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If people can gather in the tens of thousands with masks on for a cause, then why couldn't we celebrate July 4th with our masks on? Why does the state get to s

If people can gather in the tens of thousands with masks on for a cause, then why couldn't we celebrate July 4th with our masks on? Why does the state get to sponsor a political movement? How dangerous can this virus be if we're willing to allow mass protests, looting, and "autonomous" zones? All it can take is <1% of a crowd to pull down their masks to sneeze to spread the virus and kill more people. > A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no overall rise in infections but could not rule out that infections might have risen in the age demographic of the protesters. Funny, because that's definitely not what I see on the total infections chart from JHU. How are everyday people supposed to interpret this? EDIT: Retracted a part I misunderstood.

TMWNN 6y ago
> If people can gather in the tens of thousands with masks on for a cause, then why couldn't we celebrate July 4th with our masks on? Why does the state get to sponsor a political movement? How dangerous can this virus be if we're willing to allow mass protests, looting, and "autonomous" zones? All it can take is <1% of a crowd to pull down their masks to sneeze to spread the virus and kill more people. Don't forget how people have to attend funerals via Zoom, but George Floyd had multiple indoor funerals with thousands attending in person for his golden casket!
tych0 6y ago
> So racism has been killing more than the 130,430 people who have purportedly died from COVID-19 in the United States? Well, yeah. > Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years. The number purchased by the traders was considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate with approximately 1.2–2.4 million dying during the voyage and millions more died in seasoning camps in the Caribbean after arrival to the New World. Millions of slaves also died as a result of slave raids, wars and during transport to the coast for sale to European slave traders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
- ravenstine 6y ago
  Note the language: > has been That's present-tense. Maybe Bassett misspoke. Nevertheless, people need to be careful how they say things or they will get misinterpreted. Yes, if you go back far enough, you can find a lot of death caused by racism. Nobody disputes that.
  - tych0 6y ago
    > Nobody disputes that. And yet you did :)
    - ravenstine 6y ago
      How so? I'm disputing deaths in recent history, based on the present-tense phrasing, not the fact that racism has killed millions throughout the history of the United States. As far as I can tell, we don't disagree on the latter point. You speak as if I'm dumb and didn't know about the African slave trade.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- slimed 6y ago
  We're talking about preventing covid deaths in 2020 and you bring up the Trans-Alantic slave trade. This is why no one takes you guys seriously anymore.
- voxic11 6y ago
  Yeah but that is 12 million over 400 years, which is a rate of 30,000 a year. Covid is 130,430 in just over 4 months, which is a rate of 391,284 a year. So covid is about an order of magnitude more dangerous.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    The 12 million is for both North and South America, while 130 thousand Covid deaths are in the USA alone.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
> So racism has been killing more than the 130,430 people who have purportedly died from COVID-19 in the United States? I really doubt that, and I'm seeing why a lot of people don't take public health experts seriously anymore. It's genuinely unclear to me why you think the quoted speaker is saying that racism is killing more people than COVID-19.
ben_w 6y ago
That quote says “killing people a lot longer” not “more than”. I’m not a sociologist, but how would you measure the number of deaths caused by racism in a fair and unbiased way? I assume it’s something along the lines of the difference between disability-adjusted life expectancy of different ethnic groups, but even then you have a question of are things like poverty and education levels confounding variables or examples of systemic racism? Likewise, are the healthy life years lost to genetic disorders like sickle-cell anaemia the fault of society for not treating them or the fault of the genes for being adapted to (in this case) malaria when there isn’t any malaria around to protect against? And even if everyone agrees on the same answer to the above, the fact that racism hasn’t been constant over time makes it unclear what you are integrating over and when you are integrating between — The absolute racism since the Declaration of Independence or the estimated difference between actual history and a hypothetical counterfactual that nothing changed since the race-segregated toilets were drawn into the original design of the Pentagon? I mean, if you count all the racism in post-Columbus Northern American history, you’d also have to count the literal genocide of how many native Americans tribes, and I’d also argue the slaves. I can even see a way the non-slave deaths during the American Civil War could count. What I can’t see is a way to be totally clear in advance what the question is even supposed to answer. They’d all be true, but they’d mean different things. If I had to guess, these are all big numbers, but they vary by more than two orders of magnitude. Like the saying says: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
- ravenstine 6y ago
  Ah, you're right. I'm going to retract that part because I didn't understand it properly.
opwieurposiu 6y ago
The american civil war killed 750,000. If covid-19 sticks around for 3 years like the spanish flu of 1918, we could reach that number. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up...
awinder 6y ago
> How are everyday people supposed to interpret this? I’m just gonna laser focus on this because I think this is the sentiment that the rest derives from. I don’t think most people are supposed to interpret this. It’s a complex multi-actor system with legal entanglements and public health issues at play. Decisions like this are made by teams of dozens with hundreds of years of collective experience. As a person who delegated through taxes to people with this experience, my job is to hear the advice, not to try to pick flaws towards a predetermined world view. People haggle more with public health people than they would a roofer and I can damn right guarantee you that 99% of people know way more about roofing than these complex issues. The other 1% work in these government/ngo positions.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  The question is, do those on the team of dozens, with hundreds of years of collective experience, also have a predetermined world view? Probably, in at least some cases. Does that influence their decisions? How could I tell? But when you see "anti-lockdown protests are bad, epidemiologically, but anti-police protests are fine", it sure looks like their world view is coloring their decisions, because their decisions look insane.

TMWNN 6y ago

> If people can gather in the tens of thousands with masks on for a cause, then why couldn't we celebrate July 4th with our masks on? Why does the state get to sponsor a political movement? How dangerous can this virus be if we're willing to allow mass protests, looting, and "autonomous" zones? All it can take is <1% of a crowd to pull down their masks to sneeze to spread the virus and kill more people. Don't forget how people have to attend funerals via Zoom, but George Floyd had multiple indoor funerals with thousands attending in person for his golden casket!

tych0 6y ago

> So racism has been killing more than the 130,430 people who have purportedly died from COVID-19 in the United States? Well, yeah. > Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years. The number purchased by the traders was considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate with approximately 1.2–2.4 million dying during the voyage and millions more died in seasoning camps in the Caribbean after arrival to the New World. Millions of slaves also died as a result of slave raids, wars and during transport to the coast for sale to European slave traders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

ravenstine 6y ago
Note the language: > has been That's present-tense. Maybe Bassett misspoke. Nevertheless, people need to be careful how they say things or they will get misinterpreted. Yes, if you go back far enough, you can find a lot of death caused by racism. Nobody disputes that.
- tych0 6y ago
  > Nobody disputes that. And yet you did :)
  - ravenstine 6y ago
    How so? I'm disputing deaths in recent history, based on the present-tense phrasing, not the fact that racism has killed millions throughout the history of the United States. As far as I can tell, we don't disagree on the latter point. You speak as if I'm dumb and didn't know about the African slave trade.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
slimed 6y ago
We're talking about preventing covid deaths in 2020 and you bring up the Trans-Alantic slave trade. This is why no one takes you guys seriously anymore.
voxic11 6y ago
Yeah but that is 12 million over 400 years, which is a rate of 30,000 a year. Covid is 130,430 in just over 4 months, which is a rate of 391,284 a year. So covid is about an order of magnitude more dangerous.
- rbecker 6y ago
  The 12 million is for both North and South America, while 130 thousand Covid deaths are in the USA alone.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

> So racism has been killing more than the 130,430 people who have purportedly died from COVID-19 in the United States? I really doubt that, and I'm seeing why a lot of people don't take public health experts seriously anymore. It's genuinely unclear to me why you think the quoted speaker is saying that racism is killing more people than COVID-19.

ben_w 6y ago

That quote says “killing people a lot longer” not “more than”. I’m not a sociologist, but how would you measure the number of deaths caused by racism in a fair and unbiased way? I assume it’s something along the lines of the difference between disability-adjusted life expectancy of different ethnic groups, but even then you have a question of are things like poverty and education levels confounding variables or examples of systemic racism? Likewise, are the healthy life years lost to genetic disorders like sickle-cell anaemia the fault of society for not treating them or the fault of the genes for being adapted to (in this case) malaria when there isn’t any malaria around to protect against? And even if everyone agrees on the same answer to the above, the fact that racism hasn’t been constant over time makes it unclear what you are integrating over and when you are integrating between — The absolute racism since the Declaration of Independence or the estimated difference between actual history and a hypothetical counterfactual that nothing changed since the race-segregated toilets were drawn into the original design of the Pentagon? I mean, if you count all the racism in post-Columbus Northern American history, you’d also have to count the literal genocide of how many native Americans tribes, and I’d also argue the slaves. I can even see a way the non-slave deaths during the American Civil War could count. What I can’t see is a way to be totally clear in advance what the question is even supposed to answer. They’d all be true, but they’d mean different things. If I had to guess, these are all big numbers, but they vary by more than two orders of magnitude. Like the saying says: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

ravenstine 6y ago
Ah, you're right. I'm going to retract that part because I didn't understand it properly.

opwieurposiu 6y ago

The american civil war killed 750,000. If covid-19 sticks around for 3 years like the spanish flu of 1918, we could reach that number. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up...

awinder 6y ago

> How are everyday people supposed to interpret this? I’m just gonna laser focus on this because I think this is the sentiment that the rest derives from. I don’t think most people are supposed to interpret this. It’s a complex multi-actor system with legal entanglements and public health issues at play. Decisions like this are made by teams of dozens with hundreds of years of collective experience. As a person who delegated through taxes to people with this experience, my job is to hear the advice, not to try to pick flaws towards a predetermined world view. People haggle more with public health people than they would a roofer and I can damn right guarantee you that 99% of people know way more about roofing than these complex issues. The other 1% work in these government/ngo positions.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
The question is, do those on the team of dozens, with hundreds of years of collective experience, also have a predetermined world view? Probably, in at least some cases. Does that influence their decisions? How could I tell? But when you see "anti-lockdown protests are bad, epidemiologically, but anti-police protests are fine", it sure looks like their world view is coloring their decisions, because their decisions look insane.