I'm seeing strong tensions between values considered to be fundamental; privacy, safety, freedom, etc. To me, it looks like COVID-19 has introduced a kind of CAP theorem for civil rights and we don't really have a good answer here.
Let's assume an ideal case of a perfect government with a good will. If a centralized authority have the perfect information and perfectly execute a quarantine measure, it will be so accurate that minimizes fatality and restrictions on freedom, but at the cost of extreme privacy invasion. If the government have less than perfect information or execution, you gotta choose either accuracy or recall for infected. The former will give you more freedom of action at a higher cost of life. The latter will restrict more freedom of action which also potentially leads to larger economical disasters, but will save more lives.
Even worse, this is not even a ternary choice but more of continuous, multi-dimensional one. Also, the good-will assumption made above distorts the reality in a very incorrect way. The solution space is likely much more complex (e.g. those values are not really mutually exclusive and interact each other in a subtle way) and we don't really understand what shape it is. Neither I know the right answer. But I can say that even values/rights that we assumed fundamental may conflict in the extreme situation like COVID-19 and we don't really understand what trade-offs we're forced to make and its consequences.
Dr. Michael J. Burry, M.D. (Vanderbilt), setup a twitter account[1] just to address some of the negative consequences of overreacting to covid-19. He's not normally a social media type, to say the least.
> Domestic violence "flourishing." This happening right now. Infuriating that governments sacrificed these women and children with blockhead policies lacking all nuance and understanding. Politicians and media ran roughshod over these victims. #COVID19
It's ironic that in the same tweet that he criticizes governments for lacking all nuance, he fails to note that the two anecdotes reported in the story come from China and Spain, which are among the hardest hit, which are likely the most justified for harsh measures and lockdowns.
He does point out many severe negative consequences, but they seem to be based off wrong assumptions. There is no universal testing because there are not enough tests.
There is no recommendation for the seemingly promising drugs because afaict there is not enough to meet demand. I don't see why "But there is no time for that." If there isn't enough of it anyway.
The situation may change but his current unnuanced criticism that doesn't seem to address aspects of his recommendation that seem to me need to be addressed does not convince me.
Yeah he’s pitching that California has already reached herd immunity.
The premise is that covid-19 arrived in fall and that unlike everywhere else in the world, it arrived, spread without so much as being noticed at the ER.
This has ripped through like wildfire in highly vulnerable communities.
Also, would we not have observed a lot of medical staff becoming sick like they are now?
I just find it very hard to believe that this could have happened earlier without anyone noticing it given how it's greatly impacted pockets in very newsworthy ways.
Another example was that family in New Jersey where some members of the family died within hours of one another. 7 sick, 4 died.
I'd say it's a bit disingenuous comparing Italy with California demographically - we're talking about one of the largest population per capita of elderly who are well-known for living with multiple generations on the same property if not the same household AND who have traditional body language mannerisms that involve lots of hand-to-face and lips-to-face contact. Bit less of all that in Cali.
They've done sampled serological tests in at least one town in Italy. If you compare that against excess deaths in March, you get an Infection Fatality Rate of 2%.
Perhaps it will be better in the U.S. due to age structure, but perhaps it will be worse due to the high prevalence of obesity and diabetes.
Either way, California won't have reached herd immunity until approximately 600,000 people are dead, barring some therapeutic breakthrough.
How can you use excess deaths to influence the IFR when excess deaths is across the entire population but the actual infection only reaches a small percentage?
Deaths in that town were about 10x normal for the month of March. I estimate the IFR by looking at the serological results showing 70% were infected, and observe that 1.4% of the population of the town died in March. 1.4%/70%=2% of those infected died.
Now it could be that there was some other cause for the death rate in the town to be 10x normal, but I think that's pretty unlikely. That said, I'm sure there are excess deaths from other causes, like heart attacks that didn't go to the hospital because they were overloaded, etc, but you could consider those deaths to be indirectly from COVID as well.
Indeed, if anything you should be comparing Italy with New York.
The data for Corona virus points to elderly in poor health and people with pre-existing illnesses being at risk.
If you don’t agree please explain how Monaco with a very old but rather healthy population has seen one death so far and how come Bangladesh and Pakistan with a population of 300M+ have seen a total of 80 deaths.
Monaco has half the population of Walnut Creek, CA, a lot of them very affluent and not there much of the year.
Then there's the issue of
1. how was the testing done (IF AT ALL)
2. how accurate that test was (read up on PCR if you don't agree)
3. how the cause of death was determined.
I show you a CDC explanation for how to determine official cause of death from[1]:
""When reporting cause of death...use any information available, such as medical history, medical records, laboratory tests, an autopsy report, or other sources....best clinical judgement..."
In all cases variations of the flu are much worse and not worth crippling the US and global economy over.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask someone like Dr. Burry who is much more qualified than I, at least, to answer such questions.
This is because he can't accept the face that CA implemented SIP before everyone else and what that implies about the administration's failure to recommend it. His politics are clearly driving his assertions.
The thing is, yes, he's an MD, but his job is an investor. I don't know what his book looks like, but many funds carry leverage. It's possible that having the lockdown continue wipes out his considerable fortune.
Under these circumstances, even very intelligent people can fall prey to seemingly nonsensical motivated reasoning.
We really need to stop putting so much faith in someone's opinion because they have "Dr." in front of their name. It turns out "smart" people can be incredibly stupid and/or mislead by their own prejudices and political leanings.
> It turns out "smart" people can be incredibly stupid and/or mislead by their own prejudices and political leanings.
If I had a nickle for every time I read "senior software engineer at X" in a profile that was spewing ideological drivel I wouldn't need to work for a living.
the source reporting the US surveillance is kinda murky at best. Apparently the US sources their information from ad trackers and a company called lotadata which has a "geospatial AI platform "
if most of the tracking data is coming from FAANG its nothing new, however, it may not exactly be accurate with the latest iphone and android devices which have fairly overt controls for the user to restrict data collection.
I’m speculating here, but it’s probably a data broker that gets location data from apps that share it as part of an advertising SDK. Users still need to enable location sharing. So the data ends selects for a cohort of people that installs sketchy apps and grants location permission. Ironically, this is probably the group of people least likely to follow social distancing guidelines.
The fact that commercial companies are the ones conducting the actual work doesn't justify anything, though. The article also explicitly mentions that this has been going on before the outbreak:
> The privacy-or-security discussion has been going on for years. With new digital technologies, it is one of the main ethical problems of human society. Still, the coronavirus can push people to solve the dilemma right about now.
I am surprised there hasn't be a bigger spotlight shed on the concepts developped by Michel Foucault around Biopower [0] and the genesis of the modern state.
See for example this excerpt of Discipline and punish [1] on what quarantine was like:
"First, a strict spatial partitioning: the closing of the town and its outlying districts, a prohibition to leave the town on pain of death, the killing of all stray animals; the division of the town into distinct quarters, each governed by an intendant. Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic, who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street, he will be condemned to death."
> At the ACLU, we have always recognized that, during a disease outbreak, individual rights must sometimes give way to the greater good. After all, when it comes to disease, we are not just individuals but also one big bio-mass. That is why people can sometimes be deprived of their liberty through quarantine, for example. And this is as it should be, provided — and this is a crucial and sometimes violated condition — that the science supports the effectiveness and proportionality of measures such as quarantine. And even if a quarantine is imposed, people do not lose their due process rights, which at a minimum require that they be able to challenge their quarantine.
Unfortunately the ACLU is slowly going down the path that SPLC and NRA (to pick one example from both sides of the isle) went down. They used to be a strong special interest advocate organization but they're becoming more and more corrupted by partisan politics.
Likewise a statement of "we know it's not what our organization stands for but y'all need to get on board with what the government is telling you to do" is kind of to be expected. If they really wanted to stay true to their mission they would have either come down on the side of being pro-liberty or they would have said nothing at all.
WHO and the CDC also count as organizations that were more ideologically neutral that have lost their neutrality over time.
My understanding is that it was the CDC's partisan scope creep that put it in the crosshairs when the new administration came in. Instead of sticking strictly to infectious bacteria and viruses, they started quixotic quests to classify gun violence and obesity as epidemics. Those distractions allegedly cost them their edge in this pandemic.
Based solely on their own emails and mailings, ACLU these days is a pale shadow of its former self. They have successfully convinced me to cancel my membership... instead of being about civil liberties, these days it's just another generic left-leaning group (no judgment on whether generic left leaning groups are good or bad).
This just shows that I was right.
They used to sue to protect the civil liberties of nazies for gods sake, and now they can't even take an unequivocal position on this simple (civil rights wise) issue because they have to toe the line. The lockdown, regardless of its merits, has more than enough cheerleaders already. We need someone to also focus on civil liberties, not what might be "necessary".
In pop culture people turn into zombies by contact with a virus. Zombies don't think of themselves as idiots, probably because they lost their brains in the process, so actually they don't think at all, they just mumble "ARRRRHHHHG" "ORRRRRSSSSFFFF" and go after other peoples brains. Now this is a sad comment, using the deaths of other people to make a point, but since we're talking about facts I'll go ahead.
(14794 >= 60 years old, 12973 >= 70 years old, 775 < 60 years old)
These are the statistics of the death toll in Italy, keep in mind the average life expectancy is 83 years in Italy. If it follows the same pattern as everywhere else, most of these cases will probably have co-morbidities as well.
"ALBANY, N.Y. – The majority of New York’s more than 4,700 deaths due to coronavirus were among men, and 86% of all deaths were among people who had underlying illnesses, such as hypertension and diabetes, new state data shows.
The statistics released late Monday offered the latest glimpse into how the rapidly spreading virus has impacted New York and made it the epicenter for COVID-19 in the nation.
Of the 4,758 deaths in New York since the first on March 14, 61% were men and 39% were women, the state Department of Health reportedon its new data portal.
In addition, 63% of the deaths were among those age 70 and older, while 7% of the cases were those 49 and younger.
And 4,089 of those who died had at least one other chronic disease, the records showed:"
93% >= 50 years old. 63% >= 70 years old. Of all cases, 86% with underlying conditions that are known to reduce life expectancy aggressively. The average life expectancy in NY is 81years old.
--
From https://www.france24.com/en/20200402-for-some-survivors-coro...
quote:
"As the number of worldwide confirmed coronavirus cases climbs towards 1 million, the number of recoveries is thankfully more than four times the death toll. But medical experts told FRANCE 24 that COVID-19 can cause severe long-term damage to the lungs, heart, brain and other organs – and that for some patients, these complications may be permanent." in an article by Tom Wheeldon, that appeared on www.france24.com, 02/04/2020 - 15:28
Now, given the disease is a couple of months old, how can medical experts come to these conclusions? You would need years of follow-up of recovered patients to even be able to test the hypothesis. Given what we know about lung damage, e.g. from tabaco, and the way our bodies regenerate it's highly improbable that this has any kind of truth to it. It does, nonetheless, increase one thing, fear. Still, this is touted on every major news outlet, by so called experts.
--
Regarding the cases that appear on headlines and such, you can see things such as 80 years olds with cancer, dying, in a country where the life expectancy is 81 years, and still the cause being attributed to covid. It's like saying that an HIV patient died from a cold.
Going out and catching sun is actually good for you, there's a reason why flu and colds peak from late autumn to early spring. It doesn't take an expert to understand why. Plus, there are countries that seem to have been able to contain the epidemic wave without martial law, so it's certainly not the only viable option - and the question here is, "does this justify what is being done?" - not "should we ignore those that need medical treatment?".
Lastly, although the following quote was said in a very different context, it doesn't mean it doesn't or shouldn't apply (even if it was a quote by me):
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety".
> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety".
We know the quote already. It's not doing any good to post it or repeat it. Simply saying this in response to complex problems is equivalent to saying "Thoughts and prayers" when someone is asking for help. It doesn't help and only makes you feel good.
People are willing to give up a lot for convenience, including sending many jobs to China. We allow this due to laissez-faire capitalism. Turns out people care more about cheap shit than the job prospects of their children.
People are also trained/willing to give up a lot for fear. This is caused in part by the very freedoms enshrined by your quote - there's a lot of fear and misinformation spread and allowed to spread because of the principle of free speech.
The situation is more complex and needs a more complex response than simply saying "hurr durr liberty".
While what you say might be true, you took literally the last two lines of a much longer post (that were used as final note regarding the topic in question) and in turn used that to say nothing relevant either, "hurr durr complex capitalism let-do scoobydoobydoo", but of course making me say "hurr durr liberty" in the process.
The points I made are quite clear:
a) A serious reading of the data we know shows a different picture of the fear inducing narrative being peddled
b) Experts say the most irresponsible things - in quite enigmatic situations for someone with deep expertise in the subject being talked about
c) Lockdown and home isolation are probably detrimental in terms of an individuals immune system - as in, going out is good
d) There are other approaches that seem to have worked quite well
e) You're going to die
f) You shouldn't trade certain things for a fake sense of security even in the face of uncertainty
There are other questions that are complex, like millions dying of structural inequality every year and no world wide response to that (and on that point, no moral outrage by the civic chevaliers on that either), we could go on in false moralities all night long.
Although I'm not religious, I imagine saying "Thoughts and prayers" does help people who are in distress.
It’s too bad that people can’t follow simple requests. Governments are forced to choose between allowing idiot citizens to destroy society or to implement draconian policies.
Medical professionals are being asked to come out of retirement. Nurses are reusing PPE for weeks. Medical students are graduating early to help.
The rest of us are being asked to just stay the fuck home for a few weeks.
And we just refuse to do it. Absolutely refuse. Everyone is suddenly and avid walker. So then governments have to choose whether to let idiot citizens ruin everything... or not.
I don’t blame governments. I blame all you idiots who won’t stop going outside.
> I don’t blame governments. I blame all you idiots who won’t stop going outside.
It's precisely this kind of reasoning that this article is having problems with. Pre-COVID19, it was because of the terrorists, drug dealers, and pedophiles that we'd have to give up our freedoms. Now, it's because of "us idiots." We the people are "too idiotic" to decide for ourselves, or so you say.
This is the crux of the issue. It's very easy for "emergency" powers leveraged by the government to become permanent powers. Look no further than the Patriot Act. The public should be following the public recommendations/guidelines as much as they possibly can, but they should also keep a close eye on the government and what powers it grants itself.
I know it's annecdotal, but now I've had two elderly relatives die -- one from covid-19, and one from a heart attack, in the past few weeks. The second wasn't able to get into the healthcare system because it is just too overstretched. Firstly, causes by a very slow ambulance, and got diverted to an ER just about as far away as you can get.
I have also seen more people walking along our city exercise path than ever before. There's not really a good middle ground here, exercising your civil liberties is resulting in deaths.
I'm most certainly not opposed to saving lives. But we can't just mindlessly approve whatever "solutions" the government comes up with. Some "solutions" are bound to do more harm than good, and mass-surveillance is a prime example considering its potential for abuse. Just as people die from disease, people also die from tyrannical governments. Even if we assume that your government, however unlikely, would forever continue to wield its power wisely, other governments wouldn't care. If we justify the use of mass-surveillance, we would give other tyrannical governments a free pass and more people would be killed or tortured as a consequence. But unlike pandemics, time won't cure tyrannical governments.
Well, I love the positive attitude implying time will cure pandemics. Cure, in the sense that all things come to an end, the way all bleeding stops, yeah.
I'm currently working as an infectious disease researcher for a state with a lot of political turmoil, and I'll have the be honest, my (profesional) opinion doesn't matter. No single recommendation we have made has had any bearing on the action of our state. These opinions we (you and I) have are moot.
Just to be clear, I'm not dismissing the devastating effects this pandemic has brought. More lives will continue to be lost for the foreseeable future and it will likely have lasting economic implications. But if governments around the world go forward with mass-surveillance, it would be 9/11 all over again. As a direct consequence of 9/11, many innocent lives have been lost. But it's the policy decisions after the incident that has had an even more lasting and devastating effect on our democratic society. People need to keep these things in mind, especially in times of emergencies.
The shelter in place orders started off completely voluntary. People ignored them. And it escalated. People continued to ignore and the policies continued to escalate. We didn’t go from zero to where we are now. People caused this.
There always have been people who act selfishly. I'd bet you anything that it has also been this way when the Bill of Rights was written. Does that mean civil rights was a mistake? Absolutely not.
The same government that added the Second Amendment to the Constitution put down Shay's Rebellion, and when Thomas Jefferson wrote that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure" in reference to that rebellion, he wasn't being complementary.
The founding fathers believed in government, they weren't anarchists, they believed that government could be good and do good, not that government is inherently and irreconcilably hostile to liberty. They also believed in society and the concept of the greater good, not that individual liberty and freedom matter above all else.
Indeed, when Benjamin Franklin said "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," he was arguing (in a very specific context[0]) against the "temporary safety" of individual liberty versus the "essential liberty" guaranteed by the state.
I wouldn't assume that the founding fathers would side with the people purposely undermining quarantine efforts in this case. They'd probably have such people hanged.
First, I'm not an anarchist and I'm not suggesting that the founding fathers were either. We all know that governments are necessary for society to function. Still, there must be limits to what the government can do, because after all, governments are run by humans and it'll corrupt eventually if you grant them absolute power. That's why many democratic countries have a constitution to limit governmental powers.
Second, I'm not siding with people undermining quarantine efforts (though I wouldn't agree with hanging them). But that's hardly an excuse for conducting mass surveillance, which this article is about. Mass surveillance simply has no place in a society governed by the rule of law.
Unless you're an epidemiological or virology expert, you probably are too ignorant to make sound decisions to save lives and prevent damage on a state/national scale for COVID-19. That's not a knock against you, it's just that most of us don't know the details of the many fields of science that go into our daily lives. I have no idea when/if to do mass vehicle recalls in the automotive industry, where to deploy military units for maximum safety like a commanding officer, or how to navigate law with respect to police department enforcing the law in the legal system.
The key difference that didn't settle in with people quickly enough is that they could cause damage with little or no symptoms by just being near other people. Because of how this particular virus works, that meant changing behavior by the time it affected you directly was too late. Many field-ignorant people only change their behavior when it directly affects them.
Yes, we need experts to deal with the pandemic. I'm certainly not opposed to expert opinions influencing policy decisions. But still, a system of mass-surveillance isn't something that should be rushed, even in the face of an emergency. It has far-reaching consequences that is most certainly going to outlast this pandemic, and would likely do more harm than good in the long term. Such things would need full informed consent from the public at the very least, though I'd personally prefer that it wouldn't be considered in the first place given its great potential for abuse.
It’s not a simple request for people living paycheck to paycheck. We could’ve shut down international travel, implemented UBI or expanded Medicare instead of trillions in corporate bailouts. It’s laughable to blame idiot citizens for the scale of the devastation, but a convenient scapegoat to shift the focus away from the ones in power who could’ve made the most difference.
Exercise is good for your immune system. But I think the public health experts probably meant for us to exercise alone. You still see lots of groups of 4 or 5 or more people out there in my area. And based on what people are saying, this must happen in other areas as well. Or my favorite are the groups of bicyclists exercising and keeping 6 ft away from each other. Think about it, one cyclist towards the front of the pack coughs and what's gonna happen?
I don't think the government needs for us to stay at home per sé, but they do need for us to stay away from each other. Some cooperation on our part would go a long way towards helping. Having conceded that, not sure that tracking everyone is gonna stop the kinds of stupidity I was just outlining. You'll still see the groups out there walking or running up the street together or bicycling. I'm just not sure those guys get it? And the government tracking them probably won't make them get it.
Don't be too hasty to judge groups of people unless you are certain they don't live together.
"Think about it, one cyclist towards the front of the pack coughs and what's gonna happen?"
Probably nothing. The virus spreads more easily than some, but it's not magic. The original WHO guidance was to stay 3 feet away, not 6 feet, because even at 3 feet transmission is extremely unlikely. It's not impossible to transmit in the scenario you describe, but it's not the kind of scenario social distancing is trying to solve for.
Droplets don't travel farther just because they have this coronavirus in them.
Droplet transmission is in fact possible over distances far greater than 6 feet, it just becomes extremely unlikely. Similarly, droplet transmission is less likely at 6 feet than at 3 feet. But even 3 feet reduces the chances substantially, which is why it is the default recommendation for avoiding droplet transmission.
The guidance for keeping six feet apart doesn't apply to people who already live together. Keeping your distance isn't going to work if you're all going to touch the same surfaces at home, anyway. It can be tricky to tell if groups of people close together are family / roommates.
A lot of people can’t help it, we beat them into the dirt and now they don’t have a choice. Also there’s the (probably correct) expectation that corporations and governments will abuse a lot of the emergency provisions and that feeds the rebellion. Also, it shouldn’t be surprising that young people react with apathy toward a large problem like this when older people have at best reacted towards their problems with apathy and at worst have blamed the younger people themselves.
I’m not saying these people are innocent but this isn’t one sided.
Anecdotally I have found it is the older half (latter middle age) that are less likely to take it seriously ironically and likely to complain about inconveniences or that they are "overreacting". I blame Fox News for it, they are outright the world's largest elder abuse network.
Personally I suspect the abysmal leadership and the utterly corrupt fuck ups in preparations who spent more time insider trading than stocking up on medical supplies back when there was fully functioning industrty undermines the legitimacy greatly. How can they ask others to take them seriously when they didn't? The tracking is just plain Reichstagging at this point.
And the worst part is that the threat is real and the leadership being corrupt morons doesn't change that.
Maybe it’s that older people are more used to the concept of death, so show less fear.
When I was 30, the sudden acceleration in the number of people I knew dying was incredible. Aunts, uncles, friends, teachers all started to die from complications of old age. At first I was shocked, but soon I became jaded since there’s nothing you can do about other people getting old.
Once you get so used to that, it’s seen as an inevitability rather than something to be defended against at all cost of quality of life.
As a further anecdote, during this crisis I see young people in stores studious avoiding the 6 foot distance rule, even going as far as to jump out of my aisle to maintain it. Older people though are congregating in groups, and gossiping like normal instead.
older people also more conscious of the risk they expose themselves to in day-to-day life. my aunt died of a catastrophic infection last year. the precipitating event was a slip in the shower where she broke her leg. when taking a shower or going down stairs exposes you to a nontrivial risk of death, it probably doesn't seem that bad to go to the grocery store more often than you need to.
I agree people should be wearing masks, but IMO without any training PPE is probably going to make things worse. The last time I went to the grocery store people had their (often gloved) hands all over their faces readjusting masks. For some reason I thought people understood how to use gloves and masks but now I’m pretty sure most don’t and think they magically make you safer.
> It’s too bad that people can’t follow simple requests. Governments are forced to choose between allowing idiot citizens to destroy society or to implement draconian policies.
That was Bolshevick's motto.
> The rest of us are being asked to just stay the fuck home for a few weeks.
The government should embrace that so far people resorted to wandering aimlessly as the method of entertainment because normally entertainment requires money and the same government that wants people to stay home deprived them of ability to obtain money by working.
What if you don't have a home or your home is unsafe or abusive environment. Adversity is a given, rights are not for good and peaceful times only. FYI,the US is still under emergency from 9/11, patriot act is still a thing.
You’re right, there are more people outside walking in areas than need to be. Walking in areas where there would be less people or none. People sitting on sidewalks, grass areas etc.
TV news says our city streets are empty — but there’s actually babies, old people, lots of people exercising etc etc everywhere. Farmers markets with huge crowds. Non-essential construction workers all over.
Yet there are a lot of people outside because they have no choice. They are working or surviving. And then yesterday at the grocery store, there are people working there without gloves and without masks. And they’re jovial, walking around carefree.
I seen people preparing food and drinks without gloves and touching lids etc.
I don’t think wealthy people walking around is particularly bad but I understand your sentiment. The worse problem is we just have stupid people everywhere and sadly many are in our government, agencies and so-called elite. And some are critical workers.
This is a good example of why strong negative rights and freedoms are so important. We don't want, and I quote you, "idiots" dictating what others can and cannot do based mostly on their rightful indignation.
If you want to be cool then you say "fuck the government, fuck the police". Its a big part of the reason, a lot of people want to show off by breaking rules for street cred.
I'm not sure it's that simple. I think most people breaking the rules just think it doesn't apply to them. Like they're healthy, they're low risk, they're good at following all the other rules ("we won't get close to anyone while we're out, we won't touch anything we shouldn't").
I assume it's a bit like washing your hands after using the toilet. Most people do. I don't think those that don't are saying fuck you to society - they just think "I didn't pee on my hands, there's no mess here".
I guess if something doesn't immediately affect you, it's easy to think it will never affect you and it's not your problem to deal with.
Thing is though the government is not saying don't go out. You have to go to work, (if you're essential). You have to go to the grocery store. And truth be told, you should be exercising to keep up your immunity and overall health. That's all good stuff.
But when you're calling up your friends to go on that errand with you, or to go on that walk, or run, or bike ride with you, that's where I think people are going off the rails. I think the government and public health people probably meant for us to do this stuff alone. So there would be no need to say, "WE won't get close to anyone while we're out". Because you're not out with anyone. Only one family member needs to go to the store. Your bicycling group is still unsafe even if you're keeping 2 meters away from each other. Etc etc.
The question is, does ubiquitous surveillance help alleviate this sort of thing? My suspicion is that it doesn't. I'm thinking this is an education issue. A lot of people still aren't getting it.
There are certainly a group of folks who are just trolls, and intentionally do the opposite of whatever their political opponents recommend. Look at the idiots who modify their trucks to "roll coal". Or people who intentionally burn more energy because they think climate change is BS.
The statistics I've seen floating around lately are that ~80% of people who go on the ventilators die.
But keep in mind that 20% of the people who go on the ventilators live. Flattening the curve means that, if you reach the point of requiring a ventilator -- and we haven't run out of ventilators -- your chance of survival goes from 0% to 20%. It's not 100% or even 50%, but it's a lot better than 0%.
I'm not surprised you're being downvoted. Of all the institutions that are on shaky ground these days, the medical ones are the ones who should most consider an overhaul as a result of this fiasco. Unfortunately, they seem too concerned with protecting their monopoly to accept any criticism or suggestions.
It's much better to bet on the drugs. A vaccine will take years to be fully available (let's not forget we have just two phase 1 studies going, the efficacy is still yet to be determined): drugs, if the current or upcoming trials are successful, probably within the end of the year.
And like the drugs, a vaccine may not be successful at all. What do we do in that case?
This is a problem for the ICUs only because there is no specific treatment. If we can treat it like we can treat other grave diseases, the impact becomes smaller and more manageable.
Death rates are at 0.5%, and it was worth shutting down the economy.
Car accident death rates are at 1%. Wait until people hear about that.
The bigger shock is when people realize that you can't stop the spread of a pandemic. You can flatten the curve to help hospitals. But soon we will find hospitals are more dangerous than staying at home due to infections and that respirators barely improve your chance of survival.
I hope medical loses their credibility big time. Their rejection of math and science in favor of tradition is horrifying.
So you assume that yourself are the number guy and know better, so what is the equation that will determine when lockdown is more efficient? what are the inputs in that equation ? Why car deaths would be a factor in why you should implement a lockdown. If you go to a hospital with a illness X would you like a response like "X kills less then cars in our country, until traffic laws are fixed we decided you can suffer and die from X, Have a ice death!"
I think it's fair to do death vs death. Especially if Corona disproportionately affects people who have lived 60+ years already. Car deaths affect people of all ages.
The economic collapse and scare has caused people to cancel or delay surgeries, dental work, physical therapy, buy newer and safer cars, home abuse has gone up, I imagine exercise has gone down, I wonder how alcohol use has changed.
Using the age statistics from NY and the Social Security actuarial tables, we're currently losing something like 11.75-17.1 years of life per death, depending on whether you weight towards the life expectancy at the beginning or end of each age bracket. The current update to the "dialysis standard" for the value of a YoQL is $129,000, so we're currently losing $1.5-2.2 million per death.
If the true fatality rate is 0.66% (https://www.livescience.com/death-rate-lower-than-estimates....), and 70% of the population would catch it if it is not contained before "herd immunity" is reached, that would put the total number of expected deaths in the US at around 1.52 million. If we're expected something like 100-200 thousand people to die even with the measures currently being taken, then we're averting 1.4 million deaths and that amounts to a savings of about $2-3 trillion worth of human life.
If $2-3 trillion is suspiciously similar to the magnitude being thrown around for various "coronavirus relief bills", well, it's probably only a little bit of a coincidence.
> I think it's fair to do death vs death. Especially if Corona disproportionately affects people who have lived 60+ years already.
If you're going to claim that 60+ year lives are somehow less worth than younger ones, you better damn well be 60+ years old yourself. Otherwise you're just talking about sacrificing lives that aren't your own.
In 2017 deaths from road accidents in Italy 3378, that is number for the whole year.
Since half of January in Italy died 17669 people because of virus...
People who are 50+ or 60+ are still productive members of society. They take care of children for young professionals, support them with their savings, bond family members that would otherwise do stupid stuff.
Lots of those young people will get psychical issues because their family members died. Like mother, father, grandmother and grandfather died at the same time because of virus. How much that can lead to alcoholism or suicides?
This kind of thing would not happen if there is social distancing in place. This kind of thing like wiping whole family elders at once happens rarely with car deaths.
But why cars? It would make sense if you are an extreme capitalist to put money in the equation, how much a life costs, how much lockdown costs, how much it costs to find a cure, how much it costs to let everyone sick die but it would make no sense to bring cars into this, think about it your calculation would be different depending on the country or state, like if you are in the country with horible driving bad luck now you will also die from covid.
Because we will always drive cars, and in 5 years there will be no coronavirus. Would it have been better to spend our resources on more complex airbag systems that would last as long as humans drive or a lockdown to save our oldest population for 3 years?
I think this math problem is easier than we would like, but politically it's unpopular.
Let's assume cars kill N people a month, and the next pandemic kill N-1 old people a month and cancer kills N-2 people a month. We do nothing until we solve the cars?
What if it kills N-1 children we still do nothing?
I do not see the argument that the resources should go to cars, if you want to solve car accidents you can do it for free, I have the secrets here:
- don't give a diving license that easy. have decent tests
- if you are caught drunk you should never drive again
- if you are caught looking at a phone screen your license is gone for 10 years
- if you are speeding your license is gone for 10 years
- test the cars every 2 years to check they are safe and not polluting
- analyze the crashes find the causes and address them, if speeding is the issue find a way to enforce speed limits.
Do you have any evidence that if the lockdown did not have happened more lives would have been saved? Ironically probably less people died in car accidents so you need to find some domain where the number of deaths increased more then the lives saved,
I think the point is, Forcing people to stay home is a solve against cars and coronavirus. The death rate for cars is higher, so why haven't we forced a lockdown to deal with car deaths? What makes the Coronavirus different, besides that it's been 100 years since we've had a serious pandemic?
I think your assumptions might be wrong though, if I use the numbers from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... and calculate for Italy I get 3600 car fatalities, and there are aprox 18000 deaths by covid with a lockdown on. Let me know if my numbers are wrong.
Italy's a bit of an outlier due to both average age and how they count covid deaths. If we look at Germany instead, we get 3.6K deaths by car (in 2016) vs 1.8K deaths from covid. There are all kinds of different assumptions about unconfirmed cases etc, but even in the most optimistic scenarios, it's roughly the same order of magnitude either way.
But don't ignore that Germany also treat the coivd like "not the flu" if Germany would do nothing like you suggest the numbers would be larger, to honestly support your point you need to find a country that did exactly what you want (nothing or just pray) and show that the mortality is better then car crashes when the pandemic is over.
What is the probability of someones mother, father, grandmother, grandfather and all uncles/aunts die at the same time because of car accidents?
If they all are now above 50 chances they might die because of this virus are quite high.
That is high price if one is losing his social grounding when he is 20 because he survived... Yeah he might get inheritance and have his young friends but I would not be happy if most of my relatives are dead.
keyword here is confirmed. Many of us carry the virus and are untested (or "unconfirmed") so that 5% number is likely to massively decrease to around 0.5% at some point if (second keyword), governments decide to implement large scale testing.
But if you also would consider that without the lockdown the number would have been worse you need to adjust the numbers to reflect a larger infection rate and a collapsed health care where everyone with complication is dead.
I am going with train of thought were tested and confirmed were tested because they had high chance of getting virus. You don't test people who had no chance of getting a virus so I don't think those numbers are that much higher.
Second thing is that testing already was increased in a lot of places but last 2 days new cases number did not grow it stayed around the same.
