salmon30salmon

It is more like saying, "a loaf of bread in 1950 cost 10c, and you can buy a loaf of bread for the equivalent in today's dollar. But if you want that brand-name bread that people are out-bidding each other to buy, it is going to cost quite a bit more"

I think it isn't the media not questioning, I think the media realizes that Covid is the gift that keeps on giving and they won't look that gift horse in the mouth.

It's like the trope about media coverage of plane crashes except instead of being an acute incident the media can play off of our fears day after day

Beyond your nonsense about free speech..

This is a discussion about Covid because the accused was motivated by Covid. My argument is that the hysteria we've whipped up over this pandemic has caused people to take crazy risks to further a cause which only exists in our hysteria.

I believe Ms. Jones earnestly believes that she had to do these things to save tens of thousands of lives. If those weren't the stakes in her head, would she have downloaded PII and misused an alert system?

Essentially our rhetoric around Covid is mentally dangerous for many people and can cause them to act beyond reason due to their misinformed notion of risk

Because by saying there is any equivalence between an activist in HK who is risking their life, or a opposition party member in Russia who has already had an attempt on his life and a woman who was charged with a crime that was on the books before she was charged, and which is something she has admitted to doing, is to downplay the risks the folks fighting true fascism take

Suicides are way up. So are overdoses.

But the real tragedy is the lack of support for third world countries due to the contraction of the global economy. Millions will die due to a reduction in vaccines and treatable illnesses in the developing world. Millions. But it seems we are okay with that as long as _we_ don't get covid

Right no shit. What I'm arguing is that people take the path of least resistance and it would have been far easier to announce a policy change than cook the books. I am saying that if opening up was the only reason, I do not believe that's the path they would take. Of course I'm just basing this off of my own feels.

I love you and thank you for coming to my defense but please do not link vaccine distrust with my views. I trust the data and the science behind the vaccines and believe we need to be getting them distributed as soon as possible

Because you know the links I click on. Or maybe, and I know this is crazy, but maybe this isn't my primary account as people have been mobbed and cancelled for having contrarian views on Covid!

And likewise, you inability to see her as anything but a martyr against an oppressive system is informed by your tightly held belief that the government is for some reason downplaying Covid.

Oh is that not the case? Then don't attribute some armchair psychology to my motives. I in no way think I've "discovered" something underreported. I know full well that millions of people, from credentialed scientists to dumbfuck hillbillies see the same things I rail against.

I've been accused of disregarding human life for my views on Covid response. Which is funny as Covid has touched my family in painful ways.

Humans are complex beings, more so than your coined phrase captures. But I still love you! I hope someday we all can have a calm, reasonable discussion about epidemics. Because this will happen again, so we need to study our response here as much as possible

To me that doesn't pass the smell test. In my state, they've just changed the thresholds. "New science is showing XYZ so in response counties can now eat at restaurants if their shits under 20"

He is saying I am either a troll or a pawn.

Right it's pretty fucking willy-nilly no matter the conditions you are testing for correlation. The nations you mentioned all had pretty different public responses as well.

That is why I think it's dangerous to proclaim lockdowns are a panacea because with a few exceptions you end up with similar results but a fucked economy

See my response to the parent. Yes, coronavirus gets me all hot and bothered.

No relationship. Just bored on a day off. I am passionate about Covid related topics because I am frankly concerned by the rhetoric around Covid. It boggles my mind that this has become so politicized and opposition is equated with homicidal disregard for human life.

There is also so much sensationalism around Covid that it's impossible to actually discuss. Mask compliance for example. I've heard so many times that if only dumbfuck America would mask up we'd be sitting pretty. Except the US has some oh the highest mask compliance of western nations. People talk about anti-lockdown protests as being pawns for the far right and hating science, yet these protests are not unique to the US or the Right.

Essentially our response to a pandemic has devolved into people shouting memes at one another while 30 million unemployed are liking up at food banks. It's fucking crazy

The message sent via emergency comms was quite dramatic. Her insistence that the numbers were being cooked with malice to justify reopening is also attributing to conspiracy that which could be explained by differing opinions on how to clean up messy data (if someone tested positive on vacation, will they count in their home state or Florida?)

South Korea is basically an island. Their only border is an impregnable military zone. Norway and Finland speak more to density than their geography.

But yeah, we need to learn what was different in Vietnam and Thailand. Vietnam is especially interesting, but it could be easily argued that one of their tools is unavailable here (forced detention at camps for the infected)

I posted this elsewhere but you are just incorrect.

Yeah because those countries often allow someone to be turn themselves in and then offer the accused freedom of movement for 250 dollars (10% bail).

Oh wait they just poison (Russia), disappear (China) or hang (Iran).

Are there problems in the US? Oh certainly. But don't belittle the activists in authoritarian countries by saying someone who was arrested for downloading PII is somehow equivalent to poisoning members of an opposition party.

The response to her actions seem to be overkill. With that said, what she is accused of doing is illegal (especially downloading PII from the government).

Also, she is reaching far beyond her grasp. And sensationalizing quite a bit. I am sure she is intelligent and competent in her role, but that role is not that of an epidemiologist, data scientist or public policy expert. Why does this matter?

Well, focusing mainly on the public policy, nothing is cut and dry. Understanding how semi-dependent systems work together is incredibly complex. She is so heavily focused on COVID that she lacks the insight into all of the competing forces that make up a society. And yes, getting those forces wrong will also cost lives.

Finally, her dramatization of the number of deaths implies (as many people imply) that any actions (that are not blatantly unconstitutional) could appreciably decrease deaths. Outside of the island nations and China, deaths have a weak correlation with public policy. More suggestive correlations exist for population density (cases) and average age (deaths). And yes, there are outliers (Japan is older, Vietnam is denser) but there are even more outliers on the shutdown argument.

The reason this is myopic focus on lockdowns is dangerous is that if undermines the effective mitigation efforts that can help without ruining society. As soon as any leader attempts to ease anything you have the pearl-clutching "give me lockdown or give grandma death" crowd sensationally crying foul. Our ability for reasoned disagreement was a dead horse years ago, but Covid continues to beat it senseless.

That is only really accurate if the electricity used would somehow disappear were it not for the mining. Electricity (minus the energy lost in transport etc etc) is zero-sum. If the miner uses hydro, that means someone further from the dam is using coal, methane etc as the hydro company isn't selling excess on the grid.

Energy is finite on the grid, so yes mining takes energy which could have been used for (arguably) better purposes

It is beyond unacceptable for states to now be working on their vaccine plans. Anyone with any sort of understanding would have known in April the only way out was a vaccine. Why weren't tracking apps made then? Why weren't rollout plans made then?

And I know, they didn't know the details. You don't need to know the specifics to know that you are going up need a tracking system, a notification system, some sort of order of priority etc.

My state is still discussing who is after medical workers.

People are dying! Businesses are closing! Why is this being treated with the same urgency that seems to plague the DMV.

This isn't car registrations, these are lives!

Yeah, I don't really give a shit about down-votes but it is interesting. I am not making this shit up. And I am not defending the right-wing at all, its all abhorrent behavior.

At least where I am, one of the tactics that the right-wing protestors engage in is to walk right up to the limit of the law and greatly antagonize the left-wing counter-protestors. When the counter-protestors respond, they play the victim card and the police arrest the left-wing.

Sort of like antagonizing a kid on the playground and then telling teacher when you get socked. Sure it may not be right for the person you antagonized to hit you, but you knew exactly what you were doing.

A bit of an dark pattern here everyone. The menus at the top of the site are _not_ related to the article/topic. I thought I would be looking at top books by subject and instead saw ads for online universities. Beware.

Thank you. I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible. Some may like working remotely, others may like the wider acceptance of meal and grocery delivery, others may prefer the reduction in greenhouse gases. That is the only way I can rationalize the insistence of lockdowns here on HN and elsewhere.

Either that or COVID is another social issue that is being exploited by nefarious actors to divide western nations.

Or both.

We really need to stop using the term Nazi so flippantly. Nazism represented a systematic process of genocide. Literally treating the death of an entire ethnic group as something you use CI techniques to improve efficiency.

The US saw some cosplay that went way too far. Is it dangerous? Yes. Is it toxic? Yes. Could it lead to something akin to Nazism? Yes. Is it Nazism? No.

Don't minimize what happened under Nazism by using it as an idle insult

People get their hopes up too much. I don't mean to "blame the victim" here, but at the same time I read all of the hype machine prior to a release and am not surprised that people are disappointed. Based on the hype and the expectations, nothing but the best game ever made will satisfy the crowd. This is the same for anything that is overhyped. Game of Thrones comes to mind as well. Everyone hated on the last season, but literally no matter what they did, it would be hated on.

People just need to relax, accept that things are imperfect, and enjoy the game once it is patched.

This is exactly my problem. The United States is structurally terrible at responding to a pandemic. We have a slow moving, federal republic with (ostensibly) a weak executive. We have open borders between states that is (arguably) constitutionally protected. We have a patchwork of local authorities with differing skills and abilities.

The federal republic is an incredible system of government for many things. The balance that it has (in theory) restricts it from doing anything quickly, including responding to a pandemic.

Yes, the pandemic caught us with our pants down, so to speak. But I would not trade for authoritarian control for protection against a once-in-a-century pandemic.

(I know Aus is not an authoritarian country and is quite like the US culturally. But it is an island. The only non-island nations that have curtailed this are strong authoritarian states)

I can only speak for my home state. Maybe we have shit hospitals

I believe that we don't know the effects of a long term lockdown because we've never done it before. I do believe the number of people impacted by poverty, food insecurity and job loss is far higher than the number of people impacted by COVID long term.

I do not believe flattening the curve is a myth. I believe that without an exit strategy flattening the curve is unsustainable. I believe that keeping ICUs from being full is a very good goal. I also believe we generally locked down out of panic way before ICU capacity was at risk (See SFO in March) and thus consumed the will, resources etc to withstand flattening the curve. Now we have ICU issues but we've lost the will .

Belgium, Italy, UK, Slovenia

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/