Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 174 posts

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#81

Post by atoav »

chrisco255 wrote: post #41
keeganjw wrote: post #15

They make a good point in this article, I just wish Newsweek and other media outlets would get this pissed off about climate change. "Old and unafraid of the climate crisis? Good for you. Now stop killing future generations." If we're mobilizing to stop a pandemic, why the hell aren't we mobilizing to stop climate change? I know this is going to get downvoted into oblivion, I just wanted to say it.

Nobody is dying from global warming. It's a sea level rise of 2-3mm a year. Less than 11,000 people a year die from natural disasters, which is near all-time lows despite a rising population. 100 years ago, it was common for at least 1,000,000 people a year to die from natural disasters. Thanks to technology, including internal combustion vehicles and electricity, that number has dropped dramatically. Crop yields are…

> Nobody is dying from global warming.

Citation needed. Many (also old) people died in the European heat waves of the last summer. And every year these summers are getting hotter.

Once crops closer to the already dry and hot areas of the globe stop to yield, and people migrate away from those areas — how many people die in the resulting conflicts, how much human suffering will be produced there?

What impact will the usage of resources we use to safeguard costal cities against rising waters have on other areas that prevent human suffering?

Answering the possible fallout from even a moderate change in global climate is nowhere near as clear cut as you make it out to be.

On top of that: the ddcisions we take now could potentially be multiplied by the next 1000 human generations, only idiots would take that risk lightly.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#82

Post by rvz »

keeganjw wrote: post #15

They make a good point in this article, I just wish Newsweek and other media outlets would get this pissed off about climate change. "Old and unafraid of the climate crisis? Good for you. Now stop killing future generations." If we're mobilizing to stop a pandemic, why the hell aren't we mobilizing to stop climate change? I know this is going to get downvoted into oblivion, I just wanted to say it.

Perhaps its because we already have technological solutions put in place or still actively developed to actually reduce climate change ahead of time even when eventually we'll see the real devastation in action in 10 - 20 years time.

Compared to this, the virus spreads extremely fast and healthcare systems across the world are being stretched and tested since there aren't any vaccines or solutions yet to tackle COVID-19 except for reminding everyone to wash their hands regularly.

So the world now has to focus on battling a pandemic now rather than improving on the technologies already put in place to save us from climate catastrophe. At least taking a flight should now be seen as a double negative at this time for the kids of today.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#83

Post by Moshe_Cohen »

keeganjw wrote: post #15

They make a good point in this article, I just wish Newsweek and other media outlets would get this pissed off about climate change. "Old and unafraid of the climate crisis? Good for you. Now stop killing future generations." If we're mobilizing to stop a pandemic, why the hell aren't we mobilizing to stop climate change? I know this is going to get downvoted into oblivion, I just wanted to say it.

That's very subjective though.

I could just as well say "White and ignorant of racial differences? Good for you. Now stop destroying our grandchildren's homelands."

To me, one of our headlines is hysterical and dangerous, while the other is a deeply serious, indisputable reality. I think you might say the same.

Perhaps we could both agree that this is a very odd time and place to shoehorn in either polarising political narrative.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#84

Post by knicholes »

pengaru wrote: post #56

It does seem kind of karmic through the lens of NIMBY older folks have been making it impossible for younger generations to buy/build homes near them, and now they want the young whipper snappers to care about their welfare. Maybe the best way to become a home owner in SF in the near future is to run around infecting everyone there ASAP. (In case it's not obvious, I'm mostly kidding)

Of course it's terrible to say, but it might help the USA with social security payments.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#85

Post by 34679 »

If Merkel's assertion that 60%-70% of the population in Germany will be infected is accurate, and we end up with similar numbers in the US, the math is pretty stunning.[1] With a US population of 330,000,000, we end up with 198,000,000 infected, using the lower estimate of 60%.[2] A study in China concluded a 2.4% mortality rate and the WHO reported 3.4% among reported cases.[3][4]

Using a (hopefully not) conservative 1% mortality rate, we're talking about 1,980,000 dead Americans. That's more than the American Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Vietnam War, the Middle East wars, and indeed every other military conflict the US has engaged in since 1775.. combined.[5] And not just a bit more, it's roughly 3 times as many as all US combat fatalities since the beginning of our country.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/angela-merkel-most-people-wi... [2]https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population... [3]http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-720... [4]https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1234872254883909642 [5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#86

Post by jeffadotio »

LordHumungous wrote: post #60

Old people still need a functioning society and economy right? So therefore maybe it makes sense for the less vulnerable people to keep doing things.

This is the exact attitude described as being destructive in the article. It is also plainly illogical. It is so obviously illogical that it is boring. By doing normal things one spreads the virus, killing people and grinding businesses to a halt. This argument boils down to stopping deaths by increasing infection rates.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#87

Post by aazaa »

graeme wrote: post #52
aazaa wrote: post #9

It's easy to understand how Europeans look at Americans is if they're brain-dead. However, the article does nothing to support the thesis that young people in particular are killing other people. It may be true. If so, including evidence to that effect would make a better article.

It is substantially better to respond to article content, not headlines. Authors don’t write their headlines. It would be better if they did, but they don’t. So if you argue against the headline only, you argue against a strawman. (It’s fine to address the headline as well, as that gets a lot of attention. But don’t attribute it to the author)

The headline is what brought many participants to this discussion. It's a part of the article, and comment-worthy.

This looks like an editorial, for which it seems that at least some authors choose their own titles. For example, see:

> Use a catchy title that ties into the theme of your piece. The title is what the reader sees first. Your title should entice the reader.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/writing-op-eds

There are other sources that give similar advice.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#88

Post by csomar »

geerlingguy wrote: post #35
keeganjw wrote: post #15

They make a good point in this article, I just wish Newsweek and other media outlets would get this pissed off about climate change. "Old and unafraid of the climate crisis? Good for you. Now stop killing future generations." If we're mobilizing to stop a pandemic, why the hell aren't we mobilizing to stop climate change? I know this is going to get downvoted into oblivion, I just wanted to say it.

Not to excuse anything, but the main difference is the time scale—within days/weeks we saw differences, and death counts... with climate change it's not only difficult to measure easy-to-understand direct correlation sometimes, it also is at minimum on time scales of months to years. Most news cycles are hours or days, not months or years.

> with climate change it's not only difficult to measure easy-to-understand direct correlation sometimes, it also is at minimum on time scales of months to years.

Isn't this, exactly, why we are in trouble with the coronavirus. Our inability to see a disaster looming ahead?

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#89

Post by 3JPLW »

dengul13 wrote: post #77

To the people here with older parents (70+), there's another thing you can do: Call your parents. Tell them they need to take this seriously, because they are the ones most likely to die from this virus. Tell them that while average mortality rates may be low, it is highly dependend on age. Dr. Drosten of Charité in Berlin estimates mortality from corona in people aged >80 to be around 25%. Tell them that exponential…

> Tell them that while average mortality rates may be low, it is highly dependend on age.

Mortality rates are also highly dependent upon healthcare system capacity — especially so for elderly and at-risk, because they're the ones more likely to require hospitalization to survive.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#90

Post by ajross »

jshevek wrote: post #45
shakezula wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with this enough. The media seems willing to be alarmist about everything _but_ the most important crisis my generation will ever face.

Part of the problem here is that extremists have subjected us to at least three decades of climate alarmism poisoned by bad science and failed predictions. People who lack the scientific background to properly understand specific claims and the basis for them rely on ignorant heuristics, such as "the boy who cried wolf". They wrongly conclude that the current round of climate concern is no different than the rounds t…

> extremists have subjected us to at least three decades of climate alarmism poisoned by bad science and failed predictions.

I'm sure someone said something dumb. But straightforward models of long term climate change and CO2 output going back to the 70's have all been largely proven out. Which "extremists" are you trying to point the finger at, specifically?

Post reply on HN