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America is giving up on the pandemic?

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Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#521

Post by rayiner »

caconym_ wrote: post #471
twblalock wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

We've heard a lot from black people over the past week or two (and much longer, if you cared to listen) about what typical American policing is like for them. It's not good. It's perfectly valid to see those issues as important but still not worth the risk of spreading COVID-19, but by boiling this down to a contest of how many people each Bad Thing killed in X amount of time, you miss a lot of the nuances in both is…

I happen to agree: several hundred, or even several thousand more people dying as a result of COVID 19 is a worthwhile trade off for the progress and change these protests are enabling. If that’s your opinion, own it. But that’s a political opinion, not a scientific one. Scientists have no business trying to clothe that political value judgment in the garb of expert analysis.

The problem the public health sector has worked itself into is that it dismissed any attempts to analyze “trade offs” when we were talking about economic trade offs. So now they have to pretend like we’re not talking about trade offs at all. Hence the completely non-sensical premise that protests are okay because police brutality is a public health problem.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#522

Post by rhino369 »

TeaDrunk wrote: post #476
achenatx wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are no calculations being done. They believe in the cause therefore it is justified. They dont believe in the cause of the other side (freedom of movement/commerce) and therefore dont believe they are justified. They are pretending to base it on science, when it is just another political opinion.

"there are no calculations being done" Calculations on what, exactly? There are calculations done on how police brutality and systemtic racism contribute to decreased quality of life for black americans. It's considered widely acknowledged within the healthcare industry that black americans have statistically significant health disparities compared to other races, and that additionally it is statistically known that…

Conceivably, you could do some sort of analysis on how much systemic racism has an impact on black lives as a measure of year of life lost, etc.

But you'd also have to do the same for the 3 months they've taken from everyone else due to lockdowns.

Until they do that sort of thing, its politics not a social science.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#523

Post by HaloZero »

danenania wrote: post #324
achenatx wrote: post #294

Just wanted to add that the abolish the police sentiment isnt as inane as it sounds on the surface. Abolish the police is about taking away responsibilities that police have today and giving them to people more suitable. Police - people trained for aggression with weapons to stop violent criminals should not be handling: 1) mental health 2) homeless 3) drug addiction 4) domestic violence 5) traffic stops etc etc They…

This is the strategy used at Burning Man, and it seems to work quite well from what I’ve heard, though it’s admittedly not a very representative slice of society. There are “rangers” who deal with safety issues or disputes, and camps devoted to caring for people who might be having a bad trip (or other kind of episode) in a compassionate way. They will only call the police as a last resort. I think a similar approach…

I'm a Ranger. One of rules though is not to put ourself in danger. Which is opposite of what a cop might need to do.

We have a few must reports (rape, lost child, and sexual assault) that we must call in but anecdotally I've rarely heard of a Ranger calling in LEO (law enforcement officer) to handle anything that isn't a gun/weapon or a must report.

But Burning Man has no guns and everyone is there on vacation. It doesn't apply.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#524

Post by bagacrap »

lykr0n wrote: post #12

> Businesses are opening Yeah. We never were going to be able to keep everything closed for much longer. There is a very anti-handout ideology here, and the amount of political will for more bailouts was dwindling. > Protests... Sorry about this one. There are more important issues that need solving right now, and momentum and timing are very important. Right now we're in a perfect storm where a large amount of peopl…

is it just an ideology? At a certain point, you do have to actually work to make the economy spin. No economy, no money for healthcare. People die from no economy. So this is not an ideology so much as acceptance of reality.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#525

Post by drusepth »

rayhendricks wrote: post #468
School-Cotton wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public assembly is critical, yes. So is the ability to work, run a business, get married, and engage in social gatherings. Either COVID-19 is serious enough that it merits cancelling a bunch of “critical” features of normal life, or it isn’t.

I agree with this statement. At least here in Seattle the protesters and police are packed closely together and are yelling at oneanother. Very few if any police are wearing masks (I was ~20ft from anyone & wearing a mask but wanted to see things 1st hand). IMO this will create a level of pandemic similar to NYC unless we really start testing and contact-tracing. It does feel like much of the left is OK with this, wh…

Do you think most protestors would be okay with contract tracing, especially when the most critical times to trace are during protests?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#526

Post by mythrwy »

01100011 wrote: post #480
mythrwy wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper incident from a few weeks ago was the most important 'teachable moment' that we've had in years. I am somewhat disappointed that it was overshadowed by protests against police brutality, because I thought it was a very 'teachable moment' that illustrated the type of racism that still exists behind a facade of tolerance. Police abuse is sort of a separate issue relating to train…

Maybe I'm not understanding the term "structural". To me the word indicates institutions officially set up to behave in a racial manner, i.e segregation. Obviously we don't have much or any of that anymore. But I agree racism and profiling (which I think of as a separate issue... note, I do think it's an "issue") exist. I just balk at the use of the term "structural". Structural is rounding up Muslims in Western China. Structural is passing a law that says if you are black you can't come in. We don't do structural anymore. Which isn't to say we don't have racism or racial problems or classism or profiling or injustice, obviously we do.

Unlike the average San Francisco resident I've actually spent a lot of time around blacks and black communities so this isn't theoretical one dimensional abstract signaling of the type that is unfortunately too common lately.

The issue is deep and not nearly as simple as one sided "structural racism social injustice". A lot of it comes down to culture and how people feel about proper behavior. Along with contempt for cultures that don't have the same values. And willingness to engage in violent behavior.

But I don't deny black Americans have a rough time with the police and I do think we should do something about that. Maybe that is what is meant by "structural" in which case I agree, no argument.

I'm not sure what to do about people not liking each others culture though. I expect the bigots are the ones missing out, but I don't know if we can legal that problem away.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#527

Post by caconym_ »

twblalock wrote: post #511
caconym_ wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've heard a lot from black people over the past week or two (and much longer, if you cared to listen) about what typical American policing is like for them. It's not good. It's perfectly valid to see those issues as important but still not worth the risk of spreading COVID-19, but by boiling this down to a contest of how many people each Bad Thing killed in X amount of time, you miss a lot of the nuances in both is…

Scientists are no more qualified at discussing the trade-offs of economics and racial justice and policing than anyone else. By attempting to do so they politicize science and thereby reduce public trust in science. My problem with their letter is that they made a judgment about these trade-offs and attempted to portray it as a scientific one, when it really wasn't. Based on the data alone, there is no way to reach t…

> White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19. Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police compared to white people, but the effects of racism are far more pervasive. Black people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress. Black people are also more likely to develop COVID-19. Black people with COVID-19 are diagnosed later in the disease course and have a higher rate of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death. COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.

Is that all BS, then? No, I don't think so.

I wouldn't call it a "scientific conclusion", but the point that black people have poor health outcomes relative to other demographics has a lot of merit and honestly who else should be making it but medical professionals and scientists?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#528

Post by kleer001 »

ken wrote: post #474
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

What point are you trying to make? Systemic racism is way bigger than just police killings. Do you want to ignore the (non-lethal) evils of prejudice, and just play a numbers game with fatalities? From some back-of-the-envelope math, the average POC in America will still lose more years of their life from simply living in a racist society than from COVID-19. Life isn't a pissing contest of "my problem is bigger than…

> Life isn't a pissing contest of "my problem is bigger than your problem".

> Systemic racism is way bigger than just police killings.

?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#529

Post by thisiszilff »

rayiner wrote: post #510
thisiszilff wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Another excerpt from the article state: > "We created the letter in response to emerging narratives that seemed to malign demonstrations as risky for the public health because of Covid-19," according to the letter wri…

The letter is gobbledegook. Police brutality isn’t a “public health problem.” It’s a bad thing, and it may well be that reasonable people feel like protesting police brutality justifies taking the risk of increased COVID-19 transmission. (I certainly feel that way.) They’re deciding that “protesting police brutality is worth some excess deaths from COVID.” But the authors don’t want to own the fact that they’re makin…

Their letter makes it clear they are taking about racism, not necessarily just in police brutality.

The letter to me reads as 100% political because it is suggesting that you can get rid of the protests by addressing their concerns. That option is available to you. Their motivation for writing the letter is largely to say "hey, you can stop the protests by addressing their concerns" and to point out that addressing their concerns in this case also advances what they consider to be a public health interest.

It is possible we had different interpretations of what they wrote, but this felt more like "1000 doctors make a poltiical statement about the protests" rather than "1000 doctors say in their scientific opinions that protests are justified."

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#530

Post by noad »

scarmig wrote: post #453
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…

They're being flagrantly irresponsible. If nothing else, messaging and public trust are key parts of any epidemic response. Right now, a conservative might look at this letter and come away with the impression that this is a case of quarantine for thee but not for me. An opinion that wouldn't be unjustified: can you imagine them doing the same thing to provide cover for abortion protests? The right to religious gathe…

Or maybe there are just bigger problems than the virus right now.
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