop us looking left and right before crossing the street -- or taking all kinds of other precautions (both at the individual, and at the community/government level).

To rephrase: we might not be immortal, but few are that cavalier about dying or eager to die sooner rather than later.

> If the average life expectancy for someone living in the U.S. is 78.93 years (in 2020) -- does this mean that other nations whose life expectancies are less than 78.93 years -- are guilty of killing their citizens early, because they don't follow the "best practices" of the U.S., that is, they don't do exactly what the U.S. does in its governance?

Well, I'm sure about those being the "best", since there exist nations with higher life expectancies.

I'd also say that:

(a) it should be a kind of goal for nations to have their citizens live more and better lives. Isn't better living conditions (from business cooperation and economy, to health, social life, safety, justice, etc.) a basic motivation behind having human communities in the first place (and subsequently things like nations)? I'm pretty sure e.g. Sierra Leone (life expectancy around 54) would want to do much better...

(b) it is however not a be-all-end-all goal, other goals (including preferred way of life, freedom, etc., can always have priority).

> Also, would it be justified then, for those nations to control and micromanage, basically take away all of their citizens' freedoms -- in the name of increasing the average life expectancy of their citizens?

No.

That said, a once-in-100-years pandemic with the potential to kill millions is hardly cause for concern about "micromanaging".

And, I'd like to point out, nobody proposed to "take away all of their citizens' freedoms" (in any democratic country faced with covid), as far as I know. Not even most. Just some, and just for the period necessary to handle the crisis.

> How does the old saying go? "Those who are willing to trade a little bit of their freedom for security -- deserve neither" ?

Well, that's how an old saying goes. But for me it's not some ultimate god-given wisdom about the matters of freedom and safety, just a rough guideline.

On the other hand, those who aren't willing to trade a little bit of freedom for security, might find out they're invaded, enslaved, sick, dead, living in an anarchy (the bad kind, where the more powerful do what they please and there's chaos in the streets, not the friendly "no government" one), and so on, depending on the respective danger they wouldn't trade some freedom to handle.

In other words: freedom doesn't come for free. It requires some sacrifice, and it's bounded by conditions (including safety concerns). Plus, of course, it should not risk/hurt the freedom of others.

Of course someone could say: "I don't care for all that, I want absolute freedom". But others, assuming that person lives in a society, aren't necessarily to agree to that.

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