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The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

nyti.ms

161–170 of 369 posts

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#162
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal basic income.

Negative taxes are better. No need to give to the wealthy in the first place to come back and tax them later.

It may seem pointless, but it may be administratively simpler. Similar to how people with government jobs still pay taxes, even though their paychecks come from the government in the first place.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your problem is that it’s not fair how he distributed it? You’d rather see life saving medicine trashed rather than go into a human being’s arm? How can you defend that position? It’s so unethical.

>So your problem is that it’s not fair how he distributed it? No, the point I'm making is that his actions were outside of the system we use as a society to ensure fairness. He could still have distributed the vaccine fairly - but he also could have done it unfairly. The concern comes from the lack of due process. >You’d rather see life saving medicine trashed rather than go into a human being’s arm? How can you defe…

> in bypassing policy

Citation needed please, the article said that he followed the policy of not letting the vaccine go to waste.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#164
post #124

It would be so simple to have a system where everyone can sign up with the local health department to receive extra doses at the end of the day. If there are extra doses, you receive a text message and have 10 minutes to confirm that you'll be there within the hour, otherwise it moves on to the next person. There should be no reason a single dose of this stuff should ever go to waste.

This might be a rare edge case case involving unforseen circumstances. For rare cases like this (presuming that that's true), we probably don't want to set up a whole communication apparatus, since doing so is quite expensive. Instead rely on common-sense ad hoc decision making, just like the doctor in question did. We just need a small caveat in the rules that only people the doctor doesn't know (either directly or…

I don't know that this situation is that rare. I just got Moderna dose 1 last night and heard the nurses talking about no-shows and how many bottles they were going to have left over (I didn't catch the number). Anecdata of course, but I don't think leftover doses is some crazy rarity.

Edit: To be clear, I don't know whether these left over bottles were going to go to waste or if they had contingency plans to use them.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're literally saying he should have just thrown them away instead of distributing them as best he was able. I wouldn't necessarily object to that particular policy. It's a shame to waste perfectly good medicine in a pandemic, but would we feel the same if he had not found anybody vulnerable who was available, and instead ended up vaccinating his own children, who are fit and healthy? What if, instead, he taken…

> It's a shame to waste perfectly good medicine in a pandemic, but would we feel the same if he had not found anybody vulnerable who was available, and instead ended up vaccinating his own children, who are fit and healthy? If he'd made an honest attempt at offering it to vulnerable people first and couldn't find any takers, then I'd be fine with him giving it to his healthy children. > What if, instead, he taken the…

>I think it's unfair to offer these as the comparisons to what he actually did

They're not comparisons. They are hypotheticals, intended to explore the range of possibilities that people would allow or oppose.

If people want to argue that the doctor was right to go out and distribute the vaccine ad-hoc, I think they should consider not just the actual result, but also counterfactuals, and whether in those counterfactual cases the actions would still be "justified". By returning to the real events, you're avoiding that consideration.

>Not really - the policy was exists in most places heavily favors the most vulnerable, not equitable racial distribution.

I did not mean "equity" in terms of "equitable racial distribution". I meant "equity" in the nebulous way of "fairness".

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#166
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our education in the US is in the same position. We spend far more time, energy and money on problematic students who don't give a rip than we do on dedicated/motivated students. The goal posts aren't there. If a certain number of students fail it creates red flags for the district and if those students are a certain minority that can viewed as evidence of institutional racism and open up legal liabilities as such th…

Isn't the parent stating too many people are doing exactly what you're proposing, which is protesting that services are being provided to people who don't deserve it? (Separating children into deserving and undeserving categories of educational attention seems that way to me...)

Not separating into inherently deserving and undeserving, but those who desire a good education and those who do not. There are students in poor schools who push to become learned in spite of obstacles. Think Ben Carson for an example. And there are those who have tons of resources and opportunities but fail to use them, those who don't care about learning something. I knew quite a few of the former, people who would go to the library for extra study or to learn things after school. And I knew quite a few of the latter, who would go home and play video games or go out and drink, who didn't care about learning anything.

In today's school system, the resources go to those who do not desire an education. This is because of programs like "no child left behind", and because a higher graduation rate looks better. But I think we should make a normative judgement that those who do not make an effort to better themselves should receive no support from society. Put less money into summer schools for kids who fail, and put more money into before- and after-school tutoring. This will benefit those who put in the effort to the detriment of those who don't care, which is a good trade-off.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is an ideological argument devoid of meaningful goals to help residents and create a strong economy. who cares, on the face of it, what size the government is? size is not the goal, it's at best a poor proxy metric for (in-)efficiency, which itself is a proxy metric for how much we help people via public goods (and thereby the whole economy). rent-seeking around wic is a rounding error next to property & capital…

I'm not sure I see why killing the engine that fuels the rent-seeking gravy train, and, in the process of doing so, taking a huge monkey off the backs of people who are receiving assistance, would somehow misplace blame on those same people. It's simply suggesting that perhaps we should address a cause of the problem rather than only focusing on its symptoms. And the way in which the market gets freer, in this case,…

you're mistakenly associating assistance programs with rent-seeking, and moreover focusing on an entirely irrelevant corner of it. rent-seeking will occur anywhere there is wealth to be extracted, which is basically everywhere else in the economy, so that association is unwarranted. you should be looking at where capital is concentrated and deployed if you're truly concerned about rent-seeking over "big government".

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#168
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a rare edge case case involving unforseen circumstances. For rare cases like this (presuming that that's true), we probably don't want to set up a whole communication apparatus, since doing so is quite expensive. Instead rely on common-sense ad hoc decision making, just like the doctor in question did. We just need a small caveat in the rules that only people the doctor doesn't know (either directly or…

I don't know that this situation is that rare. I just got Moderna dose 1 last night and heard the nurses talking about no-shows and how many bottles they were going to have left over (I didn't catch the number). Anecdata of course, but I don't think leftover doses is some crazy rarity. Edit: To be clear, I don't know whether these left over bottles were going to go to waste or if they had contingency plans to use the…

If it's not rare then disregard what I'm saying above. I was just presuming that that was the case (no data either way here).

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud is real, and vast, and if it creeps in it undermines the whole thing. What's the alternative?

> and vast ...* [citation needed] Fraud does happen. But it doesn't happen enough for it to be worth setting up an entire bureaucracy to prevent it. Especially if that bureaucracy undermines the value of the program for everyone who's faithfully making use of the services in the intended manner. More and more, it seems that keeping social welfare programs inefficient is benefiting the people who want to remove them e…

> But it doesn't happen enough for it to be worth setting up an entire bureaucracy to prevent it

But perhaps it would happen vastly more if that bureaucracy wasn't trying to prevent? I don't know, but I suspect there are an awful lot of people who would commit fraud if they thought they'd get away with it.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud is real, and vast, and if it creeps in it undermines the whole thing. What's the alternative?

> and vast ...* [citation needed] Fraud does happen. But it doesn't happen enough for it to be worth setting up an entire bureaucracy to prevent it. Especially if that bureaucracy undermines the value of the program for everyone who's faithfully making use of the services in the intended manner. More and more, it seems that keeping social welfare programs inefficient is benefiting the people who want to remove them e…

I could be wrong, but it is possible that fraud is low because of the bureaucracy
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