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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?

#781

Post by splintercell »

NateEag wrote: post #717
shwoopdiwoop wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Regardless of whether it's a good idea, it cannot be done. I believe the last number I saw said there were about 300 million guns in the US - one for each person. There's no way to just make those disappear into government hands.

300 million stat is old, I think now it's somewhere around 393 million. Coronavirus and the riots have also created far more new gun owners among a lot of people (making an observation from my friends and other people I know).

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#782

Post by dehrmann »

war1025 wrote: post #47
axguscbklp wrote: post #29

This is a pretty heavily politicized article for something that is marked as "Science" by the publishers. The authors have a clear political agenda that bleeds through onto the page.

It's from the Atlantic. Of course it has a political agenda. That's why people read it.

They try not to have a political agenda

> In Politics, The Atlantic will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea.

But I'd still generally describe them as a respected center-left new source. I wouldn't go as far as saying they have an "agenda."

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#783

Post by thescriptkiddie »

rpiguy wrote: post #312
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…

Unfortunately, items 1, 3, 4, and 5 are all extremely dangerous. The Not Police would be in grave danger. There is a reason that the Police Police are armed. That guy on drugs could stab you, you could pull a car over and that person could have a gun, you could go to stop domestic violence and get attacked. Police brutality goes up proportionately with violent crime in their area. In other words, the more police deal…

In many non americas, the police police are already not armed, (although they do often carry non-leathal weapons). For example, the famous "bobbies" of the world's oldest operating police force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgdhxLPJBgQ

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#784

Post by ikeyany »

Tomte wrote: post #775
ikeyany wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually true. The surgeon general literally said: "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus"

Did you read my comment at all? "which was a smaller component of the motivation, sure, but got mostly conflated with the real argument. I think that is because it was much easier to explain to the public and to journalists."

They still lied, which was the original point. Even if they lied for what they believed to be good reasons.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#785

Post by Hnrobert42 »

stephen_cagle wrote: post #604
nkozyra wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airtime is finite - editorially, it's unsurprising the story took a backseat. NYC curbed infection rate, there may be seasonality, numbers in general are going down in this country. If we see another phase it will be A1 material again.

I wonder how much longer the words "A1 material" will even make sense to people? Like, they will probably think you are talking about quality of meat or something. Newspapers; I'd almost forgotten about them.

Funny. I am 40, certainly old enough to remember newspapers, but I didn’t get the reference until the last line of your post.

Also, sorry you are getting downvoted. Emotions are running high. I’d guess folks are interpreting your snark against newspapers as snark against the parent.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#786

Post by redisman »

Animats wrote: post #350
robocat wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a common mask protects you 50%, then that is a huge win both as an individual and as a group. Saying Assuming 0% in your calculations is biased. I think your word “cheapo” is derogatory. Are people just being cheap when they don’t buy an N95 mask? Saying “cheapo” masks only protect others is an incorrect conclusion: your language is also misleading.

Anything which leaks when you inhale doesn't protect you. If you take a deep breath and don't feel the mask pulled against your face, it's not working. There's now a huge supply of poor to useless masks available, many with phony approval markings.[1] That's most of what's being sold on Amazon. It's moderately hard to make a mask which seals tightly, doesn't offer too much resistance to breathing, and filters to N95…

In Asian countries with low transmission everyone use a "surgical" style mask, not N95. You almost certainly cannot convince a large number of Americans to wear a N95 as it makes breathing quite a bit harder. Especially if you have any underlying health problems or poor general health (again, that's majority of Americans).

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#787

Post by AnthonyMouse »

deanCommie wrote: post #753
hindsightbias wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We indeed live in an era where all things are binary. But what is a thinking person supposed to think when the Surgeon General is saying don’t wear masks in a pandemic caused by airborne viri? In urban (educated) zones likely to be hotbeds for outbreaks, could the state not do a little nuance and say “hospitals need the N95s and you need a bandana” Everybody has got a bandana, but if I were to start walking into stor…

> could the state not do a little nuance and say “hospitals need the N95s and you need a bandana” No. Not in 2020. Not with the vast majority of the population. Nuance is dead.

Rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

There seems to be a trend to paint people as imbeciles who can't tie their own shoelaces without somebody standing over them, and then on investigation it turns out not to be true.

There was a story a while back about a couple who drank fish tank cleaner (containing chloroquine) after Trump touted chloroquine against the coronavirus. Come to find out the couple were not fans of Trump but were having marital difficulties, so now you've got to weigh the possibility that these two were stupid enough to drink poison against the possibility that the woman discovered a way to intentionally poison her husband and pin it on Trump:

https://nypost.com/2020/04/29/homicide-cops-investigate-deat...

More often than not, when you see someone doing something apparently colossally stupid, it's because you don't know the whole story rather than because they're actually that stupid. People understand nuance plenty when it's important to them.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#788

Post by raverbashing »

javagram wrote: post #664
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.…

FWIW, I don’t think the majority of the officials intended to lie about this. It wasn’t anything that started this year or anything - they’ve had the same message about masks since as far back as the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-t... > But the CDC has recommended against mask use. I hypothesized that the CDC was intentionally lying to us, trying to trick us into not b…

The recommendation against masks was probably a knee-jerk reaction. Or maybe a bureaucratic "we know better than you" reaction

At the same time the amount of people that think that have the mask below the nose or just at the chin or mishandling it because it feels "uncomfortable" to them is astounding. I'm not sure but I believe an intubation is more uncomfortable (and yes these are predominantly people at risk ages)

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#789

Post by orange8 »

nappy wrote: post #771
orange8 wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing apples to apples: Average daily deaths in US caused by heart disease: 1800 Average daily deaths in US caused by cancer: 1600 Average daily deaths in US caused by corona virus: 1000 https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death Comparing oranges to oranges: Total deaths in US caused by homicide (2019): 19510 Total deaths in US caused by police (2019): 1112 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicid…

Not apples to apples at all. This is the average daily COVID-19 deaths with extreme restrictions - so imagine comparing this heart disease with large-scale mandatory exercise, or cancer if cigarettes were eliminated entirely.

I'm comparing actual stats of natural deaths that have happened, and you are saying it is better to compare hypothetical/imagined stats with the real ones to be more accurate?

Should we now also imagine/project the homicide death rates if all civilians were peaceful and happy and compare it with that of the real deaths caused by the police?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#790

Post by in_cahoots »

JamesBarney wrote: post #713
in_cahoots wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the 20% of the population was more susceptible? It seems that the outbreak was concentrated in long-term care facilities, healthcare workers (who received a larger viral load than average), and the poor (who tend to have more pre-existing conditions). If the 20% is not randomly distributed the math can still work out.

The math could work out, but if that was true then that means if NYC got 5 times as many infections the number of fatalities would barely change. I would find that hard to believe and I also doubt they would have enough data to validate that type of hypothesis. We're still guessing at the number of people infected, not to mention how old are they, what pre-existing conditions did they have, how do those pre-existing…

Fair points! You could probably make an estimate with a stratified approach but if 0.3% have already died there’s no wiggle room for additional deaths.
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