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[Dunamisdeos]

I mean, you have a point about groups and federal limiting thereof. However, we're not actually talking about the government enacting laws about meeting in groups. We're talking about people who 100% have no need whatsoever to meet in a group, who are then proceeding to meet in as large a group as possible out of spite, and then dying while blaming the libs.
 
My aunt was going back to church regularly, because her church was taking extreme measures to keep everyone safe (masks required, something like 12 feet apart, ordered entry to avoid crowds while entering, weekly sanitization of touch surfaces). Some stupid jackass came in not wearing a mask because God told her on Facebook that the Chinese libs are trying to ruin her life etc, turns out she literally had Covid. My Aunt has later-stage emphysema. Just waiting to see if she catches it and dies in an hour, now.
 
Zero reason for anyone to be in that building.
 
Also fucking yes actually you should be aware that your vehicle can kill a person via your inattentive actions, and create appropriate habits to avoid that. Yes, you would be wrong for equating your daily life with a right to risk other people's lives. If you spend an entire year being educated about the mortal dangers of a specific action, and then you decide to take that action, and then someone dies as a universally predicted, fully educated result of that action, you are at fault for taking that action. It doesn't matter if you're legally culpable. Someone is dead whether you can get away with it or not.

[Teneb]

Yeah, if people actually took the precautions (wearing masks properly, actually wearing masks at all, not standing close to each other) then we wouldn't need the damn lockdowns all over the world.

But gotta make stonks go up and endanger everyone to own the libs and/or communists. So here we are.

[McTraveller]

Yeah, if people actually took the precautions (wearing masks properly, actually wearing masks at all, not standing close to each other) then we wouldn't need the damn lockdowns all over the world.

But gotta make stonks go up and endanger everyone to own the libs and/or communists. So here we are.

In many places people did do the lockdown - back in March or April - and it didn't seem to do much.  Maybe because it was too early, maybe because it wasn't "locked down" enough.  All we do know is the countries that proclaim to have "won" against the virus are those that are unequivocally willing to use force to keep people in lockdown.

As for the virus being dangerous and overrunning the health system - I agree here is one place "the government" could have done a lot. We have had 8 months - where are all the new PPE factories employing those that have been put out of other work? Where are all the construction projects to build more hospitals which in addition to helping now, will also help by providing more health care supply in general, which would actually reduce health costs?  Where are the funds for mental health?

[Dunamisdeos]

We call that "socialism" round these parts.

[Arx]

"Those who would give up essential safety, to purchase a little temporary liberty, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  -Frenjamin Banklin

There's my trite two cents on the topic Lockdowns can definitely be done very poorly (for instance in Uganda I believe for some time the "lockdown enforcement police brutality" death toll was higher than the covid infection rate) but the US is a pretty clear object lesson in how much more dangerous rejection of communal responsibility is.

[andrea]

It should also be noted that equipment isn't the only problem to solve. You also need doctors, and those can't quite be built as quickly as an hospital.

[feelotraveller]

I'm sorry you can't hang out at your social club of worship but people are dying. Such an embarrassment.

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  -Benjamin Franklin

It's a sad time when the meaning of statements like that are lost. People are all too willing to give up these essential liberties, and even applaud those who take them away, for "a little temporary safety".

The essential liberty being given up here is the liberty to meet in groups. Think about what can arise if the government has the ability to prevent people from gathering (for any purpose).

There are ways to deal with the pandemic that don't require giving up essential liberties - both on the side of the public and the government.  It's sad that both sides are not using those tools though, and instead just cause massive damage (by ignoring basic hygiene precautions or by becoming draconian).  In hindsight, it's most shameful that We the People (in the USA especially, but worldwide by statistics) are so focused on the immediate now, that we can't even function as a civilization in the time of a pandemic.

Being the curious entity that I am I went looking for the context of the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin and (after wading through a morass of alt-right 'coronavirus is all a democrat hoax' type of nonsense) managed to stumble upon a brief NPR piece:
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century

WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.

SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation.

WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.

Yeah, if people actually took the precautions (wearing masks properly, actually wearing masks at all, not standing close to each other) then we wouldn't need the damn lockdowns all over the world.

But gotta make stonks go up and endanger everyone to own the libs and/or communists. So here we are.

In many places people did do the lockdown - back in March or April - and it didn't seem to do much.  Maybe because it was too early, maybe because it wasn't "locked down" enough.  All we do know is the countries that proclaim to have "won" against the virus are those that are unequivocally willing to use force to keep people in lockdown.

Really?  I don't think that's how it worked in Australia and New Zealand.

[McTraveller]

I think the scale of "danger" should be rated only post-facto, on the following criteria: did the actions taken result in less or more hardship than if the actions were not taken at all?

We have estimates for deaths and other complications with "business as usual." We will eventually have actual data for the actions that were, in fact, taken.

I'm morbidly curious to see which ends up being worse in 10 years (assuming I live that long).

NINJA EDIT:  Yes, you can make "doctors" way faster than the US current system does. The current system perpetuates the systematic shortage of medical personnel.  I'd start by regulating more tiers of medical care, so that you can have reasonable "family doctors" that would cover probably 90% of what people go to for medicine but only require say 6 years of school instead of 10 or whatever.  I mean seriously regulators recently made nurse practitioner in my state require a doctorate where it previously was just a masters degree.  This is the kind of stuff we needed to fix health care, not "fix the insurance scheme."  Surgeons, anesthesiologists, etc. who can really do damage to you, yes, those need more training. But seriously to take a swab and run a culture for strep throat or flu or set a bone?  Those things basically just require a boot camp and adequate professional oversight structures, not a decade of expensive education.

You don't have to train people to be generalists right now either - really you need nurse-level care to deal with the overloaded just basic patient care.  You don't need armies of MDs and ODs to deal with the pandemic, you need nurses and PAs.

EDIT: I think Franklin's argument can be pro-freedom and pro-taxation at the same time.  Especially if the Penn family was trying to avoid some short-term inconvenience (tax dollars) at the expense of defense spending.  I don't get how the quote was ever "pro-privacy" at all.

Australia and New Zealand - how do they enforce travel restrictions again?  I do think they have managed their border control very well in terms of the pandemic.  This is why most other areas' lockdowns don't work - they cannot (or are unwilling to) do border control.

[feelotraveller]

Australia and New Zealand - how do they enforce travel restrictions again?  I do think they have managed their border control very well in terms of the pandemic.  This is why most other areas' lockdowns don't work - they cannot (or are unwilling to) do border control.

Mostly by avoiding the need through preventative education, that is, keeping the public properly informed.  And beyond that through fines for really belligerent cases.  In some sense these were less onerous than traffic fines, even if the financial penalty might have been greater, since in the latter case the loss of driving license is caused/threatened.  Not absolutely sure if there wasn't someone somewhere who might have gone to jail for a day or two but to be honest it would probably have been for 'assault police' rather than ignore travel restrictions.  A hell of a lot of tolerance was given to the crazy coronavirus denier types.

[Dunamisdeos]

How about loss of human life? Can we measure by the criteria "did the actions taken result in less or more loss of human life than if the actions were not taken at all" instead?

I don't think hardship by any definition is really a comparable metric to the reality of our situation. That is, unless in 2030 we somehow have an economic crisis resulting in mass death from the wearing of surgical masks. I'm not feeling that as a likely thing, but I'll admit my shortsightedness if it comes about, for sure.

250000 people aren't going to die in a decade because they couldn't go to the bar today. 250000 more WILL probably die because they caught COVID from some heroic asshat and suffered subsequent heart and lung complications as they age, though.

Here's an article that tries to explain what NZ did to contain Covid in more detail. They implemented border lockdown and increased medical care for it's citizens. Also, a 7 week lockdown. To summarize, NZ and the people therein did what they fucking should have to prevent their neighbors from catching it, and it was over in a month.- https://www.contagionlive.com/view/how-did-new-zealand-control-covid19

If I get heated about this topic, it's because my wife was a COVID nurse and a fucking lot of people died because their neighbors/coworkers were too free for PPE.

[Max™]

We have lots of data on the effectiveness of the current measures, we locked down sporadically initially, it slowed things down, the fucking stupid goddamn republicunts and president-reject made masks a political issue because muh stoxxxx and we're probably going to pop over 200k cases and 3k deaths when the weekend lag plays out next week.

Having OVER a quarter of a million dead at bare minimum, right now with our current trajectory (in the last few days I watched 20k added to the tally way quicker than I have all year checking this shit, the early 2.7k peak wasn't this prolonged) we're on track to hit half a million early next year.

The ~2k deaths a day we're seeing now were infected in the days before the election mostly, and we were still under 100k new cases a day as I recall.

Having a half a million deaths, the massive wave of lost economic activity due to unemployment, lower quality educational experiences, the ripple effect of business closures... we won't have to wait 10 years to see how fucked this is going to leave us.

As for business as usual, I'd call that the scenario where the orange dumbfuck said literally nothing, but the federal government gave no direction or coordination.

Better would have been him shutting the fuck up and NOT removing the pandemic preparedness systems the Obama administration left in place, and then having the federal government direct states and assist with general overview/assistance of the state efforts.

As it is we didn't get business as usual, we got a big orange bitchbaby throwing hissyfits, undermining everyone including himself, active efforts to prevent state and local governments from receiving federal aid (I would love to watch Kushner dangle on a good sturdy piece of hemp for this, fucking worthless pile of vomited up dogshit) plus the efforts of all the MURICANS to turn masks and saving lives into an attack on freedoms, stoked by the piece of shit loser we're kicking the fuck out on 1/20/2021.

As for comparing it to driving... fuck off with that bullshit ass comparison, ok? It's not merely driving, though yes, NONE of us are qualified to operate these things around other people as much as we do. I drove a cab, I drove a forklift(not one of the little warehouse ones, big 20+ ft boom fucker used to move sawdust and ash barrels around at a lumber yard), I've done autocross shit, and just for fun my hobby for years was shit like gran turismo and enthusia with my wheel and pedals setup. I'm pretty good at driving and I'm not good enough to feel comfortable if EVERYONE was as skilled as I am or better, neither are you.

No, running around ignoring masks and other restrictions right now? That's driving drunk and that is shit where you don't need to kill someone to justify getting punished for it because it's irresponsible enough to indicate that you are clearly not qualified to exercise that freedom any longer.

You're a dumb motherfucker insisting on cramming into stupid shit like bars, church, theaters, parties, and so forth right now despite how much it not only endangers you but everyone around you? You're obviously not qualified to make that decision for yourself right now.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, if you're that much of a stupid motherfucker to do shit that thoughtless and risky to yourself, why the absolute fuck should you be allowed to make decisions about the safety of others?

[Shazbot]

Adults and persons aspiring to become adults only. You are warned.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The United States consists of some three-hundred and thirty million people.
Thus far, some 200,000 - 250,000 have died of either presumed or proven Covid-19 infections.
These persons are overwhelmingly past reproductive age, in retirement, in nursing homes, or already afflicted with frail health.

250,000 / 330,000,000 = 0.076%, rounding up.

Internationally there are some seven billion, eight hundred million people.
Thus far, some 1,500,000 have died.

1,500,000 / 7,800,000,000 = 0.0193%, rounding up.

Every year, seven billion, eight hundred million move one year closer to their life expectancy and the end of their terminal illness known as ordinary metabolism.

A full 100% are dying.

Some sixty million people finished dying this year. At 1.5 million deaths, 0.025% of these deaths were due to Covid-19.

For comparison, in 2017...
17.79 million deaths from cardiovascular disease.
9.56 million deaths from cancer.
3.91 million deaths from respiratory diseases.
2.56 million deaths from lower respiratory infections.
2.51 million deaths from dementia.
2.38 million deaths from digestive diseases.
1.78 million deaths from neonatal disorders.
1.57 million deaths from diarrheal diseases.
1.37 million deaths from diabetes.
1.32 million deaths from liver diseases.
1.24 million deaths from traffic accidents.

For comparison again, the Asian flu pandemic of 1957-1958 killed more than one million worldwide (0.034% of a world population of 2.87 billion, and a case mortality rate of 0.6%). Deaths in the United States were 110,000 (0.00062% of a population of 177 million). There was no shutdown.

I had Covid, my wife had Covid, my two older children had Covid, my 84 year old grandmother had Covid. My grandmother was barely affected and pulled through easily, but the only reason she and anyone else in the nursing home is alive, hugging their great grand-children, is being kept from them. This is a torture of kindness. The only person to have died of a respiratory disease in my most extended possible social circle was my children's Sunday school teacher, 26 and healthy, of ordinary influenza in early January.

The reason we need lockdowns all over the world is because people who are inordinately afraid of death think we need lockdowns all over the world, and their leadership sees this as a great opportunity to posture as protectors of their constituents against selfish political adversaries who want to get everyone else killed.

From my perspective this has been yellow journalism par excellence, in which "have a Zoom call Thanksgiving" will be remembered with as much head-shaking shame at our own gullible stupidity as "remember the Maine".

People die, and as much as materialists mock spiritualists who believe in eternal life for those who adhere to ritual and obeying the grey-haired man at the podium, they remain just as certain that if we all cloistered in our materialist bubbles and entrusted our bodies to the grey-haired man on television with a lab coat, this angel of death will pass over us.

It will. But it isn't hurried. The Asian flu, H2N2, was vaccinated against in 1958, mutated, and returned as H3N2, causing the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic. Asian flu killed one million. Hong Kong flu killed four million. Covid-19 may kill six million. Covid-30 may kill twenty-four million.

Those who finish dying a few years early are a hundredth of a percentile.

Sixty million people finished dying in 2019. Sixty million people will finish dying in 2020. Sixty million people will finish dying in 2021.

The fearful man dies a thousand times, the brave man dies only once. Stop being dead.

I don't care. You were warned.

[NJW2000]

Charmingly patronising as that may be, the damage prevented to countries by attempting to control the virus does in fact largely outweigh the negatives of lockdowns. Impressive as your ability to divide large numbers is, the experts are really the people to go to here.


As a mathematician, I do feel compelled to point out a teeny flaw in your calculations:

250,000 / 330,000,000 = 0.00075757575 = 0.076%
Not 0.00076%.

I hope this isn't rude of me - I hate to correct adults. Feel free to take this to PMs if you need a little refresher on how percentages work.

[McTraveller]

Deaths is part of it, yes.  We absolutely know that the US has 250k more deaths this year than in a typical year. But will next year be "average"? What about two years from now? Did we really just pull deaths "earlier" so that a future year will have a below-average year?  This is why I said "look at it in 10 years."  Also don't discount the massive long-term adverse effects of severely disrupted education, especially for the poor populations.

Looking at it right now is fraught with emotional response, not rationality.

I'm sorry I just can't get behind demonizing people. I can get behind punishing people who knew they were sick and went out and intentionally spit on people or whatever.  But that's different than calling the single mom who has to work a fool or idiot or whatever. Yeah go ahead and blame the system that forces people like that to work, but don't blame the average person.  The "average" person is the one who goes out only to get groceries, wears their mask, tries to get their kid to get some kind of education through a stressed education system, and sits at home consuming several times the previous year's average in alcohol, wallowing in depression.

The worst of it is, that most people are correct: it is probably not any one individual's fault, but it is indeed collectively everyone's fault.

Preview edit: Seriously people, yes we can second guess our leaders and neighbors all day - and often criticize them rightly.  But it doesn't change the past.  At the end of the day, don't sit online and bitch and moan about other people being idiots. The world will always be full of idiots. When you go out, be a good example.  Take up arms, whatever.  But just sitting and blaming others for the ills of the world, while it is true, is also on our heads if we don't go out and try to right them.  Have you sewn masks? Have you gone around and delivered food to and checked on the elderly or otherwise infirm in your area? Have you offered to tutor kids whose parents have to work and whose schools are closed?  The world is a harsh place, and sadly I think humanity's ability to tame its harshness just made modern society complacent.  Some cultures work a bit better to fight back against the complacency.  There is no law preventing you from fighting complacency though.

[A Thing]

The fearful man dies a thousand times, the brave man dies only once. Stop being dead.

I too played Rome Total War and read the loading screen tips.