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America is giving up on the pandemic?

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Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#391

Post by mikedilger »

achenatx wrote: post #294

Just wanted to add that the abolish the police sentiment isnt as inane as it sounds on the surface. Abolish the police is about taking away responsibilities that police have today and giving them to people more suitable. Police - people trained for aggression with weapons to stop violent criminals should not be handling: 1) mental health 2) homeless 3) drug addiction 4) domestic violence 5) traffic stops etc etc They…

I understand you see two roles that should be separated, and I won't weigh in on that - perhaps you are right. But let me highlight something that isn't so obvious in this discussion:

Job #1 for police is to keep everybody alive, even the criminals. Everything else is secondary. They are not primarily trained "for aggression with weapons", they are trained in deescalation, social resources, helping the community, etc. And contrary to most TV shows and movies, use of a weapon is a rather rare event in a police officer's career.

Whether police should or should not be armed depends entirely on whether the criminals are or are not armed. Here in New Zealand police have arms, but they are in lock boxes in their cruisers, and only brought out when necessary. Then there is a special "armed offenders squad" which comes in with sniper rifles and such and takes care of hostage situations, mass shooters, etc.

If the current 'abolish the police' sentiment intends to send the message you are expressing, it's not sending it very effectively. My fear is that police will quit/retire in droves and not be easily replaced. That will cause inner city gang activity to increase. As I understand it, there are a small number of powerful remorseless hardened criminals forcing inner city youth into a life of crime via credible threats, and using them as pawns to distance themselves from the day to day criminal activity. The police are the only ones powerful enough to fight this and to protect these kids.

Yes, they often do a shit job at it, and yes, they often are infected with racists and overly aggressive assholes, and even criminals using that position for the power it affords. But I think we'd do better if we focused on finding and weeding out the bad cops, rather than throwing out the entire institution.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#392

Post by oh_sigh »

zarathustreal wrote: post #384
wpietri wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And far more harm than just one year's worth. We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that. If people are finding the timing of the current protest inconvenient, well, they've had their whole lives to fix the problem. They shouldn't blame the protesters for their own lack of action. I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil ri…

>We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me. Do you really have 400 years worth of evidence of literal outright racism? How can we hope to inspire change with rhetoric like this? This is the equivalent of simply screaming louder to get a point across. Highly ineffective unless annoying them int…

Many humans operate by parroting things they've heard recently. I'm 90% positive from the phrasing that OP recently saw popovich's video recently and is just repeating the claim.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#393

Post by mvid »

manfredo wrote: post #308
stonogo wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a double standard. That's just a standard. When one group of people is holding signs that say "stop murdering people" and the other group is holding signs that say "I need a haircut," and you're mad that "the commenters" are not treating them the same, the problem is not with the commenters.

> When one group of people is holding signs that say "stop murdering people" and the other group is holding signs that say "I need a haircut," and you're mad that "the commenters" are not treating them the same, the problem is not with the commenters. This is at best an extremely distorted comparison of the two messages. 40 million people are unemployed. The stakes are much larger than just getting a haircut.

Yet those were the signs being held. There are clear goals for police brutality protests. The anti-quarantine protests had no clear goal, the narrative seemed to be “the government hit their ‘disable economy’ button and we want them to turn it back on” as if relaxing legal restrictions would suddenly make everyone ok with the rampant disease and go spend time rubbing shoulders again. People were self quarantining before it was a legal requirement.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#394

Post by gridlockd »

danenania wrote: post #324
achenatx wrote: post #294

Just wanted to add that the abolish the police sentiment isnt as inane as it sounds on the surface. Abolish the police is about taking away responsibilities that police have today and giving them to people more suitable. Police - people trained for aggression with weapons to stop violent criminals should not be handling: 1) mental health 2) homeless 3) drug addiction 4) domestic violence 5) traffic stops etc etc They…

This is the strategy used at Burning Man, and it seems to work quite well from what I’ve heard, though it’s admittedly not a very representative slice of society. There are “rangers” who deal with safety issues or disputes, and camps devoted to caring for people who might be having a bad trip (or other kind of episode) in a compassionate way. They will only call the police as a last resort. I think a similar approach…

Like you said, that's not representative. It means nothing.

Of course, if you just add up all the cases across the country, then you don't need armed police in 99% of case. The problem is that you don't know which one percent does need armed police.

You want police to be able to bring the situation under control as soon as possible, you don't want to wait for people to get stabbed or shot by some guy who couldn't be stopped otherwise.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#395

Post by fzeroracer »

axguscbklp wrote: post #281
jddj wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're stopping short of spelling out your conclusion. The aims of the protests are to shine a spotlight on police brutality and qualified immunity / defund the police / ensure that killer cops are prosecuted / damage property in pursuit of anarchy / score a new TV / whatever. It's all fairly clear and makes enough sense. Your idea, however, leaves us with nothing but a knowing look and an appeal to not trust the nar…

>it's because all the "but what about white folks?" people in my social circle have been following the same playbook. Consider that maybe it's not a playbook. Maybe people look at the data and reach conclusions different from yours. Call to action: Let's work together to reduce police brutality. However, let's not sweep black-on-white violence under the rug while focusing narrowly on white-on-black violence. The prev…

> Police brutality is wrong and there is reason to think that it is a worse problem for black people than for white people. At the same time, we recognize the disproportionate extent to which white people suffer from black violence. We may perhaps disagree about the extent to which the discrepancy is due to systematic racism or socioeconomic issues, but we recognize your concerns. We want to reach across the division and work together to fix all these issues

So you want to dilute the protest which is specifically about police violence against black people into something entirely different? You're essentially arguing to destroy the entire protest for something it's not at all about.

Protesting police brutality against black people is protesting police brutality in general.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#396

Post by robocat »

Animats wrote: post #350
robocat wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a common mask protects you 50%, then that is a huge win both as an individual and as a group. Saying Assuming 0% in your calculations is biased. I think your word “cheapo” is derogatory. Are people just being cheap when they don’t buy an N95 mask? Saying “cheapo” masks only protect others is an incorrect conclusion: your language is also misleading.

Anything which leaks when you inhale doesn't protect you. If you take a deep breath and don't feel the mask pulled against your face, it's not working. There's now a huge supply of poor to useless masks available, many with phony approval markings.[1] That's most of what's being sold on Amazon. It's moderately hard to make a mask which seals tightly, doesn't offer too much resistance to breathing, and filters to N95…

Exactly.

The science shows a well fitted “cheapo” mask can protect you better than a poorly fitted N95 mask. Even a surgical mask provides a little protection: if they provide 25% protection and 50% reduction in transmission, and everyone uses them, that is a huge reduction in R0.

Not everyone can invest the time required to learn how to source a real N95 mask.

My impression is you are trying to educate the uninformed, while sweeping under the carpet important nuances. I’m sure that isn’t your intention, but that is how it comes across to me.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#397

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #352
kadoban wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is _far_ more harm in unjust policing than is counted in deaths per year.

And far more harm than just one year's worth. We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that. If people are finding the timing of the current protest inconvenient, well, they've had their whole lives to fix the problem. They shouldn't blame the protesters for their own lack of action. I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil ri…

[deleted]

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#398

Post by OJFord »

dang wrote: post #405
dang wrote: post #220

All: if commenting, please be up to date on the site guidelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) and be sure follow them. Start here: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Don't use a thread like this to fulminate or flame. It helps no one. It adds toxic fumes. Regardle…

This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place, so that it can be collapsed and prevent too much offtopicness at the top of the thread.

Why has a question mark been added to the title here?

IMO by HN's usual standards it makes it a worse title, not better.

I assume it's to present it as a debate for discussion rather than appear partisan? (Let me say here I'm British, live in the UK, don't really care for US politics, at that level at least.) But we have controversial titles all the time that are presented as fact (the author's opinion, the author's title) and yet discussed all the same.

If we need a '?' to have a discussion, then every submission needs a '?' suffixed.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#399

Post by dunnevens »

zarathustreal wrote: post #384
wpietri wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And far more harm than just one year's worth. We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that. If people are finding the timing of the current protest inconvenient, well, they've had their whole lives to fix the problem. They shouldn't blame the protesters for their own lack of action. I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil ri…

>We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me. Do you really have 400 years worth of evidence of literal outright racism? How can we hope to inspire change with rhetoric like this? This is the equivalent of simply screaming louder to get a point across. Highly ineffective unless annoying them int…

>The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me.

We had slavery in America from 1619 until 1865. Jim Crow and segregation for 100 years after that. The Civil Rights Act, and related laws, eliminated much of the legal basis for institutional racism. But as we all know, that didn't eliminate racism. Safe to say, there's plenty of racism left in this country. Especially in institutions like the police. That's 401 years.

ETA: That's focusing purely on the black population. If you count what was directed against the native populations, you can go back even further.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#400

Post by DuskStar »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #382
DuskStar wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to have missed the police setting buildings on fire and beating up shopowners. Not to say that the police haven't committed a ton of violence in these protests, but it's not all them.

There are looters and then there are protestors.

Well, sure. But if you define "protestor" as "no violence, no looting, no arson", of course the protesters won't do those things.
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