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America is giving up on the pandemic?

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Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#561

Post by whymauri »

realtalk_sp wrote: post #518
bagacrap wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right that "science" and "data" are only believed when they align with one's views. But people seem to care a lot more about coronavirus deaths than deaths from war, flu, air pollution, traffic accidents, cancer (since screenings are down since lockdown), etc, so I can't agree with you on the other point. Let's not forget that the data is far from all collected, and the science is not settled, wrt eith…

You're digressing from the core, indisputable truth: these protests, in the present environment, will result in a significant number of deaths. Sure we won't start to have a sense of just how many until a few more weeks have passed, but we can say with relative certainty it will be " significant ". The reason people are dodging this is because it makes these protests morally indefensible, on balance. This is terribly…

Are all the state-wide openings in May, the opening of casinos, and the festivities of Memorial Day Weekend, of which we are already seeing COVID impacts, more or less morally indefensible than the BLM protests?

When all these other non-protest gatherings of people were taking place, were you this outraged? If the answer is no: explain yourself.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#562

Post by humaniania »

zarathustreal wrote: post #323
matwood wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. This tells me the protests are working. When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege and…

>When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege Unfortunately you're very correct there, though not in the way I think you're assuming. Force people with influence, power, money, ability to be above common problems, to see what's happening and you're not going to…

What a fatalistic and pessimistic attitude. I hope that you're not that negative about everything in life.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#563

Post by greedo »

tenpies wrote: post #500
war1025 wrote: post #3

A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio). It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic and now we're just left with the pulpy mess that no one really wants to deal with.

Keep in mind it's an election year, and the biggest failure in the US and the world, New York, is extremely Democrat. It is critical to the Democrats to shift the conversation. Clearly blaming Trump for the city's failure isn't going to work, so the pivot was to waiting until there was one particularly bad case of police abuse against a black person and then light the powder keg. If you look back this year there have…

Doesn't look like this victim was murdered by the police. We should hold the police to a higher standard since they have a government sanctioned monopoly on the use of lethal force.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#564

Post by shwoopdiwoop »

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #517
grey-area wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

Do you think it's intellectually honest to compare countries with very, very low rates of firearms access to a country where firearms are available to anyone who wants one? You're comparing the USA, which has about 100k shootings per year, 36k deaths involving guns of which 33% (~12k) are homicides, to the UK which has 50-60 cases of homicide involving a gun per year. The fact is that the US police are far, far, far…

Sounds like severely limiting access to guns in the US would be great place to start then.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#565

Post by missedthecue »

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…

Many police shootings happen at mundane traffic stops.

What happens to Not Police in these situations?

https://youtu.be/LsrC5QV_Yrc

https://youtu.be/mI4UxURjqEQ

https://youtu.be/DbaJTuoLpWM

https://youtu.be/-yUnT5aFygg

https://youtu.be/4i86SUNFFzs

You want unarmed people doing this? Your Not Police would be getting killed in any of those.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#566

Post by poulsbohemian »

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…

> 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.

Perhaps it’s not so much weasel words as a carefully coded “caveat emptor”

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#567

Post by thisiszilff »

realtalk_sp wrote: post #251
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…

This is a baffling argument. Far more lives are threatened by coronavirus today than will be threatened by police brutality over the next several decades [1]. You're basically saying that immunocompromised and elderly persons are acceptable collateral damage. One thing that's been lost in the noise is that death by police brutality is a vanishingly small problem: less than 0.0003% of the population per year (and most…

It is important to not the latter did not mitigating police brutality as a public health interest, but racism in general.

From the letter:

> 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.

The remainder of the letter goes into strategies for mitigating the spread of COVID-19 during protests.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#568

Post by ken »

jpxw wrote: post #487
ken wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can I see these calculations please?

Black people in America have a measurably lower life expectancy than white people [1]. For people born in 2015, it's down to about 5%, but as recently as 1970, it was over 10%. That's a lot of years of life being cut short.

(There are well-known social causes for this which are direct consequences of racism, like access to quality health care, housing, education, credit, etc.)

COVID-19 deaths aren't taking nearly that many years. According to [2] (about 1.5 weeks old), 1 in 1850 (or around 0.05% of) black Americans have died from COVID-19. Even if this continues for the rest of the year, it still can't hold a candle to plain old racism.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/015.pdf [2]: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#569

Post by thisiszilff »

jpxw wrote: post #487
ken wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can I see these calculations please?

Their letter has a paragraph addressing some of their concerns:

> 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.

Edit: these aren't the calculations you asked for, but should give you an indication of what they are thinking about.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#570

Post by whymauri »

caseysoftware wrote: post #342
cblades wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assemble carrying weapons and with half the crowd claiming that the entire disease is fake, though?

Does what someone is carrying - but not using - make their assembly invalid? Does what someone think make their assembly invalid?

>Does what someone think make their assembly invalid?

Point out above where GP said those assemblies were invalid. Pro tip: they did not.

Their right to assembly is not fundamentally invalidated, but the protesters are certainly open to a variety of critiques.

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