‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted – It’s Why You Feel Awful

I agree with the need for perspective. The well off really need to know what the rest of the world is like, so they make decisions that take their effects on others into account. The disadvantaged really need to know what the path to being well off looks like, so they can apply their voices and efforts to the places that will make a difference. I've been in that place where a rise in the price of ramen or gasoline could make it impossible to pay rent. I've also been fortunate to find myself in a much better place.

However, we don't gain much by forbidding any displeasure for all but the worst sufferers. Failing to get a job at FAANG doesn't magically move that money into the hands of people who desperately need it. Being set back in one's own fortunate life still sucks.

We all need empathy at times, nobody should have a monopoly on empathy. Mutual empathy builds bridges, monopolized empathy builds resentment.

It's very much like Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane didn't kill thousands of New Orleanians. Almost all of them were alive after the hurricane had passed. It was the local and larger government's failure to handle it that led to such a widespread disaster.

At least for me, the kind of people I know directly (in meatspace) with this attitude are the kind of people who decided the middle of the pandemic is the best time to make social visits to the elderly (for little other reason than being bored with the lockdown). And I know these people don't secretly want to murder their elders. After seeing plenty of that first and second-hand, it's kind of hard to not suspect motivated reasoning when someone goes out and says "sure I've considered the risks, there's no harm in 50-ish me dropping by my 80 years old mother on my way back from the private health clinic I work in" (real example I know, and that same clinic is staffed with people who consider the pandemic overblown and do the absolute minimum to protect themselves and their patients from it).

> PS: If you want to talk direct social risk and safety then it's time to ban alcohol for the greater safety of society.

It's been tried and decided against, but in this comparison, it's worth noting that harms caused by alcohol don't grow exponentially.

I’ve been seeing this ageist and eugenics-like language coming up quite a lot lately and it’s really disturbing to me.

Why is it OK that hundreds of thousands of people are dying because they are mostly older? Should we amend our laws so it’s OK to murder anyone above a certain age, because they’re elderly so who cares?

Why is it OK that people with pre-existing health conditions are dying because they have these conditions? Should we never provide any health care services to people with any comorbidities because their lives don’t matter?

You may think you’re being rational by deciding these people have little to no societal value—survival of the fittest! they’re maximised their contribution to society!—but this seems like a maladaptive coping mechanism: minimisation[0] in order to avoid confronting the fact that, yes, this is actually a big problem and no, it’s not really OK that hundreds of thousands of people are dying needlessly due to a communicable disease. (Nor is it OK that government has failed to step in to protect those whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted.)

These are human beings. They have families. Their deaths cause needless suffering, and that suffering goes far beyond just one old person dying from a preventable contagious disease. Humans do not live in vacuums.

It’s also a tragedy that other people—who are statistically unlikely to suffer any direct long-term consequence of infection—are suffering as a result of restrictions set on movements and activities to try to save lives. That people lose their livelihoods and have to go hungry, though, is a failure of government.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimisation_(psychology)

Well... Yeah. If you considered the implications of harming others, then examined the data at hand, and concluded that not wearing a mask and not limiting your activities was what you wanted to do... Then yeah, that is selfish and "dumb" behavior.

This isn't a subjective thing. We have decently solid data now showing what the transmission rates are (we know certainly the lowest observed transmission rate), what the death rate is; we can objectively say that >180,000 in the US have died since March. So with all that being known, if you decide not to take the most basic steps to limit spreading it, you're either being incredibly selfish, or you're incapable of understanding that your actions have consequences. This is a definition, not an argument.

This is why we have laws against drunk driving; we know it kills people. It's bad for society. At least people who drive drunk have the plausible deniability that they were too impaired to make the rational decision to not drive while drunk. If unimpaired, you make that decision, there's no way to justify your actions.

* You're assuming death is the major potential consequence, and that there aren't potentially problems we haven't identified yet, and ignoring those we have[1]

* You're assuming the economy is crumbling because of social restrictions and lockdowns. It isn't. We could lift all restrictions today, and things would not return back to normal until PEOPLE STOP GETTING INFECTED AND DYING IN THIS STILL-VERY-MUCH-A-PANDEMIC.

[1]: https://gladstone.org/news/new-insights-how-covid-19-causes-...

...

> You simply put too much weight on the perceived danger of this almost-at-this-point-not-a-pandemic-anymore. We simply don't agree on how dangerous it is.

Something to reflect on here is that (a) the person you're replying to didn't accuse anyone of not taking others into account and (b) you invalidate their conclusions in the same way you believe they invalidated yours.

In my area, there were two points where ICUs got dangerously full. At the start, and then shortly after initial restrictions had been loosened. Fortunately, the spikes in case counts had been seen before, and restrictions were ramped up in response both times, and the hospitalization numbers flattened and then dropped. It certainly looks like a case of those restrictions being massively helpful, which you're discounting out of hand.

I didn't, initially, fault their conclusion. However, I noted that their conclusions consistently and increasingly favoured their immediate self-interest, regardless of what else was happening.

Another thing I noticed, in the same people and the same situations, is a difficulty noticing any nuance regarding the issue. When I presented them with something, instead of addressing it, they would react to the threat they perceive.

To me, this also suggests that they are arguing from their thesis, rather than the situation.

There’s unmeasurable effects of all this hysteria and confinement. And if the over-cautious lockdown side is going to assume worst-case scenarios of covid, let’s assume worst-case scenarios for the cost and side-effects lockdown - the true worst-case is that the benefit is marginal and we suffer every drawback.

> A very large part of the online community is irrational indeed. Irrational about the true danger of the virus.

Pick one. It’s hard to be persuasive when you hold your critics to a higher standard than you hold yourself.

I would, however, argue that there's lots of evidence that it is not evenly distributed.

There's a non-zero but low probability of you spreading a virus you don't know you have as long as you're following good practices, and the severity of doing so seems relatively minor (99% of people you infect will have minor symptoms. Not to say that's ok, but it is normal for people to get sick occasionally). A low probability multiplied with a relatively minor severity gives you a very small number.

On the other hand, if you're already finding yourself socially deprived, the probability of suffering severe effects from it is high, perhaps even approaching 1. The severity for some people could also be very bad: declining health, ruined relationships, perhaps even suicide. A high probability multiplied with a high severity gives you a very large number.

It's hard to quantify and everyone is different. The point is, it's better for someone to go socialize when they need to rather than go insane, and it can be a perfectly reasonable decision.

Before the pandemic, you and everyone else were constantly doing "unnecessary" things that put other people at risk. Every time you see other people you could be spreading any number of diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. Every time you take a car trip you're increasing the risk of a fatal accident to other drivers and pedestrians.

COVID makes some activities more risky, and will shift some of them from "acceptable" to "unacceptable". But it doesn't mean that you're a bad person if you put more than zero weight on your mental health.

My wife has had multiple friends with similarly aged children try to convince her that it's not dangerous for her or the kids when she refuses play-dates, and no matter how many times we tell them that it's not us we're worried about, they still frame it in those terms.

If we cannot get our government to help us tackle the pandemic in an effective fashion, we are increasingly forced to contemplate questions like, "well, if this goes on forever, how do we adapt to preserve the other important things in life?"

This epidemic can still be won, but it takes effective and coordinated leadership to do so. When our government's response mirrors the reality of the situation, rather than proclaiming that we are doing a sufficient job, and nurtures a united approach to mitigation, we will start winning. Case rates are falling slowly -- we are on the cusp of improving the situation substantially if we can get our act together further.

When we start to win, winning gets easier. Such is the nature of confronting an exponential adversary.

We did this before this most recent coronavirus also. What is important is the cost/benefit comparison, including mental health.

EDIT: I block cookies on many news sites as well. It bypasses paywalls on many sites (but not FT).

Your CPU doesn't seem any slower than mine, really, so maybe that's not the problem either.