Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

391–400 of 415 posts

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

#391
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

I'm not sure if you meant to write this sarcastically, but it kind-of sounds like you're comparing COVID with third-world countries full of Ebola and tribal killings? You do realize you're the comparison is a bit ridiculous? Ultimately, it's a question of value. How much do you value not getting an illness with 99.9% survival rate, vs. living your life. And then imposing your own value system onto others (or not).

At no point did I compare COVID to a country, so no. Also, you use an awful lot of nasty little rhetorical manipulations in your posts, did you realize that? Actually, that last sentence is an example of one of these tricks you use! Go back and read my post if you're interested in learning something, but do not use faulty summarization to misrepresent what I wrote.

But aside from your creepy and manipulative way of writing, let's get down to the heart of the matter. You wrote: "How much do you value not getting an illness with 99.9% survival rate, vs. living your life." This is a stupid and fallacious argument. It presupposes that you cannot take cautious, responsible, defensive measures against being infected without sacrificing "living your life". I'm currently living in a first world country, living happy, content, and healthy, and also only going out in public places when I really need to, and always masking when I do. It's not the SAME as pre-Covid, but it's also not painful, difficult, or boring. So taking some simple, possibly inconvenient precautions means you can still "live your life", it just means that there are some boundaries dictated by your circumstances.

Secondly, let's say for the sake of really destroying your argument that you can't both take these common sense precautions and still "live your life". Fine, COVID 19 is destroying your mojo during 2020. All you have to do is take a year off. It's ridiculously fucking easy. We'll have good enough therapies early next year to make COVID not a huge problem anymore, so when you say "live your life", what you're actually taking about not being able to do is "living your life for a year and maybe a couple months", which is really not a big deal when you consider all the harm you can do to the people around you by being a selfish twat.

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

#392
post #20

What are HNers planning to do for the holidays? We’re seriously considering not seeing anyone, not even parents, even though my SO has had COVID already (she works at a hospital and contracted it from COVID patients). Stories like this are the main reason. Even if no one at the party gets very ill, the chance of further spreading it to others seriously scares me.

Nothing, wife, son and myself family dinner, video call the rest of the family.

Maybe Goto the park a few times for my son.

Too much empathy to risk someone's life being selfish.

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

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-sur... > The entire state of Iowa is now out of staffed beds, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told me. Worse is coming. Iowa is accumulating more than 3,600 confirmed cases every day; relative to its population, that’s more than twice the rate Arizona experienced during its summer peak, “when their system was near collap…

> Most of the US is likely to have their medical systems collapse this winter. “Collapse” is too terse and paints a potentially misleading picture of the problem; “be overwhelmed and forced to ration care on bases other than medical need, such as expected future quantity and quality of life and chance of recovery” and “face significantly reduced total capacity because of COVID-19 impacts on staff” would be more preci…

Fair. A key indicator is the death rate of patients hospitalized with COVID. It's been driven down significantly since the start of the pandemic, but if the fatality rate of those hospitalized starts climbing that's the system starting to fail.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > This is not like the AIDS crisis; the medical system was not at risk of collapsing. > Neither is it now? https://www.grandforksherald.com/newsmd/coronavirus/6753876-... https://dcist.com/story/20/11/13/dc-hospitals-covid19-metric... https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/coronavirus-midwest/... https://www.alaskapublic.org/2020/11/13/across-alaska-as-the... https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2020/11/13/covid-updates…

I'm going to guess this plays out like every place around the world so far. It's extremely tough for a while as a population experiences their wave and then the virus essentially becomes endemic. But every place so far around the world has gotten through their wave.

Everywhere else in the world implemented some increasing level of restrictions as their cases climbed and that's what prevented collapse. We're arguing about a significant subpopulation that refuses to adhere to those sorts of restrictions at present (unlike most of the planet). Combine that with the apparent seasonality of spread and loss of political will due to fatigue and economic damage and we're into uncharted territory here.

I certainly hope you're right as to a rough peak, but I'm perfectly happy enforcing pro-social behaviors during a crisis of this type. It's normal for the US and other democratic states. Go read some newspapers from 1918 shaming "mask slackers".

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

#395
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we live in an imperfect world and it takes time for public opinion to adapt to change. Also, we do have BAC limits for driving, and public intoxication prohibitions.

Are you claiming that in a perfect world we would have legal limits on BMI, and totally ban alcohol and tobacco?

[deleted]

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

#396
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we live in an imperfect world and it takes time for public opinion to adapt to change. Also, we do have BAC limits for driving, and public intoxication prohibitions.

Are you claiming that in a perfect world we would have legal limits on BMI, and totally ban alcohol and tobacco?

Of course not. I’m saying that complex situations yield inconsistent results, and that way we solve one problem may not be exactly the same way we solve a different problem, even though they may look superficially similar.

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Having to wear masks is a restriction of freedom, albeit not a very severe one.

So is being forbidden from defocating in the streets. Interesting that nobody seems to have a problem with that one.

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to wear masks is a restriction of freedom, albeit not a very severe one.

So is being forbidden from defocating in the streets. Interesting that nobody seems to have a problem with that one.

No, that is not interesting at all.

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

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not like the AIDS crisis; the medical system was not at risk of collapsing. Neither is it now? Even at the peak in NYC, the Javits center was never filled, nor the hospital ships. Likewise in the UK the nightingale hospitals were never used. Should we be wary at all of our propensity for stigmatizing people with disease(especially a viral one)? Should we berate anyone who gets HIV when they could have worn…

> > This is not like the AIDS crisis; the medical system was not at risk of collapsing. > Neither is it now? https://www.grandforksherald.com/newsmd/coronavirus/6753876-... https://dcist.com/story/20/11/13/dc-hospitals-covid19-metric... https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/coronavirus-midwest/... https://www.alaskapublic.org/2020/11/13/across-alaska-as-the... https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2020/11/13/covid-updates…

>> Right now medical systems in a lot of the country are exceeding capacity and turning away patients who would normally be hospitalized or treated due to the impact COVID-19 is happening.

Does this account for the dynamic aspect of capacity? e.g if health care providers had layoffs due to lack of cases wouldn't that result in reduced capacity?

Also I followed the Arizona ICU bed utilization and noticed the capacity figure followed the number of cases and the number of beds total varied by roughly 2x low to high. This implies the capacity was not fixed and followed utilization. Which makes sense from a business management perspective. But it invalidates utilization as a harbinger of TEOTWAWKI.

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it demonstrates how weak enforcement of the rules are. Maine already had rules against such gatherings. Yet it still happened. Why?

Because some people are selfish and stupid. It's fascinating to watch, for example, people commenting on Facebook about vehicles driving too fast in winter conditions, endangering other road users. But those same Facebook commenters will say that nobody can order them to wear a mask...

>> It's fascinating to watch, for example, people commenting on Facebook about vehicles driving too fast in winter conditions, endangering other road users. But those same Facebook commenters will say that nobody can order them to wear a mask...

and vice versa, do you think?

Post reply on HN