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What we currently have going on right now is a complete collapse in confidence. So many commenters are debating the death rate, case counts, hospitalizations, e

• mtgp1000 6y ago
  >Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb. No no no no no. It's high time we stop treating everything as black and white in this country. It's not just callously disregarding the dead - it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus. And the signal/noise ratio right now is absolutely tiny, especially considering how much damage the media has done by unambiguously turning this into an opportunity to bash Trump. Regardless of how you feel about the presidency, if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations until the recent protests (both left and right) began; and while I do believe it is shameful that we were caught with our pants down, scrambling to gather supplies nearly 3 months late, I'll remind you that so was everyone else. Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine. We also shouldn't be applying the same policies to urban and rural areas. You know what would really answer this question to me? What percent of nurses and doctors in COVID wards have gotten sick? And what is their CFR? That's pretty much worst case exposure and seeing as I haven't heard of doctors dying in droves, I'm inclined to start believing that people do have and/or develop immunity and the fatality/complication rate really is extremely low, for whatever reason. But I need data to be sure.
  • jacksnipe 6y ago
    Lives are only lost in a lockdown scenario because of god awful policy. Pay people to stay home. Feed the poor.
    • lostapathy 6y ago
      That only works when we have food to feed everyone ... which requires a surprising amount of people to stay at work. Besides the obvious people working in the fields/farms, there's a lot of support businesses that need to stay open. The people who repairs the tractors, the people who make parts for the feeders in the barns, etc, which need support for their own manufacturing equipment. We can't just "shut it all down" worldwide and not run out of food.
      • gowld 6y ago
        No one is saying to shut down essential workers. Just to push pause on the silly luxuries we've come to expect.
    • rayiner 6y ago
      How do you think food gets made and distributed?
      • gowld 6y ago
        See way it is now, by essential workers wearing masks. Not by packing halls with protesters holding coughing parties.
  • jimbokun 6y ago
    > it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus. oramit said: "The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus. So we get to have the deaths and have the financial damage as well. Yay us!"
• marcell 6y ago
  > we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter how much we lock down.
  • shreyansj 6y ago
    But if everyone had stayed locked in for 6 weeks and if that had prevented 50000 deaths, how is that not worth it?
    • marcell 6y ago
      I'm not sure if it's worth it or not, but after you end the lockdown, you have the same situation you did at the start of the lockdown. I think there's a huge misconception in many media sources that lockdown will somehow eliminate the virus. It can change the onset pattern of the virus, but that's it.
      • shreyansj 6y ago
        It's amazing to wonder whether any step, any inconvenience is worth saving even lives when the magnitude of that is in the thousands. Countries have literally been bombed over far fewer deaths.
        • burner831234 6y ago
          Such a good point. Ppl really do not seem to understand this.
        • bmitc 6y ago
          > Countries have literally been bombed over far fewer deaths. This virus, itself, isn't anti-American or "terrorist" enough for the U.S. to wage war against, yet it's far deadlier.
• isthispermanent 6y ago
  Yes. This is largely the problem. Unfortunately, I don't think it would have mattered whether it was a left or right president. The side not in office would have done the opposite. Everything is a political proxy war right now.
  • gowld 6y ago
    There are two camps causing trouble preventing COVID-19 mitigation: the Radical Right where they are in office (Trump, Arizona, Florida,...), and the Radical Right where the Left or moderate Right are in office (Michigan).
    • isthispermanent 6y ago
      This is what I'm talking about. I want to preface this with: I've voted blue ticket my entire life... The numbers just do not back this claim up. NY/NJ/CT all have the absolute worst outcomes so far. NY and Gov Cuomo couldn't be more adored by the media. Meanwhile the red south and others that never locked down are sitting at about 10% the deaths of the blue northeast. You can say wait two weeks, but we've been waiting two weeks on AZ, FL, and GA, for about 6 weeks now. Cases have gone up but deaths have not. Current trends suggest they will tick up, but they will not go vertical. So I'm not sure what the real problem is that you point to.
      • kingaillas 6y ago
        >NY/NJ/CT all have the absolute worst outcomes so far. They were also hit early in this ongoing pandemic and had to fight hard to get it under control. That red states are now ticking up is a sad commentary on their governance, which is a mix of hubris, denialism, and willful ignorance. > Cases have gone up but deaths have not. The average age of the infected is lowering, and they tend to survive.
        • war1025 6y ago
          > The average age of the infected is lowering, and they tend to survive. An illness that lasts two weeks and then goes away is a shitty two weeks. We're sitting at what, a shitty five months now? I guarantee there are a lot of people out there who would take a rough couple of weeks over what we've done to their livelihoods this year.
• electriclove 6y ago
  I'm very pleased by the decision from the top in California today about keeping schools remote until things get better. The only complaint I have is how long it took to get there. Tons of people at hundreds/thousands of school districts and private schools throughout the state have spent incredible effort debating and planning and so much effort could have been saved if the decision from the top was made earlier.
  • samatman 6y ago
    I share your pleasure in the decision, but staunchly disagree with you about the method used to reach it. The correct decision was reached, in time (before the start of the school year) for it to make a difference. Tons of people and thousands of schools vigorously debating is the democratic process. A decision handed down from "the top" is authoritarianism, and as we've seen repeatedly this year, authoritarian decisions are resisted even when they're the right decision. For something like masking, you can justify it with the urgency of the situation (even though I'm compelled to add that "the top" got this one wrong during the crucial months of February and March). For starting school in the fall, you can't.
    • dmoy 6y ago
      I think you are at least a bit misconstruing direct democracy vs representative democracy and instead calling it democracy vs authoritarianism. The people handing down the aforementioned decisions were elected specifically to do things like this. That doesn't outright make it authoritarianism. (Yes, most elected US politicians on both sides of the aisle skew fairly authoritarian, but that doesn't mean the process itself is authoritarian)
      • samatman 6y ago
        This is at most a conflation, not a misconstrual. I prefer to think of these words as points in a spectrum, rather than definitional prisons with tight boundaries. Allowing school districts to do what they are constituted to do, is more democratic than delegating it to the State governments, which is more authoritarian. Authoritarian is also not an antonym of democratic. They correlate, but not as strongly as any advocate for democracy would prefer.
• gowld 6y ago
  The financial damage is completely self inflicted. There is plenty of food, housing, and other necessities of all kinds except some items specific to treating the pandemic itself (which is important, but not the goal of "reopen it the economy"). Closing restaurants and football stadiums doesn't deprive anyone of the necessities of life and health. We can watch TV for entertainment. People doing essential work haven't stopped. The only economic-related suffering are people being pushed out of their homes by landlords, or refused food (of which there is plenty) by the controllers of the food supply. Government officals, corporation managers, billionaires and few others are simply unwilling to let go of their obsession with hoarding money, an imaginary social invention (which is of course useful in easier times), for a few months while we fight the commmonest real enemy the world has ever faced.
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• temptemptemp111 6y ago
  Did you just confidently pitch that you have the cure for fear? What a joke... How do you know fear hasn't manipulated into this view you're proudly suggesting others should adopt? There are no new viruses.
• spaetzleesser 6y ago
  “What we currently have going on right now is a complete collapse in confidence. So many commenters are debating the death rate, case counts, hospitalizations, etc, which is all besides the point.“ That’s what happens when political parties and now the president and his administration are spreading misinformation as long it helps their short term needs. Nobody believes anything anymore. I am already worried about the election. No matter the result, a significant part of the population will most likely not trust the results. I don’t think a country can survive such distrust without significant damage to its institutions.
  • xenospn 6y ago
    They will trust it if Fox News/OAN reports it. And that remains to be seen.
  • thu2111 6y ago
    It's not the case. This is clear because lots of countries are having problems with teaching unions refusing to go back to work, but only one country has Trump. There's a lot of evidence teachers aren't actually afraid, but rather, are in hock to hyper-aggressive unions. They have been paid to not work. They can keep being paid to not work. Why would they work? To go back to the US context, there's now a teaching union in LA that's refusing to go back post-COVID until their demands are met. Their demands include .... defunding the police. Obviously. http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/state/la-teachers-union-says-public-schools-should-not-reopen-unless-demands-are-met/article_57616128-65b3-5fb7-9805-fc66c5b6cf1d.html http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/state/la-teachers-u... (The Center Square) – One of the largest teachers unions in the state of California, the United Teachers Los Angeles with 35,000 members, says public schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District should not reopen if certain policies are not implemented on the state and national level, including defunding the police and implementing Medicare for All This isn't a COVID problem. This is a political problem.
    • nswest23 6y ago
      I followed this link which contained the blurb about “defunding the police...” to the next link and read the summary of the actual research paper from the teachers union. Nowhere in that summary does it mention any demands wrt defunding the police or Medicare for all.
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• dgzl 6y ago
  An old CS professor: Efficiency with computers, effectiveness with people.
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• theonething 6y ago
  > we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus Do you think an enforced national lockdown is feasible in the US? Given the size of the country, the culture of independence, the relatively loose union of 50 states and other factors, my answer is no.
  • FuckButtons 6y ago
    It’s bizarre to me that given the conclusion that this is the only solution people’s immediate instinct is to just say it’s not possible. Nothing’s possible if you don’t even attempt it.
  • ryandrake 6y ago
    Also, in case you haven’t noticed, we are not even remotely “locked down”. If you go downtown where I live (and in countless other cities in the USA) you will find people out horsing around, ignoring stay-at-home, eating at their restaurants, shopping for their khakis, and basically pretending the virus doesn’t exist. Traffic has not changed. People aren’t wearing masks (despite a statewide order). And where is enforcement? Nonexistent. I’m not convinced we can do a national lockdown because no state has even managed to implement a statewide or even citywide lockdown. We have powerless leadership, proclaiming half-assed and unenforced orders, more worried about saying the right things than doing the right things. If we were actually serious about beating the virus, downtown would be totally empty and I wouldn’t hear constant traffic and human activity from my backyard.
• koop123 6y ago
  In my opinion, the government shutting down the economy and forcing businesses to stay closed was a horrible idea. The government should have intervened as little as possible. I think the news disseminating the news about coronavirus and then each individual should make the choice of what they want to do. If they wanted to stay at home then stay at home, if they want to keep their hair salon open, then they should have been allowed to make that choice. Don't forget this virus is from China and if China informed the world and the world health organizzation actually did their job then maybe they could have isolated this to China.
• koop123 6y ago
  Cooperation? Are you kidding me? What this is is two contrasting view points (maybe you can describe them as democratic or republican) that can't decide how to manage things and I think the only big mistake we made was shutting down in the first place because there's no way we could have possibly kept things down for more than two months in the first place. So we fucked our economy and made everyone change their behavior to try to save everyone. The problem with that logic, is that is not possible to save everyone in the first place. Stop blaming Trump because this lack of national plan that you believe is possible (which isn't and never will be) is because of all of our politicans suck and cannot agree on a plan you idiot.