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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?

#721

Post by djf1 »

deanCommie wrote: post #688
rayiner wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget public health officials outright lied and said masks don’t help reduce the spread of the disease, putatively to help conserve masks for medical personnel: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-... > When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks.…

[flagged]

I don't think _every post_ whining about the lies of the health authorities has a libertarian "fuck everyone else" subtext.

It seems to me that the original misinformation on this subject has caused a continued belief that masks are not helpful in reducing transmission. Initial public health recommendations cannot easily be walked back. Once the meme is sufficiently embedded, it's nearly impossible to dislodge.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#722

Post by jakeogh »

JamesBarney wrote: post #622
humaniania wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC revised their risk estimates towards the end of last month. "The fifth scenario is the CDC's "current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States." In that scenario, the agency described its estimate that 0.4% of people who feel sick with Covid-19 will die. For people age 65 and older, the CDC puts that number at 1.3%. For people 49 and under, the agency estimated that 0.0…

Those CDC numbers are really weird btw. 0.4% of symptomatic cases is like a 0.2-0.3% IFR. 0.3% of the New York City population has already died of corona-virus. So assuming everyone in New York was infected that gives us an IFR of .3%. But if a more realistic 20% of the population was infected then the IFR could be as high as 1.5%. I tried going through all the most recent research and almost all of it came up with a…

Influenza and pneumonia deaths by influenza season and age United States, 2008–2015: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn...

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#723

Post by dang »

ribasushi wrote: post #111
axguscbklp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are the protests really founded on something significant? If they focused simply on police brutality regardless of race, that would be one thing, but the general narrative seems to be that there is a big problem of white-on-black violence in the form of cops. Now, there is such a problem, but this ignores the wider context that in this country, black-on-white violence is a much bigger problem than white-on-black…

> in this country, black-on-white violence is a much bigger problem than white-on-black violence In the interest of discourse, I am genuinely curious: how did you arrive at the quoted statement? Links to anything that would allow me to understand your view will be very much appreciated.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This is one of the commonest and most inflammatory clichés of race war that exists, so your comment reads like concern trolling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#724

Post by dang »

axguscbklp wrote: post #88
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…

But are the protests really founded on something significant? If they focused simply on police brutality regardless of race, that would be one thing, but the general narrative seems to be that there is a big problem of white-on-black violence in the form of cops. Now, there is such a problem, but this ignores the wider context that in this country, black-on-white violence is a much bigger problem than white-on-black…

Race war ideology flamewar is not allowed here. Yes, related topics are of the moment, but you crossed the line, and the resulting subthread was particularly wretched. No more of this please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.htm

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#725

Post by Fellshard »

chasd00 wrote: post #715
Fellshard wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analysis is quite simple: basic cynicism. Experts are incentivized to maximize results corresponding to their field /in isolation/ - with little or no trade-offs considered. This preserves their reputation, and allows them to recommend within the bounds of their knowledge. If an expert recommends religious institutions continue to hold only remote meetings, they are not going to suffer any consequences, both dire…

but reality doesn't care. when people start falling sick, and the curve steepens while the cries of "why weren't we warned!" become loud and clear what's going to be these "experts" answer then? Surely they've thought that far ahead. right? Or maybe the lockdowns were a massive over reaction and this is a subtle acknowledgment.

Regardless which way the cookie crumbles, the damage to their reputations is done. Neither outcome is good, though one is obviously far more desirable in the short term: the one with less resulting death. Though, if they have lost credibility the next time this rolls 'round...

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#726

Post by alexashka »

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…

If anything, this simply lets regular people peek behind the curtain - it's mostly politics all the way down.

Science is a minor concern within a sphere of human influence.

When mathematicians of all people, reject prizes for making undeniable progress in their field [0], you can only imagine what happens in all the other fields that are inextricably tied to politics (economics anyone?)

Here's a depressing quote from Perelman's wiki: "It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#:~:text=On%20....

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#727

Post by caseysoftware »

whymauri wrote: post #570
caseysoftware wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right. That comment didn't actually say or contribute anything at all. Consider my comment withdrawn.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#728

Post by zests »

caconym_ wrote: post #512
roenxi wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A protest is a political stunt. That seems to be an essential part of what it means to have a protest. And at risk of being too on topic and reading the article, the issue is that the gloom-and-doom arguments that a lockdown is necessary and correct have been well and truly rejected by the activist wings of politics, and implicitly by a large portion of the commenting-class of journalists. And business. And possibly…

Oh, crap! I forgot that I can ignore context and nuance—and even redefine words and terms at will—to win arguments with zero-effort pedantic nonsense! What have I been doing, arguing in good faith all this time? Was the civil rights movement a political stunt? I think I'm rolling my eyes so hard over here that they might fly out of my head. Call it what you want, anyway. I don't care. > the issue is that the gloom-an…

We usually try to keep it a bit more civil here.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#729

Post by coffeefirst »

baddox wrote: post #611
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…

To me, that seems like fairly precise language. They’re saying they do not believe the risk level is sufficiently high to condemn the gatherings. It doesn’t seem much different than saying grocery store visits are not condemned as risky, while music store visits are condemned as risky. The virus doesn’t care about what you’re shopping for either, it’s just that shopping for food is more important (by their estimation…

That, and it's a healthy dose of pragmatism. If nobody is going to comply with your advice, you're doing more harm than good.

You can realistically tell people to shop for vinyl from the comfort of their couch, and they might do that.

Given the level of outrage, there were going to be large groups of protests across the country either way, but they were successfully convinced to wear masks, use hand sanitizer and spread out where they can. At least here, every time the mayor talks she urges people who went to protests to get tested.

Persuasion is still everything.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#730

Post by rayiner »

in_cahoots wrote: post #676
rayiner wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxford Textbook of Public Health: https://m.oxfordmedicine.com/mobile/view/10.1093/med/9780199... . Do you see any sections on police brutality? Not to mention, I have family in the field, I grew up with probably a dozen public health experts attending Thanksgiving dinner, and did my first internship at a public health company. At no point in hearing decades of shop talk did I ever hear police brutality being mention…

Out of curiosity, were guns or poor maternal outcomes for black women discussed as public health issues? The former has long been thought of as a public health problem but it is rarely discussed due to politics. The latter has been a problem for decades but only acknowledged recently. I recognize you have some expertise here, but I don’t think there is a finite set of issues that can fall under ‘public health’.

I’ve never heard of guns spoken of as a public health issue by public health experts, as opposed to politicians. This is among a fairly uniformly left-leaning bunch of people. The worse maternal outcomes for black women is something I’ve heard discussed, because maternal health is a central focus of public health (it happens to be my dad’s area of expertise). Maternal mortality for black mothers is a problem everywhere in the world. Most developed countries don’t have enough black people to have rigorous data on this. Some that do, like France, don’t track these statistics by race as a matter of formal policy. But the UK has about the same maternal mortality rate for black women, (40 per 100k) as the US (37 per 100k). The gap between black and white is actually bigger in the UK (5x) than the US (3x). Nobody does a good job with maternal care for black women, and nobody really knows what the problem is.

By the way, I have no public health expertise myself; just recounting as a lay person what I’ve heard public health experts talk about as a proxy for the metes and bounds of the field.

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