People be allowed to make their own decisions about risk tolerance? We trust people every year to make such decisions when it comes to the seasonal flu which kills tens of thousands. In the aggregate, Covid is ~3x more contagious than the flu and ~3x more deadly, but for certain age groups, it’s actually less deadly than the average seasonal flu.

IOW: I believe there is a reasonable case to be made that people should be allowed to make their own decisions. Maybe they should and maybe they shouldn’t ... but dismissing it out of hand is absurd — there is a reasonable case. If you don’t want to get Covid, there’s a 100% foolproof way to do that: stay home and don’t interact with other people. Covid isn’t going to sneak into your place. Not even being willing to hear that case and cheerleading real restrictions on people’s lives AND LIVELIHOOD (while also browbeating them) is, very predictably, going over like a lead balloon with many.

For many the choice is simple: risk Covid and get paid or stay home and go broke. Government assistance on the scale that would be necessary to make this not a choice would be hundreds of billions if not [and more likely IMO] trillions... added onto the trillions of debt we already have. With likely stagnant GDP, how high can we run our debt service to GDP ratio before it becomes irresponsible when most working age people are going to be fine if they get Covid? Dismissing these questions out of hand is much more irresponsible than going shopping for a new BAFSTV with a mask on.