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

441–450 of 1001 posts

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#441

Post by NoSorryCannot »

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #154
enraged_camel wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you put the word justified in quotes?

Either the vitriol people received for protesting the lockdown, wanting to reopen their businesses and resume life - they were labelled essentially as murderers and #COVIDIOTS - was justified OR the mass protests, flouting of concern about the virus, etc. is justified. You cannot have both. So either those out and about without masks, or protesting the lockdown, etc. AND the current protests are justified as COVID is…

Actually, we can have both.

The law has to be blind to different ideas being expressed; they are all valid, with reasonable limitations. And so it was: despite being overwhelmingly unpopular, antilockdown protests were generally carried out unimpeded.

The popular perception isn't bound to be equitable in this way, nor should it be, nor is it obliged to be uniform.

It is totally valid to carry the opinion that protesting lock downs is less legitimate than protesting police violence. There is no contradiction or injustice here.

Somebody that holds this opinion might argue that while both sets of protestors are willingly putting themselves at risk, one was campaigning for an action that would put others who didn't consent at greater risk and the other is campaigning for action that would protect people. That seems very consistent to me.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#442

Post by mythrwy »

wpietri wrote: post #352
kadoban wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ri…

I'm not sure how much "structural" racism actually exists in the US at this point. There are no doubt pockets and they should be rooted out.

Personal racism exists and will probably never go away. It would be nice if it did.

I do think people get profiled and hassled because other people who look like that have done XXX and cops see a possible pattern. This isn't fair to innocent people at all but I suspect this has been what is happening rather than anything "structural".

I learned this firsthand like 20 years ago when I grew long hair and a beard John Lennon style for maybe 8 months. I was very quickly pulled over, hassled and searched (very rudely I might add) on made up charges by a rural cop. This did open my eyes to maybe a small part of what black America goes through in dealing with cops. I cut my hair back to military style, shaved, and it was back to letting me off with a warning and have a nice day.

I feel like this kind of thing is a good part of antagonism but I don't see it as "structural". More many cops (including minority cops as far as that goes) not liking certain types of people. They need to serve the community imo and it would be better for everyone.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#443

Post by Zarath »

maxerickson wrote: post #426
chrisseaton wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're asking police officers to be less armed then the general public. But most policing tasks don't involve interactions with people looking to fight to the death. Do people really react to being stopped for speeding by starting a firefight? Is that genuinely a routine concern?

Most police have never had cause to use their firearm while on duty: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-lo...

Policing doesn't even make it near the top of a list of dangerous professions

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#444

Post by [deleted] »

treyfitty wrote: post #421
Animats wrote: post #304

Total deaths in US caused by police. (2019, full year): 1112 [1] Total deaths in US caused by coronavirus (last Friday, one day): 975 [2] [1] https://www.theroot.com/here-s-how-many-people-police-killed... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

I see the intent... but scale is drastically different. You’re comparing a yearly figure to a daily one that is nowhere near the daily max to begin with.

[deleted]

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#445

Post by CameronNemo »

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.

Which is why the federal government passed a never-before-seen stimulus package that included forgivable small business loans and expanded unemployment income.

There is no equivalent safety net for people who are victims of positional asphyxia.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#446

Post by AmericanChopper »

smsm42 wrote: post #373
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…

> However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They…

It really just makes it undeniable how political the official advice and accompanying commentary is. The slew of new rules put in place for BLM protests are incredibly dubious, from both a legal and safety perspective. It’s not up to the government to decide what speech or cause for assembly is important, and health officials should not have their risk assessments swayed by political considerations.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#447

Post by grey-area »

Animats wrote: post #304

Total deaths in US caused by police. (2019, full year): 1112 [1] Total deaths in US caused by coronavirus (last Friday, one day): 975 [2] [1] https://www.theroot.com/here-s-how-many-people-police-killed... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

The US is no5 in the world for police homicides, just behind countries like the Philippines, Syria, Brazil. Not a record to be proud of - 1,536 in 2019 according to wikipedia.

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

Other countries manage to achieve numbers like 2 for Japan, 3 for the UK, 11 for Germany which is nowhere near even adjusted for population. American police kill more people per capita than almost every other country. Per 10 million people that's:

46.6 for the US

0.5 for the UK

0.2 for Japan

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#448

Post by default-kramer »

twblalock wrote: post #358
caconym_ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Am I missing a double negative? Even if protesting police brutality has negative value, surely protesting lockdowns has even less than that. It would even be valid to say, "Protest anything you want except lockdowns" (assuming the speaker believes the virus is the greatest threat).

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#449

Post by xphilter »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #446
smsm42 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They…

It really just makes it undeniable how political the official advice and accompanying commentary is. The slew of new rules put in place for BLM protests are incredibly dubious, from both a legal and safety perspective. It’s not up to the government to decide what speech or cause for assembly is important, and health officials should not have their risk assessments swayed by political considerations.

What new rules specifically? And what rules were not in place for the armed all-white protests in Michigan, for instance?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#450

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #319
ianai wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s crazy though is for the first time in my life I actually fear for the future existence of the US. I watched 9/11 in real time and that didn’t feel as much of a threat to our existence as this does. There’s an actual civil war movement among the extremists now. I don’t think that existed during the civil rights movement days, even. Nor even the Vietnam fallout.

If you think things are worse now than in the 1960's, I don't know what to tell you. They were way worse. Multiple politicians assassinated. Major multi-day riots across multiple cities with hundred dead. Then a president being impeached. 2020 doesn't even come close to the 1960's.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN