5 ms·

Removing personal choice should sound alarm bells for anyone who has read Brave New World, 1984 or the Gulag Archipelago. If you permit me to stereotype the HN

Removing personal choice should sound alarm bells for anyone who has read Brave New World, 1984 or the Gulag Archipelago. If you permit me to stereotype the HN demographic here- you are probably reading this comment from the comfort of a warm apartment with running water and you're probably not hungry. Removing personal choice is an extremely dangerous idea where those reliable things that you take for granted start to disappear. All you have to do is look to N. Korean, Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela right now, this day to see how disastrous it is. You may call me hyperbolic but this is exactly how it starts. If we have to lose some elderly people to a virus (with an IFR of .1%, median age of death of 84 and 92% with comorbidity), i'm sorry to say that we have to lose them. The alternative is authoritative oppression, starvation and misery for hundreds of millions of others. Make no mistake, this is exactly what is at risk when you talk about removing personal freedoms.

claudeganon 6y ago
This post explains a lot about why many Americans are incapable to taking basic, rational steps to halt the progression of this disease. If we were more capable of reflection and putting others before ourselves, we wouldn’t have to invoke a bunch of irrelevant boogeyman to justify our shortsightedness.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
slg 6y ago
Stopping people from spreading a deadly disease doesn't make us North Korea. Not every slope is slippery. We can move further along a spectrum without being guaranteed to fall off a cliff. I don't have the personal freedom to get drunk and drive my car down the highway because that puts the lives of everyone on the road in jeopardy. Spreading disease is the same thing. Your personal freedoms end when they start invading my personal freedom to continue living.
- ls612 6y ago
  >Not every slope is slippery. We can move further along a spectrum without being guaranteed to fall off a cliff. Let me ask you something; Has there been any setting in the past 50 years other than changing sexual mores in which people have gained any personal freedom? And have any of the instances in which people lost bits of their freedoms in that same timeframe ever been reversed (again aside from changing sexual mores)?
  - slg 6y ago
    I don't see how the overall trend is relevant to this specific issue. I also don't understand why you are ignoring "sexual mores" or even what that specifically means. Does that include every increase in personal freedom related to gender and sexuality? It would be weird to ignore those because they are obviously the biggest increases in freedom over the last 50 years since many of the biggest changes of the civil rights movement occurred just outside that window. If you do want to ignore all those issue, I will point out that freedom of speech is more prominent today than it was 50 years ago. After repeal of the fairness doctrine, the loosening of obscenity laws, and various court cases including Citizens United most recently, free speech rights might be at an all time high in the US. Also there are examples of freedom being lost and regained in gun ownership. The assault weapons ban in the US that lasted 10 years is one that comes to mind.
    - ls612 6y ago
      Thank you, I had forgotten about the assault weapons ban and the fairness doctrine. The reason I said that about sexual mores is because from my perspective almost all of the increases in personal freedom since the civil rights era have been related to that, and other freedoms have mostly been on a steady decline since that time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good for people to not be forced into some religion’s definition of a ‘good relationship’, but if that’s the only thing heading in the right direction and everything else from an individual rights perspective is heading in the wrong direction it’s a distinction very much worth considering.
mmastrac 6y ago
First of all, your extra-low IFR is trying to draw a false equivalency between COVID-19 and less-fatal diseases like the flu. It is more like 0.5%-1% (if not more), and the IFR once you hit 65+ is 1.5% and rises quickly. So when a pandemic is hitting us and our collective personal responsibility is failing, our only choice is to roll over and get sick? There are plenty of options to feed those who are going hungry due to COVID, but you should look at who is throwing up roadblocks to assistance.
- timr 6y ago
  "It is more like 0.5%-1% (if not more), and the IFR once you hit 65+ is 1.5% and rises quickly." The current best estimates of IFR for SARS-CoV2 are: * 0-19 years: 0.00003 (0.003%) * 20-49 years: 0.0002 (0.02%) * 50-69 years: 0.005 (0.5%) * 70+ years: 0.054. (5.4%) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
  - mmastrac 6y ago
    https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-34-ifr/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-ana... "Using these age-specific estimates, we estimate the overall IFR in a typical low-income country, with a population structure skewed towards younger individuals, to be 0.23% (0.14-0.42 95% prediction interval range). In contrast, in a typical high income country, with a greater concentration of elderly individuals, we estimate the overall IFR to be 1.15% (0.78-1.79 95% prediction interval range)."
    - timr 6y ago
      There have been dozens of papers in this area, primarily differing (as does your link) in the assumed balance of ages in a society. The CDC citation is aggregating these studies, and (essentially) picking the middle. Cherry picking a single study from the larger pool is not a rebuttal.
maxerickson 6y ago
What I don't understand is why people don't make better personal choices? It's very strange that people won't just wear a mask (with it over their mouth and nose). There might be some tiny fraction of people that have a real issue with it, but not anywhere the number of people that feel the need to loudly object to it.
- goostavos 6y ago
  Is there room for a position of liking wearing a mask, liking other people wearing a mask, but also supporting people's personal choice to not wear one..? Surely obvious, but there are people who will think that you make bad personal choices and need to make better ones. If those people also wield extraordinary power, well, it becomes less fun to find yourself suddenly having wrongthink.
- flubert 6y ago
  Does anyone have statistics on mask wearing compliance in public? Seems like someone could use ML to identify people with and without masks. Last time I went out shopping it was 100% compliance (and using a mask correctly) as near as I could tell.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Here, in a northern Michigan county that is spiking, compliance is decent but I see a few people pulling their mask aside pretty much anywhere I go. (I mean inside places; I don't wear a mask outside either, as I am not going places where there are crowds outside)
- no-s 6y ago
  >> There might be some tiny fraction of people that have a real issue with it, but not anywhere the number of people that feel the need to loudly object to it. Let's not forget the cadre of objectors who want us to wear a mask to protect their peace of mind, explicitly stating this goal as needful. Or those who vociferously demean anyone who objects for personal reasons (e.g. I tear up and start sneezing if I wear a typical cloth mask or sterile surgical mask for more than a few minutes, and have a sinus headache for several hours subsequent; I'm not the only one in this class). Can you cite the transmission rate for asymptomatic carriers? The false positives for the various tests? The critical aspects of the efficacy of masking?
artursapek 6y ago
The tragic thing is, it's much easier to measure "coronavirus deaths" and "coronavirus cases" than it is to measure the price we pay to minimize those things. It's your typical case of over-optimizing for a single KPI and losing the bigger picture. The measures we've taken are deteriorating society in more subtle ways, and there are deaths and suffering indirectly caused by these measures. They are just not easy to sum up. How many people have killed themselves because of the lockdowns and economic problems? I know of at least one. How many people in third world countries are starving as a result of it? I've read millions. How many families are being torn apart due to increased divorces? These kinds of effects pay out their harm over longer periods of time, and in less obvious ways. We aren't tracking those on a widget on TV. Because the pro-lockdown, pro-authoritarian case is so much easier to back with clear and obvious numbers the government and media are able to easily manipulate the population, most of whom won't consider the trade-offs, into conformity. This is so sad to watch.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  The US hasn't been meaningfully locked down since July, and it was pretty lax starting in May. It's not the government ruining people's lives, it's the pandemic.
enumjorge 6y ago
This is such a simplistic take on the virus. There’s not just the death rate, there’s also the lingering health effects many people are experiencing after getting over COVID. There’s the fact that it’s not just affecting elderly people, setting aside the suggestion that the elderly are expendable. There’s also the fact that in many places in the US it’s pushing the medical system to its very limits. In North Dakota the governor asked nurses who are COVID positive to go back to work because they are so short staffed [0]. What about their personal freedom? What about the people who don’t want to work in an environment that might put them or one of their loved ones at risk? You talk about living in a bubble but you don’t seem to consider the teachers, first responders, medical workers, who have to make the choice between working during a pandemic or losing their livelihood. None countries you mentioned didn’t descend into authoritarianism by enforcing restrictions during a once-in-a-century pandemic. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/north-dakota-lets-healthcare-workers-covid-stay-job-record-surge-n1247487 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/north-dakota-lets-healt...

claudeganon 6y ago

This post explains a lot about why many Americans are incapable to taking basic, rational steps to halt the progression of this disease. If we were more capable of reflection and putting others before ourselves, we wouldn’t have to invoke a bunch of irrelevant boogeyman to justify our shortsightedness.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

slg 6y ago

Stopping people from spreading a deadly disease doesn't make us North Korea. Not every slope is slippery. We can move further along a spectrum without being guaranteed to fall off a cliff. I don't have the personal freedom to get drunk and drive my car down the highway because that puts the lives of everyone on the road in jeopardy. Spreading disease is the same thing. Your personal freedoms end when they start invading my personal freedom to continue living.

ls612 6y ago
>Not every slope is slippery. We can move further along a spectrum without being guaranteed to fall off a cliff. Let me ask you something; Has there been any setting in the past 50 years other than changing sexual mores in which people have gained any personal freedom? And have any of the instances in which people lost bits of their freedoms in that same timeframe ever been reversed (again aside from changing sexual mores)?
- slg 6y ago
  I don't see how the overall trend is relevant to this specific issue. I also don't understand why you are ignoring "sexual mores" or even what that specifically means. Does that include every increase in personal freedom related to gender and sexuality? It would be weird to ignore those because they are obviously the biggest increases in freedom over the last 50 years since many of the biggest changes of the civil rights movement occurred just outside that window. If you do want to ignore all those issue, I will point out that freedom of speech is more prominent today than it was 50 years ago. After repeal of the fairness doctrine, the loosening of obscenity laws, and various court cases including Citizens United most recently, free speech rights might be at an all time high in the US. Also there are examples of freedom being lost and regained in gun ownership. The assault weapons ban in the US that lasted 10 years is one that comes to mind.
  - ls612 6y ago
    Thank you, I had forgotten about the assault weapons ban and the fairness doctrine. The reason I said that about sexual mores is because from my perspective almost all of the increases in personal freedom since the civil rights era have been related to that, and other freedoms have mostly been on a steady decline since that time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good for people to not be forced into some religion’s definition of a ‘good relationship’, but if that’s the only thing heading in the right direction and everything else from an individual rights perspective is heading in the wrong direction it’s a distinction very much worth considering.

mmastrac 6y ago

First of all, your extra-low IFR is trying to draw a false equivalency between COVID-19 and less-fatal diseases like the flu. It is more like 0.5%-1% (if not more), and the IFR once you hit 65+ is 1.5% and rises quickly. So when a pandemic is hitting us and our collective personal responsibility is failing, our only choice is to roll over and get sick? There are plenty of options to feed those who are going hungry due to COVID, but you should look at who is throwing up roadblocks to assistance.

timr 6y ago
"It is more like 0.5%-1% (if not more), and the IFR once you hit 65+ is 1.5% and rises quickly." The current best estimates of IFR for SARS-CoV2 are: * 0-19 years: 0.00003 (0.003%) * 20-49 years: 0.0002 (0.02%) * 50-69 years: 0.005 (0.5%) * 70+ years: 0.054. (5.4%) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
- mmastrac 6y ago
  https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-34-ifr/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-ana... "Using these age-specific estimates, we estimate the overall IFR in a typical low-income country, with a population structure skewed towards younger individuals, to be 0.23% (0.14-0.42 95% prediction interval range). In contrast, in a typical high income country, with a greater concentration of elderly individuals, we estimate the overall IFR to be 1.15% (0.78-1.79 95% prediction interval range)."
  - timr 6y ago
    There have been dozens of papers in this area, primarily differing (as does your link) in the assumed balance of ages in a society. The CDC citation is aggregating these studies, and (essentially) picking the middle. Cherry picking a single study from the larger pool is not a rebuttal.

maxerickson 6y ago

What I don't understand is why people don't make better personal choices? It's very strange that people won't just wear a mask (with it over their mouth and nose). There might be some tiny fraction of people that have a real issue with it, but not anywhere the number of people that feel the need to loudly object to it.

goostavos 6y ago
Is there room for a position of liking wearing a mask, liking other people wearing a mask, but also supporting people's personal choice to not wear one..? Surely obvious, but there are people who will think that you make bad personal choices and need to make better ones. If those people also wield extraordinary power, well, it becomes less fun to find yourself suddenly having wrongthink.
flubert 6y ago
Does anyone have statistics on mask wearing compliance in public? Seems like someone could use ML to identify people with and without masks. Last time I went out shopping it was 100% compliance (and using a mask correctly) as near as I could tell.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Here, in a northern Michigan county that is spiking, compliance is decent but I see a few people pulling their mask aside pretty much anywhere I go. (I mean inside places; I don't wear a mask outside either, as I am not going places where there are crowds outside)
no-s 6y ago
>> There might be some tiny fraction of people that have a real issue with it, but not anywhere the number of people that feel the need to loudly object to it. Let's not forget the cadre of objectors who want us to wear a mask to protect their peace of mind, explicitly stating this goal as needful. Or those who vociferously demean anyone who objects for personal reasons (e.g. I tear up and start sneezing if I wear a typical cloth mask or sterile surgical mask for more than a few minutes, and have a sinus headache for several hours subsequent; I'm not the only one in this class). Can you cite the transmission rate for asymptomatic carriers? The false positives for the various tests? The critical aspects of the efficacy of masking?

artursapek 6y ago

The tragic thing is, it's much easier to measure "coronavirus deaths" and "coronavirus cases" than it is to measure the price we pay to minimize those things. It's your typical case of over-optimizing for a single KPI and losing the bigger picture. The measures we've taken are deteriorating society in more subtle ways, and there are deaths and suffering indirectly caused by these measures. They are just not easy to sum up. How many people have killed themselves because of the lockdowns and economic problems? I know of at least one. How many people in third world countries are starving as a result of it? I've read millions. How many families are being torn apart due to increased divorces? These kinds of effects pay out their harm over longer periods of time, and in less obvious ways. We aren't tracking those on a widget on TV. Because the pro-lockdown, pro-authoritarian case is so much easier to back with clear and obvious numbers the government and media are able to easily manipulate the population, most of whom won't consider the trade-offs, into conformity. This is so sad to watch.

maxerickson 6y ago
The US hasn't been meaningfully locked down since July, and it was pretty lax starting in May. It's not the government ruining people's lives, it's the pandemic.

enumjorge 6y ago

This is such a simplistic take on the virus. There’s not just the death rate, there’s also the lingering health effects many people are experiencing after getting over COVID. There’s the fact that it’s not just affecting elderly people, setting aside the suggestion that the elderly are expendable. There’s also the fact that in many places in the US it’s pushing the medical system to its very limits. In North Dakota the governor asked nurses who are COVID positive to go back to work because they are so short staffed [0]. What about their personal freedom? What about the people who don’t want to work in an environment that might put them or one of their loved ones at risk? You talk about living in a bubble but you don’t seem to consider the teachers, first responders, medical workers, who have to make the choice between working during a pandemic or losing their livelihood. None countries you mentioned didn’t descend into authoritarianism by enforcing restrictions during a once-in-a-century pandemic. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/north-dakota-lets-healthcare-workers-covid-stay-job-record-surge-n1247487 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/north-dakota-lets-healt...