America is giving up on the pandemic?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Don't use a thread like this to fulminate or flame. It helps no one. It adds toxic fumes. Regardless of how right you are or which color the fumes, that points in the direction we're trying to avoid in this community.
There are important and interesting issues here. It's fine to debate, but do it within the guidelines. You'll do a better job of making your substantive points that way too.
Comments should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Maybe the text in italics ("Be kind. Don't be snarky...") should be always shown above the HN comment box? It'd be nice to get the reminder every time we are starting to write something unkind or snarky...
Parts of the UI like that can really only be seen once: once the user has seen that it is just a warning that is always there, it becomes an uninteresting piece of clutter that is zoned over and never again influencing the user.
I think the current system works much better: a thoughtful and appropriate comment written by a human when deemed appropriate (or possibly copied, I don't know).
This reinforces the ideas when necessary, and by itself is already a push for humanity, while a robotic repeating reminder serves only rarely to reinforce good reactions.
I feel like sites experience a downward spiral of intellectual entropy as time goes on if effort isn't put into maintaining a constructive culture.
“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”
This is why cross examination in needed in trials - of course everyone tries to make a plausible argument, so noticing the incongruities is important.
Assuming good faith and cross examining are not mutually exclusive.
I think it’s clearer and more direct and has less of an implication of being overly deferential to bad arguments.
In curious conversation, people want to know what the other person really thinks and what their experience has been like. In cross-examination, the goal is to defeat an enemy, so people are aggressive, try to make the other person seem as dumb or awful as they can, and generally seek to back them into a corner.
In one case the goal is to receive information from others' comments, in the other case it is to fire weapons into them. One can't do both at the same time. I think there are even physiological reasons for this: one is in a very different state when doing the one vs. doing the other.
Moreover, since curiosity evokes more curiosity and aggression evokes more aggression, the effects are systemic, meaning they apply to the site as a whole. We must choose which one we want, and we choose curiosity. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
IMO by HN's usual standards it makes it a worse title, not better.
I assume it's to present it as a debate for discussion rather than appear partisan? (Let me say here I'm British, live in the UK, don't really care for US politics, at that level at least.) But we have controversial titles all the time that are presented as fact (the author's opinion, the author's title) and yet discussed all the same.
If we need a '?' to have a discussion, then every submission needs a '?' suffixed.
I haven't read this whole thread, but the parts that I saw definitely did not lack for pushback. The question is how best to push back. Denunciatory rhetoric doesn't work. Its purpose is to provide momentary relief to the denouncer, at the cost of damaging the container and evoking more, not less, hatred from the other side.
There are better mechanisms for pushing back against hatred: flagging, downvoting, responding within the site guidelines, and in egregious cases emailing hn@ycombinator.com.
>However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators' ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders."
Why are many taking this position? One can recognize that the protests are risking an increase in virus transmission while still recognizing that it is a risk worth taking. Don't tell us there is no risk from these protests, but there is a risk from stay-at-home protests. The virus is not selective of political beliefs. It completely ruins the credibility of many health professionals. Almost no one's opinions will be swayed either way if they acknowledged that the protests do carry a real risk of transmission.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-lette...
huh who could have known this was a partisan issue not about health
Just one example:
They oversimplified the explanation of the science and pushed for lockdowns at all costs with no exceptions. Now, by admitting there are exceptions, they reveal that they were not being straight with us all along.
“Stay inside”, “don’t gather in groups”, “cancel your wedding”, “wear a mask during sex”, but oh hey, it’s OK to go downtown and riot, burn down buildings, and throw bricks at the police.
This is not a good faith depiction of what the protesters are doing.
“Stay inside”, “don’t gather in groups”, “cancel your wedding”, “wear a mask during sex”, but oh hey, it’s OK to go downtown and riot, burn down buildings, and throw bricks at the police.
These things are all true of the UK. As someone with a family member in the UK I can assure you they had to cancel their wedding, they were limited to an hour of outside time per day, they were told not to gather in groups and notoriously the government just told people if they live apart - even if they're in a relationship - they're not merely required to wear masks but cannot meet at all.
As for the riots:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/police-chief-fights-...
"A Virginia police chief fought back tears during a press conference as he described how rioters set fire to a home with a child inside and then prevented firefighters from responding as quickly as they could have"
It's a pathetic show from the HN userbase that the post is flagged and dead. Do the people here have any idea how many hundreds of millions of people are thinking exactly the same thing right now?
The public health community's credibility is now zero or lower. Only the most naive in society will ever believe them again. Every time we think they can't fail worse, they do. Their models are always wrong and the most influential was filled with basic C programming errors. They can't decide if masks work. They lauded China at the same time as complaining internally they weren't being given any data. They demanded a massive programme of ventilator production and then none were needed. They demanded censorship of "misinformation" even when that misinformation came from Nobel Prize winners and turned out to be correct. They've published an openly fraudulent paper on a possible treatment championed by Trump that led to trials being suspended, whilst simultaneously tweeting about how much they hate Trump. They demanded the economy be destroyed and the world placed under a totalitarian police state. Virtually all of them protect each other and refuse to criticise each other's work even when it's clearly wrong, and now the final salt in the wound: they decide that protesting against racism is healthy, but protesting against their decisions is not.
Never again.
This is a sad day for science and these experts should be ashamed.
1 - Trump is a racist for suggesting that borders should exist
2 - Trump is liable all covid deaths for not closing the borders fast enough
3 - The state/police are great for enforcing stay-at-home orders and social distancing
4 - We need thousands or millions to assemble in the streets to fight police
This is the type of schizophrenic messaging that happens during societal collapse.
Maybe it happens as a matter of social change or economic stress? What evidence is there that "societal collapse" (or what that even means?) has anything to do with these headlines?
I have never seen anyone say there should be no exceptions. They have always said essential things must continue. (although with different ideas of "essential")
Don't tell us there is no risk from these protests, but there is a risk from stay-at-home protests.
They just seem to think protesting America's rampant institutionalized police brutality is more worthy than protesting the lockdowns themselves, and I can't say I disagree, but even if I did I wouldn't be able to say they're being inconsistent, because they aren't. They just haven't stuck their heads in the sand of relativism.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/30/8654130...
I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil rights protests "unwise and untimely". [1] Somehow it's never the right moment for justice. Anybody suggesting an indefinite delay should be aware that their arguments are indistinguishable from those of people for whom "later" actually means "never". If people really want to end these protests now, instead of arguing for delay they should quickly enact deep structural changes.
[1]https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me. Do you really have 400 years worth of evidence of literal outright racism? How can we hope to inspire change with rhetoric like this? This is the equivalent of simply screaming louder to get a point across. Highly ineffective unless annoying them into submission is your goal.
We had slavery in America from 1619 until 1865. Jim Crow and segregation for 100 years after that. The Civil Rights Act, and related laws, eliminated much of the legal basis for institutional racism. But as we all know, that didn't eliminate racism. Safe to say, there's plenty of racism left in this country. Especially in institutions like the police. That's 401 years.
ETA: That's focusing purely on the black population. If you count what was directed against the native populations, you can go back even further.
Personal racism exists and will probably never go away. It would be nice if it did.
I do think people get profiled and hassled because other people who look like that have done XXX and cops see a possible pattern. This isn't fair to innocent people at all but I suspect this has been what is happening rather than anything "structural".
I learned this firsthand like 20 years ago when I grew long hair and a beard John Lennon style for maybe 8 months. I was very quickly pulled over, hassled and searched (very rudely I might add) on made up charges by a rural cop. This did open my eyes to maybe a small part of what black America goes through in dealing with cops. I cut my hair back to military style, shaved, and it was back to letting me off with a warning and have a nice day.
I feel like this kind of thing is a good part of antagonism but I don't see it as "structural". More many cops (including minority cops as far as that goes) not liking certain types of people. They need to serve the community imo and it would be better for everyone.
Police abuse is sort of a separate issue relating to training and accountability. While it is very definitely fueled by racism and classism, I feel like it is an issue that affects all races, albeit blacks more because of long standing economic and cultural issues. The 'warrior cop' mentality affects us all, and is something that has been slowly improving in many large cities.
"Personal racism" is tough. Racism is a broad term for many things. If my neighbor plays their stereo too loud and they're white, I might call them 'white trash' in private conversation, and depending on their race I might adopt a different epithet. That isn't to say I would deny them opportunity or hate them because of their race, just that their race is a convenient attachment point for my general dislike of them. Now I'm not saying that is good or excusable, but I think it is a different thing than denying someone rights or opportunities because of their color, or making assumptions about them based on their background.
When people of color don't feel safe to walk the streets of their own neighborhood because a Karen can report them as suspicious and the authorities take that seriously and escalate the situation, there very definitely is systemic, structural racism at play. If this were just happening to blacks who appeared 'urban' you might have a point, but it affects even well dressed black people and there are countless stories backing that up. Hell, ten years ago an aquaintence was profiled because her dark Italian skin made her appear Mexican to some stupid AZ cops.
I am a long haired white guy who has also been bald, so I get what you're saying. For years I could guarantee I would have the last open seat on a plane next to me, I'm assuming because of the way I look. That doesn't negate the experiences of people of color, it just adds another facet to the way people can prejudge you. If anything, it should illustrate how bad things could be if you weren't white.
Unlike the average San Francisco resident I've actually spent a lot of time around blacks and black communities so this isn't theoretical one dimensional abstract signaling of the type that is unfortunately too common lately.
The issue is deep and not nearly as simple as one sided "structural racism social injustice". A lot of it comes down to culture and how people feel about proper behavior. Along with contempt for cultures that don't have the same values. And willingness to engage in violent behavior.
But I don't deny black Americans have a rough time with the police and I do think we should do something about that. Maybe that is what is meant by "structural" in which case I agree, no argument.
I'm not sure what to do about people not liking each others culture though. I expect the bigots are the ones missing out, but I don't know if we can legal that problem away.
A cop and his boss acting badly may be systemic. It isn't structural.
Structural racism is often called systematic or institutional racism[0]. It doesn't have to be deliberate, but instead is something that perpetuates reduced status of a racial minority by the way laws or institutions are structured.
A commonly used example is the difference in laws and sentencing between crack and powered cocaine. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act created a mandatory minimum sentence on 5 years for 5 grams of crack cocaine, but the same Act made the 5 year minimum sentence apply to 500g of powered cocaine[1].
This doesn't appear to have been deliberately racist, and instead it was mostly in response to media hype about crack. But it had the result of meaning blacks were much more likely to be sentenced to prison for minor drug offences.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism
[1] https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/crack-vrs-po...
I personally believe profiling is not the same as racism, both have clear definitions. Both also sweep up innocent people and lump them in with miscreants who "look like that" so it's not something to go to the mat over. I basically agree.
What I don't agree with is your over the top rhetoric.
"We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that."
This disregards John Brown, the civil war, the civil rights act, affirmative action and a multitude of programs policies and attempts to bring justice and some measure of equality of opportunity to the minority. It also ignores the widespread support of the current protests and paints America with an overly broad brush of racism. In short, it does exactly what racists are accused of doing. I realize you likely read this kind of thing in a book. That doesn't make it any better nor more fair or accurate.
When you say "structural" and attempt to equate profiling with slavery or segregation, both of which were structural in an attempt to imply we are exactly the same place legally and in terms of opportunity, and how the system treats minorities when we manifestly are not, it's offensive, inaccurate and it raise hackles.
I really didn't want to get deep into this, and I'm not debating, but I think this point needs to be raised because there is entirely too much hot and shallow speech about lately and it detracts from the core point.
Yep that was exactly my point and why I related the story. I learned that people really are profiled and harassed based on their looks or certain assumptions about them. It really does happen.
But not in any structured way, but rather in random human behavior that we might never be able to correct, right?
It is very difficult to devise reasonable plans of action when the core terms in the dispute are ill-defined. There also seems to be a current of thought that any attempt to clarify or analyze the situation is an attempt to diminish the grievances. This anti-intellectualism coupled with the chaos and violence of a mob is frightening.
Here's a movie, Thirteenth, which VERY CLEARLY defines and examines structural racism in the criminal justice system in the US, and how it evolved directly from the systems of slavery and its sequel, Jim Crow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8
This analysis and conversation has been building for literally decades. It's like showing up for the fifth week of an algebraic geometry class and calling it 'anti-intellectual' because you can't be bothered to pick up Euclid...
And thanks for proving my point that some people view any attempt to analyze the situation as an attempt to diminish the grievances.
Your willingness to jump yet again to the conclusion that I was attempting to dismiss legitimate grievances is frustrating and again an example of the behavior I was trying to call out.
When I pointed out that "systemic racism" means different things to different people and that lack of agreement on that point made it difficult to have a meaningful discussion, you told me to "Go educate myself" and proceeded to lecture me about my ignorance regarding the criminal justice system.
How did you determine I was ignorant about anything? I happen to agree that our criminal justice system has some deep problems, so you just attacked a potential ally.
It seems to me that you jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that I had challenged some assertion about "system racism'. But by doing so you illustrated my point that it was difficult to have a discussion when terms are so ill-defined and that it was even more difficult to do so when people assumed that any attempt to clarify and understand the meaning behind the words was some attempt to minimize or diminish the grievances.
Your reaction was exactly the behavior that I was pointing out as making it difficult to discuss these issues.
You are upset that I am "splitting hairs over phrasing" and that is an example of what I would call "anti-intellectualism". The meaning of words is supremely important if we are to find common ground and be able to work rationally towards addressing the legitimate grievances being expressed in the protests.
I think "structural racism" is one of the biggest branding failures of the whole movement.
To begin with, it uses the word "racism" to refer to something unintentional, when it normally implies intentionality. That needlessly makes people defensive. So then they want to deny that it's happening rather than admit there is a problem, which is the first step to solving it. Before even step one you've already lost.
Then the definition comes out as something like, structures that produce a racial disparity. But before controlling for confounders that's just everything. There are a slew of factors that correlate with race -- income, culture, in some cases biology (e.g. for Vitamin D). If lower income people get worse outcomes then all else equal, black people will get worse outcomes as a result of lower incomes. Which implies a poverty problem in those cases rather than a racism problem, which means you need anti-poverty solutions.
If you try to insist on a racism frame there, all you're doing is making enemies out of lower income white people who might've been your allies against the actual root cause which affects them too. And you make it all too easy for opponents to reveal the confounders and show that the "racism" isn't there, even though the problem is still there, because the problem wasn't "racism" (as it's commonly understood) to begin with.
It's easier to actually solve the problems if you stop having to constantly fight with people over calling it that.
Your poverty example strikes me as disingenuous because poverty for black people is considerably worse than poverty for white people, even when you control for the big confounders, precisely because of racism. Which means that anti-poverty measures can be a great thing but they will not by themselves be sufficient to level the playing field.
It's funny how it's always --other-- people who are getting defensive, who will refuse to listen, who are lost before the arguments have even been expressed. You're fighting on behalf of a demographic that doesn't exist: people who aren't racist but are unwilling to listen for 2 minutes to an explanation of systemic racism. I bet you just dislike the concept of systemic racism yourself and you're using hypothetical alienation of ignorant poor white people as a cover.
A pretty clear example is what happened with the phrase "Black Lives Matter". It doesn't involve the R word. And yet, it sends a lot of white people into a rage. Literally, as here, where the menacing white man is shouting: “Black Lives Matter? Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10223827665665524&se...
And it's not just that guy. For many, there is no acceptable way to point our racial injustice. The only acceptable level of protest is one so quiet that it is entirely unseen, unheard. MLK addressed this in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" if you want to read more.
It's more that white people become defensive when you accuse them of racism. Which, when racism means intentionally hating black people, you can understand -- they know whether or not they hate black people and then you're accusing them of something they know isn't true.
Having to explain that it means something else in this context is just handicapping yourself from the start for no reason. Call it structural injustice or something.
> A pretty clear example is what happened with the phrase "Black Lives Matter". It doesn't involve the R word. And yet, it sends a lot of white people into a rage.
In this case the phrase is the name of a group. Now the group is holding mass protests after everyone has been told to stay home because of a virus pandemic. There is a non-frivolous argument that doing that right now could end up killing a lot of people. That has the potential to piss people off completely regardless of what is being protested.
You can certainly find examples of people saying nasty things against the lockdown protesters and trivializing their concerns -- and that even had a reason to be happening specifically now and not a year ago or a year from now. (King's "later is never" doesn't really apply to a temporary public health issue which can't be used as an indefinite excuse.)
But the phrase itself was kind of an own-goal to begin with. The best way to hear the trouble is to compare it to "Blue Lives Matter" -- the tone deaf response that raises the question, compared to what? The original has the same problem, you just don't hear it when it's your team.
The phrase taken literally states something so uncontroversial that it carries the implication it has to be relative to something else in order to mean anything. So people hear "Black Lives Matter More Than ___" and are invited to fill in the blank with something important to them and then get upset.
It was also just waiting for opponents to claim the middle and respond with All Lives Matter, which makes you sound like jerks because they're being inclusive and you're implicitly saying you only care about black people.
Good messaging is hard.
> For many, there is no acceptable way to point our racial injustice.
It seems to me that calling it "racial injustice" rather than "injustice" is not adding anything useful. If there is an injustice not related to race, should we ignore it? Does the racial injustice have some uniqueness to it that requires it to be addressed separately and using some unusual methods not suitable to ordinary injustice?
When you look at something like police brutality, it disproportionately affects black people. But what does a solution have to do with race? If we address police brutality in general, does that not solve the problem? Does that not make it easier to build a larger coalition?
More than twice as many white people are shot by police as black people. This is proportionally not as many. But what does that mean? You bring that proportion of white people in, the ones suffering the same as you, and now your coalition is three times as large. But you have to set your sights on the injustice and not just the "racial" injustice.
Yes, it seems that way to a lot of white people, especially ones who haven't studied the topic. But there are deep historical roots here, and white bias is a major cause of the problem. Continuing to erase that means the problems will continue to remain unsolved.
If you'd like to learn more, I'd suggest Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist. For the historical roots, Kendi's history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning is fascinating, too. To understand the white pattern of reaction and erasure here, DiAngelo's, White Fragility is a good resource (as is her 2011 paper by the same name).
If you think you can solve these problems via focus on just a generic injustice, feel free to take a swing at it. But I don't think white armchair critique of anti-racist activists is helpful. And I haven't for some years: https://www.facebook.com/williamp/posts/10105565800812373
You said this experience opened your eyes, yet you say structural racism doesn't exist. That was literally structural racism. Do you not agree? This is called white privilege; a black person can't change their skin color, but you can cut your hair.
> I'm not sure how much "structural" racism actually exists in the US at this point. There are no doubt pockets and they should be rooted out.
Well if you're "not sure", they why are you posting your own narrative without becoming sure? It's like if I said, "I'm not sure how cars work, but here's a theory that sounds good to me: it involves lasers and hamster wheels, and so I will now believe it."
This is the one of the biggest issues in America, would you consider attempting to GET sure about it?
Perhaps you should ask for clarity. Here, I'll go:
Structural [institutional] racism never left the US. That's what millions of people are protesting right now. It's not some vague notion.
Here are a few off the top of my head:
- Drug laws that target blacks (crack sentences are 10x longer than cocaine)
- Wealth accumulation that holds back black families (not getting loans means not getting houses means not passing wealth down to children; the GI bill that rejected nearly all black applicants and was primarily responsible for middle-class Boomer wealth accumulation)
- Education (poorer zip codes get less funding and end up less educated and poorer, a vicious cycle)
- Job applications (black sounding names get rejected more frequently)
- The vast sentencing disparity between whites and blacks committing the same crimes (blacks are guilty till innocent, and shot for being black in the wrong place or misdemeanours (jogging, selling loose cigarettes), whites are "good kids" who don't deserve to have their lives ruined by a felony rape)
All are structural, institutional racism that are alive and well today.
Do you think I am way off base, or do you reject what I'm describing as factually incorrect or politically motivated? Or anything other than examples of structural racism. I personally don't know anyone who believes structural racism doesn't exist so I'm in a totally different world here...
As an example, you might read Loewen's "Sundown Towns". He covers the Nadir, the post-reconstruction period that includes events like the Tulsa Massacre. He demonstrates pretty convincingly that white-led ethnic cleansing was widespread across the US. Through a variety of historical records, including extensive use of census data, he demonstrates that in town after town, all across the country, white people violently drove out any black people and then used violence to keep them out. And then they quietly erased that history, despite keeping otherwise extensive historical records.
Was any of this covered in my high school or college education? No. That's even though it demonstrably took place in towns all around where I grew up. That a lot of suburban growth was driven by racism. That wealth distribution was driven by racism. That made it easy for me to think that racism was this thing that happened long ago or far away. When instead I grew up soaking in its structural effects.
The police regularly distort their reporting. There is no centralized collecting of police violence statistics, in large part because they have organized against the collection of those statistics. The 1,000+ number will be far less subject to manipulation.
Here's some additional reporting. The 2014 Tampa Bay Times project to track police violence found 827 people shot in a year. In Florida alone. They spent a huge amount of effort on the reporting because the statistics were sometimes not collected and usually not trustworthy where they were.
https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2017/investigations/f...
While it's fair to say that bias was a factor in Rice's shooting, and I'd agree, pointing to open carry protests as evidence of this may not be the most effective line of argument. Especially since armed Black demonstrators carried out their own demonstrations not long afterward: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/michigan-law...
Police were responding to:
> "There's a guy in here with a pistol," the man tells a police dispatcher during the call. "It's probably fake, but he's like, pointing it at everybody."
The problem with systematic racism is the "percieved threat" part. When I have that racisit bias, I obviously will percieve a black person more as a threat than a white one. I may not even be aware of it, and facing ones own biases is a hard thing even more so for such serious things as racism and police brutality. When this bias is combined with the kind of training US police is getting, it a given to end up where the US ended up.
The only nice thing is, it also shows where to sart to remedy theissues. Once the police and the poluation accepted to see the issues.
This post is pretty double speaky because these doctors can't quite come out and say stay home because the virus is still here and dangerous. So they say things which are self contradictory and therefore ultimately meaningless but allow themselves to signal their support for the cause.
It's what happens when your institutions become explicitly partisan.
That can’t possibly be a valid scientific opinion on the basis of public health data — until recently the virus was killing more people per day than the police kill in an entire year.
It’s a political opinion and this was a political letter.
From now on, when public health experts give advice, we must all wonder if it is based on science, or if it is just political messaging which has no more claim to truth than any other political messaging. That’s dangerous ground to be on if you want science to be taken seriously by the public.
With that in mind, it is important to put an understanding of public health data in context with systemic racism, and why the data looks like it how it does.
What are we going to do!?
Gather in large groups while screaming in close proximity to each other!
It doesn’t seem an irresponsible or unprecedented extension of that principle to say that if your country is rocked by civil unrest, dealing with that is more important than preventing the spread of disease.
it is safe for me if you take morphine; it is not safe for me if you spread an airborne pathogen. see the difference?
Protesting the lockdown is not a just cause.
Saying "Well now anything doctors say is political!" does not show good intent or faith, but someone looking for a gotcha statement so they can say "See, they were political actors all along!"
You can't decide what other people think is unjust. You would be negating the entire point of protests.
I think the quarantine of the healthy was unjust. You're going to tell me I can't protest against it?
Nobody said you cant protest to your heart's content, you can protest over anything. It's just calling out one of those protests is a mite's buzz of a complaint to a lion's roar of shame for the treatment of black people by America.
It's perfectly valid to see those issues as important but still not worth the risk of spreading COVID-19, but by boiling this down to a contest of how many people each Bad Thing killed in X amount of time, you miss a lot of the nuances in both issues and really preclude any reasonable, rational, productive discussion about the nature of the tradeoffs that are being made.
If you want to ignore all those things and walk away convinced that it's a political stunt, nobody can stop you.
And at risk of being too on topic and reading the article, the issue is that the gloom-and-doom arguments that a lockdown is necessary and correct have been well and truly rejected by the activist wings of politics, and implicitly by a large portion of the commenting-class of journalists. And business. And possibly the public at large. They clearly don't agree.
My problem with their letter is that they made a judgment about these trade-offs and attempted to portray it as a scientific one, when it really wasn't. Based on the data alone, there is no way to reach their conclusion.
Is that all BS, then? No, I don't think so.
I wouldn't call it a "scientific conclusion", but the point that black people have poor health outcomes relative to other demographics has a lot of merit and honestly who else should be making it but medical professionals and scientists?
That's my point. If it's not scientific, then scientists should not have presented it as such.
I can reason about moving a heavy object from my car to my house using the general knowledge that dropped objects fall downward and often break when they hit the ground; I don't need to whip out the graph paper and prove it.
The problem the public health sector has worked itself into is that it dismissed any attempts to analyze “trade offs” when we were talking about economic trade offs. So now they have to pretend like we’re not talking about trade offs at all. Hence the completely non-sensical premise that protests are okay because police brutality is a public health problem.
I'm also not super convinced that "the public health sector" was never receptive to questions about economic tradeoffs. We have a dysfunctional federal government and the same in many local jurisdictions, but where I live the local public health institutions have been working hand in glove with state and local governments to open as quickly as possible while staying abreast of the disease's spread.
Science is a minor concern within a sphere of human influence.
When mathematicians of all people, reject prizes for making undeniable progress in their field [0], you can only imagine what happens in all the other fields that are inextricably tied to politics (economics anyone?)
Here's a depressing quote from Perelman's wiki: "It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#:~:text=On%20....
In this quotation: "we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission". "As risky" seems like a very specific choice of words because they could have said "we do not condemn these gatherings because of the risk" but did not.
Similar to how a judge might say "I condemn you to death" is designating the sentence of death to a subject, "condemning a gathering as risky" is designating the attribute of risk to a gathering. They do not condemn the gathering as risky, so they consciously decide to not designate or apply the attribute of risk to the gathering.
Of course, it could have simply been a mistake to word the sentence in this way, but "as risky" does not seem like the obvious choice of words, "because of the risk" does.
And yes, they do later go on to say to prepare for an increased number of infections and do recognize that protestors can and likely will spread the disease, but that just goes to show that the statement is contradicting itself. They are specifically being inconsistent in the earlier mentioned sentence.
Or what if I’m doing renovations, and someone asks me to make something I know to be unsafe. I point that out, but they insist... Again, do I just do what they ask because, “professional?”
I suspect you are conflating “professional” with “mercenary.” To me, being a professional means approaching my work with a sense of ethics.
In fact, I suggest to you that saying nothing in these cases is also injecting ethics into my work, only it is my personal investment in “The Status Quo.”
You can’t escape ethics, you can only support the existing structure by pretending you are above petty “ethics” and “politics.”
I would interpret your remark as suggesting, “Professionalism involves ethics, but there is an interpretation of those ethics that suggests these particular people should have made a different choice in this stuation.”
I could agree or disagree with your conclusion, but I can certainly support the form of your argument as sound: Professionals should have ethics, so let’s talk about what those ethics should be, and how to apply them to this situation.
———
It’s the same conversation as, “Should professional work for a social media business that amplifies and spreads falsehoods, violent rhetoric, &c.”
If someone were to say, “A professional just writes code, the effect of that code on society is not their business,” I think that’s flat-out wrong. Not taking a stand on the matter is taking a stand, but lying to yourself about not taking a stand.
On the other hand, people can and do regularly have discussions about whether there is a “greater good” served by allowing people to communicate and decide for themselves whether George Soros is behind Black Lives Matter, or whether the Coronavirus was actually hatched by Bill Gates in an attempt to use a vaccine to inject people with microchips.
I have opinions about the ethics of that too, but I can appreciate that there are people who are also trying to apply ethics to such decisions, even if they are ethics I disagree with or flat-out abhor.
it's never black-and-white like that.
if my professional doctor's personal ethics includes clauses that motivate him to seek non-standard and unproven treatments, yes, i'd prefer they discard those.
I would prefer it if employees at Planned Parenthood didn't have personal ethical clauses that caused them to purposely give incorrect data and wrong phone numbers to women seeking abortions because their personal ethics sway them to do so.
If I were a very famous politician that had polarizing views on something, i'd prefer if my taxi driver remained a professional rather than kicking my ass out of the car because their personal ethics required that they do that to someone that they view as a political enemy.
I'd prefer prisoners be fed , even if it's against the personal ethics of the food service workers to feed and take care of felony rapists.
There are a lot of professions that require professionals to have a certain level of detachment from 'pedestrians'. It's not at all uncommon.
They are pretending to base it on science, when it is just another political opinion.
Calculations on what, exactly? There are calculations done on how police brutality and systemtic racism contribute to decreased quality of life for black americans. It's considered widely acknowledged within the healthcare industry that black americans have statistically significant health disparities compared to other races, and that additionally it is statistically known that the covid19 shut down primarily affect the service industry, which hits people of color disproportionately towards white people (as people of color are less likely to have jobs that can be worked from home).
But you'd also have to do the same for the 3 months they've taken from everyone else due to lockdowns.
Until they do that sort of thing, its politics not a social science.
So yes of course there is risk. However as with anything political no honest discussion is permitted. This is why people calling out the violence and looting are being hushed or intimidated because politicians don't want to talk about that side of the issue. The same politicians who have been building up the police state in blue cities for generations.
The difference is the stay-at-home protesters overwhelmingly didn't wear masks [1] and the BLM protesters are overwhelmingly wearing masks [2]. Hong Kong has proven it's possible to have massive protests while wearing masks and not being vectors of infection. [3]
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
[2] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/protesters-aim-to-bring-one...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/world/asia/coronavirus-ho...
The risk there is much thus lower than places that have already have tens of thousands of cases, although it also depends on how long the protests continue and whether an outbreak can be caught early through testing.
> Prepare for an increased number of infections in the days following a protest. Provide increased access to testing and care for people in the affected communities, especially when they or their family members put themselves at risk by attending protests.
The sentence "we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission" is a bit ambiguous, maybe on purpose. The idea is that they won't use the risk of COVID-19 transmission as a argument to disapprove of the gatherings.
They cannot say the gatherings are safe, because they aren't, but they also want to support them. That's how you get such an ambiguous message. I would have preferred a clearer stance as well like "We, as health professionals, recognize the risks, however, blah blah blah. You can minimize these risks by doing blah blah blah".
They express themselves both as medical experts and as human beings, so having a political stance is no problem, as long as they make it clear which part of them is speaking. I think it is not clear enough in their letter, but in my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with their message.
That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They are saying that the protest is too important to take health considerations into account, but they are reluctant to speak plainly and tell people there's risk but they should be adult and choose to manage the risks themselves and maybe neglect small risk in order to achieve bigger thing. Because that's what they spent last several months - and in fact, many years before - trying to convince people there's no way they can be treated as adults and just given the information and left to manage the risks by themselves. Just in this case, our betters had decided the COVID risk is less important than protesting - so it's OK for us. But only in cases which are approved by our betters. If you want to protest something else - it's still risky as heck and there they can fully condemn.
For example, https://cchealth.org/press-releases/2020/0602-Businesses-Reo...
Why create specialized rules for protests that allow an order of magnitude more people to gather than those allowed in a "close cohort" gathering?
And, importantly, all this is not in the context of individual risk, but population risk. The distinction is tricky but important, and one that trips most people up. For any single individual, the personal risk from COVID19 tends to be small, often seemingly vanishingly small. However, since we don't have immunity, it will affect everyone and even a small individual risk multiplied by (almost) everyone is a large impact on the population in terms of overall deaths.
Anyway, how many political protests have you attended in the last 10 years? How many social gatherings?
For me, it is easily 1:100, if not more. Thus, the aggregate transmission risk from protests is much smaller, therefore we can be more permissive of them. And it is the aggregate risk that policymakers care about.
On the other hand, political protest is considered a very, very fundamental right of our democracies, restricting it something to be done only with the greatest reluctance.
Yes, the frequency that people attend protests is on average much less, but the number of other people that one is exposed to is much greater hence why "larger gathering venues at a pace consistent with public health and safety, such as nightclubs, concert venues, and live audience sports" (which are often outdoors as well) are in the very final phase of California's reopening plan. If policy makers agree that protests have a low aggregate risk, why would they place things like concerts or sports events which happen mostly on the weekends in the final phase when there are now protests happening every day?
I do agree that political protest is a very fundamental right and rarely ever be restricted, but many who share your opinion were against the anti-lockdown protests which is contradictory if one believes BLM protests should not be restricted because they are political protest. People protesting the lockdown is also democracy in action, even if one believes the reason for protest is not as important. The democratic right to protest is not dependant on how important the issue is seen to be.
With the current protest, the political situation changes. Opposing these protests is a political suicide. If you can't oppose them, the only way is to have some contrived argument where you are for lockdowns (because see above) but also for protests.
> health officials should not have their risk assessments swayed by political considerations.
You can publish raw information about risk - which is complex and uncertain, and step back, but then you will have little influence on political decisions that follow it. Or you can recommend a policy - and by that inevitably contaminate the scientific assessment with political stance and become invested in certain policy. I'd much like the former, but vast majority of the policy in the US lately completely rejects the idea that the population can be trusted with full information and making its own decisions about it.
The ruling paradigm is that the government should limit people's choices for their own good, and push them into actions that it thinks are beneficial for them. And most people expect that from politicians and blame those politicians which didn't limit their choices enough and allowed them to make choices which ultimately brought bad consequences. So, the politicians and people that want the political action to happen play the game that the public wants to be played.
This is true for the policies, but absolutely not true for advice from public health officials. Globally the policies made in response to this pandemic have been justified almost entirely by appeals to the authority of health officials. The supposed basis of these policies was that those officials were providing expert and politically neutral advice on risk management. Having the expert health and safety advice show a readily apparent political motivation undermines all of it.
> When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks. Just a few weeks later, there wasn’t a mask to be bought in stores, or online for a reasonable price — just widespread price gouging. Many health experts, no doubt motivated by the sensible and urgent aim of preserving the remaining masks for health care workers, started telling people that they didn’t need masks or that they wouldn’t know how to wear them.
I sent them a link to the CDC guidance[1] that includes this picture regarding facial hair styles that are ok[2].
I don't think the notice at the top of said article is helpful whatsoever saying that this isn't advice for covid-19. A proper fit and seal is important. The picture could also be considered somewhat offensive to some.
[1]: https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2017/11/02/noshave/
[2]: https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/files/2017/11/Facia...
In your specific example of volunteer health assessments and triage at a homeless shelter, you probably need real honest-to-goodness PPE, and the organization’s advice was wrong. When I’m going down to the grocery store, though, a cloth mask should be sufficient — and my (admittedly short) beard is not going to keep my mask from blocking droplets from my mouth and nose, assuming it completely covers both of them.
If one's beard is creating even more space between the face and mask, it's of course going to make things worse.
1) They capture a lot of droplets coming out of your mouth. Do you sneeze in your elbow or in someone's face? A face mask does better than an elbow, and for every breath (not just a sneeze). So does a beard for that matter; if your sneeze goes around through a beard, it's catching big droplets too.
2) You know the six-foot-guideline? They effectively increase that distance. A person talking, yelling, sneezing, etc. can carry droplets 15+ feet in a straight line. If we're both wearing masks (or face shields), it's not going in a straight line. Beards disrupt linear airflow too.
3) You can't touch your face.
They don't stop virus aerosol. That's where you need a proper seal.
I'm not actually sure facial hair makes any difference with a cloth mask. Surgical mask would be in between. And an N95 probably becomes a surgical.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-t...
> But the CDC has recommended against mask use. I hypothesized that the CDC was intentionally lying to us, trying to trick us into not buying masks so there would be enough for health care workers.
> But that can’t be true, because the CDC and other experts came up with their no-masks policy years ago, long before there was any supply shortage. For example, during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, their website offered the following table:
> [table in link]
> And during the 2015 MERS epidemic, NPR said South Koreans were wrong to wear masks:
> “[ . . . ] Masks can be helpful for protecting health workers from a variety of infectious diseases, including MERS… But either type of mask is less likely to do much good for the average person on the street…Wearing a mask might make people feel better. After all, MERS has killed about a third of the people known to be infected. But there are no good studies looking at how well these masks prevent MERS transmission out in the community, says Geeta Sood, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University. “On the street or the subway, for MERS specifically, they’re probably not effective,” she says. One problem is that the masks are loose fitting, and a lot of tiny airborne particles can get in around the sides of the masks.”
> So if studies generally suggest masks are effective, and the CDC wasn’t deliberately lying to us, why are they recommending against mask use?
It’s also unclear what “masks” meant in the initial phases. An N95 respirator? A surgical mask? A homemade cloth mask? Each of these has different uses and effects. I seriously doubt most people knew the difference in early March, I only had a vague notion. The surgeon general likely is thinking of respirators, because all MDs in hospitals get fitted for it. They know how hard it is to put it on and take it off safely, and know how critical it is for it to be a good tight fit. None of those things are going to be true for most people in early March 2020. If that’s your frame of reference, then it makes total sense that you’d recommend people not buy masks.
Everyone going out and buying N95s when they’re not particularly useful to most people unless in a close confined space is a bad thing. It doesn’t actually save many lives, but does make it harder for people who need it (docs/nurses in close confined spaces, particularly with patients on respirators that aerosolize the virus).
People wearing surgical or cloth masks may help some, probably mostly in enclosed spaces and mostly for exhalation rather than preventing you from inhaling a virus from someone else.
Even then, it’s my understanding that the data isn’t awesome here. Many of the papers I’ve seen are under fairly odd scenarios (for example an airplane, lots of the same air, recycled all over, for hours, where the paper showed positive mask benefit). We don’t have much for bandanas, or masks that were washed 3 weeks ago, or masks that are tighter, masks that are looser. I’d wager it helps, a little, especially indoors.
In other words, this shit is complicated, why assume lying when instead we could just say, “it’s complicated, they didn’t get it 100% right.”
OK, let's say CDC guys screwed up and got caught with their pants down (oh man did they...) and now we have no clear guidelines about it. Then come down from the ivory tower and tell us what you have and let us decide without politicians yelling at us and jerking it around - one day you are an idiot murderer because you're wearing mask, next day you're an idiot murderer because you don't. It just breeds contempt for the whole setup.
By that I mean we spend so much time as scientists living with and making decisions about which course of action to take in the context of uncertain data. Other fields obviously do too, but for a bench scientist, every day is is a constant tradeoff on which data you buy, what experiments will you run to confirm/exclude it, and what’s the downside of that decision. The best rarely speak in full certainty, they talk about probabilities.
Contrast to public messaging or journalism which is, “do this, not that.” This has led to people holding “science” as an identity, a talisman of righteousness. That’s not how science works, but people want to feel better by judging people so here we are.
I personally would have preferred a short, coherent statement on what we know for sure and what we don’t, how confident we are about the same, and to treat people as adults.
Not wearing a mask offers zero protection from an illness which is mainly transmitted through droplets and aerosols.
Wearing a mask offers some protection, ranging from little to very good depending on the type of mask. In the mean time we know that surgical masks offer pretty good protection in particular, but there were studies about SARS, MERS and influenza going back years showing that both FFP2/N95+ and surgical masks do help. We even have studies comparing incorrect, partly incorrect vs correct usage.
The conclusion is inescapable: even if people on average wear masks incorrectly and even if the masks they wear aren't even close to 95% effective, they reduce the rate of transmission. Why on Earth would you not want to reduce the rate of transmission even if by a few percent?
This is what we do not know (still).
There are plenty of results in life science far more counterintuitive than the hypothesis, “people are less strict about social distancing when wearing masks.”
Although we don't strictly need to ask them, since the head of the Chinese CDC said more than a month ago that using masks is essential and that he doesn't understand why Europe doesn't do it. KCDC specialists said much of the same thing, although I don't know if they expressed concern at Europe's lax attitude toward masks.
And finally here's a couple of anecdotes:
* people in supermarkets seem a bit more careful now, since the masks have been introduced. But keeping 1.5-2m distance at all times is hard and this is certainly not always respected. That's the whole point of why one needs masks instead of relying on distancing - distancing doesn't always work, but having a mask on is pretty simple. And even if the wearer screws up, at least they don't easily infect the others.
* before the mandatory mask thing people generally got out of my way when they saw me with my mask on.
Where it does cause harm is early on if everyone gets N95s and the docs can’t get enough (which absolutely happened) then that actually kills more people (docs, nurses, and the people they would have saved).
The right message in retrospect should have been, “don’t go buy masks, save those for people who need the highest performance, but wear a cloth mask when indoors. Wash it frequently.” We screwed up, but it’s not malice and it is complicated.
Remember spending a few weeks agonizing over how to ramp up ventilator production, rather than focusing on masks? And then finally coming around to masks could be useful, with everyone championing DIY cloth masks? We're four months into this thing and most everyone is still proudly wearing those ersatz face-rags, even spending effort to "improve" them as as fashion accessories. Meanwhile a proper N95 costs around $3 to produce and distribute - I thought we were supposed to be an industrialized society!
At the same time the amount of people that think that have the mask below the nose or just at the chin or mishandling it because it feels "uncomfortable" to them is astounding. I'm not sure but I believe an intubation is more uncomfortable (and yes these are predominantly people at risk ages)
It's just so pointless to go to the bother of getting a mask and then wear it in such a way that you get no benefits from it.
You can go back a few months and the WHO went on record plenty of times regarding a couple of points
- Health workers really need good PPE and there is a shortage
- When infected people wear a mask, it reduces transmission
- The benefits of a non-infected person wearing a mask are not super well understood/studied and this topic doesn't really come up much because our main audience is healthcare professionals
So they said at one point, focus on getting the masks to health care workers, and then as mask supply increased they said the infected should wear them too, and now that cloth/paper masks are easy to obtain they say everyone should wear them.
It was always a question of supply and availability, there was no conspiracy.
If you looked beyond the headlines and looked at the context it was pretty clear.
The last Sars or Coronavirus illnesses differed from this one, as in those cases asymptomatic people were not spreading the virus very much.
So the (reasonable) assumption was that people mostly know when they are contagious and stay at home.
In that scenario "community masks" (everything below FPP-2) don't matter much.
When researchers found that Covid-19 is different (and that has to do with the massively higher virus load in the throat, where former similar diseases built most of the virus load in the lungs), the stance changed.
That is a good thing! Learn new information, adapt your response.
What's fueling conspiracy theories now is that the messaging back then centered on "we need to preserve masks for the medical community", which was a smaller component of the motivation, sure, but got mostly conflated with the real argument. I think that is because it was much easier to explain to the public and to journalists.
In hindsight that was a mistake. But the conspiracy theories that health officials just flip-flopped for no reason is wrong, and it's damaging the fabric of society even more.
"Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus"
"which was a smaller component of the motivation, sure, but got mostly conflated with the real argument. I think that is because it was much easier to explain to the public and to journalists."
They simplified (and arguably over-simplified) the public communication.
Insisting that they lied is uncharitable at best, and a hallmark of all sorts of conspiracy theories right now.
To be fair, I remember looking it up on the CDC website when this all started, and they explicitly stated any masks are not necessary (or useful) unless you are caring for a sick patient.
The point is that when almost all contagious people stay at home, we don't need community masks. We only need them because contagious people are asymptomatic (that's new!), tehrefore don't know about their status and therefore go out in public.
Too bad this pandemic overlapped with the flu season and with a period of time where many people had colds, thereby rendering the above assumption null and void.
For a long time I was under the impression that surgical masks don't really help the wearer. There are some studies showing comparable effects to an N95, but I was assuming incorrect N95 usage and I was incorrectly dismissing the benefit of even low double-digit protection.
The thing that convinced me to take a closer look was an interview with the German infection specialist Peter Walger, which said that:
* all masks protect the wearer to a certain degree
* medical grade surgical masks clearly offer partial protection. This was a grave error, which made personnel also in clinical practice not trust the masks and wear them for protection.
Recommendations try to take everything in to account.
It's easy now to say: just wear masks. But then, there was even a global shortage of masks for health professionals.
In US there's been many warnings to subsidize a strategic PPE supply and production. This was ignored. Early on (COVID-19) a US mask producer asked officials to provide money to expand production. This was ignored.
It wasn't just easy to predict, it was predicted various times.
But we won't build something now against it because it's a long time ago.
Another excerpt from the article state:
> "We created the letter in response to emerging narratives that seemed to malign demonstrations as risky for the public health because of Covid-19," according to the letter writers, many of whom are part of the University of Washington's Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response. We believe that the way forward is not to suppress protests in the name of public health but to respond to protesters demands in the name of public health, thereby addressing multiple public health crises."
They are not thinking about it in terms of supporting/opposing the protests. Rather the protests are a fact and you need to deal with them somehow. You can do that by either suppressing them or addressing their concerns. They do not want their concerns of COVID-19 to justify suppressing the protests, especially if addressing the protestor's concerns is a viable option.
> They are saying that the protest is too important to take health considerations into account, but they are reluctant to speak plainly and tell people there's risk but they should be adult and choose to manage the risks themselves and maybe neglect small risk in order to achieve bigger thing.
This seems almost exactly the sentiment they are addressing in the letter. COVID-19 is a public health concern, so is racial disparities that result in racial disparities in medical outcomes. Their concerns over COVID-19 transmission should not be taken as justification for suppressing the protests.
From the article,
> "Staying at home, social distancing, and public masking are effective at minimizing the spread of COVID-19. To the extent possible, we support the application of these public health best practices during demonstrations that call attention to the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy," the letter says.
They are still giving the same advice they've been giving. The letter also states protest-specific COVID-19 harm mitigation strategies for protestors & police.
> Just in this case, our betters had decided the COVID risk is less important than protesting - so it's OK for us. But only in cases which are approved by our betters.
A more charitable interpretation is that some medical professionals do not believe that the risk of COVID-19 spread is a compelling reason for suppressing protests against racial inequality, especially when the risk of COVID-19 spread can be addressed by responding to the protestors concerns & therefore advancing public health by both mitigating the spread of COVID-19 and addressing the role racism plays in medical outcomes.
The letter to me reads as 100% political because it is suggesting that you can get rid of the protests by addressing their concerns. That option is available to you. Their motivation for writing the letter is largely to say "hey, you can stop the protests by addressing their concerns" and to point out that addressing their concerns in this case also advances what they consider to be a public health interest.
It is possible we had different interpretations of what they wrote, but this felt more like "1000 doctors make a poltiical statement about the protests" rather than "1000 doctors say in their scientific opinions that protests are justified."
Not to mention, I have family in the field, I grew up with probably a dozen public health experts attending Thanksgiving dinner, and did my first internship at a public health company. At no point in hearing decades of shop talk did I ever hear police brutality being mentioned as a public health issue. Words have meaning dammit.
By the way, I have no public health expertise myself; just recounting as a lay person what I’ve heard public health experts talk about as a proxy for the metes and bounds of the field.
A difficulty with this view, at least potentially, is that it seems to allow everything in the world (certainly almost every area of public policy) to be in scope for public health, because almost everything in the world has potential to affect morbidity and mortality. At one level this broad view seems obviously correct, but at another level it seems obviously crazy (or at least likely to bring the public health profession into conflict with everyone over weighing in on every kind of decision that anyone ever makes).
In the past there was a fight between some CDC researchers and Congress over something about handgun policy because the researchers were studying something about guns and violence that made some gun rights activists nervous that there would be an argument presented under the banner of public health to limit access to guns. I believe the conclusion was that they told CDC to stop studying this, which, again, seems to me to be susceptible of some mix of "there might be a lot of legitimate reasons to have this information" and "does the public health profession get to weigh in with claimed expertise on every issue?".
I think it's a legitimately thorny conceptual problem because if you think of health as something like "flourishing" or "people having success in living the way they want" or "eudaemonia" or something, almost every public policy question can be conceived of as a "health" question. (Or even, maybe, "minimizing all-cause mortality"?) But if someone says that the policy answer to each question is therefore obvious because a particular profession thinks it knows what would maximize things it thinks it knows how to measure, I imagine a lot of the public is going to say that this doesn't match up with its notion of what health is.
Edit: after writing this, I had this weird imagine of public health as like a superintelligent AI that's super-focused on one goal and doesn't understand, or doesn't care very much, that people might have other goals too. We think there's obviously something that's going to remain outside of the scope of the AI's interest, but since the AI is smarter than we are, it discovers a way that that thing is actually relevant to its interests according to its utility function, after all! (I realize people have also had this kind of concern about other institutions that are happy to define their scope of action more broadly over time, such as profit-maximizing corporations, or militaries. The corporation says "we need to figure out what actions will maximize profit" or the military says "we need to figure out what actions will maximize our capacity to win wars" and perhaps the scope and ambition of their actions are soon larger than anyone would have expected.) I feel like this analogy is actually weirdly apposite, at least for some audiences. :-)
Probably a more sensible approach is to say the medical field concerns itself with the operation of the human body, and how to correct malfunctioning operations.
However, public health continues to actively distinguish itself from medicine (they're different degrees and different departments in universities, for example, and you can get both an MD and a DPH), so I don't think your proposed definition for medicine will satisfy public health experts as a definition of their field. Although county health departments are often led by someone who has both a medical and public health degree, many of the people working in them will have public health training but not medical training.
Even looking at classic public health activities like sanitation/environmental health and epidemiology, sanitation and epidemiology aren't really about the functioning of the human body! They're more about conditions under which the human body is more likely to experience some particular kinds of morbidity...
Even your definition of medicine might be unsatisfactory to some people in the medical field, for example because they think mental health is medicine, or because (to pick an amusing example from my health insurer's claim form) pregnancy is not a disorder or malfunction of the body, but it requires a lot of medical expertise to manage its outcomes well. Other examples could be pain management and anaesthesia (pain, for example during surgery, is not necessarily a malfunction of the body—typically you would like the body to make you aware when it's being cut!) and elective surgeries.
Take your gun example: people should know that if they support the status quo gun laws how many people will die, or what the impact of a new lw is. That doesn’t mean the CDC regulates guns, but it does mean they should have a voice in the conversation.
For example, smoking, sunblock usage, sugary drinks, STDs, binge drinking and falls by elderly people are widely seen as public health issues.
Safety nets on trampolines, malnutrition, illegal drugs, suicide, bad diets and road traffic accidents are sometimes seen as public health issues.
Skiing, rugby, workplace fall prevention, migrants using unseaworthy boats and violence between drug dealers are almost never seen as public health issues.
If there's a clear dividing line, I can't see what it is :)
Why are you putting your own characterization in quotation marks as if you're quoting someone else? Or did I miss something and this is a quote from the the health professionals in question?
Also, you're comparing government policy with an academic opinion.
UK: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wages-through-the-coro...
Australia: https://www.ato.gov.au/general/jobkeeper-payment/
New Zealand: https://www.employment.govt.nz/leave-and-holidays/other-type...
Ireland: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemploymen...
But, paying employees cash only is much harder than it used to be. Many customers now only want to pay card. The tax office sees the card payments coming into your bank account, if you try to pay your employees cash it is easy for them to catch you. So, I think the number of workers actually hurt by that is relatively small.
COVID-19 has accelerated the transition from cash to card payment, because the health advice was to avoid cash payments (due to risk that cash may spread Coronavirus), and many businesses responded by refusing to accept cash entirely.
Guarantee you it is a huge number in Canada, and probably the U.S. as well. Tax fraud in food service, bars, and kitchens is the norm here in Ontario.
That's why there is the joke about people from overseas not knowing how to tip.
It gets tricky for temps and contractors, so. If you are a temp, and employed by a third company lending you ut, that company can ask for Kurzarbeit. In agriculture and food processing, most of the work force are temps emplyed by sub-contractors. Thearetically, they are covered. In praxis, they are more often than not screwed. The sub-contractors sub-contractor is potentially ot evena german omany to begin with.
Shining light on this, is one of the few good things about Cocid-19, if you ask me.
If the government would continue—and increase—the individual stimulus checks, it would matter much, much less how long the lockdown must continue. People would still be able to support themselves and keep themselves healthy.
Telling people to stay at home all the time does have a negative impact on many people's mental health. It can both exacerbate pre-existing mental illness, and in some cases even cause the new onset of mental illness.
That's not entirely accurate. Even Faucci answered, in response to Rand Paul, he was a virologist. Not a economist, etc.
There's been little public acknowledgement of increases in suicides, illness from delayed med treatments, economic fall out affecting deaths, etc.
"So which is it? Were people like Smith lying before about the danger of spreading the virus, in order to promote a political agenda? Or being honest about it but now willing to endanger countless lives, in order to promote a political agenda?
"Adding smug cluelessness to her dishonesty and/or recklessness, Smith also sniffs that the difference is that those who rallied to end the lockdown were merely 'protesting for their ability to get a haircut.'
"Yes, of course, haircuts. It had nothing to do with wanting to get back to work in order to support their families, salvage businesses it took a lifetime to build, avoid depleting their life savings, get their kids back in the classroom, etc. It was all about haircuts." [0]
I think that excerpt makes my point for me, so I won't belabor it. Unless you want to apply the obtuse label to yourself like you did to bmmayer1.
[0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/06/what-science-is-say...
Not being in the US, I hadn't realized the incredible double-standard at play. The US seems to be almost completely paralyzed in trying to deal with this virus, various social dynamics that have been festering for decades are coming to light now.
"The fifth scenario is the CDC's "current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States." In that scenario, the agency described its estimate that 0.4% of people who feel sick with Covid-19 will die.
For people age 65 and older, the CDC puts that number at 1.3%. For people 49 and under, the agency estimated that 0.05% of symptomatic people will die."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/health/cdc-coronavirus-estima...
Perhaps a better way to frame it would be - 2% (?) of patients have serious life-changing consequences. Those under 49 tend to survive them.
This is a much more interesting data point.
Death tends to have very few ongoing life-altering consequences, and in and of itself has a very low R0.
A local, healthy 8 year old girl started having symptoms last week Thursday and died the following Tuesday.
I don't expect my family's lockdown to end before well into next year at the earliest. The odds are against dying or long term complications for younger people, but is going out to dinner, a bar, sporting or music event worth the risk? Not for me. Stay safe folks.
So far it looks like these are the absolute exception, but it does sadly happen that young healthy people and kids too get seriously sick and sometimes even die.
The German pediatric association publishes some (incomplete) stats about the disease in children (https://dgpi.de/covid-19-survey-update-kw22/) and there were so far 159 hospitalizations, with 21 of those in intensive care. 140 kids were released, 1 died. ~9600 <19yos registered as sick with COVID.
In any case I agree that the topic COVID and children is particularly sensitive and still blurry right now.
I verified that claim:
We know that the antibody tests in NYC gave the estimate of "all infected" of 20% of all. But there were around 20K deaths, and NYC has 8.3M population. Also even if we expect that the spread will stop once the 70% of population is infected the result is: 100e3 * 0.7 / 8e6 = 0.87%
Still much more than 0.4%. That it's closer to 1% matches all the statistics of the countries of the world that did a lot of testing compared to the number of cases and deaths.
Back to the article:
Bergstrom in the article: "Given that these parameter sets underestimate fatality by a substantial margin compared to current scientific consensus, this is deeply problematic."
In the same article, even CDC disclaims that their numbers are predictions:
"The scenarios are intended to advance public health preparedness and planning. They are not predictions or estimates of the expected impact of COVID-19" the CDC says.
So it seems you intentionally misinterpret CDC, given that it's all in the very article you linked.
0.3% of the New York City population has already died of corona-virus. So assuming everyone in New York was infected that gives us an IFR of .3%. But if a more realistic 20% of the population was infected then the IFR could be as high as 1.5%.
I tried going through all the most recent research and almost all of it came up with an IFR in the 0.5-1.2% range. And the few that had a lower rate were looking at anti-body tests in places with very low base rates.
I would find that hard to believe and I also doubt they would have enough data to validate that type of hypothesis. We're still guessing at the number of people infected, not to mention how old are they, what pre-existing conditions did they have, how do those pre-existing condition affect Covid-19 mortality in different age groups, what viral load did they receive, etc..
1.0% in Brazil based on 25,025 samples https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1267670267624476672
1.14% in Spain based on 60,897 samples https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1265405628853305345
0.92% in NYC and 0.84% in New York State based on 15,101 samples https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1267669314657611777
Also YYG, the guy who runs https://covid19-projections.com/ (a model that has consistently produced the most accurate forecasts) reported his model found that a ~1% IFR gave the best fit: https://mobile.twitter.com/youyanggu/status/1256051255253757...
Note: S-IFR is the fatality of symptomatic cases only. IFR is the fatality of all cases (asymptomatic and symptomatic)
I am also starting to hear some noise that there might be cross immunity between this virus and previous coronavirus. In a recent video Prof Raoult was suggesting it might explain the low infection rate of people under 20 [1]. I am not qualified to tell whether the theory has any leg but it may be that we underestimate the spread of the virus when looking at a specific antibody.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=734&v=zUbiYhknaK... (in french)
Isn't the death rate the percentage of population that dies when all are infected? Then nothing can be "exacerbated" by that alone? It then just reflects the death rate which results from the people being infected, no matter the speed?
To get the rate one can indeed calculate it with smaller representative sample, but that just doesn't imply that the vulnerable people would somehow never become infected if the epidemic continues, so the deaths of the old can't be avoided then. That the old die much more is a fact, and nothing that by itself "exacerbates" the rate.
Edit: I haven't seen any argument that estimated more than 20% of NY population that were supposedly infected were somehow specially skewed sample to hit only old people, and I'd argue that if the sample is that big it's quite improbable. If the argument is that the virus got faster in the nursing homes, one can also argue that all the old people outside of nursing homes skewed in the another direction by managing to initially not get the infection, but that as epidemic progresses they would indeed eventually become infected and suffer.
Edit2: "the virus is rather showing signs of going away" claim is very curious to me. I don't see it "going away" looking at all the statistics across the different parts of the world. I see only the slowdown of the spread, which corresponds to people generally changing their behavior to slow it down.
If it is the case, you don't expect the same death rate to scale up as the wider population continues to get infected (if it is still happening, the virus is rather showing signs of going away).
15740 deaths ÷ 2700000 infected = 0.58% (they round to 0.5%)
However they note that the official state death count (15740 deaths) «only indicates deaths that happened in a hospital or a nursing home, and does not include coronavirus-related deaths that occurred in a home, which means the official death count is likely higher than that official number»
The true number of deaths, including home deaths, is 20759 as of the date of Cuomo's press briefing, April 24 (source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/mast...)
Furthermore, all the figures quoted by Cuomo were provisional, mid-study. The serosurvey actually completed on April 28 and was published here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.25.20113050v... The final figures as of this date were:
22777 deaths ÷ (19450000 state population × 14.0% infected) = IFR of 0.84%
It is important to take deaths as of April 28 in order to minimize right censoring.
«Both the UK and NY State had a policy of sending recovering patients to nursing home»
Spain and Brazil did not do this and still exhibit an IFR of 1% add per the serosurveys I referenced.
Perhaps it’s not so much weasel words as a carefully coded “caveat emptor”
>They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They are saying that the protest is too important to take health considerations into account, but they are reluctant to speak plainly and tell people there's risk but they should be adult and choose to manage the risks themselves and maybe neglect small risk in order to achieve bigger thing.
Is there anything about that explanation which is unsatisfactory? It's not as if they simply condemned the statement to be weasel words without any explanation as to why they see it as such.
no wonder people don’t believe in global warming, these “experts” prioritize politics over everything
Very sad to see science shoot itself in the foot in the name of dubious politics.
it could be we just delayed deaths that will happen eventually anyway while commuting economic seppuku
Does that potential confuse people? Yes. Are experts always right? No. Are they still the best resource we have? Yes.
and now this whole thing about staying silent about the race riots because they support them even though they’re likely to cause a second wave
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-sweden-...
Sweden is mid-pack amongst european nations for death rate due to covid, and notably lower than the UK, Italy and France:
The same happened in a few places here in Finland, and I am quite certain that if we'd let COVID-19 through retirement homes the way our dear neighbors did, we'd have a much higher death-rate.
The actual Swedish stragegy, i.e. a soft lock-down with strong recommendations and only minor restrictions in travelling and gatherings, could actually have worked. Unfortunately, we'll never know as they screwed the retirement home situation up as bad as they did.
The Swedish catastrophe is always another 2 weeks away, and secondary effects of a lockdown (like delaying non-critical medical procedures and not screening for cancer) are likely to be much more significant than anticipated. Let's not forget that lockdowns were a knee-jerk reaction enacted by scared politicians, not a carefully considered and data-backed policy.
This coronavirus hasn't made in a big impact anywhere in SE Asia, even though countries responded in very different ways. This suggests that the virus doesn't take hold for a different reason, e.g. pre-existing immunity.
> This suggests that the virus doesn't take hold for a different reason, e.g. pre-existing immunity.
No, it suggests the variety of their responses were on the effective side of things, while Sweden’s was not. Taiwan’s VP is an epidemiologist who has guided their response from day one and should be credited for that work.
Maybe people are so hostile about Sweden because people keep insisting they be graded on a curve, contrary to the real success stories.
Taiwan started taking action before the first case had even been reported. And yes, they do deserve credit for that.
Sweden's response was also effective, given that the virus had already spread widely across Europe by the time the politicians woke up. There is some variation in the way cases/deaths are tracked between countries, but when you look at All Cause Mortality it's clear that Sweden is right in the middle of the pack, and they accomplished that without the massive externalities (both human and financial) of a lockdown. That's a success, but yes, Europe should have responded aggressively in Dec as Taiwan did.
The South Korean and Swedish responses began at about the same time, so again, this seems like special pleading. South Korea has more direct exchange with China as well.
If your argument is that Europe overall hasn’t done a great job, and Sweden isn’t that far of a deviation from that performance, ok. But again, that’s not an accomplishment relative to the actually successful countries like Taiwan and South Korea. I don’t understand how having many times more deaths be considered “effective” relative to these countries? Again, they didn’t have any of the economic damage caused by lockdowns either.
Where did you get those numbers from? EUROMOMO doesn't include data from Iceland, but for the rest it's obvious that Sweden is an outlier in regards to the overall mortality rate: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country
Denmark, Finland and Norway are below the normal mortality rates for 65+ since the lockdowns began. Sweden is clearly above. I assume there's not another epidemic over there that we've missed?
Again, I'm not saying the Swedish strategy is wrong, I'm just saying that the failure to protect the elderly has invalidated Sweden as a data point.
There has definitely been a bunch of deaths related to COVID-19 in Finnish retirement homes, but in terms of overall mortality rates for people 65+ it's quite obvious that it's not a big problem. Actual COVID-19 diagnoses are still reported by THL, including everyone who gets diagnosed by the public health system in Finland. Finland has unrelated, considerable, issues with care for the elderly, but that's a completely different topic. :)
> Let's not forget that lockdowns were a knee-jerk reaction enacted by scared politicians, not a carefully considered and data-backed policy.
Definitely. Lock-downs are last-resort measures taken when you've already failed to do what you should have done in the first place; extensive testing of travellers and contact tracing/quarantine of people who are sick. The other Nordic countries failed miserably in that regard.
It's so "obvious" that Sweden is an outlier that people don't bother to look at the data more seriously. Sweden didn't lock down ergo it must be a disaster, the data be damned.
> in terms of overall mortality rates for people 65+ it's quite obvious that it's not a big problem
That's correct. The overal mortality of all Nordic countries is completely unexceptional. Politicians panicked because they believed that this disease would be very deadly (it isn't), kills healthy young people (it doesn't), spreads exponentially (it never has), and spreads through asymptomatic hosts (it doesn't).
Today I read about several published studies that were retracted for unreliable data related to covid drugs.
I'm now just using all of these things as one data point to make a decision with. News, politicians, scientific publications, experts, data.
I've also lost faith in certain political parties which I was previously a member for their fanaticism and demonization of people who disagreed with their narrative and who still can't admit their thinking was flawed.
I read this as a clear expression of your frustration. Completely reasonable given the situation.
Are you familiar with the YouTube channel "Smarter Every Day"? There's this three-part series that might offer a new perspective on the distrust and disillusionment you seem to be feeling:
[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4
[2]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1RhQ1uuQ4
[3]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY_NtO7SIrY
In particular, the channel creator Destin Sandlin explores how YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are being used as a sort of vanguard in a meta-game to undermine our trust in the social institutions we rely on.
It's a pretty dystopian-sounding and bleak theme. However, Destin is really good at conveying a message of hope.
Use your Critical Mind, of course, but also realize that there's a personal cost to adopting absolutist views like `"experts" prioritize politics over everything.'
public health experts during this whole crisis have been morally and intellectually bankrupt. misinformation on social media is a separate issue
Is it YTs fault that the WHO was the absolutely dead last institution to recommend face mask usage on the planet? That even some countries that are having a very poor response have already recommended (or made mandatory in some circumstances) the use of masks?
That the WHO is accepting all manners of political interference from China?
Is it YTs fault that Lancet and NEJM published a completely fabricated article about HCQ usage at the point where this has become a contentious point? Sure, in the same week we have had other serious studies about it, but that one was, most likely, a fraud, that was rubber stamped by journals.
That, at a critical moment, researchers from a prestigious epidemiology centre have pulled some models they had on the shelves without enough second-guessing it and predicting very catastrophic results (which granted, there might have been unknown at the time reasons for it)
So yeah, I don't think it's solely the fault of Youtube and Facebook.
You can realistically tell people to shop for vinyl from the comfort of their couch, and they might do that.
Given the level of outrage, there were going to be large groups of protests across the country either way, but they were successfully convinced to wear masks, use hand sanitizer and spread out where they can. At least here, every time the mayor talks she urges people who went to protests to get tested.
Persuasion is still everything.
But that's obviously nonsense, given that not all of the participants wear masks, distance cannot be kept, they stay at the same location for a longer time and some are chanting/yelling.
I mean, really. How can people not see the writing on the wall? All of this is political finagling. Black protestors are merely convenient instruments. The political opportunists pushing this bland disingenuous crap don't care about George Floyd in the least.
Not just the credibility of health professionals, but all professionals.
The big thing will be climate change. This will be brought up to say that technical professionals giving their advice are just partisan hacks who don’t care about the economy and people’s livelihoods, but do care about their virtue signaling.
Limited access to healthcare is not a theoretical challenge. The link between historical injustice manifests every day in the pandemic crisis. And the nature of this virus - rapid, asymptomatic contagion - means that any vulnerable population can be a source of ongoing infection in the general population.
Never has the bond in our common good been more clear.
So sure, there are political positions to be taken in how best to move forward, but the virus doesn't care.
Why are we assuming it's systemic access to healthcare and not say Vitamin D deficiency? Healthcare access is worst in Africa and yet their numbers and outcomes are exponentially better. So what are the differences between African communities in the US and the ones in Africa?
It just seems so politically American to assume that it must be evil systemic racism anytime a population does not do as well as white people, and yet not a peep is uttered when white people are lapped by another population.
The reason, of course, is that ignoring the potential for disease transmission in these protests is necessary to stay in the good graces of woke circles.
Which we kind of were at anyway, but now public health figures have given their signoff on that interpretation.
TBH from the outside it seems that whatever the death count is it never really mattered to a majority of people in the US.
I understand people's frustration with them, and I understand why people don't care about their "signoffs" on what we're allowed to do, especially when the guidelines are completely nonsensical like in California.
Where are the free clinics? Where are the free tests? Where is the free quarantine hotel room? None of that, instead we just get chided for being stupid and uncooperative by leaders. This is completely unacceptable, they failed us, not the other way around.
And the police might actually kill me today, unlike the virus.
I think you have this backwards?
And I'd note that this is just an open letter signed by those willing. Perhaps a left-leaning subset.
But yes my first thought when I see this kind of thing is how people have been criticizing religious gatherings.
Edit: oh I see how it can be viewed the other direction, where "thee" is the right and "me" is the left.
It is a straw-man but I think the woke circle isn't that different from religion for some proponents. Different dogmata, same zeal.
And while I don't like people being too sensitive that you refrain from stating anything substantial in public without PR support, this statement is particularly bad.
The lockdown protesters make clear that experts don't decide about their freedoms. This statement just provides evidence for the validity of their point in my opinion.
I'm not really this much of a hack, so forgive me, because what you are saying is true in the most literal sense.
But if you believe in capitalism, a political system, the virus will treat you better if you're rich -- a beneficiary of that system. It's not as reductive as better health care. As a rich person, you can easily stay at home without working, infinitely. The federal government's most effective anti-COVID intervention was actually saving the markets, it's the one promise the government delivered. And the biggest parts of that story are (1) that our society is oriented to protect capitalists, so of course there will be an effective and fast intervention nowadays that protects equities, like a five trillion dollar equities buying scheme, and (2) you can go ahead and sell your stocks to the government now, essentially, and live off this largess. You can go on ordering shit from Amazon and working from home for Facebook. You can shelter in place pretty much indefinitely.
We're not even talking millionaires, we're talking about middle class people, programmers, health officials, pretty much everyone on this forum working for more than the 75th percentile income.
This point of view doesn't even require the bullshit of categorizing your preferred kind of protestor. The reopen people, the peaceful protestor, even the looters all share a common political belief - let me illuminate it for you. None of those teenagers looting Best Buy have trusts, they don't have savings or anything that goes "up" and lets them or their parents stay home when the government props up the stock market. It's not as reductive as simply being poor (i.e. being on the wrong side of the system), or even being bored or angry. It's in opposition to the system.
Imagine 18-78 years of "fuck you, you have to choose to die for money or die from homelessness and starvation" every single day. It's not just the pandemic times, though that exacerbates it immensely, for millions of people. It's like being born directly into jail. You'd go blow up a Best Buy too! You'd show up at the state capitol threatening people with guns!
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren lost the Democratic primary, to the relief of basically every venture capitalist I know. But a series of idiosyncratic votes, as should be obvious to everyone, isn't the end-all be-all refutation to socialist politics, even temporarily.
And just because you don't hear political leaders or even ordinary people taking the leap and asking, "Well is there a point to looting a modern art store?" doesn't mean that there isn't a point. It might be political suicide, send along the down votes, but I can sympathize with people who are mad as hell about not being given the resources to shelter at home as comfortably as rich people do while simultaneously being told to shut the fuck up about it. The only solution to that is straightforward socialism, which lost in the primary but did not lose in the hearts and minds of millions of people. It means allowing stocks to drop, IPOs to dry up, tech workers get laid off, and people being paid to stay at home long past July and not work -- all ideas verbatim rejected by Republicans, venture capitalists and seemingly most on this forum.
Socialist politics are stronger than ever. That health care officials may sympathize with those politics -- that it's a very specific capitalist system we have that is culpable for brutalizing minorities and failing to protect many people from a pandemic -- isn't surprising; they're smart people who have a very special perspective on what suffering really means. They, like many peaceful protestors, want to show solidarity with losers of the capitalism system without appealing to violence or coercion in the pursuit of an abstract goal like declining infection rates or whatever.
Experts are incentivized to maximize results corresponding to their field /in isolation/ - with little or no trade-offs considered. This preserves their reputation, and allows them to recommend within the bounds of their knowledge.
If an expert recommends religious institutions continue to hold only remote meetings, they are not going to suffer any consequences, both directly and as a response. Anger over such a decision will usually be directed to the politicians, instead.
If an expert recommends these protests be halted due to risk, they themselves will likely be affected, and charged with racism and bigotry, likely - in our current environment - leading to total destruction of both professional and personal lives.
The calculus is quite simple, and absolutely dangerous.
Or maybe the lockdowns were a massive over reaction and this is a subtle acknowledgment.
Would love a breakdown of this. "Community stakeholders" is meaningless. The letter reads like something you'd see on change.org.
[1] many of them have done so for years, for anyone paying attention
Now, this weekend they had a protest here to support the ones in the US, and we just had 25000 people in a smaller place to show their solidarity. How is that going to help people's trust in the decisions taken by authorities, it just makes everything political.
The anti-lockdown protest happened, more or less, during the hight of the lockdown. So totally different circumstances.
All assemblies have to be registered upfront, regardless of COVID-19. SO if the assembly isn't permited, police will break it up. Happened more than once in the last weeks, didn't it? So I doubt your last point.
Outbreaks in mass gatherings are responsible for entire epidemics in italy, spain and germany. I can only imagine what will happen in a month, when racial minorities start accusing each other for the scale of the second epidemic.
Total deaths in US caused by coronavirus (last Friday, one day): 975 [2]
[1] https://www.theroot.com/here-s-how-many-people-police-killed...
1) Police Killings are low. 2) Covid deaths have bottomed.
In the context of police killings, that 1,000 figure doesn’t indicate if it’s innocent killings- sure some may be, but how many are suicide by cop? How many are due to hostage situations? Or how many are due to being fired upon first?
In regards to Covid deaths, 1,000 daily deaths is low compared to the 3,000 we saw at the peak.
So, what point is the parent trying to make?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
Other countries manage to achieve numbers like 2 for Japan, 3 for the UK, 11 for Germany which is nowhere near even adjusted for population. American police kill more people per capita than almost every other country. Per 10 million people that's:
46.6 for the US
0.5 for the UK
0.2 for Japan
You're comparing the USA, which has about 100k shootings per year, 36k deaths involving guns of which 33% (~12k) are homicides, to the UK which has 50-60 cases of homicide involving a gun per year.
The fact is that the US police are far, far, far more likely to encounter a suspect with a gun in the course of their duty than the UK police are.
38 US police officers were shot dead in the line of duty last year. The UK had 3.
They're not equatable.
I believe the last number I saw said there were about 300 million guns in the US - one for each person.
There's no way to just make those disappear into government hands.
This has been done after wars for example (after WWII), and after many different conflicts in different countries in Africa. It would take a long time and would require tightening laws gradually and at the same time encouraging people to hand in their weapons.
This is not particularly difficult logistically, the only difficulty is in the American psyche apparently, which seems completely incompatible with this simple common-sense measure. The outcome would be fewer deaths by cop, fewer deaths in burglaries, and fewer mass shootings.
There is abundant evidence from around the globe that limiting the ownership of guns helps limit deaths.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has already ruled that total ban on firearms in common is unconstitutional[2][3]. Hence why DC and Chicago no longer completely ban handguns. I also don't think the in common use standard will hold since the Supreme Court more recently reiterated "the Second Amendment ex-tends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms"[4]. It is the opinion of some that DC v Heller was watered to get Kennedy on board. Moreover, as California has already argued, you cannot ban something then down the road argue that it's not in common use since the low numbers are artificial.
> To the extent that magazines holding more than 10 rounds may be less common within California, it would likely be the result of the State long criminalizing the buying, selling, importing, and manufacturing of these magazines. Saying that large capacity magazines are uncommon because they have been banned for so long is something of a tautology. It cannot be used as constitutional support for further banning. See Friedman v. City of Highland Park, Illinois, 784 F.3d 406, 409 (7th Cir. 2015) (“Yet it would be absurd to say that the reason why a particular weapon can be banned is that there is a statute banning it, so that it isn’t commonly used. A law’s existence can’t be the source of its own constitutional validity.”).[5]
[1] http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/about-us/highlights/2018/high...
[2] DC v. Heller 2008 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
[3] McDonald v. Chicago 2010 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf
[4] Caetano v. Massachusetts 2016 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-10078_aplc.pd...
[5] Duncan v. Becerra 2019 https://michellawyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Duncan-...
Exactly how do you expect people to defend themselves from violent threats when the number 1 counterpoint of "call the police" is taken away or severely limited?
The defund/dismantle/disband movement is, as I understand the movement, more about replacing the police-as-an-institution with a fundamentally different approach or set of approaches to law enforcement, not reducing the total resources or number of persons assigned to law enforcement functions.
If someone manages to carry a "disarm and leave it to the police" argument with that evidence in recent memory it will go down in the history books as one of the great political accomplishments of the 21st century. Anyone who ever argued in favour guns in self defence was talking at least in part about moments in history like these.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/nyregion/nyc-looting-prot...
The UK has a population of 66 million people. The US has a population of 328 million. The UK has 123k police, the US has 687k.
They're not equal but I think you might be exaggerating the differences by comparing very differently sized countries.
There are also cultural issues - policing should be with the consent of the population, if you lose that trust and end up in an adversarial position, violence moves from the last resort to the first resort.
US police killed: 38 UK police killed: 3
If the rate in the UK was the same as the US, 6 policeman would be killed when actually only 3 were killed (123*38/687).
So in the US police are about twice as likely to be killed, yet they kill 500x more people.
You're right, they're not equatable _at all_.
British policing isn't without problems but the idea of (say) police barging into someone's house guns blazing without announcing themselves (as happened recently) is absolutely unimaginable in the UK.
British police operate on consent whereas American police operate on fear (is the stereotype)
In the long term that kind of doctrine is bound to have consequences on stats like deaths caused by the police, no matter how good / bad the intentions of individual officers are.
And it frames how the public reacts to events as well. Like if you are a cop and you shoot a person trying to rob a bank in the US your friends and family might congratulate you on a job well done, where as in europe you’ll be looked at with disdain by your loved ones.
If there are more violent crime its understandable that there would be more police killings,
Do you want to ignore the (non-lethal) evils of prejudice, and just play a numbers game with fatalities? From some back-of-the-envelope math, the average POC in America will still lose more years of their life from simply living in a racist society than from COVID-19.
Life isn't a pissing contest of "my problem is bigger than your problem".
(There are well-known social causes for this which are direct consequences of racism, like access to quality health care, housing, education, credit, etc.)
COVID-19 deaths aren't taking nearly that many years. According to [2] (about 1.5 weeks old), 1 in 1850 (or around 0.05% of) black Americans have died from COVID-19. Even if this continues for the rest of the year, it still can't hold a candle to plain old racism.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/015.pdf [2]: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race
Joking aside, you can sometimes prove causality. It's just not as easy as proving a correlation. The most broadly accepted method would be a RCT (randomized controlled trial), though it is often unethical or unfeasible.
You can also build on causal assumption that everyone agrees on. (Like: A person's gender cannot be caused by a government policy. A person winning the lottery is not caused by anything other than playing the lottery.) From such knowledge you can build a causal graph, and (in some cases) draw new causal conclusions from statistical data.
Long story short: you cannot just dismiss a correlation as being useless for any proof of causality.
> White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19. Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police compared to white people, but the effects of racism are far more pervasive. Black people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress. Black people are also more likely to develop COVID-19. Black people with COVID-19 are diagnosed later in the disease course and have a higher rate of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death. COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.
Edit: these aren't the calculations you asked for, but should give you an indication of what they are thinking about.
> Systemic racism is way bigger than just police killings.
?
The second means "Even though you're trying to compare these problems, you've massively underrepresented the impact of systemic racism by simplifying it to the number of police killings."
A single protest movement isn't going to end systemic racism, no matter how large it becomes. Even revolutions don't end conservatism -- just ask Leon Trotsky.
However, the coronavirus epidemic is here today and it may well be gone in a year. This may be the worst possible time for a protest movement since the Spanish Flu.
Average daily deaths in US caused by heart disease: 1800
Average daily deaths in US caused by cancer: 1600
Average daily deaths in US caused by corona virus: 1000
https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death
Comparing oranges to oranges:
Total deaths in US caused by homicide (2019): 19510
Total deaths in US caused by police (2019): 1112
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
Comparing apples to oranges:
> Total deaths in US caused by police. (2019, full year): 1112 [1]
> Total deaths in US caused by coronavirus (last Friday, one day): 975 [2]
But it’s also helpful to present the causes as well. Your roommate can’t cough on you and give you heart disease.
Yours wifes cooking can give you heart disease.
Poverty can give you asthma.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_poverty#Asthma]
I was not responding to pertinent points of the discussion, but to two statistics placed side by side without any further elaboration.
Should we now also imagine/project the homicide death rates if all civilians were peaceful and happy and compare it with that of the real deaths caused by the police?
Almost. We'd need to compare actual homicides to an imaginary world where everyone cooperated with the police while being arrested.
The police killing someone is, on the face of it, a significant problem. But some percentage of police-caused deaths are justified and would be acceptable after careful review of what happened.
I think everyone would prefer 0 police-related deaths, and all options are on the table to get there. But to compare oranges to oranges properly it would be necessary to split the category into police abuses of power vs unavoidable/reasonable uses of force.
What do you mean by almost? Just do it already. Then post all the imaginary/alternative stats here below.
And that is why an oranges to oranges comparison can't actually be done.
What do you mean how? Aren't you the one who came up with the suggestion in the first place? You go ahead and almost do it.
> And that is why an oranges to oranges comparison can't actually be done.
Classic straw-man argument. You just set up your own imaginary cooperative world of full of alternative stats, then shot it down immediately.
Your "oranges-to-oranges" comparison isn't. It compares homicides - which are overwhelmingly going to be negligent accidents or intentional crimes - with police caused deaths. The police are people we purposefully send into situations where violence is likely or respect for the law has broken down. It is expected that they will cause some deaths in the execution of their duty.
I can certainly see an argument that getting the deaths caused by police to 0 or close to is a worthy goal. But it isn't comparable to homicides because it is normal for the police to be sent in to uncontrolled situations. It'd be nothing short of a minor miracle if police-caused deaths were comparable to background rates given how seedy the US gets. We certainly can't get a feel for the justified/unjustified/negligent breakup of the figures which is germane to the debate.
In philosophy, there is a subject and an object. An object is what the subject observes. An object consists of of properties (has-a) and relations (is-a). Take an orange for example. An orange is-a fruit, and an orange has-a rind, flesh and seeds. It makes sense to compare oranges with oranges (a type of fruit); and orange seeds with orange seeds (the same parts of an orange fruit). Its a stretch to compare an oranges with orange seeds, as they are not the same type of object. Or to put it another way, its like comparing oranges to apples.
> Your "oranges-to-oranges" comparison isn't.
It is, because I'm comparing instances of the same type of philosophical object. Lets take another very relevant example: homicide.
A homicide is simply defined as "the act of one human killing another". So comparing homicides done by policemen with homicides done by civilians, in the same year and country is a valid oranges-to-oranges comparison. Regardless of the circumstances of the homicides, they are all homicides whether justified (e.g. self defense), unjust (murder) or unintentional (man-slaughter). My comparison is not concerned with the parts of the orange (rind, seeds, flesh), but the oranges as a whole. If you'd like to compare police acts of man-slaughter against civilian acts of man-slaughter, that's fine. That's a valid oranges to oranges comparison, just on a lower level of the conceptual heirachy. And even if you did present these statistics, my original point still stands. You cannot however, come up with an invalid comparison (oranges to orange seeds) then try and use it as a straw-man argument against my valid comparison (oranges to oranges).
Number of adults with diagnosed heart disease: 30.3 million [1]
People in the United States infected with corona virus: 1.9 million [2]
[1] https://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/NHIS/SHS/2018...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-c...
Those are just the kind of meaningful insights you get when you compare pears to pears, apples to apples or oranges to oranges.
– Total population of US (2019): 329 million [1]
– Total population of UK (2019): 68 million [1]
– Total deaths in US caused by police (2019): 1112
– Total deaths in UK caused by police (2019): 3 [2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
Just wait a couple of weeks...
P.S.
It might already be higher: https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac8...
Is your intentional action here to be purposely superficial in order to invoke to deeper discussion? It’s an interesting style that seems particularly suited to this forum.
83570 [1] excess deaths in 2002. Another study says AfAm likely death by 65 38-50%, white 20-33%.
That's direct deaths.
I personally would also include life lost in incarceration for basically nothing (way to many sad examples to list).
And all around lower life quality and total bullsh*t that systemic racism has inflicted on POC from the first Colonists.
1 https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.24.2.4... 2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3052342/
It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic and now we're just left with the pulpy mess that no one really wants to deal with.
https://www.engadget.com/facebook-limits-boogaloo-groups-122...
My general feeling is that it is too difficult to manage democracies over large geographic areas because the people at the edges tend to not have enough interaction with each other on a social or economic basis to recognize each other's problems.
So I don't know about CalExit but I have definitely spoken about New England or Northeast Secession (heh NExit) as something I'm at least interested in. I just hope if the opportunity ever comes up we can do it peacefully...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/04/boogal...
There's been a lot of reporting on it as they've stepped up action over the last year. Did you not see the news stories about these individuals stationing inside the Michigan Capitol with assault rifles?
Reminds me of "jenkum", the drug the media reported on that turned out to be a prank.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-move...
One of the comments there puts it better than I can:
> Honestly, most of it is genuinely trolling. I don’t go on it anymore (used to more often), but really the whole thing is a meme. Sure, a few people take it seriously, but I have no doubt it is no statistically different than any other group that has a subculture.
> 4chans entire subculture exists to start trends, meme, and get a reaction. The boogaloo movement was always a meme and it is only now being legitimized because of mainstream news coverage. Now, people who aren’t about of the Chan subculture see it and start to believe in it legitimately.. when that never was the case to begin with.
> They did this with the “OK” symbol, Waterproof Iphones, TayTweets, and most recently Boogaloo.
> Now they are doing it with #goBaldForBLM (or at least trying to).
> Just kind of sad to see a credible investigative journalism site constantly spending time to focus on 4chan.. when it’s trolls.. and the only people who take it seriously are the ones who read about it through the lens of an article.
It's the media not understanding the internet and creating their own boogeyman.
Look no further than Pizzagate and now QAnon. Boogaloo may have started out like that but people quickly made it a real thing long before mainstream media jumped on board.
The whole "oh it's only trolling, can't you take a joke" is just a front used for people to shield their true beliefs behind.
Here's a criminal charge[1] against one Boogaloo person. I'd note this sentence: "During the rally LYNAM stated their group was not for joking around"
We don't, in general, talk about the horrible things that were happening back then. Only unlike a lot of racial problems today, they happened in plain sight and were celebrated. I know Rand Paul got a lot of hate for his recent speech against the legislation to make lynching a federal crime, but the things he talked about happening back when lynching was a frequent problem really opened my eyes to how bad things were.
We don't talk about the fact that before MLK was assassinated, he was widely disliked by the american public.
We don't talk about the fact that a lot of American gun control we still have was passed as a reaction to the civil rights movement - as a way to disarm minorities and weaken their ability to protest.
I wasn't there, but I get the feeling we're still a long ways from things being as bad as they were during the 60's civil rights movement.
"Days of Rage" by Bryan Burrough is a good read on the subject (political violence in the late 60s and 70s). There's a good blog / semi-book review that I link people to when they seem intent on learning more of the history (which I originally got from a comment on HN during the 2016 election cycle) [0].
>You have to understand: in 1968, many radicals absolutely believed that the United States was getting ready to collapse. One Weatherman puts it: “We actually believed there was going to be a revolution. We believed 3rd World countries would rise up and cause crises that would bring down the industrialized West, and we believed it was going to happen tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, like 1976.”
There are periods of calm and periods of dramatic unrest. The history of political activism / protests in America touches the civil rights movement, the worker rights / labor movements, etc..., and goes all the way back to the first taxes the newly formed United States federal government tried to levy against domestic goods (in the form of the Whiskey Rebellion [0]). The American revolution itself was the result of a series of protests that started with the Stamp Act of 1765 [1]. It is a truly fascinating history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helter_Skelter_(scenario)#Back...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#Founding_t...
I'm optimistic that red and blue America will have something more like Czechoslovakia's Velvet Divorce involving minimal bloodshed, but I'd be surprised if the USA makes it to 2100 as a single polity.
Multiple politicians assassinated. Major multi-day riots across multiple cities with hundred dead. Then a president being impeached.
2020 doesn't even come close to the 1960's.
Nobody on the far-left is advocating for the extreme violence. During the 1960s, I believe Malcolm X was ready to have a real war to defend Black Americans. Now, at worse the discord is about justifying some looting that has diminished.
I have seen many people talking about "burning the system to the ground".
Maybe we could consider it purely metaphorical, if there hadn't been a rash of arsons across the US in recent weeks.
https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-police-warn-of-sharp...
That's exactly it. I've some friends who are on the whole rather apolitical, in fact I'd call them politically ignorant as it's not something they tend to invest any time into, but who either run relatively large social media pages as a side hustle or do so professionally on behalf of the company they work for.
From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. The companies want to get info out to customers, however feel that if they post without the promo post first they'll be castigated for it. Those with influence pages want to retain engagement and are in the same position.
In essence, those actually supporting the protests have created an environment whereby they'll never be able to judge the true sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed. Something that, in my eyes at least, has dangerous potential.
This tells me the protests are working. When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege and the plight of other groups. But, growth doesn't occur without first being uncomfortable.
> sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed
Sentiment will be judged through action and change.
Unfortunately you're very correct there, though not in the way I think you're assuming. Force people with influence, power, money, ability to be above common problems, to see what's happening and you're not going to get a pat on the back. Change is certainly going to happen, and it's not going to be the change you're hoping for.
Can you clue in the rest of us here? These are very chaotic times and I'd really like to know what the future holds.
I support the protests. What can I change in my behavior to stop creating this dangerous environment?
If we see another phase it will be A1 material again.
Newspapers; I'd almost forgotten about them.
Also, sorry you are getting downvoted. Emotions are running high. I’d guess folks are interpreting your snark against newspapers as snark against the parent.
They can't tout how horrible and scary the pandemic is (forcibly close all businesses! we're all gonna die! put people in jail for failure to socially distance! take their kids away from them!), while cheering on protests. They're in fundamental conflict and it became too obvious, the obnoxiousness of the contradiction was being pointed out constantly. They had to pick one, so they pivoted.
Don't worry though, they plan to go back to focusing on the pandemic after the protests fade. There is more political juice there yet, perhaps in the fall if the virus picks up.
When I do see or hear numbers pop up in local media, it's often offered without meaningful information about larger trends and lends itself to the same horserace/it's all sports mentality that afflicts political coverage.
I put together my own spreadsheet based on my local health agency's data to try to get a more objective sense of how things are really progressing:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSxCDL6xIQll...
It's more than an academic exercise. I've been citing it as my small company discusses whether to reopen our local office. (There's no business need to do so. Our office can operate entirely remotely -- and has been for several weeks now.)
I'm also trying present the data in a meaningful way -- relative to testing and reopening guidelines. If you're frustrated by local reporting, I'd encourage you to do some something similar for your region.
Now? They've moved on.
Well I've noticed that the firing of Inspectors General hasn't been in the news lately. With the Controversy of the Week with Trump, it's kind of hard to keep up.
Which has been his (and Bannon's) general strategy:
* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...
It is critical to the Democrats to shift the conversation. Clearly blaming Trump for the city's failure isn't going to work, so the pivot was to waiting until there was one particularly bad case of police abuse against a black person and then light the powder keg. If you look back this year there have been some awful cases.
For example, one stands out from February where a man was murdered execution style with 4 shots to the head and back[1]. Never heard of it in the media? That's because the person murdered was white so it was not politically useful to the Democrat media machine.
The takeaway for me is that this is only going to get worst. Elections are still in November. Biden is a terrible candidate so they're going to go absolutely nuts trying to sow discontent, instability, and outright rebellion. Can the US survive it's own media and it's two-party system, especially as foreign actors amplify the media's destabilizing message and focus on polarizing people?
---
[1] https://6abc.com/west-sedgley-avenue-shooting-north-philadel...
I'm glad the Democrats are shifting the conversation. You think this hasn't been happening regularly for decades? At the very least this has been brewing since 2014 and Ferguson.
They might try to blame Trump but honestly he's given the Democrats enough material just by literally stoking the flames instead of trying to be conciliatory.
Number of new cases and new deaths have dropped off a bit and mostly flattened out. Health care capacity is handling current loads. Economy is opening back up..
There is still plenty of talk about COVID-19, but I'm not sure how much cynicism is required to explain why something that is no longer a critically urgent emergency is no longer being reported as a critically urgent emergency.
1) mental health
2) homeless
3) drug addiction
4) domestic violence
5) traffic stops
etc etc
They should be called to handle
1) robbery in progress
2) active shooters
etc
The Not police should be trained in deescalation and should be familiar with all the social resources necessary to help people in the community. The not police should not be armed
That guy on drugs could stab you, you could pull a car over and that person could have a gun, you could go to stop domestic violence and get attacked.
Police brutality goes up proportionately with violent crime in their area. In other words, the more police deal with very dangerous people all the time and the more their reactions become more aggressive to everyone.
It is no excuse for murder like what happened with Floyd, but there is a reason we don't send social workers out to domestic violence calls or drug calls...
Plus citizens have the right to own guns (which I am ever thankful for now with rioting breaking out across the country). Unarmed Not Police would be a joke.
That don't need to be armed with firearms. That's overkill (literally overkill, unfortunately) for community policing. They could have batons. Firearms should be restricted to specialists deployed only when needed for a specifically authorised task.
You're asking police officers to be less armed then the general public. 43 states are "shall-issue" and allow residents to conceal carry a firearm after completing required training and submitting an application.
Can we at least agree that off-duty police officers working as security guards at a hospital or elsewhere should not under any circumstance carry a weapon (other than perhaps a stick or something) while on non-police duty?
> Soon, from inside the room, there was shouting, sounds of a scuffle and a loud pop. During an altercation, two off-duty Houston police officers, moonlighting as security guards, had shocked Mr. Pean with a Taser, fired a bullet into his chest, then handcuffed him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/hospital-guns-mental-h...
> Mr. Pean said he was informed of the dismissal of the assault charges against him in a phone call to New York, where he is finishing college. He said he was relieved but remained deeply disturbed by his experience, noting that his family spent more than $100,000 in his defense. “If I was someone else, I could have ended up in jail,” he said.
> After the incident, federal health officials conducted an emergency investigation and faulted the hospital for the shooting, saying that St. Joseph had created “immediate jeopardy to the health and safety of its patients” and ordered that it restrict use of weapons and provide more training in dealing with mentally ill patients.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/us/alan-pean-hospital-gun...
In addition, perhaps if a police officer is not "on duty", felony assault charges should not be possible. This may sound harsh but imagine a bus driver goes on a walk and someone hits him on the head with a stick. Does that carry felony assault charges as well?
I think many people are saying a police officer's testimony should be void in a court of law if they do not have other evidence (in which case the evidence can stand on its own without the officer's testimony).
People that don't know the average day don't have any basis to accurately imagine the average day, it's not a useful activity at that point.
My mother was a nurse and had guns drawn in the hospital by opposing members of a gang there to inspect someone who was shot.
There are three main problems. District attorneys who do not like to charge cops. Police unions protecting cops. And the justice system requires a unanimous jury verdict to convict. This is to protect the accused.
If you think the riots are crazy now, wait until the jury is hung or acquits Floyd because one juror has doubt. Floyd had fentanyl in his system.
The lawyer only needs to convince ONE juror that it wasn’t just Chauvins fault that the fentanyl contributed to it and you can’t know BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that it was all Chauvins fault and boom, he gets off.
This has a reasonable probability of happening. I hope it doesn’t and he convicted. But this is the real second wave I am worried about. More than Covid.
But most policing tasks don't involve interactions with people looking to fight to the death. Do people really react to being stopped for speeding by starting a firefight? Is that genuinely a routine concern?
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-lo...
In the US they've got loaded and cocked guns on their waist belts ready to use in a second.
Note that when I was in a literal warzone I didn't even always keep my rifle cocked.
The less obvious answer is to stop glorifying violence, including gun violence, war porn, drug kingpin lifestyles, cop/detective lifestyles, and other forms of abusive aggression in the media.
Considering that the US seems to go insane when a nipple appears on TV without a formal invitation, it's really quite strange that you can watch dramatised blood spurting out of fatal high-calibre organ wounds multiple times an hour - if you really want to.
I never ever considered owning a gun in my entire life, but I have one now and not afraid to use it if needed. Several friends have also done the same.
The debate for gun ownership is probably dead for 1 or 2 generations, and I do not want to see a single person blaming anyone about it when I was literally told by the police the other day that I am on my own during the night of looting in NYC.
Anyway, take a two day training course on how to use a gun (not “safety” course), otherwise owning a gun is pretty useless. Also, you need to periodically go to the range, and clean the gun after. And stock pile some ammo when you can - you are not going to be able to get any during any crisis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officer...
https://www.dw.com/en/two-german-police-officers-killed-by-f...
If officers don't engage because they are insufficiently equipped, you effectively have less policing. Less policing causes more violence and more deaths.
"Stop and frisk" works:
https://www.npr.org/2012/05/15/152764402/stop-and-frisk-work...
Knife crime in the UK keeps going up...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42749089
...as a result of literally defunding the police:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/02/criminals-go...
Why pick out a random statistic like knife crime? It sucks, but matters much less than the following statistics:
US has 4 times more intentional homicide rate vs. UK. US has 18 times more murder rate vs. UK.
I think the evidence is quite clear that the UK with police that are less heavily armed have better crime statistics, fewer police deaths, AND fewer civilian deaths caused by police.
When there's a situation that requires guns, they stay put until the police with the guns arrives. Or they become a hero and get stabbed in the process:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/22/police-briti...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-49273979
https://news.sky.com/story/police-officer-critical-after-bei...
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-charged-stabbing-p...
Not all Police are armed (see UK). Also, other countries, while armed, seem to use their firearms much less (e.g., the entire country of Germany seems to use fewer bullets than a single US city).
> the entire country of Germany seems to use fewer bullets than a single US city
So perhaps guns are not actually the problem? There's commensurately little crime occurring in Germany, crime is not punished as harshly and criminals are not armed to the same degree.
When somebody is getting arrested in the US, they're looking at years in harsh prisons. They're likely to use any sort of irrational means to avoid or resist getting arrested.
The stats seem to show comparable crime rates across most industrialized countries; see point 7:
* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/u...
There's just more violence in the US:
Most officers do not carry firearms, but snipers and other firearms carrying officers are generally available at a moments notice. In larger cities they are in roving vehicles.
Not really ‘unarmed’ although not carrying firearms to every situation may be a good policy.
I've also called 911 in the past when my house was burglarized, two men on a highway got into a fist fight after one's car hit the other, and once when a man was wandering into the middle of the highway trying to get himself run over. You could limit the number of guns but there are real issues that I think you'd want a well-equpied force for.
That's sort of the point. That's a situation that may require both an armed officer and a social worker. it's not to say that there is no situation that would require it in a heavily armed nation like the US but frequently it does not. In fact many would say sending heavily armed officers where it does not require it can escalate things, and affects how these officers view and police their communities.
The important point is that the structure of decision making inside the police is totally messed up. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail …
So the leadership has to come from somewhere else, basically.
One huge obstacle I still see is that US police basically completely gambled away trust inside the communities. They have to build up trust and are unwilling or unable to do that. That’s tragic. One way to change that would be to tip the balance way in favor of anyone not in the police, e.g. the police having to be right in fact when they apply violence to a problem (i.e. if they shoot the person they are suspecting of having a gun better have a gun or else they go to prison).
This would obviously lead to less effective policing, but that might be needed to lead to a change of strategy by the police. Because if you have to be right in fact you will act differently.
This is actually a symptom of a much larger problem: the US defunded public mental health institutions years ago, and many people that are a danger to themselves and others became homeless. When you defund the very institutions designed to help these people, and militarize the police, you get the expected outcome: mentally ill people getting shot for "resisting arrest."
So, I believe as a public we have been misinformed on how deadly it is to actually be a police officer in the US, and this is somehow used to justify extra-judicial killings of potentially innocent civilians. You certainly don't see loggers and roofers unions talking about how they are the "thin brown line" protecting society from the dangers of uncut trees and leaky roofs.
I think a similar approach at the community level would be great to see in the US. Rather than fighting the police head-on to try to make them respect our rights as they should (a tall order), we could instead try to make them largely redundant. Of course, there will always be some situations where armed police are necessary, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s less than 1% of the calls they’re currently responding to.
Of course, if you just add up all the cases across the country, then you don't need armed police in 99% of case. The problem is that you don't know which one percent does need armed police.
You want police to be able to bring the situation under control as soon as possible, you don't want to wait for people to get stabbed or shot by some guy who couldn't be stopped otherwise.
“The problem is that you don't know which one percent does need armed police.”
Perhaps there are more intelligent ways to triage than treating every situation like a military engagement?
Often the cops showing up with guns drawn is what turns a situation violent.
Anything that a bunch of yuppies do in their leisure time is not representative of anything else. It can not to be used to draw conclusions on what to do about, say, crime in the inner cities.
> Perhaps there are more intelligent ways to triage than treating every situation like a military engagement? > Often the cops showing up with guns drawn is what turns a situation violent.
Cops generally don't draw their guns unless there is a perceived threat. If there is a perceived threat, not having a gun puts cops at a severe disadvantage.
Of course there's the option for cops to just not engage and let the situation play out. There's the option for cops just to not do any policing, to not even show up. That'll reduce victims of police brutality for sure. That's already happening in some areas and all these calls for defunding the police will surely have an impact there.
Yeah and these "perceived threats" include kids with toy guns, unarmed people with their hands up, and people lying on the ground dying.
Many cops have learned, whether through training or culture, to point their guns first and ask questions later, at a huge cost to society. It seems you don't have sympathy for the people affected by this, but many of us do.
I have a lot of sympathy for police too. They have a dangerous and thankless job, and we all rely on them. But my sympathy ends at those who abuse their power, and those who protect the abusers in their midst.
People who would rather kill another human than accept any risk in trying to defuse a situation peacefully don't have what it takes to do this extremely difficult job, and they should look for another line of work.
Yes, unfortunately, those people were perceived as threats and the officers involved weren't taking any chances.
Those are, for the most part, accidents. How many children are run over because people are carelessly driving? Would you ban cars for everyone?
> Many cops have learned, whether through training or culture, to point their guns first and ask questions later, at a huge cost to society.
Yes, many people have had bad training or are just not made for the job. These are still people whose lives are at the frontline and they aren't even paid that well. I don't think the solution is to defund or disarm everyone involved.
> It seems you don't have sympathy for the people affected by this, but many of us do.
This is a disingenuous statement. You have to look beyond some exceptional and sensationalized cases, at the day-to-day reality of policing. If you disarm the police, they will stop policing those areas that are affected by crime the most. Criminals with guns will get free reign. More people will get shot, just not by cops.
More affluent people will not be affected by this, they could have it either way, it wouldn't make a difference. Their sympathy may be real, their intentions may be good, the outcome will still be bad.
> I have a lot of sympathy for police too. They have a dangerous and thankless job, and we all rely on them. But my sympathy ends at those who abuse their power, and those who protect the abusers in their midst.
I think we can all agree on this.
We have a few must reports (rape, lost child, and sexual assault) that we must call in but anecdotally I've rarely heard of a Ranger calling in LEO (law enforcement officer) to handle anything that isn't a gun/weapon or a must report.
But Burning Man has no guns and everyone is there on vacation. It doesn't apply.
Job #1 for police is to keep everybody alive, even the criminals. Everything else is secondary. They are not primarily trained "for aggression with weapons", they are trained in deescalation, social resources, helping the community, etc. And contrary to most TV shows and movies, use of a weapon is a rather rare event in a police officer's career.
Whether police should or should not be armed depends entirely on whether the criminals are or are not armed. Here in New Zealand police have arms, but they are in lock boxes in their cruisers, and only brought out when necessary. Then there is a special "armed offenders squad" which comes in with sniper rifles and such and takes care of hostage situations, mass shooters, etc.
If the current 'abolish the police' sentiment intends to send the message you are expressing, it's not sending it very effectively. My fear is that police will quit/retire in droves and not be easily replaced. That will cause inner city gang activity to increase. As I understand it, there are a small number of powerful remorseless hardened criminals forcing inner city youth into a life of crime via credible threats, and using them as pawns to distance themselves from the day to day criminal activity. The police are the only ones powerful enough to fight this and to protect these kids.
Yes, they often do a shit job at it, and yes, they often are infected with racists and overly aggressive assholes, and even criminals using that position for the power it affords. But I think we'd do better if we focused on finding and weeding out the bad cops, rather than throwing out the entire institution.
What happens to Not Police in these situations?
You want unarmed people doing this? Your Not Police would be getting killed in any of those.
If you believe police is not needed as a form of authority, you have been living in a privileged bubble for far too long. Travel, look around, and you will see the world is not as nice as you think it is.
Nobody denies that the pandemic is/was a real thing. But at that point it has been politicized ad nauseum and this is bad.
It will for sure have an impact on how much people trust experts, and general trust in experts was already bad before this. But now nobody should dare blame anyone for not believing an expert after the sham we have all seen.
Very sad that the pandemic has stopped being about science but moved to being about politics. Good luck getting compliance if there is, god forbid, a second wave or another more deadly virus in the future.
I suppose, in light of the shortcomings of human nature, it would be a lot easier to make the point that needs to be made if we were dropping bombs on coronavirus victims and broadcasting the carnage instead of rolling them up into statistical output. Their crime, apparently, is dying in a way that isn't direct and emotionally resonant enough for other human beings to grasp the magnitude of it.
But people seem to care a lot more about coronavirus deaths than deaths from war, flu, air pollution, traffic accidents, cancer (since screenings are down since lockdown), etc, so I can't agree with you on the other point.
Let's not forget that the data is far from all collected, and the science is not settled, wrt either the true impact of the virus or the effectiveness of various responses to it. I don't think it's wise to assume that science will bear out any one particular point of view, once there is better data, more perspective, and a scientific consensus.
The reason people are dodging this is because it makes these protests morally indefensible, on balance. This is terribly inconvenient if you've entrenched yourself in a particular way of thinking and no longer wish to question it.
When all these other non-protest gatherings of people were taking place, were you this outraged? If the answer is no: explain yourself.
But your point is also a straw man. For the most part, there are still prohibitions on large gatherings of people. These protests have been blessed as an exception. Why? Because the government's hand was forced by political expediency. In essence, the government has failed to protect the people from themselves.
And let me flip the question on you: why do we need to protest so urgently now, during a global pandemic? Why can't it be postponed until after we've resolved that problem and can permit it to go about safely?
I'll answer that for you: BLM has found outsized effectiveness because of coronavirus. Because people have more time, and are feeling less economically secure, and are more emotionally vulnerable. They were better primed to respond to the movement and organizers are capitalizing on that at the direct expense of human lives, even if that isn't obvious to them.
Worst of all, history suggests that these protests and the consequent loss of life will buy Black people next to nothing. Categorically the wrong solution to a very complex problem.
Covid as bad as it is will be an issue of the near future, civil rights gains or losses will have an impact in decades to come.
Does what someone think make their assembly invalid?
Point out above where GP said those assemblies were invalid. Pro tip: they did not.
Their right to assembly is not fundamentally invalidated, but the protesters are certainly open to a variety of critiques.
Anyway I’m not worried for myself, I’m gonna be fine in all likelihood—it’s my at-risk friends and family.
having a physically distant beer with a friend (assuming an uncrowded bar, as is required in most places) is quite low risk. geting hammered and carrying on with a bunch of in-your-face strangers is not.
just avoid exchanging spit with strangers. being outside is the easiest and best method, and maintaining a little distance is a close second. wear a mask indoors if you can't maintain distance. it's easy.
then you can set the fear aside and move on with your life.
ehhh I wouldn't be so sure about that.
I’m not going to claim that these were all retributive, but I can certainly understand the paranoia—legal protections only exist on paper.
do you honestly believe that a little rag in front of your mouth will reduce the spread in big crowd everyone screaming at the same time?
the protest might just prove false all the scaremongering, this is what I see very as a likely outcome
and that the disease does not propagate outdoors, that the disease does not propage by touch etc.
Where is an instance of a study that indicates the opposite? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
> the authors note that the findings on face masks and eye protection are based on limited evidence
You also have to consider second-order effects like a sense of invulnerability from the mask and added social interactions because people feel safer. Those haven't been studied.
... And then watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress.
Politicans politicize all that they can in order to use it as ammo against their opposition. The mainstream media creates and editorializes narratives in the name of garnering and sustaining attention and therefore advertising dollars.
If you're engaging with either, you have to approach it with skepticism, try to find balancing viewpoints, and make the best decisions for yourself, your family, etc. as a result.
Unfortunately, in the current case, healthcare professionals have allowed themselves to become tools of the above parties and have massively discredited themselves and their institutions in doing so. We're now even at a point where someone could rightfully be completely confused as to whether something as small as buying/wearing masks is a fruitful endeavour or a waste of effort, which is a dire state for us to be in.
There is a lot of truth in this.
In any war there is a level of acceptable losses. For most of the spring, the modern culture wars were on hold and there were no hills worth taking. Now there is something going on that has the potential for long term consequences, so the level of acceptable losses has gone up.
Ask me to take a risk because it is good for the economy and I'll tell you to fuck off. Ask me to take a risk to help reform violent police forces that oppress minorities and I'm more willing to do it.
Let me explain some of the consequences.
In the UK people have been pulling out their own teeth with pliars because the dentists weren't allowed to be open, not even for emergency surgery. It was "too dangerous" for dentists to be close to their patients.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-52321910
https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/20/mum-tried-pull-tooth-when-cou...
In India, all the factories and shops were closed. But because it's India the government wasn't able to replace people's incomes overnight. Those people started to starve so they tried to go back to their home villages, in the hopes of getting some food from the land. But because of the lockdown they couldn't get transport either, so they started to walk, in some cases they tried to walk hundreds of miles. And some of them died because of it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52086274
In the UK there's now a backlog of 2.4 million cancer tests or treatments. There's no obvious way to catch up and some people will die because of it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8374697/2-4-million...
The economy is defined, literally, as every service or product people sell each other. But sure, it's also just a minor thing that doesn't matter.
All these meetings are meaningless, because they do not address several problems:
1. There is a serious neglect of educational system in black neighborhoods. There is no discipline in the schools in these areas. There is a lot of push from ultra-left to keep the things as they are "because this is black culture"; lots of ultra-left derive political capital off of misery of minorities - if there was no misery, there would have been nothing to fight against, to become somehow important.
2) Most of black people are killed by the black people in their neighborhoods. The numbers are of different maginitude when compared to police brutality. If the protesters were really concerned about well-being of black minority, they should have argued for better policing, security cameras, better schools, better foodstores in these areas. ASk any protester if they would part with their monety for that cause, raise taxes for exmpale, NO way, They would not.
But why were the people protesting the lock downs and business shutdowns and the limiting of freedoms the yahoos and crazy murderers? Why did nurses block them from protesting but not one would block someone now?
This is a false dichotomy. Sure, these people (and their workers) deserve empathy and support, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to reopen. You can support business owners via financial aid or other measures while their business is closed.
If you believe that you get infected at a store, don't go to the store ... case closed. On what basis is the state "protecting" someone that does not want to be protected? On what basis is someone considered a criminal when a crime could only potentially be committed?
what if the person is immune to the disease, already had the disease, or does not mind getting infected?
Because we live in a society and our actions affect others. When you take this argument to an extreme it becomes pretty obvious that it is fallacious. For example, do you think it is okay for someone to actively burn their garbage, venting toxic smoke into their neighborhood because they are “willing to take the risk” of developing health complications?
> If you believe that you get infected at a store, don't go to the store
It would really nice if this worked but it strikes me as a grand oversimplification of how society operates and diseases spread.
> what if the person is immune to the disease, already had the disease, or does not mind getting infected?
These people still risk infecting others and perpetuating the pandemic, which is why you shouldn’t do it, even if you aren’t afraid for yourself.
Being obese? Smoking? After all, both of those are the direct result of your choices and less dependent on other people than getting a virus.
Most people say "Oh, that would never happen!" but if we have a time where rationing healthcare becomes the norm or even just vital, it will just as it did in Italy a few months back.
'you should support blm and adjacent causes from home through donating without putting more people and lives at risk'
Why is "Reopen all the things!" the only solution, though?
Part of the reason why people got angry is because none of the people involved around the cosplaytriots wanted to consider any other options, and there are many.
1) The fact that losing your job costs you your healthcare is a political problem. The government can decide to extend healthcare by fiat, expand access, or several other choices.
2) The fact that people weren't getting paid unemployment that they filed for is a problem.
3) If you really believed in choice, give people $2,000 per month unconditionally but allow them to choose whether they wish to go back to work. Now we can see the free market in action.
Instead, the only thing on the cosplaytriot protest agenda was "Stay home and die or get back to work and possibly die". That's not exactly a protest sentiment that's going to get much grass roots support.
Putting a gun to people's heads is going to make them angry.
There is no equivalent safety net for people who are victims of positional asphyxia.
Why should anyone be criticised for denying this so-called "science" when the people who made it are now openly denying it as well?
Science should not be a partisan topic. Mistakes get made, but those should be learning opportunities rather than a chance to discredit your "opponent".
Whether such outcome is desirable vs the trade-offs is not a scientific fact as desirability only exists in the minds of each individual.
Science has found no universal "utility" function that applies to all humans. As such its impossible for science to maximize utility, or in laymens terms "outcomes" globally for all humans. We must choose what we find important and there is no scientific tool to do so.
Once you've decided what's important sure you can apply science to help you make the best decisions to achieve that outcome.
The most science can tell you is what are the consequences of some act. Deciding if they are good or bad and if they are worth taking is a completely politic act.
Perhaps as we better understand the brain that may change.
This isn't a fair question, people will protest and go back to their lock down down life. Reopening is sustained interaction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly
According to Wikipedia assembly is an example of a civil liberty. The preeminent doctrine on civil liberties is On Liberty. According to John Stuart Mill the greatest destroyer, as addressed near the top of chapter 2, of civil liberties is populism whether from an aggressive majority or angry mob.
Assembly only really means anything, to those observing, if the participants are assembling for a purpose of individually formulated passion opposed to an exertion of social pressure. That, as it would appear, is the difference between a protest versus an angry mob.
That said I would say the most fundamental right is freedom of expression which can occur from a group or individual and be every bit as powerful and influential.
I'm a fan of John Stuart Mill's writing, but having a memorable book title does not make a permanently relevant tome that applies to all of history backward and forward.
My understanding of assembly (no wikipedia reference here) is that it's a form of expression (which you also kind of said yourself).
Are saying that assembly isn't good or necessary for society? Or is this entire post specifically about the OP's word choice?
In either case, are you citing J. S. Mill as a form of "proof" for your assertion?
> having a memorable book title does not make a permanently relevant tome that applies to all of history backward and forward.
The definition of liberty has not changed, so yes that essay still equally applies.
Out of curiosity, what other philosophers do you consider to be so absolutely correct (and so clear in their statements that misinterpretation is impossible) that rise to the level of proof or evidence when cited?
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philos...
This is what people reference when they say: I think, therefore I am. I find that is not at all accurate to the writing. Really it says a thinking machine that can doubt can doubt away all things but doubting itself so then that ability must exist.
How is the ‘free assembly’ you are talking about more important, and even if it is to many, am I required to have come to the same conclusion, or to follow the conclusion someone else has made for me?
I have a feeling a lot of freedom of assembly protections were really more about the ability to get together and discuss stuff than it was about marches and protests.
In that case, our freedom to assemble has been massively curtailed for months.
Who gets to decide what assembly is worth violating the lockdown for?
The economic devastation wrought by the pandemic could ultimately kill more people than the virus itself: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-11/more-t...
With kids stuck at home, ER doctors see more severe cases: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/with-kids-stuck-at-home-er...
The Untold Toll — The Pandemic’s Effects on Patients without Covid-19: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2009984
COVID-19 Is Likely to Lead to an Increase in Suicides: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/covid-19-i...
Coronavirus could deplete Social Security as early as 'this decade': analysis: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/coronavirus-could-deplete...
"Deaths of despair”: The deadly epidemic that predated coronavirus: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/15/21214734/deaths-of-despair-cor...
'Biblical' famines could double global hunger as a result of the coronavirus crisis, UN warns: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/22/coronavirus-biblical-fam...
How COVID-19 may increase domestic violence and child abuse: https://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19/domestic-violence-child-...
Millions of Credit-Card Customers Can’t Pay Their Bills. Lenders Are Bracing for Impact: https://www.wsj.com/articles/millions-of-credit-card-custome...
Now to dare dumb down the argument to being only about haircuts is, well everyone can understand what I would say, but I don't want to run afoul of the rules.
See how a strawman argument works?
The other side doesn’t, so I’m much more supportive of their protest, even though there might be associated risks.
As long as I don’t call for the first protest to be made illegal this is a perfectly consistent argument.
Sometimes you have to look at the content of a protest to judge if it’s valuable or not. And it’s perfectly ok to judge a protest as not being valuable.
They want to be the judges that get to determine which movement is worthwhile and which movement is not worthwhile.
The good argument is that if we care about mitigating suffering and death, we should also be looking at the suffering and death the lockdown measures lead to. Counting one side and not the other is dishonest.
This is at best an extremely distorted comparison of the two messages.
40 million people are unemployed. The stakes are much larger than just getting a haircut.
Those are the signs you were shown, or chose to notice.
In any case as a legal matter it makes no difference. Government restrictions on 1st amendment rights to assemble and protest can only survive strict scrutiny if they are viewpoint-neutral.
As soon as governors are deciding which protesters to fine/ticket based on their agreement or disagreement with the contents of their protest signs, as a matter of law the protest/gathering ban is done for. (See the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision where justice Roberts ruled that, at the time, there wasn’t evidence that church services in California were being treated unequally with other equivalent non-religious services. When the case comes back up again with Gov Newsom’s approval of protestors marching outside, but not Christians marching in religious processions, the ban is going to fall apart in court).
The trivialization of other people's causes, especially those that should engender sympathy (literally 10's of millions of those in the weakest economic situations), is a 'root cause' here.
If a very serious healthcare issue is politicized, we're all in trouble.
I could say: "One group is holding signs that say 'Let us reopen. I have 2 children to feed' and another group is calling for police abolition while smashing in the windows of small businesses and murdering people" and it would be just as valid of a description as yours. It's not a fair description though.
Maybe your framing is the result of not having a wide enough array of news sources.
What do you think the definition of a 'double standard' is? You know, applying a different standard to the same behaviour (protests).
>Circumstances and outcomes vary, a form of 'neutrality' that ignores that fundamentally isn't a useful metric.
Sure. And it's still a double-standard. You just associate the phrase 'double-standard' as a negative and you don't like to apply something negative to behaviour you approve of.
If someone calls for protests to be illegal in one case and not the other then that’s a double standard and not such a great argument. (There are some subtle differences here, though: The situation a month ago was materially different – both in terms of the epidemiological picture as well as in terms of new scientific evidence about the relative dangers of being inside and outside – so it is possible for someone to argue for a difference on that basis, though I do acknowledge that’s a very shaky one.)
What’s happening here, though is that people judge the content of the protests: The content of the protests against the restrictions was irrational trash, so engaging in them is irresponsible stupidity. That’s a value judgement and it is perfectly valid to arrive at different conclusions with such a value judgement.
Judge not that ye be not judged.
>Circumstances and outcomes vary, a form of 'neutrality' that ignores that fundamentally isn't a useful metric
Perhaps not useful to you and your cause.
However, if you want to talk about double standard, where are the cosplaytriots who were sooooo concerned about their rights? Where is the groundswell of Second Amendment defenders out protecting these protests against the government like the Black Panthers did back in the 1960's?
They all bluster about standing up to the government--here is the time. So why is silence all I hear? Seems like they don't really care about those pesky rights so much, after all. And it seems like they don't really like standing up when the government might actually shoot back. Cowards.
Lots of people on the left were calling for more support from the government to handle this. EU unemployment is half of what the US is. Germany's at 3.5%. So risking yourself, for the economy didn't seem worth it especially when other nations did so much more. Lots of states started eviction moratoriums to protect people.
Toward your point: I fundamentally don't respect most conservatives, much less those who think they need to protest against public health measures. So to an extent, yes, this is a lot more important than what they were complaining about.
You're conflating political stance with intelligence. Also, you need to respect everyone. That doesn't mean agree-with or follow blindly, just recognize their inherent humanity and worth. I feel like that must have been a sentiment promulgated by someone famous at some time in the past.
I don't think they are "worth less" than someone else, and I certainly know there are intellectually honest, well-meaning conservatives in the country. The line starts to blur <somewhere that I have defined> but that gets too politically specific for HN.
Either COVID-19 is serious enough that it merits cancelling a bunch of “critical” features of normal life, or it isn’t.
IMO this will create a level of pandemic similar to NYC unless we really start testing and contact-tracing. It does feel like much of the left is OK with this, whereas everyone was freaking out when the reopen protesters were protesting. This is inconsistent, and unfortunate as I do have somewhat left-leaning views.
Taking down a list of people who dined at a restaurant during a certain time period is one thing.
How are you supposed to contact trace a 10,000 person protest? No one is going to know the random people they happened to be standing next to and chanting at a specific moment.
If these protests are super spreading events it blows a huge hole in any attempt at contact tracing & targeted quarantine/isolation. Hopefully it turns out the virus somehow can’t spread well in these conditions otherwise this is a huge setback for a country that just sacrificed so much to reduce the virus prevalence.
Consider that when people are yelling and standing tightly packed together, even if there's wind it won't blow away the droplets, just the aerosols. And new aerosols will be continuously generated...
Of course cases will increase when people leave their homes. But have the hospitals been overwhelmed in any of the states that started to reopen several weeks ago? No! In that case the lockdowns have served their purpose.
The authors of this article are arguing more from a pro-lockdown position than from an anti-virus position — they seem to care more about defending the lockdowns than they do about actually solving the problem, even though it’s becoming obvious that new solutions, like partial reopening, are working.
If we don't have those things in place, the problem is not the re-opening, which was inevitable since indefinite lockdown and isolation is not sustainable anyway.
I'm going to do my small part in not being a vector. But there's no way the US is ever reaching New Zealand's success at discovery, tracing, and isolating before a vaccine's available. The virus is still an awful pandemic and will have major consequences, but we have no good choices anymore.
this is what is unbelievably frustrating. most people in the u.s. basically hold the opinion that everything wasn't so bad, and that things came out okay. meanwhile, most of the numbers point to the u.s. being one of the worst managed countries with respect to the virus. it's really sickening there is this dissonance with people.
i don't feel safe in the u.s. and will be staying away from people as long as possible. it just feels sickening though, because that length will be indefinite in the u.s. until a vaccine arrives.
And this isn't a retcon. I got TTSI from vihart's video which was based on this work published in April: https://ethics.harvard.edu/covid-roadmap
Lots of areas have actually mostly eliminated the virus, just not the USA and Europe. Avoiding hospital overwhelm is avoiding the worst case. But if that’s all you do then life is still heavily abnormal until a vaccine.
i think you've lost sight of what flattening the curve was about. flattening the curve, from the beginning, was giving up. it was about accepting that we weren't and still aren't prepared for the virus, and that tons of people would get sick and die. at the moment, the deaths is a rather sickening 100,000+. the "flattening the curve" movement was an acceptance of this and was just meant to spread out the sick and deaths over time. meanwhile, other countries successfully managed the virus where they didn't even have to flatten the curve. they squashed it.
because then, in the end, the fact that the u.s. flattened the curve could be seen as a successful handling of the virus, when it was anything but.
it is still a legitimate threat in the u.s., while other countries came out of lockdown much, much sooner with much less cases and deaths.
Ideally you get the virus to low enough levels where you coast along until we get effective treatment or a vaccine with a new normal that disrupts the economy and daily life as little as possible.
This article seems to completely ignore that, instead focusing on positive test results, even though the vast majority of infections are mild or even completely asymptomatic. If anything, America is giving up on the breathless projections of mass die off that aren't supported by reality.
I will say that 100k+ deaths is nothing to treat so trivially.
21 days indicates the incubation period plus adequate time for an infected person to become ill enough to seek testing or treatment. Cutting the number at 14 is a way to minimize assessment of impact.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/11/floridas-cou...
I'm a little frustrated with public health officials who say we need to wait 14 days between lockdown steps because of the incubation period. 14 days is for quarantine, but you'll have the data you need by 10 days (assuming a lag between the onset of symptoms and testing) at the latest.
1: https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/journal-scans/2020/...
the answer is that america gave up from the beginning. that much is clear from the graphs. other countries, like south korea, didn't just flatten the curve, they eliminated it. a total of 100,000+ deaths is a mass die off.
in the united states, out of every 100,000 people, 35 have died. and it's likely more because the united states has manipulated death numbers by underreporting them.
in south korea, out of every 100,000, only 0.5 people have died. by those numbers alone, the u.s.' handling of the virus is 70 times worse. i'm sick and tired of people like you spreading misinformation and shrugging this thing off like it hasn't been a big deal. it hasn't been that big of a deal in countries that have handled it. that does not include the united states.
Not in Utah.
Now, if most people have mild infections, what death rate are will willing to tolerate? It's definitely more than zero. Was Sweden's big mistake how it handled migrant communities and nursing homes?
But wow, yes, that'd be a good choice. Condoleezza Rice?
George W. Bush is eligible (90% jokingly). Biden and Bush would be malapropism gold for SNL.
marketing hype. That's what America is good at it. Yes, America is a leader in innovation and technology and business. No, there is not something "exceptional" about the US or Americans relative to other free market, liberal countries that makes it "capable of overcoming any obstacle" other than its very large market size, possession of a resource-rich landmass with a relatively small population density. Yet instead of recognizing their luck and good fortune, Americans tell the world things like: God chose us, we are exceptional people, we are special, etc., which is nonsense.
the information war is being fought with bricks and 'boogaloos', nothing about 9 days of riots and protests goes against 4chans goals and desire to throw the US into chaos.
you don't even need disinformation when articles will back you up based on your political alignments
> They see Covid-19 as a nothing burger, and health experts giving these protestors a pass vindicates their belief.
Four minutes later someone says just that:
> by admitting there are exceptions, [public health experts] reveal that they were not being straight with us all along.
Nevertheless it is clear that public health experts have not been straight with us. You don't need to be a right-wing loon to see that their open letter contradicts what they have been saying until now.
Why did you personally attack me and associate me with the 4chan nutters with no basis whatsoever?
I never said you did.
> Nevertheless it is clear that public health experts have not been straight with us.
Depends on the public health officials you listen to, eh?
> You don't need to be a right-wing loon to see that their open letter contradicts what they have been saying until now.
I agree. Mass protests during a pandemic are irresponsible although understandable, in my opinion, and the open letter people are talking about in this thread sounds to me to be pretty irresponsible as well, although I haven't read it.
I just watched a bunch of videos of demonstrations happening today all over the world. While my heart soared a little voice in the back of my head was saying "...but covid is loving this..."
> Why did you personally attack me and associate me with the 4chan nutters with no basis whatsoever?
I didn't attack you, I wasn't even responding to you. I was struck by the pattern match, that's all. I apologize for the offense, and wish you well.
On and on.
They love it because, like anyone, they love being proven right. If you want them not to love it, then do not prove them right.
We shouldn't have let politics drive all of our COVID-19 policies and responses, but we did, now it is evident, and we're going to have to pay for that with a loss of trust.
Perhaps it's like the car accident paradox where streets that would seem more dangerous have less actual accidents, because people pay more attention when driving them.
The you look across the lines at the national guard and the Seattle PD at see one or two masks at most! Why aren't the NG and PD wearing masks? Like, it's the smallest sign of caring and they don't do it.
imo, arguing that the increased transmission risk is justified by the importance of the cause is reasonable. arguing that thousands of people gathering in the streets doesn't really move the needle for covid infections is a fantasy.
The staff is a different matter.
Yeah. We never were going to be able to keep everything closed for much longer. There is a very anti-handout ideology here, and the amount of political will for more bailouts was dwindling.
> Protests...
Sorry about this one. There are more important issues that need solving right now, and momentum and timing are very important. Right now we're in a perfect storm where a large amount of people can protests. Day after day after day.
The only way we could have kept the pandemic at bay if it was the only thing in the news and on everyone's mind. And more important things came along.
This may be the most striking thing at the moment. The pandemic isn't evenly distributed in the US. Several factors compound the problem, including:
1. the time between the enactment of policy and the consequences varies
2. there may be an underlying seasonal component that's modulating stats in certain states
3. states show varying degrees of commitment to complete, accurate reporting of test results and rigor
4. positivity rates (# positive results vs # of tests) are rarely, if ever reported so it's nearly impossible to assign weight to increases or decreases in cases/fatalities
Throw this all together and you get one big, fat mess. It's nearly impossible to figure out exactly what's happening with respect to viral spread or why. National-level efforts to track or contain the spread are weak at best.
We should all hope that point (2) is not a major factor in this. If it is, a bigger, badder sequel of the early spring, starting around fall seems inevitable.
However, places are starting to relax the shelter-in-place rules already, so people going out now isn't comparable to people going out a month or two ago.
I do wish it weren't an either/or. Protest with your mask, and keep distance. To most people I know, this is how the protests they've been to have gone, so that's great and we should stop giving them shit, the same way as we shouldn't label the whole movement by the actions of some looters.
Filtering for "2019, black, unarmed" you get:
15 people shot and killed by police match your filters (less than 1%)
Change that to "2015" and you get:
38 people shot and killed by police match your filters (1%)
People are also marching for deaths caused by other citizens that were first swept under the rug, like Ahmaud Arbery.
> lack people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress.
So 1k-2k per year would be a low estimate. Some will correctly point out that that 1k-2k killed by police includes people that are committing violent crimes (ie, killing them may not be unjust). The response to that argument is to look at the intersection of poverty and race to see how systemic racism drives crime in black communities.
Did you know that an even greater health/life expectancy disparity exists between men and women?
One gender on average lives 5.1 years longer than the other.[2]
>decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress.
Likewise all of these issues affect men disproportionately compared to women.
Why is it so popular to talk about these same issues as systemic oppression against group X (relative to group Y), while ignoring or the fact that those same issues affect group XY, often to an even greater degree (relative to group XX)?
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health_in_the_Unite...
[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_ex...
That being said, I don't think gender is a good counterpoint given that biology does have a significant role in some disparities in outcomes for men & women (for example life expectancy). With race, as cited in the letter, biological explanations aren't enough to explain the differences.
> Why is it so popular to talk about these same issues as systemic oppression against group X (relative to group Y), while ignoring or the fact that those same issues affect group XY, often to an even greater degree (relative to group XX)?
Speculatively, with respect to blacks in America, I'm going to guess that it isn't any single issue that is concerning, but the totality of them. Yes, a given issue X might affect group Y more than it does blacks, but blacks in the US as a population are affected by multiple such issues and I can't think of many areas where they have a leg up over other groups.
I agree my friend, thank you for the measured response.
>given that biology does have a significant role in some disparities in outcomes for men & women (for example life expectancy)
How do we know biology is the most significant factor that causes women to live longer than men?
How do we know biology is not a significant factor that causes white people to live longer than black people? It's a biological fact that black people in the US suffer greatly from vitamin D deficiency[1]
[1]https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2019/09/24/african-americans...
> In Politics, The Atlantic will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea.
But I'd still generally describe them as a respected center-left new source. I wouldn't go as far as saying they have an "agenda."
A week ago, a Facebook friend of mine posted a passionate post about the importance of wearing masks. This weekend, the same friend posts a photo sitting around with friends, sans-mask.
This same friend is very politically active. Honestly, some of his actions seem linked to whatever the current hot-topic is. I think there's been a shift in emphasis, hence the lack of caring for the mask this week.
In Germany, much of the ire around unpunished excess police force is around riot response squads who regularly use excessive force against leftist protests (anti-G20, anticapitalism/Occupy, anarchists), especially if some of the protesters turn to vandalism, start setting fires or attack the police.
Once the weather gets better again you can bet that all along the European coasts hoardes or people will be ignoring the laxer provisions. In fact, they already are.
Europe (at least Western Europe) is also giving up on the pandemic. At this rate there's going to be a second wave. I have no idea if this will create better conditions for the virus to mutate and possibly herald a third wave keeping us in until 2022.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/doctors-...
These protests are interesting and different because a lot of factors are playing into them:
- Obviously, black lives matter
- Pent-up anger over Trump
- Pent-up frustration over lockdowns
- Unemployed people with nothing to do
- People who are desperate (read: have nothing to lose)
- Media coverage focusing on very few issues
And these issues play into each other.
Sad
My opinion is that standing up for the current abhorrance of police violence connected to BLM is worth some endangering behavior on their own choice (i.e. going out in crowds, because it's a multi-100 year problem), whereas getting a haircut is not the same, but I see why that's contentious. 1000 more people getting a positive case that wouldn't have otherwise will lead to a few deaths, and they will spread it and kill a few more. It's personally horrible to just write down that fact and not know what to do with it.
1. https://bing.com/covid/local/washington_unitedstates
2. https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/NovelCoronavirusOutbreak2...
COVID-19 cases will go up when the economy reopens. Until then I'd be surprised if we even see a statistically noticeable blip from these protests.
I think the potential customers who wanted to get a haircut or their nails done were making a less important request than the person who is losing their livelihood. That is a different issue than the impact on the small business owner who is devastated by this. Someone in my family is facing financial devastation because they work in the wedding industry and all weddings are of course on hold. This person could lose everything. Yet I don't want my or anyone else's old relatives to die because of more spreading. Also my niece has a job in a restaurant that isn't open any more - they tried to open but not enough customers came.
With the people going to protests, we are certain to have increased infections in a week or two.
The current US death rate is about 1,000 per day, and that probably won't go down much until there's a vaccine or until 70% of the US population has had the disease. This is a "bury the dead and go on" situation. The US hasn't faced one of those since WWII.
Meanwhile, don't bunch up, get good masks, and wear them. The mask supply situation has improved, although too many of them are junk. The US could probably beat this thing with enough N95 respirators.
[1] https://www.smchealth.org/health-officer-statements-and-orde...
Think this through. 50% use masks, 5% are spreading the disease. Interact with 100 people over a period of time.
- Masks which protect others: (0.95)^50 chance of non-exposure = 0.6%. 92% of population exposed.
- Masks which protect you: 50% of population exposed.
This is oversimplified, but wearing masks which protect others just doesn't do much.
I think your word “cheapo” is derogatory. Are people just being cheap when they don’t buy an N95 mask?
Saying “cheapo” masks only protect others is an incorrect conclusion: your language is also misleading.
There's now a huge supply of poor to useless masks available, many with phony approval markings.[1] That's most of what's being sold on Amazon. It's moderately hard to make a mask which seals tightly, doesn't offer too much resistance to breathing, and filters to N95 standards.
A real N95 mask (3M 8210) is about $1.25 if you can get it. Some of the fakes are much more expensive.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-files-charges-against-chine...
The science shows a well fitted “cheapo” mask can protect you better than a poorly fitted N95 mask. Even a surgical mask provides a little protection: if they provide 25% protection and 50% reduction in transmission, and everyone uses them, that is a huge reduction in R0.
Not everyone can invest the time required to learn how to source a real N95 mask.
My impression is you are trying to educate the uninformed, while sweeping under the carpet important nuances. I’m sure that isn’t your intention, but that is how it comes across to me.
I believe the vast majority of cases are transmitted by respiration, and the recent news that super-spreaders dominate transmission will eventually find that they spread the disease by air, not by contact or fomites.
I have yet to see any evidence that washing hands reduces transmission by any significant amount (say 5%).
There is ample evidence showing that hand washing reduces the spread for viruses that are similar to covid 19.
We obviously should wash hands regularly and well. Even a 5% reduction for a simple action is really worthwhile (and hand washing is clearly critical in a healthcare setting).
My main beef is that in my country I think there has been too much attention paid to hand washing and fomites, and not enough information given on enclosed spaces or mask usage. The turnaround on mask usage is a classic example of seemingly obvious misinformation. Another classic is the news clips of government employees in Asian countries spraying roads and buildings - powerful images that misdirect.
> The US hasn't faced one of those since WWII.
That's just incorrect. The US has faced this every year (by percentage), since it's inception. Hundreds of thousands of people die of disease every year of cancer. Not just disease. Tens of thousands by car for most of the 20th century.
The hyperbole that COVID-19 can be considered historically notable, is in the scale and type (optional, changing recommendations, etc) of social measures that have been taken.
Some protests are allowed but not all? Why?
If I were a machiavellian populist facist president of the USA I would ignore this reality and immediately start blaming the protests for increased case incidence of SARS-II. I don't think this ends soon, in fact I suspect this political fight will get worse before it gets better.
For the non-factual topics, such as whether there an epidemic of unjustified police violence against black people (the data does not clearly show that there is - and in fact imo shows that there is not), stating their opinion on the political topic means their scientific opinion loses credibility immediately for significant percentages of the population.
Why do any scientists talking about the spread of virus need to say that they support the cause? When they say that they do support the cause, why should the 40% of the country who voted for Trump and watches Fox News still follow their scientific advise?
I can't help but look back on the anti-lockdown protests and sympathize with those people's skepticism and animosity toward scientists.[1]
It feels to me as the hard sciences have been inflicted with the same political ideology that has dominated the arts+social sciences and that the scientists are scared to share their scientific opinions in an apolitical way. The same reason that your dishsoap company emailed you to let you know their political beliefs.
I remember seeing photos during the anti-lockdown protests of medical workers standing in front of cars: https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/denver-count...
And a few weeks later photos spreading virally of medical works supporting protests: https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F...
It feels to me that in much of America, politics are not allowed to be public unless they align with liberal views.
Is there any reason to have renewed confidence in these influential people and institutions?
[1]https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1267281387486412801
There are many Asian countries aggressively stopping the virus without lockdowns. Their citizens are leading fairly normal lives right now except many still must wear masks everywhere. They have achieved this by contact tracing every single case and stopping all new outbreaks. But the US is still trying to learn how to do contact tracing, and without federal leadership on this it is unclear if the US will be able to get proper contact tracing working.
Mapping Police Violence (https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/) notes that police killed 1098 people in 2019 in the US. Per the Washington Post, the figure is 1043 but that's specifically for shootings (which covers almost all officer involved deaths): https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic.... And in all likelihood, most of those situations were handled properly and professionally and the deaths were justified (without wrongdoing on the police's part).
So we've just taken on far more undeserved deaths due to irresponsible protesting and rioting than the very brutality we were outraged about in the first place! How was this even allowed? It is completely irrational to permit these protests, and to tolerate these super spreader events given the harsh restrictions we placed on our lives in response to COVID-19.
I cannot believe that healthcare professionals and public health officials are lining up to excuse the protests. This, just a couple weeks after they were all criticizing moderates/conservatives who wanted to see orders relaxed. The healthcare professionals and public officials who've jumped on the train of rationalizing their flip flopping are simply too afraid to admit that they're willing to tolerate the risks for activities and causes they align with, but they still want to force others to make sacrifices with the activities that they value. In other words, one set of rules for them, another set of rules for everyone else. I've lost faith in our elected officials, public institutions, healthcare providers, and academic bodies as a result of this hypocrisy and failure of logic.
A more fair and just handling of COVID would be to let every individual assess the risks and benefits of their activities themselves, as individuals, and let them go about their way. If a business wants to stay open, so be it. If a customer wants to visit a business, so be it. Those who are risk averse and afraid of exposure can choose to deal with that risk by impacting only their own lives by sheltering themselves.
I think for every 100 covid deaths, it's probably closer to 1-5 actual covid deaths and the rest just get conflated.
There’s nothing in here about disregarding recommendations from epidemiologists. It’s about saying enough is enough on a persistent threat, not an acute one.
The problem is a large percentage of the population has very little to fear from this virus. The reason quarantining and other tactics had to be top-down mandated is that individuals acting selfishly threaten other people. That has not changed.
In short, a large number of immunocompromised and elderly persons are going to die as an almost direct consequence of the protesting. Apparently, we're okay with that.
The chances of experiencing life-changing injury or death from either are vanishingly small. Too bad we can't get people this excited about obeying traffic regulations.
Also, you have to consider that there is widespread and life changing psychological injury (trauma) inflicted on minorities from years, decades, centuries of systemic injustice along every axis of life. Imagine being a child and growing up with a worldview that you and your loved ones are in constant danger (from people that are supposed to protect you, no less) based solely on the color of your skin. I keep thinking of the powerful words of George Floyd’s friend Stephen Jackson in this clip (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JdWfUJYYU):
>”We, as black men, have seen a lot of stuff as far as people being murdered and taken from us, right? But now, not only it’s been seen by us and our brothers, but it’s been seen by our children now. So I’m sitting there watching this and my daughter...my daughter tells me, ‘Dad I can’t leave you, cause I seen what happened to your friend, and I think you need me.’ My daughter is 6 years old. For my daughter to see that, and tell me that I need her at 6, imagine the pain and frustration that’s in my mind right now”.
In my teenage years, I worked as a low status laborer in shops where I was one of a very few white people among mostly blacks. Most were indifferent to me. A few (all Christians) were saints, really, and I remember them kindly to this day. And a few, including my crew boss, were "unfriendly" at best, and in retrospect, racist as all hell. I don't particularly blame them, but I cannot condone this sort of behavior either.
I sympathize with those who suffer. We all suffer. And we all deserve such sympathy. Suffering, really, is the nature of being alive in our reality.
Is there more to do along this road? Yes. Are the killings and maimings we have seen over the last week in any way justified or "worth it"? No.
The damage is and will continue to be immeasurable. How will the years of life we saved measure up to the years of life and quality of life we have ruined? We will never know.
The whole point of the Model is to detect things which are uncertain by nature. Being wrong is not bad, it's good TBH.
CMIIW.
We also were told that Georgia was going to be a disaster for reopening too soon and that has not come to pass.
It’s good to know that “believe science” and “stay home stay safe” are completely negotiable based on what is politically expedient.
To lower risk, black people could stay at home and wait for better times...
It says that between 2013 and 2018, about 96 in 100,000 (approx 1 in 1000) African American men were killed by police in the U.S.
Death from Covid is also lifetime risk.
It is a commonly reported statistic if you want to find other publications that say the same thing. Did you try googling for it — for example google: "1000 black men and boys" police
That said:
* We had the "I don't wanna stay at home" and "masks are tyranny" protestors a month ago, too... but as far as I know, most governments pretty much let those happen. Hell, they let a lot of those happened with the protestors heavily armed. Protestors drew a lot of criticism but more or less got to do what they wanted.
* Similarly, it's pretty clear that most governments aren't thrilled about BLM protest crowds from a public health standpoint, but have adopted a range of tactics from "cooperate and keep peace" to "actively suppress." Protestors have drawn a mix of support and criticism and... in some cases got a beat down and trip through arrest processing, but in other cases kinda got to do what they wanted. It's not like social justice was just given a pass here; in some ways it actually has faced heavier resistance.
* If we're comparing motives here, are we weighing "the audacity to want to return to work"? Or the audacity to want other people to return to work? And how would we compare that with, say, the desire to be free from being murdered or otherwise singled out for selective enforcement or brutality by officers of state?
* Government direction didn't cause a retreat from social/economic engagement, it coordinated it. Most people would have done exactly the same thing they're doing now absent official direction, just at different times/thresholds, leading to the same eventual economic results but less effective epidemic mitigation. And the only thing that will get everyone back to work is either nihilism or trust that risks are well-managed.
It seems to me that there is U.S. tribe that worships the lockdowns despite the evidence, for no articulable reason other than a hatred for the President, or a proximity to the culture surrounding that hatred.
We have been delivered a blessing, in the reality of the matter, and it seems like some people are more upset that the good news demonstrates the hubris of their attempts to control the outbreak.
However, although we have more knowledge now, we don't yet have a vaccine, nor a political system that puts people first instead of profits, so might we find ourselves in the same situation as our ancestors? Sure, we also have the ability to complain to more people, more quickly, but that's about it.
Some of that is due to the fact that the number seen in context(https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death#what-do-people-di...) are not as extreme as it was feared/hyped, and that the containment measures were to little to actually stop the pandemic and never designed with that goal in mind.
Just to clarify about Covid: -The highest deathrate from it is around 1%, CDC reports 0.30 lately. -Hits predominantly the old parts of the population -The death comes in a normal way - pneumonia -> death, nothing like the bubonic plague or ebola symtoms
Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., H. Clifford Lane, M.D., and Robert R. Redfield, M.D. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
Published February 29, 2020
> On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2
And maybe this is part of the problem with the whole covid discussion - labeling all these simple arguments from all sides as "wot a moron!" instead of presenting them clearly for people to learn from.
Well, it isn't done and I'd say in terms of raw deaths it's pretty significant. Particularly when you recognize that a lot of those previous bad pandemics coincided with terrible water/sewage and insufficient healthcare.
Weirdly I’ve seen a lot of attempted history rewriting, I guess by people who in March didn’t understand the medical literature and confused CFR with IFR.
Interesting because the CDC and NIAID were signalling well in advance of that they wanted at least 8 weeks of shut-down.. Anyone with their ear to the ground(actually reading articles from and watching interviews of epidemiologists and health officials) would have known everything was going to be shutdown well into May and that school was out for the summer. Marriott furloughed employees until end of June BEFORE the major March shutdowns.
0 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...