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>Heart disease and cancer aren't contagious, so your actions on that front will only improve your own life No, they inflict massive negative externalities on s

by rkk3 5y ago

>Heart disease and cancer aren't contagious, so your actions on that front will only improve your own life No, they inflict massive negative externalities on society through healthcare. > while being a bit more careful with covid will potentially prevent sickness in a lot of people. Classic Safety-ism. Even today, 20 years after 9/11 and we are still paying a ludicrous price for this logic.

nautilius 5y ago
The ludicrous and horrible price - of wearing masks? You have a twisted logic, comparing terror attacks and follow-up global wars to the horrors you must be going through, masking up (or not) for the grocery store.
- rkk3 5y ago
  Personal attacks aren't welcome on Hackernews. > The ludicrous and horrible price - of wearing masks? Of shutting down schools? of closing borders and separating families, which since you want to trivialize things I didn't bring up, a 3 year old in my family was separated from her mother for a year and a half. I didn't specify wearing masks.. but no one knows what the effect will be of kids wearing masks all day. They are at a time of critical development & learning to read faces, non verbally communicate etc. It may turn out to have a terrible price.
  - nautilius 5y ago
    Several hundred thousand people could have been saved in the US if these measures had been taken seriously, early enough, compared to other first world countries. Social distancing, closing schools, etc. were proven methods that showed the difference between cities with horrible losses and much better outcomes for the Spanish Flu. (Edit: Washington had his troops in the revolutionary war quarantined, separated, and inoculated when small pox became a problem. ) We knew all that. This weekend, we are mourning the tragical losses of a terror attack that cost the lives of 3000 innocent people. Because of people like you, who call proven measures against COVID ‘safety-isms’ we lose that many people every other day. If anything, we clearly didn’t do enough ‘safety-isms’.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      > Several hundred thousand people could have been saved in the US if these measures had been taken seriously That is baseless speculation. > Social distancing, closing schools, etc. were proven methods that showed the difference between cities with horrible losses and much better outcomes for the Spanish Flu. Where is the source? And that was a completely different disease, which had the worst outcomes for young people, so maybe taking pre-cautions for them made sense. > Because of people like you, who call proven measures against COVID ‘safety-isms’ we lose that many people every other day. You should take your dogmatism & personal attacks to another forum, where it is welcome. > we lose that many people every other day. Tragic, but they are elderly, chronically sick and had a life expectancy of less than 5 years. Also tragically under accepted normal & non idealogical circumstances, we loose around 8,000 people a day in the US.
      - nautilius 5y ago
        With a world population of 7.9 bio, global COVID deaths of 4.55 mio, a U.S. population of 328.2 mio, and U.S. COVID deaths of 661 k, the U.S. has ~4.4% of the world population, yet >14% of the COVID deaths. Even if the U.S. had managed to simply reach the average of the world of 0.058% mortality, i.e. competing against such beacons of healthcare and wealth as the Congo, the U.S. outcome would have been a mere 190k, i.e. 470k souls saved. Unless you're suggesting that U.S. Americans are somehow inherently inferior to people in other countries, or that the health care system is the world's worst, one would think that the differences will lie in policy and different measures would have changed the outcome. I'll leave it as an exercise to you to draw a fairer comparison, maybe by comparing to OECD countries rather than all of them. Astounding, how generous you are with other people's lives. Dogmatism is overlooking the data and holding on to your misbelief. You will know more about that than I do, I am afraid.
        rkk3 5y ago
        The dataset on Covid is so wildly incomplete to invalidate the objectivity of your entire argument. > competing against such beacons of healthcare and wealth as the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo has had 1.23 deaths per 100k population from Covid [1]. Why do you think the US has 200x deaths per population than the DRC ? > Unless you're suggesting that U.S. Americans are somehow inherently inferior to people in other countries Yes people are not all the same, and those different factors effect outcomes. The US has a large populations that are elderly, chronically sick, urban, highly mobile etc, were tested for covid, etc. Saying hundreds of thousands of people could have been saved in the US is highly speculative. 1. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
- chitowneats 5y ago
  Some of us don't mask "just to go to the grocery store". That's HN software engineer privilege, 100%. Many people, including little children, are expected to wear these masks 8 hours a day. You have no idea what damage you are causing for the lower classes, the less fortunate, and American public school children. Nor do you understand the effect this has had on the campaign for mass vaccination. I can assure you this is significant. Minority enclaves in my city (Chicago), largely regard masks as "white people bullshit". I work in these communities. It's not a stretch to see why they apply that same logic to vaccine mandates (even if the vaccines would be beneficial for most of their community).
  - nautilius 5y ago
    Well, we are on HN, are we not? Many people, such as doctors, nurses, certain manufacturing jobs wear masks for much longer stretches of time, for many decades already. They are fine, it works really well. But you are right, I do not understand the effect of mask wearing on vaccination. Care to elaborate?
    - chitowneats 5y ago
      Pointless mandates (masks), where the vast majority of the burden falls on the lower classes, while the laptop class pretends to be hard at work while comfortable at home, tend to breed resentment and suspicion of legitimate public health policy and intervention.
      - nautilius 5y ago
        Masks are proven to be effective against transmission. Countries with early mask mandates suffered much less than countries without. I still fail to see the extraordinary “burden” “hardship”, “sacrifice” of - wearing a mask as a proven way to save lives? Would you feel better if there was some medal attached, maybe “Great Hero of the Fight against COVID”?
        chitowneats 5y ago
hnbad 5y ago
> No, they inflict massive negative externalities on society through healthcare. Good thing the US doesn't have socialized healthcare and private insurers generally exclude preexisting conditions. > Classic Safety-ism. Even today, 20 years after 9/11 and we are still paying a ludicrous price for this logic. Funny how the "safety-ism" after 9/11 was pushed by the Republicans and now the Republicans are complaining about Democrats pushing safety measures against Covid. Except y'know most of these measures actually drastically reduce transmission (tho I agree some are ill-conceived, like I'm not sure curfews do anything but encourage people to meet indoors where transmission risk is significantly higher). Banning shampoo bottles was mostly theatrics. Bonus: > no one knows what the effect will be of kids wearing masks all day I'm going to avoid the bait to reference mask wearing in Asian countries, but sure: that sounds like an important reason to crack down on Covid hard and fast rather than go back an forth on half-assed policies and artificially expand the duration of the crisis and risk a perpetual cycle of masks and vaccinations as poorer communities keep generating resistant mutations. So I take it you support the mass production of vaccinations and free distribution to developing countries to bring down infection numbers world-wide and protect the US from foreign mutants? If perpetuating this pandemic could traumatize an entire generation of children, maybe this should be considered a national defense emergency and the US should invest a few more billions and rally its allies to do the same. Open up the patents to also get the countries on board that are distrustful of US-supplied vaccines. Or are you trying to argue that Covid isn't that bad or that it's better if we let children catch it because they have a lower mortality?
- chitowneats 5y ago
  "lower mortality" Try nearly zero. Much lower than other common pathogens like flu and RSV. Which is why the UK is not recommending mass vaccination of teenagers aged 12-15, or any children younger. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 This is why many argue that the focus on covid in children is largely about the irrational fears of parents and educators who have not seriously looked at the data.
  - nautilius 5y ago
    What a propaganda piece. “many say”, etc. Stop spreading lies like the lower COVID mortality compared to flu. It’s disgusting. Stop lying about what the article says, it’s not about the national recommendation of a country (that famously botched their response). “Nearly zero” means nothing for societal outcome, certainly for mortality. What is the number of people infected, “nearly zero” of which die? Then these numbers become meaningful.

by rkk3 5y ago

nautilius 5y ago

The ludicrous and horrible price - of wearing masks? You have a twisted logic, comparing terror attacks and follow-up global wars to the horrors you must be going through, masking up (or not) for the grocery store.

rkk3 5y ago
Personal attacks aren't welcome on Hackernews. > The ludicrous and horrible price - of wearing masks? Of shutting down schools? of closing borders and separating families, which since you want to trivialize things I didn't bring up, a 3 year old in my family was separated from her mother for a year and a half. I didn't specify wearing masks.. but no one knows what the effect will be of kids wearing masks all day. They are at a time of critical development & learning to read faces, non verbally communicate etc. It may turn out to have a terrible price.
- nautilius 5y ago
  Several hundred thousand people could have been saved in the US if these measures had been taken seriously, early enough, compared to other first world countries. Social distancing, closing schools, etc. were proven methods that showed the difference between cities with horrible losses and much better outcomes for the Spanish Flu. (Edit: Washington had his troops in the revolutionary war quarantined, separated, and inoculated when small pox became a problem. ) We knew all that. This weekend, we are mourning the tragical losses of a terror attack that cost the lives of 3000 innocent people. Because of people like you, who call proven measures against COVID ‘safety-isms’ we lose that many people every other day. If anything, we clearly didn’t do enough ‘safety-isms’.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    > Several hundred thousand people could have been saved in the US if these measures had been taken seriously That is baseless speculation. > Social distancing, closing schools, etc. were proven methods that showed the difference between cities with horrible losses and much better outcomes for the Spanish Flu. Where is the source? And that was a completely different disease, which had the worst outcomes for young people, so maybe taking pre-cautions for them made sense. > Because of people like you, who call proven measures against COVID ‘safety-isms’ we lose that many people every other day. You should take your dogmatism & personal attacks to another forum, where it is welcome. > we lose that many people every other day. Tragic, but they are elderly, chronically sick and had a life expectancy of less than 5 years. Also tragically under accepted normal & non idealogical circumstances, we loose around 8,000 people a day in the US.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      With a world population of 7.9 bio, global COVID deaths of 4.55 mio, a U.S. population of 328.2 mio, and U.S. COVID deaths of 661 k, the U.S. has ~4.4% of the world population, yet >14% of the COVID deaths. Even if the U.S. had managed to simply reach the average of the world of 0.058% mortality, i.e. competing against such beacons of healthcare and wealth as the Congo, the U.S. outcome would have been a mere 190k, i.e. 470k souls saved. Unless you're suggesting that U.S. Americans are somehow inherently inferior to people in other countries, or that the health care system is the world's worst, one would think that the differences will lie in policy and different measures would have changed the outcome. I'll leave it as an exercise to you to draw a fairer comparison, maybe by comparing to OECD countries rather than all of them. Astounding, how generous you are with other people's lives. Dogmatism is overlooking the data and holding on to your misbelief. You will know more about that than I do, I am afraid.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        The dataset on Covid is so wildly incomplete to invalidate the objectivity of your entire argument. > competing against such beacons of healthcare and wealth as the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo has had 1.23 deaths per 100k population from Covid [1]. Why do you think the US has 200x deaths per population than the DRC ? > Unless you're suggesting that U.S. Americans are somehow inherently inferior to people in other countries Yes people are not all the same, and those different factors effect outcomes. The US has a large populations that are elderly, chronically sick, urban, highly mobile etc, were tested for covid, etc. Saying hundreds of thousands of people could have been saved in the US is highly speculative. 1. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
chitowneats 5y ago
Some of us don't mask "just to go to the grocery store". That's HN software engineer privilege, 100%. Many people, including little children, are expected to wear these masks 8 hours a day. You have no idea what damage you are causing for the lower classes, the less fortunate, and American public school children. Nor do you understand the effect this has had on the campaign for mass vaccination. I can assure you this is significant. Minority enclaves in my city (Chicago), largely regard masks as "white people bullshit". I work in these communities. It's not a stretch to see why they apply that same logic to vaccine mandates (even if the vaccines would be beneficial for most of their community).
- nautilius 5y ago
  Well, we are on HN, are we not? Many people, such as doctors, nurses, certain manufacturing jobs wear masks for much longer stretches of time, for many decades already. They are fine, it works really well. But you are right, I do not understand the effect of mask wearing on vaccination. Care to elaborate?
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    Pointless mandates (masks), where the vast majority of the burden falls on the lower classes, while the laptop class pretends to be hard at work while comfortable at home, tend to breed resentment and suspicion of legitimate public health policy and intervention.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      Masks are proven to be effective against transmission. Countries with early mask mandates suffered much less than countries without. I still fail to see the extraordinary “burden” “hardship”, “sacrifice” of - wearing a mask as a proven way to save lives? Would you feel better if there was some medal attached, maybe “Great Hero of the Fight against COVID”?
      - chitowneats 5y ago

hnbad 5y ago

> No, they inflict massive negative externalities on society through healthcare. Good thing the US doesn't have socialized healthcare and private insurers generally exclude preexisting conditions. > Classic Safety-ism. Even today, 20 years after 9/11 and we are still paying a ludicrous price for this logic. Funny how the "safety-ism" after 9/11 was pushed by the Republicans and now the Republicans are complaining about Democrats pushing safety measures against Covid. Except y'know most of these measures actually drastically reduce transmission (tho I agree some are ill-conceived, like I'm not sure curfews do anything but encourage people to meet indoors where transmission risk is significantly higher). Banning shampoo bottles was mostly theatrics. Bonus: > no one knows what the effect will be of kids wearing masks all day I'm going to avoid the bait to reference mask wearing in Asian countries, but sure: that sounds like an important reason to crack down on Covid hard and fast rather than go back an forth on half-assed policies and artificially expand the duration of the crisis and risk a perpetual cycle of masks and vaccinations as poorer communities keep generating resistant mutations. So I take it you support the mass production of vaccinations and free distribution to developing countries to bring down infection numbers world-wide and protect the US from foreign mutants? If perpetuating this pandemic could traumatize an entire generation of children, maybe this should be considered a national defense emergency and the US should invest a few more billions and rally its allies to do the same. Open up the patents to also get the countries on board that are distrustful of US-supplied vaccines. Or are you trying to argue that Covid isn't that bad or that it's better if we let children catch it because they have a lower mortality?

chitowneats 5y ago
"lower mortality" Try nearly zero. Much lower than other common pathogens like flu and RSV. Which is why the UK is not recommending mass vaccination of teenagers aged 12-15, or any children younger. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 This is why many argue that the focus on covid in children is largely about the irrational fears of parents and educators who have not seriously looked at the data.
- nautilius 5y ago
  What a propaganda piece. “many say”, etc. Stop spreading lies like the lower COVID mortality compared to flu. It’s disgusting. Stop lying about what the article says, it’s not about the national recommendation of a country (that famously botched their response). “Nearly zero” means nothing for societal outcome, certainly for mortality. What is the number of people infected, “nearly zero” of which die? Then these numbers become meaningful.