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Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

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Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#31

Post by whb07 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #17
whb07 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in that time span about the same people died from the "regular" flu. Speak for yourself, the "concept of freedom" that you talk about is one of the many reasons the U.S is what it is. The freedoms we have do have costs at times like these but the benefits vastly outweigh the costs.

“It only killed as many as the flu” is a weird talking point. It killed that many with an unprecedented shutdown of the entire global economy to mitigate it.

Yeah....no. Funny how this line of thinking goes. Serological studies starting to come out and they are showing rates above 25% of the population being infected. Study out of Germany reports that CFR is 0.3%. Theres a news article out of Chicago where the drive thru testing reported more people had the antibodies than tested positive.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#32

Post by stronglikedan »

EarthIsHome wrote: post #11
whatshisface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, if the condition for giving up your rights is "the government says they have a good reason," then you never really had any rights at all. We're all smart, maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties - a way that we'll never discover if at the first sign of danger we yell "take our rights, oh wise rulers!" to the politicians who, of course, are willing to take them.

What civil liberties are you afraid of eliminating in a crisis like this?

Here's the thing - you really don't know until you're asked to give them up, and it's usually implied that you will only be giving them up for the duration of the crisis, but in reality you hardly ever get them back. This is how they get chipped away over time, so an abundance of caution must be used when deciding what you're will to give up, even during a crisis.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#33

Post by justin66 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #29
kingkawn wrote: post #2

I live in nyc and have a brother who lives in Vietnam. When a person in my brother’s building tested positive for the coronavirus the government quarantined the building, tested every single person who lives and works there, stationed police outside to enforce the lockdown, and delivered food for two weeks. If someone had tested positive they would be relocated to a hospital facility for treatment. When the tests for…

> America is finished if this is the best we got. Thank goodness NYC isn't America, or even the best America's got.

The cities that can lay claim to being the greatest city in the world without getting laughed out of the room can - unless I'm missing a few - be counted on one hand. I wonder what other cities in the United States you believe qualify.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#34

Post by notyourday »

rjzzleep wrote: post #26
notyourday wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh come on, please stop this “it only works in police states” rhetoric. It’s not true, nor is the slippery slope argument. Vietnam is a police state. Singapore is a police state. South Korea is a police state. China is a police state. HK is a police state. > Asking people to undergo testing and voluntary quarantine is perfectly within democratic bounds of civic duty and anyone with a iota of ethic is more than will…

> Vietnam is a police state. Singapore is a police state. South Korea is a police state. China is a police state. HK is a police state. Taiwan is not. I'm not Taiwanese but one sentence I used to hear when I was little was: "The extent of your personal freedom goes as far as it starts endangering other peoples personal liberties" The reason why the US and Germany are resorting to police state techniques is because: 1…

For practical purposes Taiwan is a police state which is rather understandable considering that its neighbor thinks it is a rogue province.

Neither US nor Germany resorted to police state techniques. In a set of the Western democracies only France is getting close to it.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#35

Post by whatshisface »

usrusr wrote: post #18
whatshisface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, if the condition for giving up your rights is "the government says they have a good reason," then you never really had any rights at all. We're all smart, maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties - a way that we'll never discover if at the first sign of danger we yell "take our rights, oh wise rulers!" to the politicians who, of course, are willing to take them.

But it is also completely impossible to discover countermeasure methods that are highly efficient in "effect per loss of freedom" if every single change to the status quo is indiscriminately rejected as a slippery slope towards police state.

You're talking about "refusing to discuss" rejections, I'm talking about "refusing to implement" rejections. You're right that the former would prevent us from discovering good solutions, but the latter would only stop us from implementing bad ones.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#36

Post by whatshisface »

EarthIsHome wrote: post #11
whatshisface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, if the condition for giving up your rights is "the government says they have a good reason," then you never really had any rights at all. We're all smart, maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties - a way that we'll never discover if at the first sign of danger we yell "take our rights, oh wise rulers!" to the politicians who, of course, are willing to take them.

What civil liberties are you afraid of eliminating in a crisis like this?

Not saying any of these are going to happen, but some possibilities include: (To be clear, I'm just spitballing some fiction for parable use only.)

1. Police taking biological samples as a matter of course, even after the crisis. A sneaky politician or official manages to turn this in to DNA sample collection, maybe by sequencing swabs on the side to "catch criminals." Nobody stops it because everyone is focused on the virus.

2. Local governments end up with expanded power to shut down businesses, this eventually gets abused for some kind of extortion in a small town somewhere.

3. Police gain generalized "indefinite detention" powers instead of specific "court-ordered quarantine" powers in some jurisdictions, creating a ticking time bomb set to explode the first time a mayor wants to get rid of a protester.

4. Efforts to stamp out counterproductive conspiracy theories result in legal and bureaucratic infrastructure which sits around and is eventually used to suppress a very productive conspiracy theory.

5. Playing on the above, Google builds a system to delete every video that says 5G and COVID-19 are linked. This is eventually used to delete every video that suggests Darkriver Mercenaries Inc. and the scandal in Kumran are linked.

All of these cases share one thing in common: a bad, over-generalized law gets passed because legislators are panicking and not taking the time to think about civil liberties. The virus spreads fast, but not so fast that you can't take the time to legislate effectively.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#37

Post by School-Cotton »

whb07 wrote: post #31
ceejayoz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It only killed as many as the flu” is a weird talking point. It killed that many with an unprecedented shutdown of the entire global economy to mitigate it.

Yeah....no. Funny how this line of thinking goes. Serological studies starting to come out and they are showing rates above 25% of the population being infected. Study out of Germany reports that CFR is 0.3%. Theres a news article out of Chicago where the drive thru testing reported more people had the antibodies than tested positive.

Got a link?

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#38

Post by kingkawn »

stronglikedan wrote: post #29
kingkawn wrote: post #2

I live in nyc and have a brother who lives in Vietnam. When a person in my brother’s building tested positive for the coronavirus the government quarantined the building, tested every single person who lives and works there, stationed police outside to enforce the lockdown, and delivered food for two weeks. If someone had tested positive they would be relocated to a hospital facility for treatment. When the tests for…

> America is finished if this is the best we got. Thank goodness NYC isn't America, or even the best America's got.

The fact that this is how you decided to respond is further proof of the country’s dysfunction. The winner will not be your perspective; we are all losing it together.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#39

Post by School-Cotton »

justin66 wrote: post #33
stronglikedan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is finished if this is the best we got. Thank goodness NYC isn't America, or even the best America's got.

The cities that can lay claim to being the greatest city in the world without getting laughed out of the room can - unless I'm missing a few - be counted on one hand. I wonder what other cities in the United States you believe qualify.

I dunno, I liked living in Tucson, AZ better than New York. Yes NYC has a unique grandeur but different people like different things; it’s silly to think one city is better than another on some objective scale.

(That said, I don’t endorse GP’s flippant dismissal of NYC either.)

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#40

Post by whatshisface »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14
whatshisface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, if the condition for giving up your rights is "the government says they have a good reason," then you never really had any rights at all. We're all smart, maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties - a way that we'll never discover if at the first sign of danger we yell "take our rights, oh wise rulers!" to the politicians who, of course, are willing to take them.

> maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties Maybe, but I've yet to see any plausible proposals. Do you have one?

I can't demonstrate that I have the right proposal, but I can demonstrate that one's imagination can run beyond what's presently being considered. Since we're talking about liberty, let's start with he Libertarian canned talking point: "liability and torts." Making individual people liable for spreading the virus would only really work with our imperfect court system for knowing super-spreaders and corporations with unsafe practices, but it might help. Instead of shutting down offices, you could make them liable for any damage cause by disease spread on-site. It's possible that if you pursued corporations and a small number of individual defectors with the liability system and asked normal people nicely, you would be able to handle it.
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