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

latimes.com

261–270 of 415 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 commen…

I posted the link. I a system admin for a organization with 900 employees. Think using anti-intellectual rambling is unfair and overly simplistic.

No problem if you disagree about best response to covid but leave room to hear some opposing viewpoints without labeling them bizarre or rants.

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

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are putting words in my mouth. I was responding to an accusation that we didn't act strictly enough back in March. I agree we know much more about the virus now and should be tailoring our mitigation efforts accordingly. I would say that in general we are failing on that front however.

I have not put words in your mouth, I've questioned your interpretation of the comment you replied to. You stick to that interpretation here, because they didn't say anything about 'strictly enough', they said we didn't aggressively address the situation, and we didn't.

The 'lockdown' such as it was, was a significant measure, but it apparently was also in many minds all we needed to do.

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

#263
post #96

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.

> Europe had about the strictest lockdown you can imagine

Um, no. No, we didn't. The lockdown in Europe (which was different in every single different country in Europe) was sloppy in the extreme. You shouldn't be looking at Europe as an example of a good way to deal with the virus and protect the economy, you should instead look at South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia.

Lockdowns should be early and hard, until there are no unknown cases left in the population (that is, all cases have been tracked down and isolated, and there are no new surprise infections popping up). The earlier and harder the lockdown, the lower the number of deaths, the sooner the virus is eradicated, and the quicker the economy can go back to making money.

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

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom is not absolute. As Hobbes said, without government to help organize us, life is "nasty, brutish, and short." Obviously there is such a thing as too much control, but there is also such a thing as too little. 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 ha…

I said nothing about masks. This thread has people advocating murder charges for going to a wedding and spreading to someone who dies afterwards. WHO said lockdowns should not be primary method of stopping the spread. Lockdowns harm as much as help, loss of jobs at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, cancer screenings delayed, mental health issues related to isolation, and we don't know the huge cost of what…

Slight difference is that this disease is fifty times more deadly than the HK flu. Just about everyone in the US got that one and about 50,000 people died. We are at 5 times that level already and only 10% of the population has been exposed. (Also the value placed on old people’s lives has increased drastically... you might not like it but it is social consensus to spend millions to extend the lives of 75-year-olds by a few more years. )

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

#265
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People die. I'm becoming more and more callus about the whole thing and beginning to think we just need to adjust our expectations and accept that people die . I was told recently that my town is in terrible shape and the hospitals are nearly overwhelmed. Listening further, I learned that "nearly overwhelmed" meant we had capacity for two or three people to be really sick with Coronavirus. If we need to decimate our…

Why can you accept people dying, but not accept the economy not doing well? The economy goes up and down. It's a fact of life. Why worry about it?

I think it is a valid concern. A bad economy kills. The so-called diseases of despair[1] kill more than 150k a year in the US. And much suffering is caused by limited opportunities and limited hope. These limited prospects can and have have taken down many governments in the past. And regime change is rarely a bloodless process. There are no perfect solutions when it comes to governance. We must do our best to promote good outcomes and mitigate the bad. I very much want my government to worry about the economy, just as I want it to worry about the virus.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_despair

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing the risk management decision some people will make in exchange for their personal freedom right now in this country.

How did masks ever get conflated with “freedom” anyway. But regardless, don’t people have a sense of self-preservation? When does that kick in?

> How did masks ever get conflated with “freedom” anyway.

The Republican Party, Trump, and Fox News did that deliberately because Trump early on chose to downplay the virus and response to it. Backtracking on that would have made Trump lose face and harmed the Republican brand in an election year, so instead they chose to politicize it and double-down on not wearing masks.

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

#267

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 (…

Another theory I've heard is that Japanese people don't talk as loudly as Americans, so exhaled droplets don't travel as far.

Honestly, though, it's probably the masks. Adherence isn't very good in the US. And maybe a third of the people I see with a mask are wearing them below their noses.

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

#268
post #190

I am getting more and more frustrated with the FDA. The vaccine has been around since February. The severity pandemic can be boiled down to a function of drug testing. If we had a pandemic drug testing protocol we could have had a vaccine months ago. The FDA is just sitting on their hands right now waiting for people in the stage 3 trials to get sick to see if the vaccines are effective. If we would have used challen…

What? We had a vaccine in February 2020? What is your source on that?

https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-ag...

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't only hurt yourself. Mandating seatbelts reduces the population's overall risk of injury. When you have a society that has a public fallback for health insurance, reducing the amount of serious injuries has a beneficial impact on lowering the cost of providing healthcare to society.

If this is the rationale, why do countries with public health insurance fallback not also have mandatory BMI or tobacco/alcohol limits, given the much much higher fatality rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer versus automobile accidents?

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

#270
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The only way they could have done this was .. preventing their staff from going to the wedding. Or maybe even preventing them from leaving the site.

Not true. The long-term care facility could just have required sick employees to stay home.

From the article:

> A worker at the Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center, a long-term-care facility 100 miles from Millinocket in Madison, Maine, came down with a “fever, chills, cough, myalgia, runny nose, and headache” — all symptoms consistent with COVID-19. This worker’s child had attended the wedding reception, and the two had been in close contact in the days right afterward.

> Despite having obvious signs of illness, the Maplecrest employee went to work that day, and the next.

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