[DoofusOfDeath]

> You can flip peoples' tribal affiliations on this topic by changing the disease to COVID. Do red-state antimaskers deserve treatment? Should responsible Americans pay for their reckless lifestyle?

Personally, I'm not sure. As I said above, I'm conflicted on the issue.

Regarding anti-maskers, I think it depends on the particular reason a person is anti-mask.

I'm working on the assumption that a lifelong smoker or someone who intentionally eschews safe-sex practices is generally aware of the risk they're courting. In my mind, this is "privatization of reward, socialization of risk" is similar to what we on HN often complain about regarding corporate bailouts.

In contrast, I could believe that at least some anti-maskers are genuinely misinformed about the risk posted by their behavior. I have less trouble feeling empathy for someone who's working from wrong beliefs, than someone who's knowingly being selfish.

[foldr]

You must be thinking about this in a weird way if you describe as selfish those people who have unsafe sex and contract HIV and who were fully aware of the risk. What do you think that they hoped to gain by becoming HIV positive? And if they thought it was an acceptable trade-in for some momentary pleasure, can they really have been fully informed in the first place? It seems that what you’re saying here is rooted in some kind of stereotype of crazy hedonism, rather than a more realistic understanding of the psychology of unsafe sex.

Believe me, there are idiots in all walks of life. There are plenty of people who are simply too dumb to practice safe sex, just as there are plenty of people too dumb to take trivial precautions against spreading COVID. I don’t think you’ll have much luck trying to formulate a coherent reason to regard the two groups in a fundamentally different light. Conservatives just have a bee in their collective bonnet about sex as compared to other comparably risky activities.

For some reason, any time there is any good news relating to HIV on HN, we have to have a thread where we seriously moot the question of whether HIV positive people deserve to die (or to put it in your bloodless terms, whether mercy is outweighed by justice). Have you considered just giving this a rest? Everyone already knows that many religious conservatives are in favor of denying treatment to HIV positive people belonging to social groups that they don’t like.

[FooBarBizBazz]

> Everyone already knows that many religious conservatives are in favor of denying treatment to HIV positive people belonging to social groups that they don’t like.

I'm sure there's malice, but I also get it. It's like --

Sometimes idiot hikers will set out into a wilderness with absolutely zero preparation, end up stranded in a life-threatening situation, and need to be helicoptered out of their plight for something like a million dollars of somebody else's money -- let's say the Park Service's.

No, I don't think they should be left to freeze to death, but if I'm funding the Park Service I have a right to be annoyed with them, especially if this isn't a one-off thing, but rather something that keeps happening.

In a world where antivirals cost a bajillion dollars, HIV can seem similar. "Get out of my risk pool."

But even from that perspective, this HIV vaccine is great. Give people the vaccine and now you aren't stuck paying for a lifelong prescription for Truvada or whatever else. Again, win-win.

Personally, when these vaccines get the kinks worked out, I will absolutely get them, even though I have zero intention of being at or of putting anyone at risk.

> It seems that what you’re saying here is rooted in some kind of stereotype of crazy hedonism, rather than a more realistic understanding of the psychology of unsafe sex.

If you delve into what has been written by radicals, you find all kinds of crazy shit, including the belief that STDs should be celebrated as a badge of courage. People as now-mainstream as Focault knowingly had unprotected sex, while HIV-positive, with anonymous men, wrapped it up (heh) in philosophical language, and sold it on to credulous academics. And there are other, slightly more fringe, characters whose names I forget; one guy I remember arguing that it was his political duty to "pos" people. To my ears this is batshit insanity and barely-disguised evil. Yet, though I know this thinking is not actually representative, it is often enough loudly defended (by trollish morons with no intention of living those values) for no reason other than that it's from "one of us". Conservatives are clearly reacting to that, in the age-old tradition of seeking out the worst crazy "the left" can provide.