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Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

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Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#731

Post by Rapzid »

fuzxi wrote: post #601
honkycat wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Introverts vs extroverts. Humans are social animals. Socialization is a basic human need. It is much harder for some people to stay inside and not socialize than others. We are now on month 7 of being told to not socialize or see or do anything. I continue to obey the orders, but I totally get why some people are starting to crack.

Month 7? I thought lockdowns, shelter-in-place, etc. largely began in March. That would make this month 5.

Mid to late March after news of Italy started blowing up. Started with spring break extensions and "temporary shutdowns". It's incredible how quickly recent history gets mixed up..

Buy yeah, we are just finishing out month 5 and heading into 6. But the most stringent lock downs were only into May for a lot of places; at least hear in San Antonio.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#732

Post by Uehreka »

csomar wrote: post #657
johnwalkr wrote: post #543

Wow with these comments. You going to the gym is not saving the economy. Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down grocery stores or the stock market. And by not doing your part, your whole community could be stunted for 2 years. Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to s…

How is this different from the TSA for protecting you from terrorists? Or how is this different from the Internet and freedom of speech censorship for protecting you from child porn. Reality Check: It's not different. People should stop from thinking they have a higher moral ground. Nobody does. On the other hand, on a free society, you should not be able to strip people from their freedom, regardless. People should…

> Also humanity and evolution has a coping mechanism called natural selection.

So the phrase "Survival of the Fittest" refers in the abstract to the idea that, given fitness function F, members of a species who pass fitness function F will out-survive members who fail function F and then reproduce in higher numbers. But natural selection itself does not define any fitness functions, and makes no mention of a "universal fitness quality" that can be used to judge the fitness of an individual.

The fitness functions that nature comes up with are pretty arbitrary, and don't necessarily align with cultural ideas about merit, fitness or attractiveness. A disease that weakens bones could kill more tall people than short people, a disorder that exploits muscle tissue might affect people who work out more, and a respiratory disease that spreads through the air could take down more sociable people while allowing introverts who stay inside to survive.

The point of modern medicine is that we recognize these many of these fitness functions have no meaning beyond the immediate danger they present. And we can use technology to say "that fitness function is dumb" and remove it from the equation. In doing so, we aren't "unlearning a lesson nature wanted us to learn", we're protecting ourselves from the meaningless and arbitrary rocks that nature occasionally throws at us, and as a result we are increasing human lifespan and quality of life. (And yes, you can quibble about stretching out the suffering of people with terminal cancer, but the millions of children who don't pointlessly die of infant diarrhea each year would probably push back a bit)

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#733

Post by bluntfang »

rootusrootus wrote: post #684
bluntfang wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most reasonable people can agree Is this just a way of saying that people who don't agree with you aren't reasonable? What do we do with those people's opinions if they are the majority?

No, it is setting a wide range and excluding the extremes -- that is, people who aren't even within spitting distance of a good faith debate. 0.01% IFR would be 1/10th of the seasonal flu. And 50% would be up there with bubonic plague. I feel pretty comfortable with my definition of 'reasonable people.'

so what happens when all the people you think are unreasonable think you're the one being unreasonable? How do you deal with that?

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#734

Post by mrslave »

dasudasu wrote: post #711
seizethecheese wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. This is wrong and misleading. You're quoting the average fatality rate for "healthy" people, but the distribution doesn't look like that at all. Then, you cherrypick 10% out of now…

True, but that's not as if death was the only bad outcome. Not that we can even pretend to know the long-term effects yet, but anecdotally it seems that some people are already experiencing them, which include lung scarring and neurological symptoms.

Heart scarring too

https://www.smh.com.au/national/seizures-and-battered-heart-...

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#735

Post by Khaine »

WD-42 wrote: post #710
seizethecheese wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. This is wrong and misleading. You're quoting the average fatality rate for "healthy" people, but the distribution doesn't look like that at all. Then, you cherrypick 10% out of now…

That’s still whole numbers for anyone over 60, and significant numbers still for anyone below it. Have you ever seriously contemplated death? If you have, those numbers don’t seem very good, not at all. Not to mention these are stats for DEATH. Meaning these are the worst case scenario. Dead. The chances of getting seriously ill, like major suffering, are much higher. Would you want to experience that? Would you wish…

Sure, but how many of those people would have died from the normal flu?

I know this is a morbid topic, but it gets to a fundamental truth. How valuable is a human life? Is it worth significantly damaging the future of the young through economic depression and increased social isolation and mental illness to extend the life old old people by a year, 5 years?

There is no easy solution. We can hibernate as much of the non-essential economy with lock-downs and mandate the wearing of masks. But this, will extend the economic hardship we are under, which will put further economic strain on young people, who now have had to contend with the great recession and now likely a depression. We can do like sweeden and try and isolate and protect the vulnerable, and keep the economy open, or we can do nothing. Each of these choices has trade-offs in terms of economic hardship and lives. Not just the lives of people who get COVID, but those who commit suicide due to social isolation, economic hardship, and other factors related to COVID.

American's can't have this discussion in a mature manner because it has been poisoned by politics.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#736

Post by Jommi »

alistairSH wrote: post #413
Jommi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just again repeating this same unscientific fearmongering as everyone else. Yes, there are possible outcomes that are absolutely terrible and potentially even permanent! Nobody is debating this. However, what we need to have a real and fact-based discussion is that how prevalent these outcomes are, what are they based on, and what groups are most affected. Then we as a society can come together and choose what…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2020/08/17/covid-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2020/08/17/covid-...

Yes, no one is debating the potential negative outcomes of having COVID. Not sure what you are trying to show.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#737

Post by achenatx »

majormajor wrote: post #665
zozin wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lock downs were premised upon preventing hospital systems from being overwhelmed. We accomplished that relatively easily, at least in the United States. However, politicians and bureaucrats, unwilling to let a good crisis go to waste, have moved the goalposts so much that now the unspoken policy seems to be that a single infection/death is anathema and that everything should be done to prevent it. I don't remembe…

> However, politicians and bureaucrats, unwilling to let a good crisis go to waste, have moved the goalposts so much that now the unspoken policy seems to be that a single infection/death is anathema and that everything should be done to prevent it. Why do you think politicians want to shut things down? What worldview do you ascribe to people where the view is "wow, this is a great chance to kill off people going to…

dems want to shut things down because trump wants to keep them open.

One of the most common arguments for schools staying closed is "so you are ok with kids dying".

We have reached a point where as the OP implied, we have become hysterical about any deaths and dems will use that to crucify trump.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#738

Post by rocha »

kmm wrote: post #693
rocha wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death. >> Where's the data to back up any close to an assertion like this? Latest IFR estimates are between 0.5% and 1.0% (1 in 200 to 1 in 100). https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating...

That's averaged over all ages. For people under 50, it's basically nil, on the order of 1 in 10,000. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...

You are correct. Thanks for pointing it out.

Your reference is very good. It is still a pre-print, but the breakdown is very informative. It estimates the IFR (Table 4) for ages between 0-34 as 0.01% (1 in 10,000), increasing exponentially from there. The estimated IFR for the next age group, people between 34-54, is between 0.04% and 0.2% (1 in 2,500 to 1 in 500), one to two orders of magnitude greater. For people over 85, the IFR is 36.8% (~1 in 3).

Note that the population over 34 is about 50% of the total in the US.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#739

Post by [deleted] »

showdeadtest wrote: post #668
kimmeld wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social activities are most certainly trivial when compared to a pandemic. Right now my kid’s school is starting remote only primarily because teenagers and early 20’s somethings couldn’t stop going to parties over the summer. Actions have consequences.

I think we see the consequences of a plan that is idealistic and unrealistic. I don’t believe any amount of moral handwringing and shouting is going to make it work.

[deleted]

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#740

Post by treeman79 »

svnpenn wrote: post #654
arxv33 wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I travelled all over Europe past two months and I must say Europe is quite laxed. And there cases haven’t really gone up. Pretty much every outdoor cafes in Europe were open with a few exceptions and I didn’t see much difference other than people wearing masks and social distancing between tables. I think in US everything is polarized and politicized. To the point that wearing masks is somehow considered against free…

Europe has twice the population of the United States. Yet despite this, United States has 4 TIMES the cases per day. Europe can relax because they worked hard in the beginning to get everything under control. The US never did that, most states (like my home state of Texas) did a half-assed closing for 3 weeks, so the numbers never really got under control.

What’s the testing rate?

What’s the accuracy of the tests?

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