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Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

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Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#331

Post by magicalhippo »

henrikschroder wrote: post #280
nick_kline wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct about Sweden. We can compare Sweden to Switzerland (8.5 million vs 10 mil pop in Sweden). Switz has 1870 deaths, Sweden 3460. Sweden is far worse per capita than it's small northern euro neighbors too (actually deaths per million, Sweden, then Norway, Finland, Denmark are (343) and (42, 51, 92). IHME [1] estimates Sweden will have 5760 deaths, Switz 1935. Correcting for relative populations (10/8.5) Switz's 1…

> I'm not sure why people have seized on Sweden as doing it right Sweden is one of the countries that have enacted the least strict measures, it's an outlier in strategy, and has therefore attracted a lot of attention from people wishing to use it as an example while arguing for their own strategy. According to the lockdown aficionados, Sweden is a zombie wasteland whose officials are gleefully sacrificing the elderl…

It's also still early days.

Norway has an order of magnitude fewer deaths than Sweden, despite otherwise being very similar countries. Yet randomized tests of citizens in Oslo, the capital and one of the hotbeds for COVID-19, show only ~2% had antibodies[1].

So we went into hard lockdown unlike Sweden, probably saved a lot of people initially, but what will happen now that we're opening the country again?

[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/bare-to-av-hundre-med-antistoff-mot...

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#332

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #301
dgzl wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally lose respect for people who think caps-lock is an acceptable way to type messages to others. You should try looking for more descriptive words to get your point across.

At some point we have to decide which is more important - all caps discourse on the internet or 85,000 lives lost in a tragedy exacerbated by incompetence.

I reject the dichotomy. We can acknowledge that the situation is very bad without deciding that it's OK to scream at people.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#333

Post by stevesimmons »

r_c_a_d wrote: post #279
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will judge a thing on it's merits. I will judge a government by how it behaves, not by my preferred political party. So... in the UK we have the Daily Briefings about covid. Each time I listen to it I hear politicians (they take it in turns) to come out and give us a fucking performance, projecting their voice, projecting (they think) 'calm' and 'competent' and 'in charge of it all' while they spew words for 15 or…

I think the daily briefings are good. It's not just a politician talking; it's a politician flanked by two scientists or public health experts. The politician explains what is going on and the experts explain why, with data. This is the first time in my life I can remember politicians so publicly deferring to experts with evidence.

The daily briefings are pure PR and political spin. "Protect the NHS" ffs.. how about protect the population?

The politicians aren't deferring to experts with evidence. They are setting up the experts to be the fallguys for their political missteps.

"We were just following the science" is their excuse when held to account for poorly executed political actions.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#334

Post by 2rsf »

dtwest wrote: post #291
2rsf wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you compare almost an entire continent to one country ? why not compare Sweden to NYC ? Sweden is handling it, not great but not terrible and so is the US and many other countries. On top of that there is a lot that we don't understand, for example why do many Mediterranean countries has low death rate even though the sick count is not low ?

How about we compare Wisconsin to Sweden? The article is about Wisconsin. Wisconsin (pop 5.8 mil, 10.6k cases, 418 deaths). Sweden (pop 10.2 mil, 27.9k cases, 3460 deaths).

How about Oman ? pop 4.829 million, 4,019 cases with only 17 deaths. Or Belgium that does have quarantine rules but still have more cases of deaths.

It's not a game, and we don't fully understand how this works so maybe we should stop comparing.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#335

Post by joshuahughes »

deskamess wrote: post #283
joshuahughes wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get the active cases down to a manageable number Isn't this the problem, the world over? That no government has actually baked into their stay-at-home orders what the specific metric is that unlocks the lockdown. People with mouths to feed are justifiably terrified as they see lockdown stretching out in front of them with no clearly defined endpoint, knowing that the keys to that lockdown are held by politicians wh…

I thought NY came out with a set of conditions for going out of lockdown for each county. I believe it was on HN front page within the last week.

Thanks for clarifying. I was only aware of government-level announcements over here in Europe. From what I've seen here any conditions are more along the lines of "x, y, and z must all be improving" and those values have been left deliberately ambiguous.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#336

Post by michaelt »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #217
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lockdowns-are-destroying-America echo chamber and a republicans-are-killing-people echo chamber. These are probably both mostly wrong, but on the plus side things must be getting better because we're back to tribalism.

Here is what I don't understand. (I seriously don't, and would honestly appreciate some explanations or ideas. And keep in mind I am 100% on board with following any and all recommendations of the CDC.) When we were all sent to sit at home back in March, the word was "flatten the curve." The idea was that containment was no longer an option, as declared by the CDC/WHO. Epidemiologists were predicting that somewhere b…

> I think (as is usually the case) the right approach sits directly in between the "open now" and "keep everything shut down" camps.

At least in my country, there's already been a lot of complaints about repeated changes to advice and rules.

I'm pretty sure the government's science advisers would ideally like to do a gradual, multi-stage re-opening with the option to roll things back if they need to. You know, reopen some schools next month with teachers under the age of 45, if death rates rise shut them down again, otherwise reopen more the month after, and so on.

The fear is that message is too complicated, and people who are told "here is a schedule for reopenings on a trial basis and subject to change" will hear "lockdown is over, I can finally visit my friends and loved ones" - and we'll get a second peak even worse than the first.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#337

Post by ericmay »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #295
roenxi wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd much rather live in Sweden or Germany, where people have sufficient trust in their government... I'm a bit hesitant to compare to either of them because I can't read the local news. That being said, didn't Sweden go with a lockdown-lite policy? The Sweedes do have the freedom to die from COVID-19 because public health orders are affronts to their liberty. EDIT And the lockdowns are threatening something like 26…

Demand isn’t going to go up magically because of reopening. I’m not seeing much evidence for pent up demand outside of hair cuts, which are not exactly essential

I'm not sure about that. I'm ready to go to the gym, go out to restaurants, and just yesterday they took the caution tape off of the school playground and lots of kids were there.

I don't think demand will immediately return to 100%, but I think quite a few people are itching to get out and spend money and enjoy life. Maybe not in some areas, but most of the country is probably ready to go.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#338

Post by corebit »

sandworm101 wrote: post #128

This is where culture really matters. Almost every jurisdiction in the western world has faced this issue. Governments are issuing orders that, when push comes to shove, might not be 100% legitimate in the eyes of a court. In most countries that hasn't mattered. People acknowledge the covid problem and are obeying the "orders" despite them, perhaps, not having legal teeth. This requires trust. Like the current politi…

In no way does it make sense to blame the courts for doing their job. The authority for these stay at home orders is by and large derived from temporary emergency powers granted by legislative authority in the first place. If the legislatures want the governor to have this power, they will grant it. It is trivial to do so. Legislatures are not doing their job, blame them.

In fact, blame the governor as well for not acting within the clear boundaries of their power. By trying to cloak themselves in authority they know is not legitimately theirs, they are actively contributing to the problem. The one party blameless in this is the courts.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#339

Post by notahacker »

tolqen wrote: post #277
makomk wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the stupid, cynical partisan bullshit that America's press comes up with to try and kick Trump out of office is spilling over to other countries and screwing up our ideas about our coronavirus responses, though. For example, early on the CDC screwed up its coronavirus test, delaying the rollout of wider testing. The press saw blood and started blaming all the American deaths on the Trump administration failing…

> For example, in the UK our right-wing party is currently in power, which means that arguments that their lockdown rules are illegitimate and exceed their powers mostly come from supporters of the other, left-wing party. The justifications for why they're exceeding their powers actually look similar in many ways to the ones in this lawsuit. Not convinced you’ve even been following British politics then. The main cri…

Indeed British [and especially English] politics is indeed a good example of the lockdown itself being depoliticised. The UK politicians who want to end the lockdown sooner rather than later sit on the right of Johnson's party, so they make their arguments quietly, in economic terms, and mostly behind closed doors. Johnson's natural political instincts might be sympathetic to them, but he's also sympathetic to the arguments of his scientists against opening up. The left overwhelmingly supports the principle of a lockdown, so their criticisms of Johnson focus on the details of his decision making and communication. Public support for the lockdown isn't as universal as political support for some sort of lockdown, but only a handful of people turned up to London's anti-lockdown protests and nobody influential saw any political benefit to encouraging them.

Re: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

#340

Post by ericmay »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #329
rubidium wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people I’ve talked to pushing for government to reopen things have lost jobs and businesses... or are about to. Their basic survival needs are being threatened. Show a little more compassion. I recommend talking to some people instead of parroting the pictures you see in the news.

People's basic survival needs have been threatened before this when they would get laid off. The entire rust belt became a cesspool of opiate and heroin addicts and no one cared when companies moved manufacturing offshore. No one cared that healthcare is tied to jobs. I've talked to a lot of people who said yea I need to work, but I don't WANT to work, I have to. And that is not a failure of the lockdown. it is a fai…

> The entire rust belt became a cesspool of opiate and heroin addicts

Is this really necessary? It's a very inaccurate, and hurtful thing to say.

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