151–160 of 415 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not when your recklessness threatens my life and the lives of my elderly parents.
Your choices and decisions are what threatens your life. If you don't want to be exposed to Covid, don't leave your home. I don't see why others shouldn't walk around / party, if they're themselves willing to take on the risk of infection.
It also demonstrates why the "personal choice" stuff is BS here. I see a lot of folks going "why are you worried if you're following the rules yourself?", and yet... > None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.
We are going on a year with COVID and the death rate is not what was advertised at the beginning. Everyone has to live their life, part of life is risk. Personal choice is BS? What in the literal hell!!! You want to take freedom away? You want to remain under house arrest fine, stay in your bubble, the nut house is a warm safe environment.
Situations such as this are extraordinary. We have a virulent and serious disease we're trying to control the best way we can. The best leaders are making difficult decisions using the best science we have to guide them.
Protecting the innocent and the vulnerable -- and valuing life in general -- is a tenet that our society has chosen to adopt. How do we do that? By balancing freedom with measured restrictions that are consistent with that tenet.
We can argue about whether the measures taken are effective, or whether they restrict too much freedom. But to just say "Fuck it all, absolute freedom for everyone! Everyone toss out their masks and get together indoors!" during this crisis goes much too far in my view.
It also demonstrates why the "personal choice" stuff is BS here. I see a lot of folks going "why are you worried if you're following the rules yourself?", and yet... > None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.
We are going on a year with COVID and the death rate is not what was advertised at the beginning. Everyone has to live their life, part of life is risk. Personal choice is BS? What in the literal hell!!! You want to take freedom away? You want to remain under house arrest fine, stay in your bubble, the nut house is a warm safe environment.
It also demonstrates why the "personal choice" stuff is BS here. I see a lot of folks going "why are you worried if you're following the rules yourself?", and yet... > None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.
How can we live good if there exists a significant amount of people rejecting seatbelts? We need to face the reality that on average people make bad choices which leads to substantial negative outcomes for any group. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic again confirms empirically that humans on average don’t have self-responsibility. How can philosophical ideas that are founded on principles such as “humans have self…
If Covid were an STD there would be huge social pressure on it even though it would be passed less frequently.
Anyway, I live in Tokyo. Tokyo Metro area has basically all of California (SF, SD, etc..) squeezed into an area the size of Los Angeles. 34 million people.
Tokyo has been mostly unlocked since June. Theaters and other venues are open (every other seat), clubs are open (WTFBBQ!), restaurants are open and many are full, everyone has masks off while eating and drinking though outside it's 99% masked.
Number shot up in the last 2 days, we'll see where it goes, but though September and October they stayed flat. About 100 to 200 a day (vs California, same population, 10k day or 100x)
Here are some videos from 3 different weekends in October Tokyo Metro Area
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0UP9v5zOh8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQQl6z45QxY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13WRmg1NX8g
No idea why the number are 100x less than California similar population. Especially given Tokyo is far more densely populated than California and trains are still packed during rush hour. Schools are open though they swap half the students each day. Lots of people have ideas, none of them proven.
* Japanese don't wear shoes indoors so don't track it into their houses :P
* Japanese are better at wearing masks? (ok, but walking by restaurants full of unmasked people doesn't seem to fit)
* Japan isn't testing as much. I think that's not true enough to get a 100x difference but even if it was hospitalizations and deaths would be up? They are not AFAIK
* Japan has a different version of the virus? Ok, so when the real one arrives were screwed.
* Japanese are healthier? (like obesity is 3.6% here vs 30% in USA)
* Japanese are not vitamin D deficient?
They have put lots of measures in though I assume that similar elsewhere. Every cashier is surrounded by various forms of transparent partitions. Fast food joints sometimes have partitions between every 2 seats. That said a cafe I used to hang out at as one large 20 person table and 8 or so bar seats near a window. I've walked by since it's near the grocery store I go to and it's full, people eating with masks off, no partitions.
I have plenty of pictures of full restaurants as I walk by.
Anyway, would certainly love to know why the numbers are so low relative to the USA and Europe. Maybe it's just luck? Seems unlikely
It also demonstrates why the "personal choice" stuff is BS here. I see a lot of folks going "why are you worried if you're following the rules yourself?", and yet... > None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.
Honestly, I would be okay with someone being tried for murder over this shit. Isn't the death penalty supposed to be a deterrence?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, just like drunk driving or twitching your trigger finger when someone just happens to be in front of the gun.
What about non-drunk driving? You still have a non zero risk of killing pedestrians or other drivers/passengers. There's risk in everything we do, including for other people. What amount of risk is acceptable is a subjective choice.
There's a difference between reckless endangerment/homicide than an accident. Ridiculous false equivalency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does the care facility deserve more blame?
Because it's literally their job to protect their patients from infection? It's not like we've just recently found out that the elderly are especially vulnerable to Covid-19. If a website left their admin portal open, didn't set a password and then got hacked, would you put the blame for that on the script kiddie who did it, or on the website's security team?
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The “personal choice” stuff was always BS even on the face of it. You can probably find some “libertarians” who will argue for removing all restaurant food safety regulations, for example, but I’m pretty sure even they are okay with banning drunk driving on shared roads.
actually I think you'd find that a lot of libertarians oppose DUI and similar things being criminal offenses. driving drunk exposes other people to unnecessary risk, but each instance of drunk driving does not necessarily harm someone. often libertarians prefer for such things to be handled via liability and private insurance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
'fighting the virus harms the economy' Would you believe it if I told you that not fighting the virus has an even bigger toll on the economy? Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, how much less economic impact would have resulted. But then, as now, we wanted to "protect the economy" and avoid restrictions as long as possible. But this time the strategy will work? I have trouble believing…
> Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, Europe had about the strictest lockdown you can imagine and their economy isn't exactly peaches and cream right now. And they have spiking case counts just like the US right now.
The spring lockdown made sense, in that we didn't really have much information. At this point, we have a bunch of other tools that we aren't using, because people have decided that doing anything is somehow the equivalent of a strict lockdown.