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Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

latimes.com

231–240 of 415 posts

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#231
post #138

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.

Those killed in the story didn’t go to the party. As well as those who died, some number will have long term disability and illness. Many of them won’t have been guests at the wedding.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you conflating "aggressively addressed this problem" with a strict lockdown? 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.

> Why are you conflating "aggressively addressed this problem" with a strict lockdown? The hypothetical was "Imagine if we had addressed the problem in March?" We did in fact lock the country down for several months. People seem quick to forget it for political reasons.

Yes, but it's a failure of imagination to assume that a strict lockdown is the only measure that would be part of aggressively addressing the problem.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#233
post #138

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.

I waited too long to post my rant and the comment got killed, so you've become my rant-patsy, and I'm pasting it below. Also, yeah, things like choosing to eat, just choose not to go get food and you're good, right?

Jeez, what a short-sighted, selfish, impatient, and entitled point of view. I'm guessing you haven't spent much time living anywhere that's actually dangerous?

A large percentage of people in the world have live their lives cautiously, because where they live is really dangerous. There are places that have to deal with ebola still, there are places where not being deferential to the right person means that you and your family are hunted and killed. Most of these places are what we call third-world countries, and being in danger, having your family in danger, is a staple of living in them. If they've been dangerous for a long time, then ALL of the people living there live cautiously, defensively, because everyone who wasn't genetically predisposed to this behavior was killed by their environment long ago.

In most first world countries, and the USA in particular, a vast majority of the population has no clue what it's like to live under these types of conditions, where you actually have to try to take steps to protect yourself. Until this year, the most danger the average American was in was during our morning commutes, where being actively defensive means "Try not to look at your phone too much while driving". Now we're just experiencing a taste of how it is to live in many of the third world countries.

What is absolutely insane though, is not that we are too stupid to figure out how to live cautiously and defensively (we're not used to having this burden, so it's somewhat understandable that we don't know how to handle it), it's that even when we're told common sense procedures to act defensively, we actively fight against them. Taking precautions that are stupid simple, that are common sense, that are EASY, and that will preserve our lives, the lives of our family and friends, and the lives in our communities, we reject those because we can't get past the delusional narcissism that we should never have to sacrifice anything.

And that's why we've had 240 thousand deaths due to covid since March. Cause we, as a nation, responded as entitled yuppy assholes, instead of taking some basic, easy, mature steps to protect ourselves.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not wearing a seatbelt hurts yourself only. If Covid were an STD there would be huge social pressure on it even though it would be passed less frequently.

This is a common and dangerous misconception. Wearing a seatbelt causes you to be a projectile that bounces around the car, into other people. YouTube "not wearing a seatbelt" and you'll never not wear one again when others are in the car.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#235
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And liability is part of that - that's why auto insurance is mandatory. There's a difference between reckless endangerment/homicide than an accident. Ridiculous false equivalency.

"There's a difference between reckless endangerment/homicide than an accident. Ridiculous false equivalency." And yet, comparison of catching a virus to homicide by gun is not.

Strawman, I never mentioned homicide by gun.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#236
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flu kills tens of thousands of people a year - disproportionately many of whom are young, unlike SARS-CoV2 - and is a transmissible disease. Driving kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people a year. Where is the line when it’s OK to control peoples lives because you are afraid? This is how authoritarianism starts.

Wear a piece of cloth in front of your fucking face until a global pandemic gets under control != “control people’s lives”

Wear a mask, don’t go to restaurants, don’t go to your family gathering, don’t go on vacation, don’t go on work trips, don’t go to the office....

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#237
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very clearly not murder; that'd set really bad precedents. You might be able to pull off something like involuntary manslaughter, but I tend to doubt it.

I wonder if a civil prosecution might be easier. Have people pay for others' loss of wages, medical expenses, the support of dependents of people they caused to kill, etc, when they can be shown to have caused the spread and been irresponsible, to a civil burden of proof. Two possible problems: 1) It might hurt tracing efforts if people are worried about being prosecuted (ie. people "clam up"). For example, this part…

(2) is a direct consequence of (1). Remember, until this year public health experts were always pointing out how shaming people in a public health context is highly counterproductive. People won't engage with the health system if they fear being punished for doing so. And with communicable disease that means there will be more spread.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#238

First off let me make it clear (1) I've mostly stayed entirely isolate since March. (2) I plan to stay isolated. So don't shoot the messenger please. 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 (…

Maybe it's all the fish. I guess I'm off to take my vitamin D, thanks for the reminder.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really lament that HackerNews has become just another outlet for political propaganda and manipulation. It didn't used to be this bad, but now there's large scale brigading of the top comment sections just like at reddit. I don't know what the solution is, but the reddit/HackerNews model of discussion definitely has its downsides in the face of malicious actors.

This reads as the equivalent of an ad hominem argument - why not address your concerns with the merits of what was said, rather than just dismiss it as propaganda?

The same link has been posted several times in this thread by several accounts, all in a similar manner. Several days ago there was another COVID19 posting with "FREE MICHIGAN" and similar bizarre, anti-intellectual ramblings. Unfortunately HackerNews/YCombinator is the one controlling the identities on this website, so without access to more information I'm unable to discern much about the authorship of these comments.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. None of this has to be accepted or conceded to, somehow East Asian countries are able to do to this right, even New Zealand just so we don't start hovering on West vs East…

I would love to agree fully with you but even in China they had to weld people into their apartments because they would go out.

But you’re right that culture can bring out the worst out of people and that we are getting the bill now.

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