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Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

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Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#341

I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie versio…

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others . Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people. This is, by far , the most o…

> Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of lives maybe are at stake.

You are extrapolating only to spread FUD. Covid19 could kill only a few people, but very fast, which could also explain the data we have for now.

There is no evidence "that millions of lives are at stake" and the available data shows cars and tabacco have killed and will kill more people than the covid19 over 20 years

"We could all die from covid19" hypothesis was valid the first 2 weeks of December. It has been long found that only a segment of the population is at risk, and we should help them, but not stop the entire economy pretending we will all die.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#342
post #231
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m too tired at the moment to figure out where I stand on this [issue of free speech / assembly] but I have a general question: I thought the Supreme Court has already shown that there are limits to speech, such as yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater. I guess the distinction is how directly the speech leads to harm. Would that apply in this situation where most medical experts would agree that the quarantine is nece…

> I thought the Supreme Court has already shown that there are limits to speech Yes correct, freedom of speech is not absolute, there are a lot of limitations in the U.S.: “libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public se…

> libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury.”

Half of this doesn’t apply to the US.

In the same Wikipedia article:

> The opinion in Brandenburg discarded the previous test of "clear and present danger" and made the right to freedom of (political) speech's protections in the United States almost absolute.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many states are suspending unlawful detainer and eviction actions until the crisis is over and people can get back to work So how does that work? Instead of right now, they'll get evicted and become homeless as soon as things open up, because they've been piling up rent with no income in the meantime? Would you find that comforting?

Why do you assume that would be the outcome? That is the cruelest, most pessimistic prediction that one could make. Come on, have a little faith in common sense and decency.

> Why do you assume that would be the outcome? That is the cruelest, most pessimistic prediction that one could make. Come on, have a little faith in common sense and decency.

Honestly, because its unlikely that most people will be able to share the burden of theses costs and we need only look at 2008 to see how a financial crisis reduced people to forced evictions (of people who even owned their homes, no less) because of delinquency.

Personally, I want to believe we could do more as individuals, as relying on the Government for solutions isn't going to work.

I'd prefer to enact a local/community based approach for this pandemic but I have serious doubts as to how it will take place or who would actually honor them when its clear so many businesses (even large corporations) are insolvent in the US. not to mention the level of wide-spread ignorance as seen with these quarantine protests taking place.

I'm starting to really wonder, especially as this can easily lead to a global depression if hasn't already, if we will have to have a debt jubilee given the severity of COVID.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/21/debt-jubi...

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#344

I usually stay out of the political/topical threads on HN but this is personal to me. From my point of view few if any of us commenting here are knowledgeable enough to connect all the disparate data points we keep snatching at and synthesize them into conclusions that are likely to be correct. The people who can do that are working on it, and generally too busy at the moment to post on forums or give interviews. The…

This is the wrong comment for this post - you cite 'misinformation' as problem, and then go on to mislead/misinform with a misrepresentative anecdote.

1) Your anecdote is not consistent with the national concern - it's local to your area.

My father is currently in a hospital for an unrelated reason and it's almost empty -> they are 'prepared for war' and there isn't a single COVID patient in the entire area, let alone hospital. They are all empty.

The vast majority of hospitals in the US are not warzones they are quiet.

"The general opinion is that the system can't handle much additional strain, and I don't think any of us are in a position to argue the point with them. "

Yes - we are! Your local hospital is not 'the system'. We have to take this into consideration.

2) It's disingenuous to somehow imply that 'because some hospitals are busy' that this means 'all doctors think we must be locked-down, everywhere' and more importantly, that people should not be able to protest the lockdown, or that major media outlets should be suppressing this.

3) In the fact of a lot of different variables, people absolutely have the right to come to their own conclusions, and protest, and certainly to drum up support for said protests.

Edit: to be clear, I agree with the lock-downs, but we really should not be suppressing people's will to express themselves. I see a lot of doctors talking about policies without a real instinct as to how existentially destructive they are. Folks we are printing money as never before seen in history, there was a 'fire in the engines' and so we shut them off, but we are now headed straight down to the earth, very quickly. We have to be conscious of that and look very hard at other things (Korea, Sweden etc.) and be real smart about it.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#345

I usually stay out of the political/topical threads on HN but this is personal to me. From my point of view few if any of us commenting here are knowledgeable enough to connect all the disparate data points we keep snatching at and synthesize them into conclusions that are likely to be correct. The people who can do that are working on it, and generally too busy at the moment to post on forums or give interviews. The…

There are increasing reports that ventilators are doing more harm than good, that in fact the way this virus starves the body of oxygen isn't pneumonia, but rather in the blood. It's like a reverse survivorship bias - most patients vented die.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#346

I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie versio…

> People should be able to take a calculated risk.

... with their own lives. You're talking about allowing people to risk other people's lives, and no, that's not ok.

> The most accurate data about the fatality rate of covid-19 may come from the Diamond Princess cruise boat where everyone has been tested. The 60-to-80 year old infected passengers had a fatality rate of ~2%. There was no fatality among the infected much younger crew.

You're contradicting yourself. If the Diamond Princess is perfectly representative of the world population, then no young people should die, anywhere. But that's not the case -- young people have indeed died from this -- so therefore the Diamond Princess does not give us an accurate picture at all.

> Now, the government should inform people with data, and let them take a decision. [...] But people who want the opposite should be able to express their voice as well.

Express their voice, yes, I agree with that. Make their own decision, no, not at all. The average -- even above average -- person does not know how to interpret the fractured data we have right now to the point of being able to make an informed decision. This is one of those frustrating times when we must rely on the people who live and breathe this every day to make those decisions for us. I'm not saying they don't need to explain or show their work, and I'm not saying we need to just blindly trust, but we do need to carefully consider whether we know better than people who are literally trained to know how all this works. (Hint: we don't, and can't, know better.)

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#347

I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie versio…

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others . Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people. This is, by far , the most o…

> NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day.

Important to remember what led up to that. High risk people were going about their daily activities, no one was social distancing. It’s disingenuous to imply that anyone who is anti-lockdown is talking about a complete return to pre-pandemic behavior that caused the numbers we are seeing in NYC.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I skimmed your comment history. I'm opting out of this conversation. I think we disagree too much to find common ground here.

Unfortunate for me. :( I'm sincerely uncertain. I'm probably closer to the middle of the Bell-curve of smarts than the majority of this board, which is why it's the only community I try to engage with. I don't know how to filter the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, when it comes to the online fire-hose of (what seems to be) an increasingly loud amount of ignorance, vitriol, panic-porn, condescension and misinformat…

Re: discomfort.

If you're exhausted, take a break. Recognize that information for information's sake isn't just unhelpful, but actively harmful to your own psyche right now. Don't drink from the firehose unless you have a very good reason. Intellectual curiosity isn't a good enough reason.

Some amount of unease aso comes from the fact that we don't know much about COVID-19, and in this day and age, that's hard to live with. The amount of scientifically-prove, peer-reviewed information about Covid-19 is vanishingly small so personally until there are peer-reviewed papers upon which to act, I'm learning to be comfortable with not knowing things. Trying to divine a fatality rate when there's a dearth of rigorous studies, globally is recipe for a descent into madness. (I stop reading threads when there's yet another re-hashing of how the Diamond Princess does/doesn't apply.)

Don't blindly trust a "who", but trust that the truth will emerge. It may take some time, however.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We assign value to human life all the time, in dollar terms or otherwise. And we most certainly assign a higher value to certain lives over others, you just do it implicitly. It’s the reason you don’t drop everything you’re doing in your life right now to go fight HIV in Africa, or aren’t organizing protests in front of the White House Lawn everyday to try to prevent the US from dropping another bomb on a Pakistani v…

Hi, let me try and defuse this a little. I'm sure we're both doing our best and these are trying times. Let's endeavor to be civil and not assume things about each other. For example, you have no idea what I did all day, so let me tell you. I work in social good, trying to close the access to justice gap. The way I justify not taking a plane to some hotspot is that I think I can "do the most good" (in the immortal wo…

Sorry if I sound irascible, but I think my point stands. Any reopening of the economy before the entire population is vaccinated will necessarily put some lives at risk. The destruction being wrought by continued mothballing of the economy is awesome, and it may well result in the premature deaths of millions of people. Pointing this out is not minimizing the danger of covid-19, it’s putting it into context. And accusing somebody who entertains a perfectly normal line of reasoning of engaging in a “ghoulish” exercise of human life valuation is a perfect example of virtue signaling.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole much? People do take calculated risks with the lives of others - again driving is a dangerous activity, you take the lives of everyone in your car and those around you in your hands while driving. Even chefs are responsible for not giving people food poisoning. Because of our hyperconnected world, we depend on people taking risks around us constantly. Additionally, NYC had 500 deaths because its approaching…

Yeah, let me rephrase. COVID is the deadliest thing most people will ever have a chance of coming into contact with, you'll spread it to others before you even know you have it, thus it's almost certain you won't be the only one "taking the risk". It's not like driving, flying, takeaway, or any other inane, minimizing comparison. It is a highly infectious, stealthy, lethal pathogen. If we let everyone get it, at even…

> We'll figure the rest out later.

When? As far as I know, no one has provided any quantifiable goal post for when it’s safe to stop lockdown.

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