5 ms·

Around 2 thousands people die every day from heart diseases in the US, every day (635k annually). Not in extreme temporary conditions. That's a standard baselin

by dpc_pw 6y ago

Around 2 thousands people die every day from heart diseases in the US, every day (635k annually). Not in extreme temporary conditions. That's a standard baseline, year after year like that. I wonder how many lives would been saved if we had mandatory 30 minutes jogging sessions, fastfood lockdowns and vegetable subsidies.

jessaustin 6y ago
Is wearing a mask while in public really so unbearable?
- mikecoles 6y ago
  Easier solution: you stay home and the rest of us will get on with life. If you'd like to wear a mask, go for it. If not, don't.
  - toomanyrichies 6y ago
    Not everyone has the option to stay at home. Essential workers, for example. Making them choose between forced exposure to COVID vectors and joblessness is not much of a choice.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    I wear a mask in public, and I have since March. I'm speaking up for your elderly and obese and otherwise-compromised relatives and neighbors, whom you seem determined to kill. If you're unhappy with how the pandemic has affected your business, you should ask the politicians why the CARES act gave the rich $5T and the rest of us a one-time $1200.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      > If you're unhappy with how the pandemic has affected your business, you should ask the politicians why the CARES act gave the rich $5T and the rest of us a one-time $1200. Better yet, ask why half of them won't get off their ass and appeal for everyone to wear masks. Call it a civil duty; call people who wear their masks patriots/hero; equate a refusal to do so is like kneeling during the national anthem or burning the flag. I don't really care what, but they need to do something. There's a lot of science supporting mask wearing as an effective way of mitigating the impact of covid. If everyone wore masks in public and around any person who is not a member of their household, the economy would not be so stressed; hospitals would not be so stressed; and we could largely go back to "normal." At this point, every time you go out in public without a mask, you are lighting cash on fire. You are hurting American companies and helping foreign ones. No amount of government stimulus is going to bring back all of the people who died or were permanently crippled from covid. Nor will it give back the year of schooling that children have lost due to covid. The cynic in me thinks that some leaders are dragging their feet with the goal of dragging the American economy into the toilet so that they can blame the next guy for it.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        Is anyone in USA so inspired by politicians that they would slightly inconvenience themselves in response to a polite request by a politician? If anything I'd expect the effect to be negative, especially with polarizing people like Pompeo or Pelosi. (You'll never convince me that a significant portion of mask-wearing in "blue" states isn't due to Trump's famous opposition to masks.) Many of those who wear masks do so because we are aware of the respiratory pandemic underway, and not pathologically selfish. Certain sports stars or perhaps "country" musicians could have a one-time effect on mask rates if they really went hard, but each time we fire one of these bullets it's used up. If "Florida Georgia Line" go all-in on masks, they won't be cool enough to tell us about vaccines.
        mywittyname 6y ago
        Politicians are one thread in the tapestry of news and information that blankets the country. Yes, people listen to them. It's abundantly clear that the entire GOP coordinates with Fox News and other sources (reddit, FB, etc) to deliver consistent messages that are curated and on-brand. So when I say politicians, I really mean this entire machination. If the entire Conservative Messaging Platform decided to tackle this problem and encourage mask wearing, we could get a critical mass of people to do so. They could have Laura Ingram, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, and a bunch of lesser known pundits/politicians harping on this day-in and day-out. While having facebook and r/conservative bots posting pro-mask memes. We know this is an effective way of influencing behavior, because we've seen it work numerous times throughout the past decade. Too bad it's never used for anything good.
        jessaustin 6y ago
        You probably aren't wrong with respect to coordination between politicians and "news" firms. When I read "GOP with Fox" I heard "DNC with MSNBC" as an echo. (My father watches MSNBC so I see more of it than Fox, just by mistake.) Just like the latter (to be more correct, the same) machine, however, it isn't magical. There are a set of buttons and pressing them has a set of effects. Some choices make others impossible. Trump could have made mask-wearing a conservative thing in January. In December that's not an option. Everyone, even his fans, would just laugh at him. No other Republican has any power to change red-staters' minds about anything. Eventually there might be a different Republican with influence, but until then many Americans must be reached in other ways.
    - nradov 6y ago
      Why didn't you wear a mask in public before March? Influenza is also a potentially fatal respiratory disease that is frequently spread by asymptomatic carriers. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/cbn/2005/cbnreport_103105.html https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/cbn/2005/cbnreport_1... We have a vaccine for it, but some years the vaccine is as little as 19% effective. In particular the vaccine doesn't work very well on immunocompromised people. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates... You might have already killed elderly and obese and otherwise-compromised relatives and neighbors by your failure to wear a mask in previous years! COVID-19 fatality rate is around 6 – 8 times worse than influenza, but that's just a difference in degree. Personally I do wear a mask in circumstances where it actually makes a difference to slow down the COVID-19 pandemic, and encourage others to do likewise. But spare us the moralizing and appeals to emotion. That doesn't help, it just divides people.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        The Surgeon General and the NIAID director both told me not to. They've since changed their minds, but I changed mine before they did. I'm kind of surprised they haven't resigned, to underscore the certainty of their new recommendations...
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Easiest solution: you act like the adult you ostensibly are and wear a mask, and we adults will get on with life. And if you don't want to be an adult about it, then you are welcome to stay home, where you can be yourself without any need to wear any sort of clothing at all.
  - gdulli 6y ago
    We don't tell people in wheelchairs to stay at home while the rest of us get on with life. We accommodate them because pure survival of the fittest is the baseline of how animals live and civilization is about evolving beyond that.
varjag 6y ago
Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death, period. You are trying to downplay COVID19 by comparing it with the leading cause of death among people, contemplate on this.
adolfojp 6y ago
Is heart disease transmitted from person to person?
- umvi 6y ago
  From parents to children, yes, both genetically and via (un)supervised learning.
  - sixstringtheory 6y ago
    You can't catch heart disease from breathing near other people with heart disease.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
What do you suppose the upper limit on daily deaths related to heart disease (a variety of conditions) is? What do you suppose the upper limit on daily deaths for covid19 (a single infectious disease) is?
alexashka 6y ago
Yes, but how many mega-corporations would become less profitable as a result? No mega-corp left behind I say.
toomanyrichies 6y ago
I am not endangering others by choosing to eat a cheeseburger. I am, however, doing so by choosing not wear a mask. Your right to swing your fists ends where my nose begins.
- CivBase 6y ago
  > Your right to swing your fists ends where my nose begins. I keep seeing this analogy when it comes to masks and COVID-19, but I don't think it's a great one. The difference between me punching your face and not wearing a mask is risk and intent. The overwhelming majority of people do not intend to transmit any virus to those around them. It's pretty difficult to punch someone in the face without intending to harm them. We also cannot avoid risking harm to someone else. Despite my best efforts, I risk hurting someone every time I sit behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. However, there are clearly some risks that are too great. If I punch you in the nose, it's a pretty sure thing you will be harmed. But if I do not wear a mask in a public space... the odds aren't particularly bad on any single outing. What makes the mask thing really troublesome is pinning down just what the risks of transmission are with and without masks over an extended period of time in a variety of normal scenarios. I've seen enough to personally conclude that wearing a mask in public spaces is probably a good idea if I cannot avoid public spaces altogether. It's just hard to convince everybody that masks are effective enough at reducing risk - and that the risk is great enough to warrant the (very minor) sacrifice of freedom - to mandate them without also overstating their effectiveness. I stand by the gist of your argument, though. There is a significant difference between risking harm to yourself and risking harm to those around you. I just wanted to address that analogy since I've been seeing it everywhere and I think it oversimplifies the conflict.
  - toomanyrichies 6y ago
    I appreciate your counter-argument. Let me address intent first, then risk. I would argue that intent might be relevant when assigning legal consequences, but not when assessing the damage caused. If I catch a case of COVID, I’m not somehow less likely to die or suffer long-term effects because the person who gave it to me didn't intend to do so. Nor can I pay my hospital bills with their good intentions. And if they engaged in reckless behavior such as attending super-spreader events or failing to wear a mask, I have to question how good their intentions were in the first place. It sounds like the drunk driver who says “But I didn’t intend to run over that pedestrian”. Maybe not, but their gross negligence allowed it to happen. Now for risk. I agree that we can’t eliminate risk from our lives entirely. But I hope that's not the litmus test for whether to take any prevention steps at all, especially if the cost of taking those steps is minimal. Take your example of getting behind the wheel of a car. It's likely that sooner or later, if I drive long enough, I'll get into some kind of accident, even if it's just someone rear-ending my car. I can't prevent this entirely, but I can mitigate the risk by getting regular maintenance on my car (i.e. new brake pads so I don't cause a fender-bender), refraining from driving drunk, keeping my auto insurance policy current so that I can pay out in the event I'm at-fault, etc. Wearing a mask is the public-health equivalent of getting new brake pads. It won't eliminate the risk of spreading COVID entirely, but that doesn't mean I'm going to throw my hands up and admit defeat. I would further argue that people are less-than-great judges of just how big a risk vector they are, because of the delay between when someone catches COVID and when they present symptoms. I've heard it can be up to two weeks, during which time that person is unknowingly exposing others. Because of this, and given the potential life-or-death consequences of catching COVID, it seems insane not to err on the side of caution.

by dpc_pw 6y ago

jessaustin 6y ago

Is wearing a mask while in public really so unbearable?

mikecoles 6y ago
Easier solution: you stay home and the rest of us will get on with life. If you'd like to wear a mask, go for it. If not, don't.
- toomanyrichies 6y ago
  Not everyone has the option to stay at home. Essential workers, for example. Making them choose between forced exposure to COVID vectors and joblessness is not much of a choice.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  I wear a mask in public, and I have since March. I'm speaking up for your elderly and obese and otherwise-compromised relatives and neighbors, whom you seem determined to kill. If you're unhappy with how the pandemic has affected your business, you should ask the politicians why the CARES act gave the rich $5T and the rest of us a one-time $1200.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    > If you're unhappy with how the pandemic has affected your business, you should ask the politicians why the CARES act gave the rich $5T and the rest of us a one-time $1200. Better yet, ask why half of them won't get off their ass and appeal for everyone to wear masks. Call it a civil duty; call people who wear their masks patriots/hero; equate a refusal to do so is like kneeling during the national anthem or burning the flag. I don't really care what, but they need to do something. There's a lot of science supporting mask wearing as an effective way of mitigating the impact of covid. If everyone wore masks in public and around any person who is not a member of their household, the economy would not be so stressed; hospitals would not be so stressed; and we could largely go back to "normal." At this point, every time you go out in public without a mask, you are lighting cash on fire. You are hurting American companies and helping foreign ones. No amount of government stimulus is going to bring back all of the people who died or were permanently crippled from covid. Nor will it give back the year of schooling that children have lost due to covid. The cynic in me thinks that some leaders are dragging their feet with the goal of dragging the American economy into the toilet so that they can blame the next guy for it.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Is anyone in USA so inspired by politicians that they would slightly inconvenience themselves in response to a polite request by a politician? If anything I'd expect the effect to be negative, especially with polarizing people like Pompeo or Pelosi. (You'll never convince me that a significant portion of mask-wearing in "blue" states isn't due to Trump's famous opposition to masks.) Many of those who wear masks do so because we are aware of the respiratory pandemic underway, and not pathologically selfish. Certain sports stars or perhaps "country" musicians could have a one-time effect on mask rates if they really went hard, but each time we fire one of these bullets it's used up. If "Florida Georgia Line" go all-in on masks, they won't be cool enough to tell us about vaccines.
      - mywittyname 6y ago
        Politicians are one thread in the tapestry of news and information that blankets the country. Yes, people listen to them. It's abundantly clear that the entire GOP coordinates with Fox News and other sources (reddit, FB, etc) to deliver consistent messages that are curated and on-brand. So when I say politicians, I really mean this entire machination. If the entire Conservative Messaging Platform decided to tackle this problem and encourage mask wearing, we could get a critical mass of people to do so. They could have Laura Ingram, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, and a bunch of lesser known pundits/politicians harping on this day-in and day-out. While having facebook and r/conservative bots posting pro-mask memes. We know this is an effective way of influencing behavior, because we've seen it work numerous times throughout the past decade. Too bad it's never used for anything good.
        jessaustin 6y ago
        You probably aren't wrong with respect to coordination between politicians and "news" firms. When I read "GOP with Fox" I heard "DNC with MSNBC" as an echo. (My father watches MSNBC so I see more of it than Fox, just by mistake.) Just like the latter (to be more correct, the same) machine, however, it isn't magical. There are a set of buttons and pressing them has a set of effects. Some choices make others impossible. Trump could have made mask-wearing a conservative thing in January. In December that's not an option. Everyone, even his fans, would just laugh at him. No other Republican has any power to change red-staters' minds about anything. Eventually there might be a different Republican with influence, but until then many Americans must be reached in other ways.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Why didn't you wear a mask in public before March? Influenza is also a potentially fatal respiratory disease that is frequently spread by asymptomatic carriers. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/cbn/2005/cbnreport_103105.html https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/cbn/2005/cbnreport_1... We have a vaccine for it, but some years the vaccine is as little as 19% effective. In particular the vaccine doesn't work very well on immunocompromised people. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates... You might have already killed elderly and obese and otherwise-compromised relatives and neighbors by your failure to wear a mask in previous years! COVID-19 fatality rate is around 6 – 8 times worse than influenza, but that's just a difference in degree. Personally I do wear a mask in circumstances where it actually makes a difference to slow down the COVID-19 pandemic, and encourage others to do likewise. But spare us the moralizing and appeals to emotion. That doesn't help, it just divides people.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      The Surgeon General and the NIAID director both told me not to. They've since changed their minds, but I changed mine before they did. I'm kind of surprised they haven't resigned, to underscore the certainty of their new recommendations...
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Easiest solution: you act like the adult you ostensibly are and wear a mask, and we adults will get on with life. And if you don't want to be an adult about it, then you are welcome to stay home, where you can be yourself without any need to wear any sort of clothing at all.
- gdulli 6y ago
  We don't tell people in wheelchairs to stay at home while the rest of us get on with life. We accommodate them because pure survival of the fittest is the baseline of how animals live and civilization is about evolving beyond that.

varjag 6y ago

Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death, period. You are trying to downplay COVID19 by comparing it with the leading cause of death among people, contemplate on this.

adolfojp 6y ago

Is heart disease transmitted from person to person?

umvi 6y ago
From parents to children, yes, both genetically and via (un)supervised learning.
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  You can't catch heart disease from breathing near other people with heart disease.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

What do you suppose the upper limit on daily deaths related to heart disease (a variety of conditions) is? What do you suppose the upper limit on daily deaths for covid19 (a single infectious disease) is?

alexashka 6y ago

Yes, but how many mega-corporations would become less profitable as a result? No mega-corp left behind I say.

toomanyrichies 6y ago

I am not endangering others by choosing to eat a cheeseburger. I am, however, doing so by choosing not wear a mask. Your right to swing your fists ends where my nose begins.

CivBase 6y ago
> Your right to swing your fists ends where my nose begins. I keep seeing this analogy when it comes to masks and COVID-19, but I don't think it's a great one. The difference between me punching your face and not wearing a mask is risk and intent. The overwhelming majority of people do not intend to transmit any virus to those around them. It's pretty difficult to punch someone in the face without intending to harm them. We also cannot avoid risking harm to someone else. Despite my best efforts, I risk hurting someone every time I sit behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. However, there are clearly some risks that are too great. If I punch you in the nose, it's a pretty sure thing you will be harmed. But if I do not wear a mask in a public space... the odds aren't particularly bad on any single outing. What makes the mask thing really troublesome is pinning down just what the risks of transmission are with and without masks over an extended period of time in a variety of normal scenarios. I've seen enough to personally conclude that wearing a mask in public spaces is probably a good idea if I cannot avoid public spaces altogether. It's just hard to convince everybody that masks are effective enough at reducing risk - and that the risk is great enough to warrant the (very minor) sacrifice of freedom - to mandate them without also overstating their effectiveness. I stand by the gist of your argument, though. There is a significant difference between risking harm to yourself and risking harm to those around you. I just wanted to address that analogy since I've been seeing it everywhere and I think it oversimplifies the conflict.
- toomanyrichies 6y ago
  I appreciate your counter-argument. Let me address intent first, then risk. I would argue that intent might be relevant when assigning legal consequences, but not when assessing the damage caused. If I catch a case of COVID, I’m not somehow less likely to die or suffer long-term effects because the person who gave it to me didn't intend to do so. Nor can I pay my hospital bills with their good intentions. And if they engaged in reckless behavior such as attending super-spreader events or failing to wear a mask, I have to question how good their intentions were in the first place. It sounds like the drunk driver who says “But I didn’t intend to run over that pedestrian”. Maybe not, but their gross negligence allowed it to happen. Now for risk. I agree that we can’t eliminate risk from our lives entirely. But I hope that's not the litmus test for whether to take any prevention steps at all, especially if the cost of taking those steps is minimal. Take your example of getting behind the wheel of a car. It's likely that sooner or later, if I drive long enough, I'll get into some kind of accident, even if it's just someone rear-ending my car. I can't prevent this entirely, but I can mitigate the risk by getting regular maintenance on my car (i.e. new brake pads so I don't cause a fender-bender), refraining from driving drunk, keeping my auto insurance policy current so that I can pay out in the event I'm at-fault, etc. Wearing a mask is the public-health equivalent of getting new brake pads. It won't eliminate the risk of spreading COVID entirely, but that doesn't mean I'm going to throw my hands up and admit defeat. I would further argue that people are less-than-great judges of just how big a risk vector they are, because of the delay between when someone catches COVID and when they present symptoms. I've heard it can be up to two weeks, during which time that person is unknowingly exposing others. Because of this, and given the potential life-or-death consequences of catching COVID, it seems insane not to err on the side of caution.