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Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

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Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#91

Post by RickJWagner »

dengul13 wrote: post #77

To the people here with older parents (70+), there's another thing you can do: Call your parents. Tell them they need to take this seriously, because they are the ones most likely to die from this virus. Tell them that while average mortality rates may be low, it is highly dependend on age. Dr. Drosten of Charité in Berlin estimates mortality from corona in people aged >80 to be around 25%. Tell them that exponential…

Yes, this!

I think there is some degree of alarmism in the reporting, but this is deadly serious for older people.

IMHO, we should have very strict rules around senior centers, retirement homes, etc. at this time.

For younger people, I am not so sure. Merkel just said Germany can expect 60-70% infection rate. I'm not sure anything can be done to make this lower for the rest of us. (Even China, where quarantine is executed with military precision, is having a failure in this regard.)

The older folks should be a top priority.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#92

Post by ajross »

jshevek wrote: post #78
gbrown wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? I feel like the mainstream scientific picture has been alarming (correctly) for that whole period, and people (using ignorant heuristics) have incorrectly discounted the warnings since they don't feel the pain right now .

Both [your observation and mine] are true. I am not talking about mainstream scientists. Sadly, they don't control the larger conversations.

> I am not talking about mainstream scientists.

Then who are you talking about?

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#93

Post by jshevek »

antonzabirko wrote: post #16
stetrain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that young people are more likely to think "Oh this won't affect me, I'll continue as normal" because the severity and mortality of this illness is statistically higher for older people. I don't see it as blaming young people, just pointing out that even if you aren't in the statistically "at risk" part of the age curve, you can still play a part in the spread and effects of this epidemic.

The article should've shed light on what govts can do better, not what individuals can. That's where the blame lies.

Let's try to reduce the damage on all levels, by all people? There's no need to choose between one or the other, government action and personal responsibility.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#94

Post by Melting_Harps »

keeganjw wrote: post #15

They make a good point in this article, I just wish Newsweek and other media outlets would get this pissed off about climate change. "Old and unafraid of the climate crisis? Good for you. Now stop killing future generations." If we're mobilizing to stop a pandemic, why the hell aren't we mobilizing to stop climate change? I know this is going to get downvoted into oblivion, I just wanted to say it.

> They make a good point in this article, I just wish Newsweek and other media outlets would get this pissed off about climate change. "Old and unafraid of the climate crisis? Good for you. Now stop killing future generations." If we're mobilizing to stop a pandemic, why the hell aren't we mobilizing to stop climate change?

> Help to fight climate change. Kill old people with the corona virus.

I knew someone was going to take it to this level after I read your initial post an upvoted it, a part of me laughed, another part made me wonder if that's what it would take...

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#95

Post by paulmd »

acqq wrote: post #25
aazaa wrote: post #9

It's easy to understand how Europeans look at Americans is if they're brain-dead. However, the article does nothing to support the thesis that young people in particular are killing other people. It may be true. If so, including evidence to that effect would make a better article.

> the article does nothing to support the thesis that young people in particular are killing other people. It is very simple: from the pool of "all people" in any big enough area (e.g. a small city) those who will catch the virus, be able to spread it to others and will not develop significant symptoms, most of them will be very young. The older one is, more chance is that he will have strong symptoms (like not being…

Disproportionately, it is the olds who are behaving like nothing is happening. They are the ones consuming the cable news that is framing it as "wash your hands and everything will be fine!".

Youngs generally accept that these large-scale phenomenon are real. We are just also powerless to change them, because politics are dominated by centrist olds who just don't want their 401k to go down too much.

Yes, you should wash your hands, but that's not going to have much of an impact on an aerosolized respiratory virus. Individual action has a very limited impact on these giant, planet-wide phenomena. A very large number of people are going to get coronavirus unless there are state or country-scale interventions like mass quarantines. It's not our fault that the bigger actions aren't being taken. Youngs wield extremely little political power (in significant part thanks to ourselves and our own unwillingness to vote).

See also: climate change, gun violence, pollution, etc etc. These are large problems that youngs accept and olds stonewall collective action on, instead pushing bullshit "individual responsibility" narratives with no realistic chance of solving the problem.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#96

Post by The_Colonel »

brianTheDog wrote: post #74
The_Colonel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with you, if only I would have not heard this exact "actually it's not so bad, mortality is super low unless you are old or sick already" in the real life way too many times.

Anecdotal evidence is horrible. I’ve heard people in their 60’s say the same thing.

> Antidotal evidence is horrible.

I agree, currently there's a horrible lack of evidence that antidote exists.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#97

Post by gre »

stetrain wrote: post #33
gre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ageist and offensive narrative to say that young people are saying that phrase and acting it out like they don't care about killing their elders.

I missed that part of the article body text, can you quote it?

I did not claim it's in the article, I'm only replying to the parent comment.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#98

Post by brianTheDog »

tdhoot wrote: post #71
maerF0x0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> civic and moral duty of every person According to which canon? I find it slightly narcissistic to claim that I would have a moral right to someone else's behavior when it's well within my ability to take preventative steps for my own safety (Wash my hands, dont leave my house, and in between as my risk tolerance allows). It's a little like someone saying "You all owe me X because I exist". Do we also owe it to the…

> Do we also owe it to the immunocompromised? Yes? For example, get your vaccines so those who cannot get them have herd immunity.

Ah so people should have free will taken away.

Re: Young and unafraid of the pandemic? Good for you. Now stop killing people

#100

Post by bkyan »

starpilot wrote: post #59

Switzerland is currently ok, but now I am thinking of canceling my trip.

Depends on your definition of okay, I suppose, but 75 cases per million people seems pretty high to me. China is only at 56 cases per million people. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
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