A lot of this can be attributed to the history of the 20th century and the different effects of communism in these respective countries. This may even be reflected in the differing attitudes towards tertiary education and vocational school.
It’s a very complicated issue with a lot of history.
If you want to put high tariffs on imports in the IS, then the IS industry would re-emerge also - though the price of cars would double.
others [1] would argue that it was american auto manufacturers' anti-union zealotry (and the decisions they made in the production process to combat the unions) that lead them to shoot themselves in their own foot.
[1] Schwartz, Michael, and Joshua Murray. Wrecked: How the American Automobile Industry Destroyed Its Capacity to Compete. Russell Sage Foundation, 2019.
In a sane world, we'd let workers choose between going to work and staying home without undue penalties either way, but that's not going to happen in 'Murica.
Additionally, social distancing doesn’t work [2] and is a suggestion being made by non medical professionals to non medical students.
[1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/study-s...
[2] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200414/cdc-covid-19-can-sp...
What Elon is pushing for seems...no different than what Germany has been doing for at least two weeks? If I’m to understand, people are saying they’re gonna cancel their orders because the company is arguing for a response that is in line with a country (even praised by the American media[0]) that has done a decent job with its pandemic response? This doesn’t seem to be the hill to die on just yet.
Reminds me—not being from there—I’m always amazed how warm southern California is in the winter compared to say, many parts of the mediterranean. I mean Los Angeles in January is warmer than Tehran. Too bad the factory isn’t down there.
The play should be to avoid a shutdown when the second wave hits, no? You look at the warm far eastern asian countries: Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia. They have a combined population of 580 million with less than 2000 combined deaths. 7 times the population of Germany with a fourth of the deaths of Germany. If they had four times the deaths it would still be impressive, considering they’re mostly dealing with it with less healthcare infrastructure.
I do think warmer places would fair better when the second wave hits in the fall. Southern California would be better for a factory. But Texas in that regard would work as well.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/an...
Nevermind the numerous serology studies from multiple different countries which show exposure to the virus is highly prevalent with most individuals being asymptomatic. Nevermind the multiple recent studies in the U.S. which show the same. Nevermind the numerous prison facilities, ships or other confined areas which show it being highly contagious yet most asymptomatic. Nevermind studies that show Unless you have multiple co morbidities, if you're under 60 you probably at a greater risk of heart disease than the covid. Nevermind that numerous studies site that transmission from children to adults is low and risk to kids themselves has been pretty low.
No no.. Let's close the schools to keep the children safe. Let's close houses of worship and other sociologically important places. Let's close small businesses but let's keep big businesses open. Let's allow the ppl to continue to take public transportation to their big box store as well. Let's indiscriminately quarantine everyone, we most certainly can't have them going to the beach or other outside areas where it's well known UV-C kills the virus and transmission risk outdoors is tiny. Let's jail salon owners operating at home and surfers in the ocean but let's release criminals for politically relevant taking points. Let's make sure we don't quarantine or even test anyone in nursing homes even though they are begging the NY governor to allow it (gotta get to 100k somehow).
Yeh no. Every time i see someone outside exercising in mask and gloves i know exactly how and why we get a 2 trillion dollar stimulus package that gives 86k to politicians per month for childcare during this crisis. They're essentially the droid army from clone wars series, just wearing masks.
I get why the govt is doing it. It's about power and control. I can say that i never thought scientism would get such a hold on the people though. If i were musk i would've already been gone from California. And if i were the governors in Texas I'd perma-ban any emigrants from NY or CA.
But putting that aside, it sounds like you think that politicians are making this seem way worse than it is, in order to exercise more power and control over people’s lives. OK, not the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard, even if there are some huge glaring holes in the logic there.
What about the scientific and medical community? Are they in on this too? Because I certainly haven’t heard an outcry from epidemiologists and virologists and physicians that we’re grossly overreacting and that the virus isn’t that big of a deal. Why not?
It’s ironic, because to my mind, your first paragraph perfectly captures my impression of your position: misinformed but fervently clinging to a religious position that doesn’t seem to match the view of the actual experts.
Go strawman, go! California and NY both have plans for slowly reopening in the comings weeks or months with various metrics guiding the timelines.
- 1.5 tests per 1000 people per day - No deaths in the past 14 days - Some max number of cases per day that's really low - Stockpile of PPE (I forget the exact numbers) - A minimum number of contact tracers (I think also 1.5 per 1000 people, although it may be an order of magnitude lower)
The bay area has a more stringent set of guidelines (minus the number of deaths that another person linked to).
There is a statewide timeline and counties can open slower/faster. There's a list of criteria for counties to consider. This is a slide deck summarizing things at a state level, it notes a variety of metrics that are being looked at:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Update-on-...
It even has a checklist with the targets that must be met before a county can lift quarantine.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Here-s-a-checkl...
[2] https://apnews.com/2c69fe294f73a1120c2dad4a738966e3
[3] https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/5.4-Report...
The problem is: 1. The virus causes permanent damage in people. Even if they live and survive they’ll be dealing with the damage for a long period of time. Some lung damage can take months to heal. 2. The virus immunity exists in the short term immunity of the body. Which means depending on the person in 6 months to a year - Surprise theyre reinfected. We haven’t seen reinfections yet, but we have proven immunity is short term and not life long. 3. This effectively means the risk of this virus becoming a yearly thing is exceptionally high. Not to mention herd immunity isn’t as useful. Due to the fact we’ll always have people losing immunity and becoming sick.
What this essentially means is that 0.5% number (which I think is wrong, but I digress) is a yearly number and will compound over time.
And yes - After a few cycles the percentage (should) drop due to our older folks dying off. However, we’re also going to see people with organ damage 6 months on being reinfected which could result in a higher mortality in itself.
If one of my 75 year old parents (whom I love dearly) dies from COVID-19, that is less of a tragedy than if a random teenager in my city does. My parent would have lost fewer years or “years of quality life” than the teen.
For the same reason, IMO, if there was only 1 kidney available, an 18 year old should get it before a 50 year old who should get it before an 82 year old, if all else is equal.
In that limited way, I do think the lives of the young have more value than those of middle age or the elderly.
There's just no way we can assume that age is the great qualifier.
For now, we want to drastically change the outcomes; for example, a month ago, you would have been given chloroquine, which doesn’t help but has side effects; maybe in a month we would know about therapies that reduce mortality and long term effects by a significant percent (or maybe not :)
Tons of testing and contact tracing would probably let the US end up with fewer people infected.
I agree we want to change outcomes, and flattening the curve is part of that. Delaying infections until better treatments is part of that. But we can't commit to waiting for a vaccine, and we can't commit to waiting for a good treatment. We may never get either.
What I think is that we sorta can and sorta should; we need to figure out the trade-offs, as best as we can, and decide what measures we want to keep for another year (will vary by country/state/city).
If you estimate that the lockdown takes 50% of life enjoyment away and each of us gets 50 healthy years of self-directed adult life, a year of lockdown is equivalent to sapping 1% of total life enjoyment. That’s not exactly the same as 1% increase in population deaths in a year, but it’s comparable IMO.
Well, I'm glad we can agree on something.
The factory worker opinion is largely irrelevant, in this context.