MileHighKiwi:

 

Wow. Killing people who breach lockdown restrictions seems a bit extreme. If you go down that road the death toll will be significantly higher than those who died from with Covid in this country.

 

Can you even arrest someone who is dead?

 

Hopefully Andrew Coster doesn't support this idea. 

 

I have news for you: if you use force of a sufficient level that threatens officers and others with the prospect of serious injury or death in an attempt to stop them from enforcing any law, they are authorised and will likely use proportionate (i.e. potentially deadly) force against you. It's only been in the Crimes Act for a few decades. That's my point. The point is not that the police should go out to kill anyone breaching COVID laws per se but, rather, that they should be prepared to act with the exact same level of determination to vigorously enforce any public health laws designed to protect people from ***** idiots, just like they would vigorously chase any burglar or whatever. We have had idiots deliberately breaching lockdown laws with (for example) dumb ass protests. First few times you'd say people are just misguided and a less confrontational approach is warranted. The recent ones? Why didn't the police use force to disperse and arrest every single one of them? Because do you think they will let a burglar walk by?

There's too much of the educational/persuasive BS and treating these types of people as otherwise "good" and harmless individuals. They are not. Arrest and oppose bail on anyone seriously flouting the regulations. Treat these people as the scum and criminals that they are. I am not approaching this from an emotive POV of "OMG think of the grandma that you might be killing!" but, rather, the objective reality that these people can cause enormous social, financial and health-outcomes related damage that can be easily prevented if they'd just stop being dicks.

frankv:

 

I agree that the *financial* benefits of professional sports are as you say. But my point is that the welfare, as in quality of life, of many, many other people is impinged on when they don't get to watch it. After all, all those people are prepared to pay in total a large amount of money to watch sports. They wouldn't do that if it didn't have some perceived value. So this value needs to be taken into account when making decisions.

 

In measuring the extent of taking away something actually affects people's quality of life, you also need to consider substitutes. Some person plonking down passively watching sports somewhere/sometime is just after passive entertainment. During the current extraordinary circumstances, they can go and find all kinds of other solutions to keep themselves entertained. Also, no one has a god-given right to enact their preferences if their preferences harm other people. This especially when the harm they cause is entirely out of proportion to any gains objectively measurable from this entertainment.

Edit: expanded my thoughts a bit in the first reply.