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

America is giving up on the pandemic?

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 1001 posts

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#141

Post by jakkyboi »

axguscbklp wrote: post #88
eganist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a certain misery that comes with [...] watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress. Yep, that's called privilege. And I'm not even trying to be snarky. From the perspective of the protesters, taking this opportunity to protest and possibly achieve change means hopefully lowering the general mortality risk for generati…

But are the protests really founded on something significant? If they focused simply on police brutality regardless of race, that would be one thing, but the general narrative seems to be that there is a big problem of white-on-black violence in the form of cops. Now, there is such a problem, but this ignores the wider context that in this country, black-on-white violence is a much bigger problem than white-on-black…

This is such an ignorant take, it's astonishing.

The "general narrative" is about rampant police brutality that first and foremost disproportionately affects people of color. It's a problem that's existed since the inception of a police force in the US and that's what this movement is about. No one is trying to play a silly number game of which race kills more of what other race.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#142

Post by mydongle »

mrcorona wrote: post #137
mydongle wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuance is not so important in this situation. The effect is that people have been effectively given a pass to disregard the virus, as long as they're "protesting". Look at the protests and all the riots, do you see social distancing happening? People are throwing punches out there my dude. It's chaos.

People living in a certain form of hell aren't afraid of dying of corona... I personally would rather die of pneumonia than 20 or so bullets to the back from an agent of the state operating with a hair trigger and impunity. Do people really think MLK felt safe when he was protesting? He was brave, new assassination was likely, and still marched.

Yeah, but if all the proponents of BLM die to Covid-19, who is going to be there to keep up the fight afterward? This is all very short-term thinking. There are other ways to protest.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#143

Post by glofish »

thethethethe wrote: post #96
alchemyromcom wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing your livelihood can kill you, however. If you are a small business owner, for example, and it's illegal to operate that business, your life is also in danger and your situation deserves empathy. Empathy is not finite resource. We can extend it to all people in bad situations, not just people we prefer.

> If you are a small business owner, for example, and it's illegal to operate that business, your life is also in danger and your situation deserves empathy This is a false dichotomy. Sure, these people (and their workers) deserve empathy and support, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to reopen. You can support business owners via financial aid or other measures while their business is closed.

no, this is not about empathy but personal autonomy and sovereignity and autocracy. Why not allow someone to do something if they are willing to take the risk, why treat them as criminals?

If you believe that you get infected at a store, don't go to the store ... case closed. On what basis is the state "protecting" someone that does not want to be protected? On what basis is someone considered a criminal when a crime could only potentially be committed?

what if the person is immune to the disease, already had the disease, or does not mind getting infected?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#144

Post by throwmehaweh »

twblalock wrote: post #109
metrokoi wrote: post #90

Quoted from a letter from 1,000 health professionals on the virus and protests [0] >However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from…

Their statements make sense if you realize that public health experts have not been speaking to the American people the way scientists would speak to an informed audience. They were being political because they didn't think the people could handle nuance. They oversimplified the explanation of the science and pushed for lockdowns at all costs with no exceptions. Now, by admitting there are exceptions, they reveal tha…

It’s the epitome of hypocrisy. How could anyone take them seriously now that they’ve shown to be complete frauds? Is it any wonder that half the country doesn’t trust the government lockdowns?

“Stay inside”, “don’t gather in groups”, “cancel your wedding”, “wear a mask during sex”, but oh hey, it’s OK to go downtown and riot, burn down buildings, and throw bricks at the police.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#145

Post by wheatocean »

TeaDrunk wrote: post #82
pjc50 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "boogaloo" movement?

I live in the middle of NYC, which has had several scenes of looting not 30 min from me broadcast to the entire nation, and I haven't heard of any such movement here. Maybe this is my east coast classist bubble, but I'd appreciate being educated on this matter?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/04/boogal...

There's been a lot of reporting on it as they've stepped up action over the last year. Did you not see the news stories about these individuals stationing inside the Michigan Capitol with assault rifles?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#146

Post by DennisAleynikov »

thethethethe wrote: post #96
alchemyromcom wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing your livelihood can kill you, however. If you are a small business owner, for example, and it's illegal to operate that business, your life is also in danger and your situation deserves empathy. Empathy is not finite resource. We can extend it to all people in bad situations, not just people we prefer.

> If you are a small business owner, for example, and it's illegal to operate that business, your life is also in danger and your situation deserves empathy This is a false dichotomy. Sure, these people (and their workers) deserve empathy and support, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to reopen. You can support business owners via financial aid or other measures while their business is closed.

you could make the same case for the current wave of protests

'you should support blm and adjacent causes from home through donating without putting more people and lives at risk'

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#147

Post by fzeroracer »

axguscbklp wrote: post #118
ribasushi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in this country, black-on-white violence is a much bigger problem than white-on-black violence In the interest of discourse, I am genuinely curious: how did you arrive at the quoted statement? Links to anything that would allow me to understand your view will be very much appreciated.

2018 FBI homicide statistics: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-... 514 black-on-white homicides, 234 white-on-black homicides.

This really only works if you consider said statistics to be reported in good faith. Black Americans tend to be disproportionately targeted by law enforcement and disproportionately punished. For example, black Americans are around four times as likely to be charged for Marijuana offenses compared to white people despite using marijuana at equal rates.

White-on-black crimes I would argue are far less likely to be reported, especially apparent by the bias that the police employ against black people.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#148

Post by thethethethe »

anticonformist wrote: post #110
thethethethe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why were the people protesting the lock downs and business shutdowns and the limiting of freedoms the yahoos and crazy murderers? People denounced those protesters because they were protesting because many of them thought the virus was a hoax or because they couldn’t get a hair cut or buy lawn fertilizer. The current protests are addressing systemic racism black people have faced in America for hundreds of years an…

These protests are going to result in the deaths of thousands of people. They are clearly irresponsible during a pandemic. Gathering in large groups with no physical distancing is tantamount to conspiring to commit mass murder. The problem of racial inequality has existed for "hundreds of years" so why not push the protests back 1 year so it won't unnecessarily cost many people their lives? There is no reasonable sug…

Edit: The parent edited their comment with no edit note, so my comment might not make as much sense because it remains unchanged

There is a lot to unpack here but I will do my best.

> I shouldn't have to say this but people these days: I fully supports racial equality, elimination of poverty, and modernization of policing in the U.S.

It doesn’t appear that you do, as you are actively speaking out against an anti-racist movement supported by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

> The problem has existed for "hundreds of years" so why not push the protests back 1 year so it won't unnecessarily cost many people their lives?

This is not how social movements work. You can’t just “push it back”. Additionally, black people a disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, so these issues are not completely separate.

> It seems incredibly obvious that the urgency here if false

I suspect you feel this way because you are not an affected demographic. The police have been terrorizing and murdering black people in their own neighborhoods for hundreds of years. If this was happening to you, I’m sure it would feel ‘urgent’. Additionally, the president of the most powerful country in the history of the world has literally been calling for the military to kill protesters and labeling them as terrorists. This is incredibly scary and I’d say speaking out against this is very urgent.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#149

Post by eganist »

whiddershins wrote: post #136
bryant wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah but that’s only one way to calculate it. Other ways might be to calculate based on number of encounters, or number of criminal acts, or to control for location, or control for income. Etc. I think it’s important to be really careful saying a given statistic, any statistic, says what we think it says.

Please bring one such alternative that effectively captures the impact on a per-capita basis.

Otherwise, this is a false analogy, since the normalized measurement accomplishes precisely this.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#150

Post by carapace »

mydongle wrote: post #113

It's tragic watching this play out. 4chan's /pol/ amongst many other racists love it. They don't have to do anything while everything implodes. They see Covid-19 as a nothing burger, and health experts giving these protestors a pass vindicates their belief. But if Covid-19 is not a nothing burger, then these protests will end up with many black people and other minorities sick and possibly dead. People on the alt-rig…

In re:

> They see Covid-19 as a nothing burger, and health experts giving these protestors a pass vindicates their belief.

Four minutes later someone says just that:

> by admitting there are exceptions, [public health experts] reveal that they were not being straight with us all along.

Post reply on HN