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Or, those vulnerable (and we cannot now pretend we don't know who they are) can remove themselves and not place the risk of their infection in the hands of othe

Or, those vulnerable (and we cannot now pretend we don't know who they are) can remove themselves and not place the risk of their infection in the hands of others. Quarantine is where you lock up sick people. Tyranny is where you lock down healthy ones. And, as far as SOP during a pandemic, I disagree. This is the first time in the last 50 years (that I've been alive) that I've seen this happen in the US.

shadowgovt 6y ago
> Quarantine is where you lock up sick people Due to the long asymptomatic infectious period for this disease, lacking a quick and accurate testing solution, we don't know who the sick people are. That's one of the major challenges of this particular outbreak. History's memory is longer than 50 years. The word quarantine derives from the practice of requiring that ships entering harbor from infected ports stay at anchor off the coast for 40 days. Unfortunately, in the era of modern air travel, and given the long incubation period for this illness, it passed the ports and got into cities and countrysides before it could be contained. You also continue to conflate quarantine with the simple public health practice of wearing a cloth to catch droplets in case you are sick. The two are not the same thing. nobody in the United States, at least, is going around welding people's doors shut to keep them at home (though it is, perhaps, worth noting that the countries that did that have already gotten back to life as normal ;) ).
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-changes-covid-19-testing-guidelines-will-kill-experts-say/3441828001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-ch...
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    > I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? Great question. The CDC is an arm of the Executive Branch and beholden to orders from their bosses; I have disquieting hypotheses (people want to pretend COVID-19 is a solved problem because masks and social distancing are inconvenient, it's an election year, being popular wins elections) but no hard evidence to confirm or deny such a hypothesis. It's unfortunate to observe that such positioning of personal political goals above public health has happened in the past; Philadelphia was the site of an unusually deadly outbreak of the 1918 flu (that killed so many people the city ran out of coffins) because the mayor decided not to cancel a military parade due to federal pressure. > No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. As we are a deeply-interconnected society, it's not that simple. People need food. They need medical care, they need trash taken out. They need repairs done to their homes. Plus, I think a case can be made that it's a lot more humane to spread the pain out a little by having everyone wear inconvenient masks for awhile than for most people to go about business as usual and a few to live like they're incarcerated. China and other countries did the latter, and Americans I talk to aren't a fan of the "your door gets welded shut and martial law is declared" solution. We like to think ourselves better than that. That's to say nothing of the fact that we're still not clear how at-risk anyone is. There's obviously a curve of probability, but it can strike young people down badly enough to cause permanent damage and, in some cases, death also (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-and-covid-19-younger-adults-are-at-risk-too https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...). It's unclear to me that we know enough about this disease for individuals to actually make an educated guess as to whether they're "at-risk." > And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. Hey, if there were a hard-to-forge mechanism for easily identifying people who already had the disease so that store owners and service providers could know quickly whether they're extremely low-risk to move around without a mask on, I'd be in favor of it. We should write our Congresspeople.
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      Again, I will redirect you to this well stated argument that illustrates how low risk the store owners and service providers really are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  Additionally, it occurred to me that the sick people on the ships were locked down, not the cities with the ports.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    The sick and the healthy were quarantined together on the ships. In the days of ship quarantine, germ theory of medicine and understanding of communicable disease wasn't where it was now; they understood disease communication but not the mechanism. The best solution they had was to have the inbound stay separated from the general populace, because whatever the mechanism, no disease had ever taken as long as 40 days to show up. Once a disease got into a city, entire cities were, indeed, cut off---the sick and the healthy together---because nobody could be sure how the disease would spread if free commerce were allowed into the surrounding cities and towns. (There's an interesting parallel to COVID-19, in that while we do understand germ theory of medicine, we don't have accurate enough testing to determine if the average healthy-looking person is a carrier. So the practical solutions lean towards the conservative side of safety. More accurate, higher-speed testing could decrease the need for general behavioral constraints in the population... If, for example, there was a 'forehead scanner' to tell us if someone had COVID-19 to 99.999% accuracy, instead of merely had a fever, we could install it at every store entrance and forego masks).

shadowgovt 6y ago

> Quarantine is where you lock up sick people Due to the long asymptomatic infectious period for this disease, lacking a quick and accurate testing solution, we don't know who the sick people are. That's one of the major challenges of this particular outbreak. History's memory is longer than 50 years. The word quarantine derives from the practice of requiring that ships entering harbor from infected ports stay at anchor off the coast for 40 days. Unfortunately, in the era of modern air travel, and given the long incubation period for this illness, it passed the ports and got into cities and countrysides before it could be contained. You also continue to conflate quarantine with the simple public health practice of wearing a cloth to catch droplets in case you are sick. The two are not the same thing. nobody in the United States, at least, is going around welding people's doors shut to keep them at home (though it is, perhaps, worth noting that the countries that did that have already gotten back to life as normal ;) ).

Fjolsvith 6y ago
I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-changes-covid-19-testing-guidelines-will-kill-experts-say/3441828001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/26/cdc-ch...
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  > I wonder then, why would the vaunted CDC change their policy to no longer test everyone? If we aren't doing this, then why bother with masks? Great question. The CDC is an arm of the Executive Branch and beholden to orders from their bosses; I have disquieting hypotheses (people want to pretend COVID-19 is a solved problem because masks and social distancing are inconvenient, it's an election year, being popular wins elections) but no hard evidence to confirm or deny such a hypothesis. It's unfortunate to observe that such positioning of personal political goals above public health has happened in the past; Philadelphia was the site of an unusually deadly outbreak of the 1918 flu (that killed so many people the city ran out of coffins) because the mayor decided not to cancel a military parade due to federal pressure. > No one is going around the country forcing at-risk people out of their homes. Those very few should stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives. As we are a deeply-interconnected society, it's not that simple. People need food. They need medical care, they need trash taken out. They need repairs done to their homes. Plus, I think a case can be made that it's a lot more humane to spread the pain out a little by having everyone wear inconvenient masks for awhile than for most people to go about business as usual and a few to live like they're incarcerated. China and other countries did the latter, and Americans I talk to aren't a fan of the "your door gets welded shut and martial law is declared" solution. We like to think ourselves better than that. That's to say nothing of the fact that we're still not clear how at-risk anyone is. There's obviously a curve of probability, but it can strike young people down badly enough to cause permanent damage and, in some cases, death also (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-and-covid-19-younger-adults-are-at-risk-too https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...). It's unclear to me that we know enough about this disease for individuals to actually make an educated guess as to whether they're "at-risk." > And besides, if I've already had COVID, I wouldn't need a mask either way. Hey, if there were a hard-to-forge mechanism for easily identifying people who already had the disease so that store owners and service providers could know quickly whether they're extremely low-risk to move around without a mask on, I'd be in favor of it. We should write our Congresspeople.
  - Fjolsvith 6y ago
    Again, I will redirect you to this well stated argument that illustrates how low risk the store owners and service providers really are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681
Fjolsvith 6y ago
Additionally, it occurred to me that the sick people on the ships were locked down, not the cities with the ports.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  The sick and the healthy were quarantined together on the ships. In the days of ship quarantine, germ theory of medicine and understanding of communicable disease wasn't where it was now; they understood disease communication but not the mechanism. The best solution they had was to have the inbound stay separated from the general populace, because whatever the mechanism, no disease had ever taken as long as 40 days to show up. Once a disease got into a city, entire cities were, indeed, cut off---the sick and the healthy together---because nobody could be sure how the disease would spread if free commerce were allowed into the surrounding cities and towns. (There's an interesting parallel to COVID-19, in that while we do understand germ theory of medicine, we don't have accurate enough testing to determine if the average healthy-looking person is a carrier. So the practical solutions lean towards the conservative side of safety. More accurate, higher-speed testing could decrease the need for general behavioral constraints in the population... If, for example, there was a 'forehead scanner' to tell us if someone had COVID-19 to 99.999% accuracy, instead of merely had a fever, we could install it at every store entrance and forego masks).