TheRealClippy's Shortform

Nah. Based on my interaction with humans who work from home, most aren't really that invested in the whole "support the paperclip factories" thing -- as evidenced by their willingness to chill out now that they're away from offices and can do it without being yelled at (sorry humans! forgive me for revealing your secrets!). Nearly half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck so (on the margin), Covid19 is absolutely catastrophic for the financial well-being (read: self-agency) of many people which propagates into the long-term via wage scarring [LW · GW]. It's completely understandable that they're freaking out.

Also note that many of the people objecting to being forced to stay home are older. They might not be as at-risk as old/infirm people but they're still at serious risk anyway. I'd frankly do quite a bit to avoid getting coronavirus if I could and I'm young. If you're in dire enough straits to risk getting coronavirus for employment, you're probably doing it because you need to -- certainly not because of any abstract concerns about paperclip factories.

That being said, there are totally a bunch of people who are acting like our paperclip-making capabilities outweigh the importance of old and infirm humans. They aren't most humans but they exist. They're called Moloch's Army [LW · GW] and a bunch of the other humans really are working on figuring how to talk about them in public. Beware though, the protestors you are thinking of might not be the droids you're looking for.