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America is giving up on the pandemic?

theatlantic.com

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Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#571

Post by Firecracker »

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.

Just wanted to say: This is the best, most thoughtfully worded mod guidance I’ve read anywhere on the web. Thank you!

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#572

Post by Fellshard »

metrokoi wrote: post #90

Quoted from a letter from 1,000 health professionals on the virus and protests [0] >However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from…

The analysis is quite simple: basic cynicism.

Experts are incentivized to maximize results corresponding to their field /in isolation/ - with little or no trade-offs considered. This preserves their reputation, and allows them to recommend within the bounds of their knowledge.

If an expert recommends religious institutions continue to hold only remote meetings, they are not going to suffer any consequences, both directly and as a response. Anger over such a decision will usually be directed to the politicians, instead.

If an expert recommends these protests be halted due to risk, they themselves will likely be affected, and charged with racism and bigotry, likely - in our current environment - leading to total destruction of both professional and personal lives.

The calculus is quite simple, and absolutely dangerous.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#574

Post by gridspy »

humaniania wrote: post #553
smsm42 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They…

The CDC revised their risk estimates towards the end of last month. "The fifth scenario is the CDC's "current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States." In that scenario, the agency described its estimate that 0.4% of people who feel sick with Covid-19 will die. For people age 65 and older, the CDC puts that number at 1.3%. For people 49 and under, the agency estimated that 0.0…

Even if you do not die, you might have a very unpleasant experience with lasting consequences.

Perhaps a better way to frame it would be - 2% (?) of patients have serious life-changing consequences. Those under 49 tend to survive them.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#575

Post by rpiguy »

CydeWeys wrote: post #503
chrisseaton wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're asking police officers to be less armed then the general public. But most policing tasks don't involve interactions with people looking to fight to the death. Do people really react to being stopped for speeding by starting a firefight? Is that genuinely a routine concern?

Statistically speaking it's very rare, yet many cops unjustifiably spend all day of every shift on edge like they could get into a gun battle at any second. And it shows in how frequently cops unjustifiably escalate situations to deadly force that didn't remotely require it.

Evidence? Statistics? Most cops are not ready for gun battle at any second.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#576

Post by TeaDrunk »

rhino369 wrote: post #522
TeaDrunk wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there are no calculations being done" Calculations on what, exactly? There are calculations done on how police brutality and systemtic racism contribute to decreased quality of life for black americans. It's considered widely acknowledged within the healthcare industry that black americans have statistically significant health disparities compared to other races, and that additionally it is statistically known that…

Conceivably, you could do some sort of analysis on how much systemic racism has an impact on black lives as a measure of year of life lost, etc. But you'd also have to do the same for the 3 months they've taken from everyone else due to lockdowns. Until they do that sort of thing, its politics not a social science.

I mean, the idea is also that the 3 month lockdowns themselves have hard numbers behind them. From what I understand economists have themselves already modeled out the effect of covid-19 without a lockdown and found a lockdown is still more economically beneficial.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#577

Post by starky »

twblalock wrote: post #92

The article’s authors are losing sight of the original justification for the lockdowns: “flatten the curve” was about preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed. Of course cases will increase when people leave their homes. But have the hospitals been overwhelmed in any of the states that started to reopen several weeks ago? No! In that case the lockdowns have served their purpose. The authors of this article are arg…

Flattening the curve is just stage 1 of dealing with the virus. Yes you start to re-open in stage 2, but you do it carefully and while maintaining much of the social distancing and having effective contact tracing in place to control any outbreaks, this is how other countries have opened up. Does the US have the required infrastructure in place to support the actions taken in other countries that have been effective?

Ideally you get the virus to low enough levels where you coast along until we get effective treatment or a vaccine with a new normal that disrupts the economy and daily life as little as possible.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#579

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

shwoopdiwoop wrote: post #564
cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it's intellectually honest to compare countries with very, very low rates of firearms access to a country where firearms are available to anyone who wants one? You're comparing the USA, which has about 100k shootings per year, 36k deaths involving guns of which 33% (~12k) are homicides, to the UK which has 50-60 cases of homicide involving a gun per year. The fact is that the US police are far, far, far…

Sounds like severely limiting access to guns in the US would be great place to start then.

Shh. Don't say that. The crazies will come out and tell you about if we do that we'll end up a totalitarian wasteland like Sweden or New Zealand or something like that.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#580

Post by bmmayer1 »

tootie wrote: post #548
smsm42 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They…

This isn't weasel speak at all. They're pretty clear that it's risky. They're just saying that they won't condemn protestors as taking frivolous risks the way anti-lockdown protestors or fun-seekers are. Police brutality, systemic racism, income inequality are all major public health risks in their own right.

I don't understand -- are keeping people out of work and isolated at home not public health risks? If non-Covid related factors are being considered in weighing against the risks of exposure they should all be considered, not only some of them, selectively.
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