That is incorrect. People who are socially isolated are less likely to seek mental health assistance precisely because of the isolation and as a consequence of their mental distress itself.

How is it incorrect? There is a problem, there is a solution.

All it calls for is a better implementation.

The success of mental health treatment is also dependent upon social reintegration, which is heavily impeded by the shutdown (if not actually precluded).

We're not talking about eradicating mental health issues. We're talking about mental health assistance to prevent people from killing themselves. That doesn't require social reintegration, which surely is a long term solution in curing people of the mental issues they possess.

When we know that a shutdown will increase the prevalence of life-threatening mental illness and that many people do not in fact have access to mental health assistance, then we can indeed call the shutdown a bad idea.

A situation like this calls for an optimal solution, not necessarily an ideal solution.

People die of common cold due to many reasons throughout the year,

yet we do not shut down the world for them because of the betterment of the majority.

One could make the same argument you did, speaking about "not caring enough for people who die of common cold"

There are people who do not have medical facilities to cure themselves of common cold.

When we know that common cold will increase the prevalence of life-threatening scenarios and that many people do not in fact have access to medical assistance, then we can indeed call not having a shutdown a bad idea. Minimally, it is a bare fact the the common cold directly contributes to deaths which otherwise would not have occurred.

What a gross abdication of personal responsibility that is. If we cannot act with basic compassion towards one another when it really matters, then our social order is not worth saving.

Personal responsibility is your first and foremost, that of survival is rooted in your genes.

Social constructs are a product of a thriving society, not the very cause of a society.

Only if people survive, a society can exist. It is therefore a need to survive while a society is a luxury.

Your fear based deference to and naive trust in 'the government' (which is just other people by the way) paves the road to authoritarianism. It does not make sense.

I'm sorry to say, but you've assumed things here. No wonder it doesn't make sense to you.

I have in no statement, implied or mentioned a said trust in the government,

I'm only pointing out the decisions made by people and why they were made so.

Well, for a start, naturalistic fallacy. Moreover, this is simply incorrect. Natural selection applies genetic pressure to individual members of species, and does not operate at the level of whole species. Moreover, if your evolutionary claim were correct then your claim about needing an authoritarian government to make us pro-social doesn't make sense.

Again, the fact that you think I've made such a claim is disappointing.

A species can repopulate from a bunch of individuals, the idea is to save as many as you can. Nothing more, nothing less.

If an attempt at saving every last man implies it puts the whole species in danger,

however morally flawed, it is obvious for the existence of the species to be the motivation of all decisions.

The whole species is not at stake. The WHO estimates the COVID-19 morality rate at 3.4%, but it's likely lower (as low as 0.6%). [1] The human species has endured far worse - the Black Death, for a start [2] - so you can drop the end of times antics.

There is also nothing obviously rational about utilitarianism. By that reasoning, it makes sense to involuntarily harvest the organs of healthy people by lottery in order to save a greater number of people experiencing organ failures.

The mortality rate of the disease is not the issue, it is in fact the failure to provide resources to people if the pandemic explodes.

This, my friend is a potential event for complete social disintegration.

Naturalistic fallacy strikes again, as does your exceedingly poor grasp on natural selection. We are not biological utilitarians evolved to sacrifice ourselves to the 'greater good'. As a moral theory, utilitarianism did not even exist prior to the 18th century and the prevailing mode of moral reasoning up until at least the 12th century was virtue ethics (which is not even a consequentialist ethic). Moreover, the mere existence of people who disagree with you and of nations that have not shut down disprove your claim that this course of action is a biological inevitability.

I don't know how much you've assumed but anyway,

Survival is what people will look for in the event of an absolute threat to life.

That is instinct. You die for many reasons consciously, sure. Every conscious (I mean avoiding instinct and dying where there is a course of action that one knows he/she would survive by implementing) human death can be classified as follows :

mental issues

Dying for a cause

Accidental

When people die for a cause, the cause is always a disagreement about some particular functioning of the society. No faction of the human population works to eradicate the species. (Invalid only in the comic book universes) They all want an alternative method of survival which is not being accepted by the faction that believes in the existing method.

Moreover, the mere existence of people who disagree with you and of nations that have not shut down disprove your claim that this course of action is a biological inevitability.

When people die for a cause, the cause is always a disagreement about some particular functioning of the society. This is precisely the case here, where the cause is a certain social construct.

To conclude, what I meant by natural selection and it's role in this scenario is that:

When things get out of human control, social constructs will begin to fall and when this happens, there will be natural selection. So provided this existing pandemic poses a threat to the society as we know, we shouldn't be surprised to see how natural selection steps in through the decisions we make, by letting the majority survive and the vulnerable perish.

That would be the case if people were denied access to mental health related assistance.

When there's a way to keep everyone alive, and it just the idea fails in the aspect of its implementation, you don't call it a bad idea.

in a pandemic such as this, every man is for himself and the governments start trying to save as much as they can. If this means going into a lockdown, it only makes sense.

In the end, we're programmed to survive only so that the species continues to.

Keeping that in mind, sacrificing a few seems much more objectively rational when the whole species is at stake.

Ideally, you'd want everyone to survive ( moral standpoint) but if it really comes down to nature, and things are not in human control anymore, we must accept the natural selection that is deep rooted in the decisions we make.

It's a tough time for people with mental issues to stay in isolation for long.

That much we can agree with. To say however, that we should be against isolation due to this is naive. It's the responsibility of the people around to take extra care about the scenario of these people who need help. Isolation from society will kill you, isolation up in your head does.

Exactly, If you can save him and choose not to, you want the person to die and he/she ends up dead. Only then you are responsible.

It's a question of morality as well as responsibility. Linking it back to the motion, he/she had control over his/her life at that instance and hence is proved to be responsible...

Why and who states it as a responsibility?

In the current setup of our civilization, the resources you possess are simply the quantification of the money you have.. So yeah, have more money, you'll have the finest of resources for your time of existence on this planet.

One might argue money is the root of all evil but my reply to that is absence of self control is. So yeah, the idea of having papers around with no inherent value

quantifies one's services of all kinds and does not limit you to possessing certain specific resources.

That was pretty much my initial stance, but think about it..

What hunger and non availability of resources and reasons along that line could do, (naturally select) would take an earthquake or a famine, just in a bigger scale to naturally select.. so we currently haven't terminated the phenomenon, we've just moved toward doing that over time..

I have no uncles in a biker club, nor myself. But I do have uncles and family members who belong in a club called humanity.

Good.

Stop playing semantics. You asked if natural selection has ceased and I answered you.

I will agree that abortion is not natural selection. It is unnatural selection of the worst kind.

1)We wouldn't have language, our biggest advantage over every other species to live, if not for semantics.So yeah, there's no such thing as playing semantics, if there's reasoning there has to be semantics involved, unless you prefer not using reason to debate.

2)One could argue about abortion, which would again come down to semantics. to say that abortion defines the whole spectrum of natural selection would be way off of the context of this debate because it would come down to a needless question of whether morality plays part in natural selection.

1)The title is questioning if natural selection has ceased, not how it has/has not, to begin with.

2)we're talking about a whole species of mammalia here. Not what uncle jim from biker club thinks about the government.