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20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#661

Post by deathanatos »

carabiner wrote: post #637
jedberg wrote: post #612

The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line doesn't require any of that. Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport makes me less of a threat. Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less of a threat...

TSA Pre requires fingerprinting and a background check. You definitely give up some privacy in signing up for it. I mean you can unlock some computer devices with fingerprints.

I had to give up my fingerprints to maintain a drivers license, but that doesn't get me TSA Pre.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#662

Post by hunterb123 »

KittenInABox wrote: post #656
hunterb123 wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotes on Reddit. Great source. Don't believe anything you read on Reddit, especially anecdotes.

Maybe go to your local hospital and ask then among their own nursing social circles? They're the people who would have first-hand understanding of how full the ICUs are. I'm not saying I believe everything I read on Reddit, but I know r/nursing is a longtime subreddit of mostly medical people and has a history of being as such for a long time. If I wanted to know what the actual medical field is dealing with day to d…

I have been to the hospital 3 times already and it's fine. My sister is a nurse and she hasn't had a covid patient in over a month.

I guess Reddit only gets one type of anecdote. I doubt the other side gets voted up and probably even removed.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#663

Post by pacman2 »

GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

20 years after 9/11, BinLaden still takes money out of your pocket (Airport security, air marshals etc.).

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#664

Post by jfrankamp »

mrtksn wrote: post #592
jfrankamp wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both have theater aspects and let me propose something: that's good. When you approach airport security (theater) you wonder what their capabilities are _today_. Are they sniffing the air at large with their GCMS? Is there going to be a dog today? Its intimidating to think of it as a theoretical attacker because of its large and multifaceted apparatus, which is part of its deterrent power. Masks are somewhat similar,…

Actually they did a study on the masks and proved effective. It was done by picking a population of 350K, then separating them to test and control groups, encourage mask for the test group. The results are that at 39% mask use in the test group the covid cases were %12 lower than the control group. There was also a difference between surgical mask(%12) and cloth mask(%9) use. [0] https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/1…

No actually required :-). I didn't say masks were not effective, I said part of their effectiveness is the making-conscious of transmission vectors. E.g. when you wear a mask and see others do it you are more likely to wash your hands or stand back.

When you wear a mask (as I do) in addition to blocking some particles you signal to others "lets play the not kill eachother game by limiting virus vectors!"

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#665

Post by anthony_romeo »

DrJones1098 wrote: post #611
anthony_romeo wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understood, though I'd point out that other insurance schemes will have similar sorts of calculations (either directly or indirectly in the form of premiums/annual limits in the US), so the specificity of the NHS isn't particularly helpful here, as it's one model among many. Also, based on my casual skimming of this article: https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg6/chapter/assessing-cost-... , this particular model evalu…

I'm tired of people pretending that everyone on the planet is expendable except Americans. There are elderly people dying in other countries and perfectly healthy Americans are lining up for the vaccines and acting righteous about saving granny when the reality is they're doing it in their own self-interest.

On a reread, I see that my comment is ambiguous and could have suggested that I believe Americans were more worth protecting. Sorry for that, I didn’t intend that reading. >15% of the US population is >=6 age 65. I’m more familiar with US numbers so I used that.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#666

Post by th0ma5 »

umvi wrote: post #658
GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

> We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties. The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives. For example, guns…

Yes police shoot and kill more people that mass shootings. But also covid has killed more police than people have.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#667

Post by KittenInABox »

hunterb123 wrote: post #559
snowwrestler wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last state lockdown orders expired in June 2020. Most lasted on the order of a few weeks. The economy is not destroyed. Assets are appreciating, GDP is growing faster than it has in a decade and employers are desperate to find workers. The unemployment rate is near 5%. If there is a weak spot in the economy, it is that rising case numbers of the Delta variant are causing people to voluntarily limit their in-perso…

When I ask small business leaders that they say to stop paying people to stay home. I said middle class. Small business was destroyed. The corporations got richer. How does your neighborhood look? All businesses still intact? Not talking about the stock market.

In my neighborhood several small businesses are still intact. The businesses that relied primarily on commuters are gone, but the staples catering to the people who live here are still intact. My favorite local bar, coffee shop, drycleaner, and bookstores are still going. I'm a bit sad about my pho place closing down, but they're a small chain, and they have another one a bit further away from me that I can still go to.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#668

Post by mike00632 »

dmarcos wrote: post #120
bedhead wrote: post #40

Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

It’s not cynical when looking at the incentives. Once a rule is in place for “safety” reasons the political cost to remove is really high (what if something bad happens?). Politicians won’t touch it. That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically (on a date or when a hard condition is met)

Right now most everyone has a sense of what it would be like to go back to normal pre-COVID life. I'm starting to lose a sense of what it would be like to go back to pre-War-On-Terror normalcy.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#669

Post by serjester »

GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

Those are risks that are stable from year to year. Deaths from terrorism, COVID and small wars are defined by power laws where they can quickly spiral out of control. You could argue people intuitively understand this and overreact in an attempt to get them under "control".

If traffics deaths varied by many magnitudes year to year you'd likely see a similar over reactions. I'm not saying I agree with this approach but it's not as simple as people make it out to be.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#670

Post by lotsofpulp »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #644
GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

Actually we are but actuaries aren't, maybe politicians should start using some actuarial expertise rather than jumping from one supposed crisis to the next to get votes. People, especially mobs, are ruled far more by fear than by facts.

I get $100 from my health insurer for getting flu shots, I imagine similar incentives are coming for covid vaccines. 2021 premiums were set before vaccines came out, so maybe they have had time to price it in by now.
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