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America is giving up on the pandemic?

theatlantic.com

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Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#401

Post by ImaCake »

scruple wrote: post #122
lostapathy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a lot of rose colored history about the civil rights movement. We're mostly taught one side of it in school - that good people protested and won out over bad people. We don't, in general, talk about the horrible things that were happening back then. Only unlike a lot of racial problems today, they happened in plain sight and were celebrated. I know Rand Paul got a lot of hate for his recent speech aga…

Most people don't even know who Fred Hampton was. Even people who lived through the civil rights movement don't recall his name. My own parents downplay the violence of the 70s in favor of the rhetoric du jour that they're fed from mainstream media, and they lived in DC from 1972 until late in 1980 (and, all things considered, they are leftists, not liberals, which makes it even more astonishing to me). It's quite as…

This is fascinating to me. The more I see about America's protest history, the more it seems like the last 20 years have been abnormally calm and your normal state of affairs is more like the mood in 2020. A quote I liked from your linked article:

>You have to understand: in 1968, many radicals absolutely believed that the United States was getting ready to collapse. One Weatherman puts it: “We actually believed there was going to be a revolution. We believed 3rd World countries would rise up and cause crises that would bring down the industrialized West, and we believed it was going to happen tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, like 1976.”

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#402

Post by zepto »

divbzero wrote: post #377
daffy wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with cross-examination?

I think the gist is to avoid aggressively picking apart minor details, and instead discuss the main points. This is in line with another section of the guidelines: “ Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. ”

It’s a good idea in principle, the problem is that the devil is often in the detail and people can say things that seem broadly like a decent argument while slipping in details (whether intentionally or not) that completely reverse the meaning or make the meaning quite different.

This is why cross examination in needed in trials - of course everyone tries to make a plausible argument, so noticing the incongruities is important.

Assuming good faith and cross examining are not mutually exclusive.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#403

Post by nikofeyn »

twblalock wrote: post #92

The article’s authors are losing sight of the original justification for the lockdowns: “flatten the curve” was about preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed. Of course cases will increase when people leave their homes. But have the hospitals been overwhelmed in any of the states that started to reopen several weeks ago? No! In that case the lockdowns have served their purpose. The authors of this article are arg…

> The article’s authors are losing sight of the original justification for the lockdowns: “flatten the curve” was about preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed.

i think you've lost sight of what flattening the curve was about. flattening the curve, from the beginning, was giving up. it was about accepting that we weren't and still aren't prepared for the virus, and that tons of people would get sick and die. at the moment, the deaths is a rather sickening 100,000+. the "flattening the curve" movement was an acceptance of this and was just meant to spread out the sick and deaths over time. meanwhile, other countries successfully managed the virus where they didn't even have to flatten the curve. they squashed it.

because then, in the end, the fact that the u.s. flattened the curve could be seen as a successful handling of the virus, when it was anything but.

it is still a legitimate threat in the u.s., while other countries came out of lockdown much, much sooner with much less cases and deaths.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#404

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

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…

> It completely ruins the credibility of many health professionals.

Not just the credibility of health professionals, but all professionals.

The big thing will be climate change. This will be brought up to say that technical professionals giving their advice are just partisan hacks who don’t care about the economy and people’s livelihoods, but do care about their virtue signaling.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#405

Post by dang »

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.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#406

Post by watersb »

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…

Systemic inequality is a component of the clinical presentation of the covid-19 pandemic in the United States. Black Americans have been dying from the disease at twice the rate, as a group, than the population in general. In my home state, half of the reported cases are among Native American communities.

Limited access to healthcare is not a theoretical challenge. The link between historical injustice manifests every day in the pandemic crisis. And the nature of this virus - rapid, asymptomatic contagion - means that any vulnerable population can be a source of ongoing infection in the general population.

Never has the bond in our common good been more clear.

So sure, there are political positions to be taken in how best to move forward, but the virus doesn't care.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#407

Post by dang »

OJFord wrote: post #398
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.

Why has a question mark been added to the title here? IMO by HN's usual standards it makes it a worse title, not better. I assume it's to present it as a debate for discussion rather than appear partisan? (Let me say here I'm British, live in the UK, don't really care for US politics, at that level at least.) But we have controversial titles all the time that are presented as fact (the author's opinion, the author's…

We do that sometimes when a title is particularly contentious, to explicitly encode the contentiousness into the title. It tends to bring down title fever, and it seems to help discussion be more substantive.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#408

Post by nikofeyn »

vharuck wrote: post #340
rabidrat wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to preventing hospitals being overwhelmed, the lockdowns were intended to give us time to develop the infrastructure for adequate testing, tracing, and supportive isolation. With those things in place, we can re-open and still keep the virus in check. If we don't have those things in place, the problem is not the re-opening, which was inevitable since indefinite lockdown and isolation is not sustainable a…

This is why I hold the "discordant" opinions that we should reopen the economy (with reasonable caveats like 6 feet distances, masks, and outside dining when possible), but am still staying inside myself like the past 3 months. I'm going to do my small part in not being a vector. But there's no way the US is ever reaching New Zealand's success at discovery, tracing, and isolating before a vaccine's available. The vir…

> The virus is still an awful pandemic and will have major consequences, but we have no good choices anymore.

this is what is unbelievably frustrating. most people in the u.s. basically hold the opinion that everything wasn't so bad, and that things came out okay. meanwhile, most of the numbers point to the u.s. being one of the worst managed countries with respect to the virus. it's really sickening there is this dissonance with people.

i don't feel safe in the u.s. and will be staying away from people as long as possible. it just feels sickening though, because that length will be indefinite in the u.s. until a vaccine arrives.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#409

Post by dang »

airstrike wrote: post #298
christiansakai wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I’m not a native English speaker. What does do not cross examine here mean? I thought cross examination is good?

I suppose the dialogue in comments should be closer to two researchers thinking about a problem than lawyers cross-examining witnesses in court

Precisely. Your wording is reminiscent of an old thing pg wrote, which I love:

Comments should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#410

Post by nr2x »

alchemyromcom wrote: post #66
nr2x wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not getting a haircut won't kill you, the police will. Also, for the most part, anti-racism protestors are wearing masks, anti-lockdown people, for the most part, are not.

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.

What exactly do you mean by "people we prefer"? I am unclear on the meaning and motive of your language.
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