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

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#351

Post by jabedude »

chrisseaton wrote: post #314
rpiguy wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, items 1, 3, 4, and 5 are all extremely dangerous. The Not Police would be in grave danger. There is a reason that the Police Police are armed. That guy on drugs could stab you, you could pull a car over and that person could have a gun, you could go to stop domestic violence and get attacked. Police brutality goes up proportionately with violent crime in their area. In other words, the more police deal…

> The Not Police would be in grave danger. There is a reason that the Police Police are armed. That don't need to be armed with firearms. That's overkill (literally overkill, unfortunately) for community policing. They could have batons. Firearms should be restricted to specialists deployed only when needed for a specifically authorised task.

> That don't need to be armed with firearms

You're asking police officers to be less armed then the general public. 43 states are "shall-issue" and allow residents to conceal carry a firearm after completing required training and submitting an application.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#352

Post by wpietri »

kadoban wrote: post #325
manfredo wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On average the police kill ~80 unarmed people each year, of any race [1]. By comparison, 40 million people are unemployed as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. Certainly, the impact of someone unjustly killed is vastly larger than that of someone laid off or furloughed. But is it 500,000 times greater? These are different issues. They aren't equivalent, but they're comparable at least. Pointing out the inconsiste…

There is _far_ more harm in unjust policing than is counted in deaths per year.

And far more harm than just one year's worth. We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that. If people are finding the timing of the current protest inconvenient, well, they've had their whole lives to fix the problem. They shouldn't blame the protesters for their own lack of action.

I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil rights protests "unwise and untimely". [1] Somehow it's never the right moment for justice. Anybody suggesting an indefinite delay should be aware that their arguments are indistinguishable from those of people for whom "later" actually means "never". If people really want to end these protests now, instead of arguing for delay they should quickly enact deep structural changes.

[1]https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#353

Post by zarathustreal »

realtalk_sp wrote: post #296

The comment thread here, and the national attitude more generally, is the literal embodiment of cognitive dissonance. Science and facts are only useful insofar as they are convenient to our ends. I suppose, in light of the shortcomings of human nature, it would be a lot easier to make the point that needs to be made if we were dropping bombs on coronavirus victims and broadcasting the carnage instead of rolling them…

Painfully true, and very well put. I hope for the day that twitter realizes most of America is not actually on twitter and trending hashtags do not represent the common sentiment.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#354

Post by gridlockd »

noobaccount wrote: post #318
rpiguy wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, items 1, 3, 4, and 5 are all extremely dangerous. The Not Police would be in grave danger. There is a reason that the Police Police are armed. That guy on drugs could stab you, you could pull a car over and that person could have a gun, you could go to stop domestic violence and get attacked. Police brutality goes up proportionately with violent crime in their area. In other words, the more police deal…

Unarmed police in other countries seem to handle those situations just fine.

I disagree. Almost every country on the planet arms its police force and all of those countries are rather low in crime, at least compared to the US.

When there's a situation that requires guns, they stay put until the police with the guns arrives. Or they become a hero and get stabbed in the process:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/22/police-briti...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-49273979

https://news.sky.com/story/police-officer-critical-after-bei...

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-charged-stabbing-p...

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#355

Post by wpietri »

manfredo wrote: post #347
brent_noorda wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said 80 unarmed, meaning the rest of the 1043 were armed.

another ~140 were armed with "toy weapons", such as the infamous shooting of Tamir Rice. But it's unclear whether that should go into the category of "unarmed" since this is still a threat perceived by police. Here is an image of Rice's toy gun: https://www.cleveland.com/resizer/CbjnPy-8-HkfIl1ApQ431f_Dlh...

Weirdly, hundreds of people were wandering around state capitols with much more dangerous looking weapons, and no cop shot them on site. It's almost like going by "perceived threat" (as determined after the fact by cops) is a giant hole that allows racial bias free reign.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#356

Post by trfhuhg »

vzqx wrote: post #166
saiya-jin wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question from non-US person - isn't one of the main reasons to also get some anonymity? As IT guy I know damn well how good face recognition software works these days, en masse. With all the biometric data US govt has on everybody, pairing would not be that hard for many.

The (peaceful) protests aren't illegal so anonymity isn't a major concern. Police might be violent towards protestors in the moment, but there's zero risk of the government tracking down and punishing protesters after the fact.

That's very good sarcasm right there. Perhaps the many years in the corporate world have made me too cynical, but I'd expect all and every protestor to be captured on cameras, identified later with face recognition software (remember that Amazon's FaceRekognition had contracts with PDs?), matched with photos on driver licenses and over the next few months they would be quietly, but mercilessly punished for the dissent. The only real question is whether the FR software work when face is mostly covered with a mask and sunglasses? It technically can, because ears, hair, head shape and shoulders shape is a unique enough combination.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#357

Post by e_y_ »

meritt wrote: post #278
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…

> Don't tell us there is no risk from these protests, but there is a risk from stay-at-home protests. The difference is the stay-at-home protesters overwhelmingly didn't wear masks [1] and the BLM protesters are overwhelmingly wearing masks [2]. Hong Kong has proven it's possible to have massive protests while wearing masks and not being vectors of infection. [3] [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-upda…

It's worth noting that Hong Kong has very few coronavirus cases, and most/all the current known cases are from travelers who are being closely monitored.

The risk there is much thus lower than places that have already have tens of thousands of cases, although it also depends on how long the protests continue and whether an outbreak can be caught early through testing.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#358

Post by twblalock »

caconym_ wrote: post #224
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…

Where'd they "tell us there is no risk from these protests"? The letter you linked explicitly advises us to "prepare for an increased number of infections in the days following a protest [and] provide increased access to testing and care for people in the affected communities, especially when they or their family members put themselves at risk by attending protests." They just seem to think protesting America's rampa…

> They just seem to think protesting America's rampant institutionalized police brutality is more worthy than protesting the lockdowns themselves

That can’t possibly be a valid scientific opinion on the basis of public health data — until recently the virus was killing more people per day than the police kill in an entire year.

It’s a political opinion and this was a political letter.

From now on, when public health experts give advice, we must all wonder if it is based on science, or if it is just political messaging which has no more claim to truth than any other political messaging. That’s dangerous ground to be on if you want science to be taken seriously by the public.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#359

Post by vulcan01 »

stevoski wrote: post #290
dang wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place, so that it can be collapsed and prevent too much offtopicness at the top of the thread.

@dang, Maybe the text in italics ("Be kind. Don't be snarky...") should be always shown above the HN comment box? It'd be nice to get the reminder every time we are starting to write something unkind or snarky...

IIRC, Stack Overflow shows the link to the site guidelines when you have under a certain amount of rep. Something similar here might solve a lot of problems.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#360

Post by daffy »

dang wrote: post #405
dang wrote: post #220

All: if commenting, please be up to date on the site guidelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) and be sure follow them. Start here: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Don't use a thread like this to fulminate or flame. It helps no one. It adds toxic fumes. Regardle…

This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place, so that it can be collapsed and prevent too much offtopicness at the top of the thread.

What's wrong with cross-examination?
Post reply on HN