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If the cost of preventing additional hundreds of thousands of dead Americans is a year or two of substantial inflation increases, this administration did right

If the cost of preventing additional hundreds of thousands of dead Americans is a year or two of substantial inflation increases, this administration did right by me.

pdonis 5y ago
> preventing additional hundreds of thousands of dead Americans But it hasn't. We have gotten the worst of both worlds: huge economic damage and lots of dead Americans. More Americans have died of COVID since the current administration took office than before that. And since governments around the world have demonstrated that they cannot stop COVID, the least they could have done was refrain from inflicting the economic damage as well.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  None of what you wrote here deals with what I said, which is that more Americans would have died, had we not spent the money we did.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > more Americans would have died, had we not spent the money we did. But we don't know that that is true, and it doesn't seem likely based on the fact that the data shows no perceptible changed based on the money being spent; the variations in the data are entirely due to seasonality and different variants appearing.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      You don't think lowering healthcare costs, keeping sick people at home, and straight up giving parents of children cash resulted in fewer of the most vulnerable people in US society dying? And there absolutely was a substantial dip in deaths after the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed in March of 2021. Last summer was the closest to "back to normal" we've gotten since this pandemic started.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > You don't think lowering healthcare costs, keeping sick people at home, and straight up giving parents of children cash resulted in fewer of the most vulnerable people in US society dying? I think this is a very nice theory which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. See below. > there absolutely was a substantial dip in deaths after the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed in March of 2021. First, the money didn't magically appear in everyone's pocket the day the act was passed, so if you were going to look for any effects, it wouldn't be right after the act was passed. You would have to allow some time for the effects to propagate. How much time? Of course nobody has any answer to that; anyone who claims to is just waving their hands and pushing an ideological position. Second, as I've already said, all the variation we see in the data can be explained by seasonality and the times at which various new variants appeared. So Occam's Razor says there was no significant effect due to all the additional money being printed.
        TameAntelope 5y ago
        So you go from saying what I claimed "isn't born out in the data" to saying there's no way of knowing when the effects kick in (though you do give some sense of timelines, which happen to line up pretty well with what is observed), to saying the effects we do see in the data (contradicting your first point) "can be explained by seasonality". Just sounds like you're making up whatever excuses you can to avoid giving credit where credit is due. Occam's Razor here says that the dump of money helped people, as that is by far the simplest explanation. It's your convoluted mishmash of viewpoints that is objectively more complex.
        LoveGracePeace 5y ago
        Occam's Razor doesn't apply by the merit of your correct use of the term "dump" implying excessiveness; whereas the correct application of Occam's Razor in a discussion, is no more than is required: https://towardsdatascience.com/stop-using-the-occams-razor-principle-7281d143f9e6 https://towardsdatascience.com/stop-using-the-occams-razor-p... Plus, you attacked the person instead of their ideas: "your convoluted mishmash of viewpoints".

If the cost of preventing additional hundreds of thousands of dead Americans is a year or two of substantial inflation increases, this administration did right by me.

pdonis 5y ago

> preventing additional hundreds of thousands of dead Americans But it hasn't. We have gotten the worst of both worlds: huge economic damage and lots of dead Americans. More Americans have died of COVID since the current administration took office than before that. And since governments around the world have demonstrated that they cannot stop COVID, the least they could have done was refrain from inflicting the economic damage as well.

TameAntelope 5y ago
None of what you wrote here deals with what I said, which is that more Americans would have died, had we not spent the money we did.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > more Americans would have died, had we not spent the money we did. But we don't know that that is true, and it doesn't seem likely based on the fact that the data shows no perceptible changed based on the money being spent; the variations in the data are entirely due to seasonality and different variants appearing.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    You don't think lowering healthcare costs, keeping sick people at home, and straight up giving parents of children cash resulted in fewer of the most vulnerable people in US society dying? And there absolutely was a substantial dip in deaths after the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed in March of 2021. Last summer was the closest to "back to normal" we've gotten since this pandemic started.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > You don't think lowering healthcare costs, keeping sick people at home, and straight up giving parents of children cash resulted in fewer of the most vulnerable people in US society dying? I think this is a very nice theory which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. See below. > there absolutely was a substantial dip in deaths after the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed in March of 2021. First, the money didn't magically appear in everyone's pocket the day the act was passed, so if you were going to look for any effects, it wouldn't be right after the act was passed. You would have to allow some time for the effects to propagate. How much time? Of course nobody has any answer to that; anyone who claims to is just waving their hands and pushing an ideological position. Second, as I've already said, all the variation we see in the data can be explained by seasonality and the times at which various new variants appeared. So Occam's Razor says there was no significant effect due to all the additional money being printed.
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        So you go from saying what I claimed "isn't born out in the data" to saying there's no way of knowing when the effects kick in (though you do give some sense of timelines, which happen to line up pretty well with what is observed), to saying the effects we do see in the data (contradicting your first point) "can be explained by seasonality". Just sounds like you're making up whatever excuses you can to avoid giving credit where credit is due. Occam's Razor here says that the dump of money helped people, as that is by far the simplest explanation. It's your convoluted mishmash of viewpoints that is objectively more complex.
        LoveGracePeace 5y ago
        Occam's Razor doesn't apply by the merit of your correct use of the term "dump" implying excessiveness; whereas the correct application of Occam's Razor in a discussion, is no more than is required: https://towardsdatascience.com/stop-using-the-occams-razor-principle-7281d143f9e6 https://towardsdatascience.com/stop-using-the-occams-razor-p... Plus, you attacked the person instead of their ideas: "your convoluted mishmash of viewpoints".