psuhoffman

I think saying it was a group is exaggerating. It was really only a couple contrarians like phin and golfsnow who said that. 2 people isn’t really a group.

Plus people aren’t doing most normal economic activity when they are sick. And the loss of much of entertainment and service industry is going to hurt bad no matter what we do. There are a LOT of factors people are failing to accurately incorporate into their theories. And that’s why it’s dangerous to think we know better than the experts. I’m sure there are factors I don’t know or am missing also but I’m not the one suggesting I know better than them.

Oh and one last thing...before the “but the economy” arguments start up again. The economy has already been tanked. It’s too late. There is no way to flip a switch and just undo what’s been done. And even if we open and go herd immunity the economy will be further damaged by the 200 million sick people and 25 million people that would end up hospitalized in the unmitigated spread scenario (again using best case scenarios) and the 1-2 million deaths. We are going to suffer economically for a while no matter what we do now. So that is a really crappy justification for accepting a strategy with higher projected fatalities.

It’s that some are taking a study that pretty much confirms how awful unmitigated spread would be and are somehow manipulating some numbers and ignoring others to twist it into a case for exactly that! Bottom line is even if we take the absolute best case pie in the sky estimate for each factor, lowest estimated Mortality, lowest possible herd quotient, we would still get well over a million deaths from a scenario of unmitigated spread. And that’s accepting the best case. But this game is getting exhausting. I’m sure once the efforts to spin the data get old the conversation will return to relativism and utilitarian arguments like, is a million people really that many in the grand scheme or libertarian ones like “but what about my personal rights”. It’s onviouslt not going to end no matter how much statistical evidence emerges because some people just don’t like it and that’s all that matters.

1. You conveniently didn’t factor in the people currently infected who will eventually die. 2. You used confirmed deaths not estimated total which skews the results. 3. You keep using the absolute lowest estimated end of the mortality range from the covid study along with the high end of the flu mortality range for your comp. That isn’t an honest comparison. 4. You clearly do not know what “statistically significant” means. 5. Even if we did accept your skewed comparison (and I’m not) .5 and .1 is VERY different in a huge population. And it can be statistically significant in a large enough study population size. You obviously missed my post about false equivalencies and data manipulation. When you do these “fun with numbers” games you aren’t fooling anyone, it’s just insulting. People on THIS board aren’t stupid. Maybe you should try your luck with those tactics somewhere like 4chan.

Something that irks me...after every story like that there is a comment like “they had a pre-existing condition”. What is their point? Did his death matter less because he had cancer as a child? Would me and my wife’s death matter less because we have asthma? Would my fathers because he has diabetes? Or my uncle and father in law because they have heart problems? How many people don’t have something? And something about “this isn’t killing young healthy people” irks me everytime. Yes so? What’s their point? Only slightly less annoying are the “omg were all gonna die from this” posts. Umm no but this is bad enough, you don’t have to exaggerate just because it’s not the apocalypse. You would think this would be that rare subject where people would put their dumb ass nonsense away just for a little while. Obviously that was too much to ask.

But that comparison is flawed because most of those risks are to oneself. I ski but if I screw up doing some off piste run it’s only me that suffers. Sometimes it’s a risk involving a few others like driving. But in almost no cases does society allow individuals to accept risk for everyone or large populations. Where exactly the line is becomes murky and a huge debate sometimes but this is most definitely on the “not an individual choice” side. One person being a clown could infect 50 people. Those 50 people could then infect 500. This isn’t an individual risk/choice situation.

“There is always one”...or was it “there can be only one” I get confused.

RIP drought thread

If you think pandemic response policy should fall under individual and not collective action we will have to agree to disagree. But the preponderance of evidence and public opinion is not on your side with that belief.

@SnowGolfBro here is the problem with a lot of your argument. You’re coming at the question of when to open backwards. Our best virology experts should use all the available relevant evidence to formulate a plan to reopen and a metric for when it is safe to do so. When a State meets that criteria then by all means they should begin to implement the plan to ease restrictions. But a lot of your policy advocacy is based on anecdotal things like “I know people are fed up”. What does those feelings of frustration have to do with whether it is safe to open? The virus doesn’t care about our feelings. Then you support that anecdotal based view with cherry picked data or speculation about the data with the obvious motive of validating your feelings. You aren’t letting logical scientific methodology drive your policy. Your preferred policy is driving your methodology.

The false equivalencies being made aren’t fooling anyone. People need to stop. It’s kinda insulting when you post something people would have to be stupid to believe. Examples I’ve seen lately Comparing the rate of “confirmed” covid infections to “estimated” flu infections. Comparing the spread of covid during extreme mitigation measures to the spread of other viruses during limited or no measures. Comparing the spread of a virus in one society to another with a completely different population density or culture. Projecting similar results of a policy from one culture onto another. Comparing the mortality of confirmed covid cases to the mortality of estimated cases of other viruses. Bringing up one variable to discredit one data set then ignoring its effect on the other you are comparing it too.

Fake news

That’s rhetorical right?

You’re being really generous there!

The current measures are uneven and not enough. Some banks. Some landlords. Some utilities. It’s a patchwork incomplete system. But the bigger problem is this creates imbalances rage do threaten the system. Some debts do still need to be serviced. Some people still need to be paid. A total freeze of all financial obligations for a set period doesn’t create those same inequities and imbalances. There would still be some and it would require some intelligent monetary interventions by the government to mitigate but far less trouble than the crazy uncoordinated patchwork measures now. Yes it can’t last forever. Even the smaller imbalances and gaps would eventually create huge problems but it can be done for a while.

Ok so let’s try 90 days...so far we haven’t done it at all so not sure what your point here is. I never said freeze forever! And I never said there are no consequences but it’s a manageable problem. Lesser of evils and all that Jazz. But the main consequences of that policy would be the executives at these institutions would have to stop drawing multi million dollar salaries during the emergency freeze. I think most could live with that...the alternative on the other hand...

Oh really??? That’s news to me. I must have missed those clauses when I taught Constitutional Law. Must have been in invisible ink somewhere after eminent domain and double jeopardy. If you are referring to the procedural and substantive due process clauses you are “implying” a right that is not clearly expressed. As such the federal courts become the arbiter as with all implied powers cases. And the precedence is that the government has quite a wide berth when asserting emergency powers for the public health and safety. In those situations suspensions of most liberties has been deemed acceptable in the past. As for the points about businesses and financial institutions needing those payments...not if you freeze financial obligations on both ends. Both to AND FROM those institutions. They wouldn’t need to service their debt or obligations either until it’s over.

If that’s your justification why not advocate we freeze all debts/rents/utilities? That would accomplish the same thing without risking lives!

Maybe it will go smoothly but this assertion has huge holes. With everything shut down there is no pressure to go to work. Once things open many won’t have the ability to stay home if the boss says get back to work. And before you say “those people can’t afford to be home now, that’s only true because we chose not to freeze all debts, rents and utilities like some other nations did. Plus there would be no further assistance if things are declared “back to normal”. Finally if this does cause a flare up it increase the risk to the essential employees still working. Maybe it works but it’s not the “free choice” utopia you sell it as.

The weekly variance is very likely due to the decreased staffing to process information over the weekend. The “unprocessed” data over the weekend ends up dumped into the Monday/Tuesday reports. But it’s not as big a deal as “some” are proposing wrt reliability. Yes it skews single day data. But we (and no one of importance is anyways) shouldn’t be using any single day to draw meaningful conclusions. Since the phenomenon is logical and consistent every week the fluctuations do not impact the longer term weekly trends. The daily flux is predictable and can be factored into the analysis. I’m not saying this for your benefit, just pointing it out in general because I think the reliability of data is very important in this situation. Some numbers are not as applicable as others for various reasons, but some are wrt trends. But some have questioned the entire legitimacy of all data due to what is a very logical, common, and predictable weekly variation in processing.

Don’t question him he stayed at a holiday inn express last night. I stopped going down his rabbit holes days ago. It’s apparent he is trolling.

We aren’t finding out anything new. Was there any doubt a segment of our societies penchant for either “rugged individualism” or “selfishness” depending on who you are taking to, would be a huge problem in dealing with any problem that requires collective action and sacrifice? Isn’t this the main reason we haven’t been able to deal with any number of recent pressing issues? Healthcare? Gun violence? Education? Infrastructure? Poverty? We can’t solve lots of problems because there is a portion of our population that doesn’t want to sacrifice a darn thing for the good of anyone else and they even constructed a narrative that we are all better off that way! Great thread getting at exactly what I was saying wrt IDR the other day and how even if it’s lower the comps to influenza are invalid. Unfortunately all anyone on the “this is no big deal” side of the debate is going to get out of that is “fake news”. So accepting this narrative, you think letting what happened in NYC happen across the whole US in every urban area is acceptable? Don’t bother... It’s a rhetorical question in case you couldn’t tell! Yea except lashing out and emotional response is exactly what you want. You trigger people so you can accuse them of being triggered. It’s an intellectually dishonest endeavor. It’s also hypocritical because you get triggered quite easily. I’m out. See you all tomorrow