3 ms·

> you can't take my analogy and twist it My whole point is your analogy is flawed and you shouldn't use it for this purpose because it trivializes significant

> you can't take my analogy and twist it My whole point is your analogy is flawed and you shouldn't use it for this purpose because it trivializes significant components of the issue at hand. You said: > Once all the old/vulnerable wood is burned up, it's much more difficult for another forest fire of the same magnitude to happen ... Which is demonstrably wrong when you liken _people_ to the dry brush, which is exactly what you did. We aren't optimizing to minimize deaths in individual years (or else we'd just kill everyone right now and the death rate would spike and then drop to zero), we're optimizing for general well-being of the population. Your analogy is flat wrong, which is why I'm poking holes in it. It also belies a shocking lack of empathy for your fellow humans, which I frankly find alarming. > Where do you draw the line? I have no idea, and I don't think this is the venue to argue it, but I definitely don't think we're at it yet, and I would much rather err on the side of trying too hard to protect people's lives than not trying hard enough. For example, when death numbers from COVID were first being released, people compared them to car fatalities, going "Why are we so worried? Car crashes kill 100x as many people in the same timeframe." The point is not "we should not worry about COVID because other things are more deadly" but "there is an alarming new source of deaths, and we should be working to reduce death as much as we can in the interests of maximizing the population's happiness." EDIT: I mean, consider, the sitting US president called COVID "a hoax" for a good two months, then kept downplaying it for another two ("it'll be gone after November, you'll see"), and overall completely failed to make a plan at the federal level to, I dunno, provide more sick leave for people so they could actually avoid spreading it to their co-workers, or rent assistance for those out-of-work because we shut down the industries with high levels of communication, or support just wearing a mask when you go outside. We are so far and away from even a reasonable level of response to this it seems wholly disingenuous to pose the "but where do we _stop_ intervening?" argument.

umvi 6y ago
> We aren't optimizing to minimize deaths in individual years (or else we'd just kill everyone right now and the death rate would spike and then drop to zero), we're optimizing for general well-being of the population. I disagree. If we were optimizing for general well-being of the population we wouldn't be doing things that will push hundreds of millions into poverty[0] and drive up suicide rates[1]. From my perspective all the evidence points to us optimizing either for healthcare capacity or for minimizing covid-19 deaths. > "there is an alarming new source of deaths, and we should be working to reduce death as much as we can in the interests of maximizing the population's happiness." Well, clearly a huge % of the population is not happy with the current actions and policy being performed in the name of saving lives as evidenced by this thread. [0] https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/covid-19-fallout-could-push-half-a-billion-people-into-poverty-in-developing-countries.html https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/covid-19-fallout-co... [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-suicide-coronavirus-more-japanese-suicides-in-october-than-total-covid-deaths/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-suicide-coronavirus-more-...
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  > if we were optimizing for general well-being... Fair enough, I wasn't clear: we _should_ be optimizing for general well-being, and among other things I think minimum-effort disease-prevention (masks, distancing, reasonable sick leave) are completely reasonable asks. Similarly, we probably shouldn't be relying on a mega-consumerist culture that, when suppressed for whatever reason, has far-reaching economic effects that doom millions in developing countries to hunger/whathaveyou. But these issues are not in opposition, we just have a crappy system that doesn't deal with both of them well at the same time. I think it's unreasonable to frame it as "well we can only address these issues in degrees, lest we make the other worse" and not question the system that somehow frames disease prevention and feeding people as opposing goals. It's certainly possible to address this disease without such drastic impacts, but it relies on the population having an empathic mentality. Look at Japan, as an example[0]: Similar in terms of development, but with a much less invasive response they've only suffered around 2.3k deaths _total_, when the US is already seeing that number daily. You are completely correct that "a huge % of the population is not happy with the current actions and policy being performed," because we have examples of cultures that are weathering this storm FAR better than those of us in the USA are.... but I think attitudes like yours are contributing to our failure to deal with this pandemic well. [0]: https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/12/12/the-japanese-authorities-understood-covid-19-better-than-most https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/12/12/the-japanese-autho...

umvi 6y ago

> We aren't optimizing to minimize deaths in individual years (or else we'd just kill everyone right now and the death rate would spike and then drop to zero), we're optimizing for general well-being of the population. I disagree. If we were optimizing for general well-being of the population we wouldn't be doing things that will push hundreds of millions into poverty[0] and drive up suicide rates[1]. From my perspective all the evidence points to us optimizing either for healthcare capacity or for minimizing covid-19 deaths. > "there is an alarming new source of deaths, and we should be working to reduce death as much as we can in the interests of maximizing the population's happiness." Well, clearly a huge % of the population is not happy with the current actions and policy being performed in the name of saving lives as evidenced by this thread. [0] https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/covid-19-fallout-could-push-half-a-billion-people-into-poverty-in-developing-countries.html https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/covid-19-fallout-co... [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-suicide-coronavirus-more-japanese-suicides-in-october-than-total-covid-deaths/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-suicide-coronavirus-more-...

tenacious_tuna 6y ago
> if we were optimizing for general well-being... Fair enough, I wasn't clear: we _should_ be optimizing for general well-being, and among other things I think minimum-effort disease-prevention (masks, distancing, reasonable sick leave) are completely reasonable asks. Similarly, we probably shouldn't be relying on a mega-consumerist culture that, when suppressed for whatever reason, has far-reaching economic effects that doom millions in developing countries to hunger/whathaveyou. But these issues are not in opposition, we just have a crappy system that doesn't deal with both of them well at the same time. I think it's unreasonable to frame it as "well we can only address these issues in degrees, lest we make the other worse" and not question the system that somehow frames disease prevention and feeding people as opposing goals. It's certainly possible to address this disease without such drastic impacts, but it relies on the population having an empathic mentality. Look at Japan, as an example[0]: Similar in terms of development, but with a much less invasive response they've only suffered around 2.3k deaths _total_, when the US is already seeing that number daily. You are completely correct that "a huge % of the population is not happy with the current actions and policy being performed," because we have examples of cultures that are weathering this storm FAR better than those of us in the USA are.... but I think attitudes like yours are contributing to our failure to deal with this pandemic well. [0]: https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/12/12/the-japanese-authorities-understood-covid-19-better-than-most https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/12/12/the-japanese-autho...