12 ms·

Case count != actual risk of death or permanent injury. You have to be in a high risk group. I wish we'd evaluate actual risk rather than perceived.

smeyer 6y ago
>Over the next 38 days, the virus spread to 176 other people. Seven of them died. Seven people died. This isn't some hypothetical where people are acting like there's risk where there isn't; it's a story of seven real, living, breathing humans passing away.
- war1025 6y ago
  People die. I'm becoming more and more callus about the whole thing and beginning to think we just need to adjust our expectations and accept that people die. I was told recently that my town is in terrible shape and the hospitals are nearly overwhelmed. Listening further, I learned that "nearly overwhelmed" meant we had capacity for two or three people to be really sick with Coronavirus. If we need to decimate our economy because only two or three people can be really sick at once, then that is the wrong trade-off in my opinion.
  - sequoia 6y ago
    'fighting the virus harms the economy' Would you believe it if I told you that not fighting the virus has an even bigger toll on the economy? Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, how much less economic impact would have resulted. But then, as now, we wanted to "protect the economy" and avoid restrictions as long as possible. But this time the strategy will work? I have trouble believing that.
    - war1025 6y ago
      > Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, Europe had about the strictest lockdown you can imagine and their economy isn't exactly peaches and cream right now. And they have spiking case counts just like the US right now.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        Why are you conflating "aggressively addressed this problem" with a strict lockdown? The spring lockdown made sense, in that we didn't really have much information. At this point, we have a bunch of other tools that we aren't using, because people have decided that doing anything is somehow the equivalent of a strict lockdown.
        war1025 6y ago
        > Why are you conflating "aggressively addressed this problem" with a strict lockdown? The hypothetical was "Imagine if we had addressed the problem in March?" We did in fact lock the country down for several months. People seem quick to forget it for political reasons.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Yes, but it's a failure of imagination to assume that a strict lockdown is the only measure that would be part of aggressively addressing the problem.
        war1025 6y ago
        You are putting words in my mouth. I was responding to an accusation that we didn't act strictly enough back in March. I agree we know much more about the virus now and should be tailoring our mitigation efforts accordingly. I would say that in general we are failing on that front however.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        I have not put words in your mouth, I've questioned your interpretation of the comment you replied to. You stick to that interpretation here, because they didn't say anything about 'strictly enough', they said we didn't aggressively address the situation, and we didn't. The 'lockdown' such as it was, was a significant measure, but it apparently was also in many minds all we needed to do.
    - abduhl 6y ago
      Would I believe someone who works at Postmates with over a decade of experience in the software industry bubble when they offer an opinion on the effects of a novel virus pandemic on the overall economy due to high level policy decisions? Absolutely not.
      - sequoia 6y ago
        I appreciate that you want to hear from experts. Instead of me, why not listen instead to Dr. Michael Osterholm, PhD MPH, "an American epidemiologist, regents professor, and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota." His podcast is here: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-osterholm-update-covid-19/id1504360345 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-osterholm-update-c... give it a listen and let me know what you think!
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Are there significant restrictions in place in your town, or is it the pandemic that is hurting the economy? Also, the word for "cruel disregard" is callous.
  - RationalThought 6y ago
    I'm becoming more and more callous about people who don't give a shit if their selfishness kills others. Guess what, that goes two ways. If you can't be bothered to wear a mask and socially distance, and you are fine with people dying because they've committed the sin of having asthma. If you're ok with perfectly healthy young adults having heart issues because they survived covid-19, then I'm ok with YOU suffering while the civilized world tries to save lives.
    - dang 6y ago
      We've banned this account for breaking HN's guidelines. Can you please not create accounts to do that with? It will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - RationalThought 6y ago
        The others in the thread were talking about killing people like me, yet they are not banned. That's horrible. Truly.
  - dougmwne 6y ago
    I am going to jump to your aid, because I suspect the downvotes are coming. I think it is ok to question if we are doing the right thing. There are intellectually honest ways to do that and intellectually dishonest ways. I do think we should do everything we can to avoid becoming callous. Some amount of of emotional fatigue is to be expected though. We are talking about nearly 250k deaths so far. That is a completely overwhelming number. And the lockdowns and general fear has created an immeasurable impact on the the future world economy, political stability and mental health. The science is clear that the risk of COVID morbidity and mortality is not evenly distributed. There could be more than one good way to manage this risk and keep our healthcare system functioning. As we start distributing the vaccine, we are going to have a great opportunity to mitigate a large portion of the risk for some people, while accepting a lower risk for others as the price to pay for getting back to normal as soon as possible. We make these kinds of population risk decisions all the time and no one bats an eye. Simply getting in your car every day and trusting your life to its imperfect safety systems is one example. Soon we will need to draw that line of what risk we, as a society will accept, and then get on with it.
  - theplague42 6y ago
    It's a lot more than two or three people. And the decimation would be a lot less bad if stimulus relief was passed. How large is your town, that the hospital only has a couple ventilators?
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Why can you accept people dying, but not accept the economy not doing well? The economy goes up and down. It's a fact of life. Why worry about it?
    - war1025 6y ago
      > Why can you accept people dying, but not accept the economy not doing well? In the grand scheme of "the economy", my portfolio is up something like 8% for the year last time I checked. My job is stable. In the locality of "the economy", I have heard multiple businesses in my area say that they are barely hanging on by a thread and will be forced to close permanently if the state forces them to shut down again. People might not be dying from the shutdowns, but it sure is an uneven load we're asking people to carry. Particularly from this high pulpit of HN, where we nearly all have cushy tech jobs where we don't have to interact with anyone to get paid.
      - dougmwne 6y ago
        People are almost certainly dying from the shutdowns. Hopefully less than we save from virus, but this is a difficult thing to measure.
      - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        > People might not be dying from the shutdowns, but it sure is an uneven load we're asking people to carry. Particularly from this high pulpit of HN, where we nearly all have cushy tech jobs where we don't have to interact with anyone to get paid. Seems like a perfect opportunity for the government to continue supporting people. Perhaps some taxes on your high pulpit would do some good. But heaven forbid we do that - because the real answer isn't "oh people die in a bad economy." It's "I'm unwilling to support my fellow americans in a proper way, I'd rather them risk their lives instead of providing some support during difficult times." e.g. "my taxes!". It's a bad faith argument. The economy has been bad before and we never cared about the poor then.
    - dougmwne 6y ago
      I think it is a valid concern. A bad economy kills. The so-called diseases of despair[1] kill more than 150k a year in the US. And much suffering is caused by limited opportunities and limited hope. These limited prospects can and have have taken down many governments in the past. And regime change is rarely a bloodless process. There are no perfect solutions when it comes to governance. We must do our best to promote good outcomes and mitigate the bad. I very much want my government to worry about the economy, just as I want it to worry about the virus. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_despair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_despair
arkitaip 6y ago
You can't really tell if you're in a high risk group unless you've done extensive health testing.
sequoia 6y ago
> You have to be in a high risk group. You have to be in a high risk group for what? To die? As far as I know, while some health conditions or age raise risk of covid death or morbidity, there is no group that is without risk of death, i.e. anyone might die from Covid19. Is that your understanding as well, or do you know of some demographic group that has experienced 0 deaths?
- snazz 6y ago
  To play the devil's advocate, the line of reasoning you used in your comment isn't very useful. Just because more than zero 5- to 14-year-olds have died from covid does not negate the fact that their risk is minuscule compared to other age groups. With a large enough sample size, there are always going to be outliers.
  - sequoia 6y ago
    Fair enough. But this "I don't have to worry because I'm young and healthy!" besides being incredibly selfish (implied "who cares if I kill people around me by spreading the virus") it's also bullshit: it is not true that you don't have to worry, that there's no risk of mortality or morbidity. I am happy to grant that the risk is much smaller, but just like the "kids can't get or spread covid" MYTH that people have been grasping to for dear life in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this "only old people die of it" myth needs to be squashed.
    - orangecat 6y ago
      it is not true that you don't have to worry, that there's no risk of mortality or morbidity For young healthy people, it's true in the same sense that you don't have to worry about getting struck by lightning or attacked by a shark. These things happen, but they're so rare that it's silly to go through your life in constant fear. besides being incredibly selfish It is not selfish to consider whether it's possible to protect vulnerable people without demanding that everyone give up their social lives, children's education, and jobs for a year. just like the "kids can't get or spread covid" MYTH that people have been grasping to for dear life in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary What evidence? Schools haven't been significant drivers of infection or deaths anywhere in the world. Yes, the risk is not literally zero, but if that's your criterion then you'd never leave your bedroom. this "only old people die of it" myth needs to be squashed If everyone had the risk factor of a healthy 30 year old (say, 1 in 10,000 chance of death and 1 in 2500 chance of serious complications), would you still support shutting everything down?
joshgel 6y ago
You do not have to be in a high risk group. I've seen people not in high risk groups die. Your odds may be lower, but no one is immune. (I guess except those who survived it or got the vaccine)

smeyer 6y ago

>Over the next 38 days, the virus spread to 176 other people. Seven of them died. Seven people died. This isn't some hypothetical where people are acting like there's risk where there isn't; it's a story of seven real, living, breathing humans passing away.

war1025 6y ago
People die. I'm becoming more and more callus about the whole thing and beginning to think we just need to adjust our expectations and accept that people die. I was told recently that my town is in terrible shape and the hospitals are nearly overwhelmed. Listening further, I learned that "nearly overwhelmed" meant we had capacity for two or three people to be really sick with Coronavirus. If we need to decimate our economy because only two or three people can be really sick at once, then that is the wrong trade-off in my opinion.
- sequoia 6y ago
  'fighting the virus harms the economy' Would you believe it if I told you that not fighting the virus has an even bigger toll on the economy? Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, how much less economic impact would have resulted. But then, as now, we wanted to "protect the economy" and avoid restrictions as long as possible. But this time the strategy will work? I have trouble believing that.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, Europe had about the strictest lockdown you can imagine and their economy isn't exactly peaches and cream right now. And they have spiking case counts just like the US right now.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Why are you conflating "aggressively addressed this problem" with a strict lockdown? The spring lockdown made sense, in that we didn't really have much information. At this point, we have a bunch of other tools that we aren't using, because people have decided that doing anything is somehow the equivalent of a strict lockdown.
      - war1025 6y ago
        > Why are you conflating "aggressively addressed this problem" with a strict lockdown? The hypothetical was "Imagine if we had addressed the problem in March?" We did in fact lock the country down for several months. People seem quick to forget it for political reasons.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Yes, but it's a failure of imagination to assume that a strict lockdown is the only measure that would be part of aggressively addressing the problem.
        war1025 6y ago
        You are putting words in my mouth. I was responding to an accusation that we didn't act strictly enough back in March. I agree we know much more about the virus now and should be tailoring our mitigation efforts accordingly. I would say that in general we are failing on that front however.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        I have not put words in your mouth, I've questioned your interpretation of the comment you replied to. You stick to that interpretation here, because they didn't say anything about 'strictly enough', they said we didn't aggressively address the situation, and we didn't. The 'lockdown' such as it was, was a significant measure, but it apparently was also in many minds all we needed to do.
  - abduhl 6y ago
    Would I believe someone who works at Postmates with over a decade of experience in the software industry bubble when they offer an opinion on the effects of a novel virus pandemic on the overall economy due to high level policy decisions? Absolutely not.
    - sequoia 6y ago
      I appreciate that you want to hear from experts. Instead of me, why not listen instead to Dr. Michael Osterholm, PhD MPH, "an American epidemiologist, regents professor, and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota." His podcast is here: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-osterholm-update-covid-19/id1504360345 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-osterholm-update-c... give it a listen and let me know what you think!
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Are there significant restrictions in place in your town, or is it the pandemic that is hurting the economy? Also, the word for "cruel disregard" is callous.
- RationalThought 6y ago
  I'm becoming more and more callous about people who don't give a shit if their selfishness kills others. Guess what, that goes two ways. If you can't be bothered to wear a mask and socially distance, and you are fine with people dying because they've committed the sin of having asthma. If you're ok with perfectly healthy young adults having heart issues because they survived covid-19, then I'm ok with YOU suffering while the civilized world tries to save lives.
  - dang 6y ago
    We've banned this account for breaking HN's guidelines. Can you please not create accounts to do that with? It will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - RationalThought 6y ago
      The others in the thread were talking about killing people like me, yet they are not banned. That's horrible. Truly.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  I am going to jump to your aid, because I suspect the downvotes are coming. I think it is ok to question if we are doing the right thing. There are intellectually honest ways to do that and intellectually dishonest ways. I do think we should do everything we can to avoid becoming callous. Some amount of of emotional fatigue is to be expected though. We are talking about nearly 250k deaths so far. That is a completely overwhelming number. And the lockdowns and general fear has created an immeasurable impact on the the future world economy, political stability and mental health. The science is clear that the risk of COVID morbidity and mortality is not evenly distributed. There could be more than one good way to manage this risk and keep our healthcare system functioning. As we start distributing the vaccine, we are going to have a great opportunity to mitigate a large portion of the risk for some people, while accepting a lower risk for others as the price to pay for getting back to normal as soon as possible. We make these kinds of population risk decisions all the time and no one bats an eye. Simply getting in your car every day and trusting your life to its imperfect safety systems is one example. Soon we will need to draw that line of what risk we, as a society will accept, and then get on with it.
- theplague42 6y ago
  It's a lot more than two or three people. And the decimation would be a lot less bad if stimulus relief was passed. How large is your town, that the hospital only has a couple ventilators?
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Why can you accept people dying, but not accept the economy not doing well? The economy goes up and down. It's a fact of life. Why worry about it?
  - war1025 6y ago
    > Why can you accept people dying, but not accept the economy not doing well? In the grand scheme of "the economy", my portfolio is up something like 8% for the year last time I checked. My job is stable. In the locality of "the economy", I have heard multiple businesses in my area say that they are barely hanging on by a thread and will be forced to close permanently if the state forces them to shut down again. People might not be dying from the shutdowns, but it sure is an uneven load we're asking people to carry. Particularly from this high pulpit of HN, where we nearly all have cushy tech jobs where we don't have to interact with anyone to get paid.
    - dougmwne 6y ago
      People are almost certainly dying from the shutdowns. Hopefully less than we save from virus, but this is a difficult thing to measure.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      > People might not be dying from the shutdowns, but it sure is an uneven load we're asking people to carry. Particularly from this high pulpit of HN, where we nearly all have cushy tech jobs where we don't have to interact with anyone to get paid. Seems like a perfect opportunity for the government to continue supporting people. Perhaps some taxes on your high pulpit would do some good. But heaven forbid we do that - because the real answer isn't "oh people die in a bad economy." It's "I'm unwilling to support my fellow americans in a proper way, I'd rather them risk their lives instead of providing some support during difficult times." e.g. "my taxes!". It's a bad faith argument. The economy has been bad before and we never cared about the poor then.
  - dougmwne 6y ago
    I think it is a valid concern. A bad economy kills. The so-called diseases of despair[1] kill more than 150k a year in the US. And much suffering is caused by limited opportunities and limited hope. These limited prospects can and have have taken down many governments in the past. And regime change is rarely a bloodless process. There are no perfect solutions when it comes to governance. We must do our best to promote good outcomes and mitigate the bad. I very much want my government to worry about the economy, just as I want it to worry about the virus. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_despair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_despair

arkitaip 6y ago

You can't really tell if you're in a high risk group unless you've done extensive health testing.

sequoia 6y ago

> You have to be in a high risk group. You have to be in a high risk group for what? To die? As far as I know, while some health conditions or age raise risk of covid death or morbidity, there is no group that is without risk of death, i.e. anyone might die from Covid19. Is that your understanding as well, or do you know of some demographic group that has experienced 0 deaths?

snazz 6y ago
To play the devil's advocate, the line of reasoning you used in your comment isn't very useful. Just because more than zero 5- to 14-year-olds have died from covid does not negate the fact that their risk is minuscule compared to other age groups. With a large enough sample size, there are always going to be outliers.
- sequoia 6y ago
  Fair enough. But this "I don't have to worry because I'm young and healthy!" besides being incredibly selfish (implied "who cares if I kill people around me by spreading the virus") it's also bullshit: it is not true that you don't have to worry, that there's no risk of mortality or morbidity. I am happy to grant that the risk is much smaller, but just like the "kids can't get or spread covid" MYTH that people have been grasping to for dear life in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this "only old people die of it" myth needs to be squashed.
  - orangecat 6y ago
    it is not true that you don't have to worry, that there's no risk of mortality or morbidity For young healthy people, it's true in the same sense that you don't have to worry about getting struck by lightning or attacked by a shark. These things happen, but they're so rare that it's silly to go through your life in constant fear. besides being incredibly selfish It is not selfish to consider whether it's possible to protect vulnerable people without demanding that everyone give up their social lives, children's education, and jobs for a year. just like the "kids can't get or spread covid" MYTH that people have been grasping to for dear life in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary What evidence? Schools haven't been significant drivers of infection or deaths anywhere in the world. Yes, the risk is not literally zero, but if that's your criterion then you'd never leave your bedroom. this "only old people die of it" myth needs to be squashed If everyone had the risk factor of a healthy 30 year old (say, 1 in 10,000 chance of death and 1 in 2500 chance of serious complications), would you still support shutting everything down?

joshgel 6y ago

You do not have to be in a high risk group. I've seen people not in high risk groups die. Your odds may be lower, but no one is immune. (I guess except those who survived it or got the vaccine)