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“I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

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Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#261

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

scotty79 wrote: post #239
Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The delivery riders, Uber drivers, couriers and postal workers that bring you all that stuff you can order online like food and goods. The people that work maintaining the cables for your ISP (and the technicians in their data centers) that let you work from home in the first place. The people that clean your streets. Ambulance drivers. Taxi drivers. Cooks. The people that collect your garbage. The people…

My point is that each delivery rider can do his job without getting within 6 feet of any other person during his shift. They do come closer but their job can be easily changed so that they don't. Uber drivers are entirely other thing. Maybe driving people should be only allowed if you have a car that has completely separate spaces for the driver and the rider and where spece for the rider can be fully vented and disi…

That’s a good point I hadn’t considered. Only time will tell, I guess. These are now really scary times to be in.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#262

Post by Dylan16807 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #53
rapsey wrote: post #3

Is covid-19 the biggest world event since WW2?

Well, I would say no, since there were multiple famines since then. 1) Post-WW2, most of the Eastern Hemisphere experienced famine and underemployment for a decade. (Britain had food ration coupons for 9 years afterwards.) 2) The Cold War was pretty scary and greatly impoverished the Eastern Bloc, Cuba, N. Vietnam and N. Korea. China had the Great Famine from 1959 - 1961, killing "tens of millions." 4) Polio was a sc…

Polio, drugs, and >40 years of Cold War fail the "event" part of "world event"

The Great Famine fails the "world" part.

Your first item is sort of arguable, but I'd say it's half not an event, and half not independent enough of WW2 to count.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#263

Post by keiferski »

scotty79 wrote: post #257
keiferski wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in the original comment: > Not every solution to a serious problem needs to be some surveillance state dystopian nightmare. The authoritarian response of shutting everything down, locking people in their homes and instituting all-but-in-name-martial law seems like a massive lack of creativity to me. Plagues are not a new phenomenon. We can come up with better solutions - as Taiwan and Singapore seem to be d…

Authority is not authoritarian if it tries to make you do the most scientifically reasonable thing.

Probably the best thing a woman can do upon discovering that she is pregnant is to see a doctor. Under your argument, it would be ‘scientifically reasonable’ for pregnancy tests to automatically track your name, age, and location, and then send your results to your doctor.

Obviously this is a massive violation of privacy...which is exactly the same issue.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#264

Post by marcus_holmes »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #224
marcus_holmes wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Asia, where mask-wearing is common (part of the culture, nothing to do with COVID), sick people wear masks. It's very practical, and also a social signal that "I am ill". As a manager of a business in SE Asia, people coming in sick but wearing masks was awesome. The mask-wearing reduced their infectiousness (because the mask stops saliva-borne virus communication) and made it OK to come in to work if you're feelin…

> when we don't want to get sick. Masks don't really work for this They do, they decrease the chance to get infected. They don't guarantee it. The previous poster wrote about exactly this.

Situation: Infected person coughs near a non-infected person.

If the Infected Person is wearing the mask, all good. Cough contained in mask, no virus spread anywhere, everyone OK.

If the Non-Infected Person is wearing the mask, they're still covered in virus-laden cough mess. All they have to do is touch their face once in the next 3 days to catch the virus. Washing their hands will remove the virus from the hands, but not from their clothes, hair, etc.

Also, they're now covered in virus. Everything they touch will be covered in virus. Virus everywhere, infecting everyone. Everyone not OK.

It's possible that a non-infected person wearing a mask might prevent a tiny bit of infection, but it's MASSIVELY more effective on the infected person.

Surgeons wear masks in case they cough on the patient. They don't put a mask on the patient...

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#265

Post by QuesnayJr »

scotty79 wrote: post #244
QuesnayJr wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would collapse back to a subsistence-level economy, but sure.

Why? Is the fear of starvation the only thing that makes people do things?

I don't get what you are advocating. If you don't pay people to do jobs, then most jobs that make up a complex society won't get done. We have complex institutions, that involve lots of people doing boring tasks that keep the institutions running. Without the institutions, society will in fact return to subsistence-level.

If you just mean that we should guarantee a certain level of income, like a UBI, then that will make no difference whatsoever for this question. We don't have lawyers and middle managers because otherwise they will starve, because those jobs pay more than any plausible minimum.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#266

Post by miscPerson »

scotty79 wrote: post #257
keiferski wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in the original comment: > Not every solution to a serious problem needs to be some surveillance state dystopian nightmare. The authoritarian response of shutting everything down, locking people in their homes and instituting all-but-in-name-martial law seems like a massive lack of creativity to me. Plagues are not a new phenomenon. We can come up with better solutions - as Taiwan and Singapore seem to be d…

Authority is not authoritarian if it tries to make you do the most scientifically reasonable thing.

This comment is one of the most fascist things I’ve heard in a long time.

1) “most scientifically reasonable thing” isn’t a thing; it’s political weasel words

2) economics isn’t science, as much as they pretend, and without accounting for economics your system will collapse

3) fascism is built on the idea that the government can better regulate society

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#267

Post by Scarblac »

scotty79 wrote: post #173
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably accurate. But the assumption that this is a game changer is more questionable. This variant of CV is fairly infectious and makes some people very ill. It also kills a non-trivial percentage. So the worst case is an incredibly dangerous virus that mutates every season. We'd have to get used to taking extreme measures, or losing around 1% of the population every year. But the usual trend is for viruses to…

> But the usual trend is for viruses to mutate in a less dangerous direction. This trend is for viruses that are in danger of killing their hosts before spreading. This coronavirus is so infectious that it's nowhere near that. Hence it can even mutate into more lethal form without risking its ability to spread.

This virus is so bad that it is making whole countries take quarantine measures. That's probably not optimal for spreading itself.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#268

Post by recoil »

robocat wrote: post #115
ohazi wrote: post #4

> How long immunity lasts for following covid-19 infection is the biggest unknown. Comparison with other Coronaviridae suggests it may be relatively short-lived (i.e. months). Anyone have sources for this? I've been skeptical of the rumors about reinfection, because they seem to be based on tests coming back positive after recovery, but the tests are rt-PCR based, and your body will be shedding leftover bits of RNA a…

I just read this preprint: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v... People over ~50 have a ~50% chance of not showing symptoms, under 50 is ~10%. I wonder if there was a flu/cold epidemic 50 years ago that is causing the difference? I know that some flus have different effects depending on age group due to cohort exposure decades ago. Though it is a preprint, so could be all sorts of sampling r…

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_flu_pandemic perhaps?

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#269

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #264
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when we don't want to get sick. Masks don't really work for this They do, they decrease the chance to get infected. They don't guarantee it. The previous poster wrote about exactly this.

Situation: Infected person coughs near a non-infected person. If the Infected Person is wearing the mask, all good. Cough contained in mask, no virus spread anywhere, everyone OK. If the Non-Infected Person is wearing the mask, they're still covered in virus-laden cough mess. All they have to do is touch their face once in the next 3 days to catch the virus. Washing their hands will remove the virus from the hands, b…

And then the virus just dies on non-live surfaces like clothes in a couple of hours.

Like we said several times, masks provide some protection (decreased risk) for a healthy person, they don't protect from getting infected 100%.

No one ever said that mask is more effective on healthy person than on the infected one, I am not sure who you are arguing against. But it is the popular for some reason notion that a mask does not protect a healthy person at all that is plain false as has to go away.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#270

Post by miscPerson »

kijin wrote: post #38
jonrimmer wrote: post #12

In this event, the solution will be the creation of a permanent, South Korea and China inspired infrastructure for testing, tracking and constraining infectious citizens by all developed countries. Regardless of the privacy and civil liberty concerns, I think that's where we'll eventually end up, and to your children it will one day seem crazy that a person with an infectious illness was once able to freely walk the…

Not even the strongest proponent of civil liberty would allow a person to walk down the street shooting bullets in every direction. It's not hard to imagine that spewing viruses all over the place will be treated just the same in a society with knowledge of modern epidemiology. Your rights ends where they begin to impinge on those of others. We do need a better standard of privacy, though, than what South Korea is cu…

Yet, people are allowed to drive cars they might crash while driving drunk.

There’s a reasonable balance between risk you potentially pose to others and your ability to live a life without government oppression.

It’s genuinely disturbing how many people respond to any risk with welcoming fascism back.

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