Deaths 9/11 2,996
Deaths Covid-19 USA 621,000
207x
Lack of understanding of large numbers is a flaw in the human mind we have to figure out how to fix.
Deaths Covid-19 USA 621,000
207x
Lack of understanding of large numbers is a flaw in the human mind we have to figure out how to fix.
In NZ when the terrorists broadcasted the Christchurch mosque shootings on facebook, NZ took action swiftly -- banning most semiautomatic weapons.
When BLM protests showed cops shooting, tasing, and running over people with patrol cars -- those images were more compelling than any story that could have been written.
OTOH, Last year one nursing home in NJ had stacked up 17 bodies during a in a shed during a covid outbreak -- yet none of the gruesomeness was aired. I have not recalled seeing any videos of people falling dead due to a mass shooting in the US, other than maybe blurred out video.
I'm not saying we should or should not see more graphic images, but it seems like self-censorship of the aftermath of violence or tragedy has unintended consequences.
I think if we had Vietnam style video of death from the start we wouldn't have as large of a % living in alternate realities.
American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448.
U.S. contractors: 3,846.
Afghan national military and police: 66,000.
Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.
Afghan civilians: 47,245.
Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191.
Aid workers: 444.
Journalists: 72.
https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-...
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It’s funny, over 60k Afghan police/military died, and our plan was to arm 300k of them and hope they like perpetual war against the Taliban. Yeah, I think they did a hard pass on that one and just wanted it all to stop.
As insane as it sounds, in that frame of mind, Taliban is a lesser evil here compared to a foreign adversary that walks around like they own the place.
Once you understand this, and by this I mean "the population does not want you here and sees you as the invader", none of this is a surprise.
Next up, just wait till you hear what population of Iraq wants ( but we all know US simply cannot leave Iraq -- ever ).
If you count in excess deaths, and missing people, the count will more than double.
/s, of course.
It's been obvious early on that the whole motive for our ratfucking of the middle east had nothing to do with the "WMDs" nor 9/11... lest we would have not gone under false pretenses, actually had gone after the country who financed the ones who flew the planes, nor remained as long as we had after Bin Laden was found. Instead we spent more money than had ever been spent before on one thing in our country's history... but on another country.
That money went somewhere.
Defense contractors.
Meanwhile, infrastructure all across the US is derelict.
Case in point, 47,000+ bridges in the US are now considered 'structurally deficient.'
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/05/710364158/report-finds-more-t...
Bin Laden himself said what his end goal was.
> "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy," bin Laden said in a taped statement. Only the smallest sign of al-Qaida would "make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations."
The article this quote was pulled from is from 2011. So, for at LEAST TEN YEARS, we knew the explicit goal was to prolong an unwinnable war in order to bleed the country dry.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/the-cos...
Why couldn't these defense contractors be paid to bring things up to snuff here instead of pissing it away on a 'war against terror' that we had no hope to win?
Bin Laden got what he wanted in the end.
would still be a big discrepency.
If you start doing this, you start valuing peoples lives differently, which is a horrible thing. Going just from this, you could say that an Afghan citizen is worth about 82% of an US citizen (64 vs 78 years life expectancy) or that burning down a whole palliative care unit is less bad than shooting a 20 year old (or 16 year old Afghan).
I can see where you are coming from, but this is really not a good road to go down.
While the whole “death panel” thing is exaggerated, it is necessary that insurers (incl. single payer governments) have quantitative ways to evaluate different treatments. They won’t throw infinite $$ at every treat that is expected to add a tiny amount to your life.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
oranges 621,000
I dont dispute your numbers at all...I just don't understand your point. They're just such vastly different situations managed by different sets of people for different reasons. The "war on terror" was excessive and over budget, but not 100% uncalled for. There WERE follow up terror attacks that happened(london bombing 2005, madrid bombing 2004, paris bataclan attack, etc) and there were some that were foiled, even if just by luck like the shoe bomber. I agree that Afghanistan went too far, too long and too expensive but what does that have to do with covid?
The argument is that the effort we spent in the war on terror, per motivating death, was massively greater than the effort we've spent fighting covid.
> far beyond having to take our shoes off in airports
That would be a valid comparison in TSA vs. covid response. This is about much more than the TSA!
We can't even get people to take the vaccine willingly after we made every vaccine free.
When will we learn that money doesn't solve everything? It is only a sufficiently motivating factor to greedy people. Religiously motivated people are explicitly raised to be weary of money (you cannot serve two masters: choose God or mammon, where mammon is roughly translated as money, greed, or material wealth)
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We can't spend money to grow the Afghan army, because they weren't motivated by money. We can't spend more money to fight COVID19, because the anti-vaxxers aren't motivated by money either. Our vaccines are sitting in storage and expiring.
We designed and built the vaccines in record time. I'm not entirely sure how else we could add money to this system and expect any benefits with regards to COVID19. Student nurses are regularly helping out in hospitals before they're even graduated, we're pulling retired doctors/nurses out of retirement to help fill hospitals. Etc. etc.
Money isn't the solution anymore. We've spent as much as we're able. The remaining problems that face us are entirely independent of money.
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The only consistent thing between Afghanistan and COVID19 is that Americans have overspent money hoping that overspending will fix everything.
It's very fashionable around here to call millions of people stupid for not sharing whatever the "right" opinion is.
Would the taleban take your words to heart?
This is basically modern capitalism. It works, as a way of managing large numbers. Most people hate it, though, because it has a tendency of reducing humans to numbers.
Or making them slaves, exploiting children, etc. If the laws allow such
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things." -- Terry Pratchett
Slaves, exploited children, etc. are just resources whose dollar value you try to maximize and whose wages you try to minimize.
I cannot understand just why it is that the average person seems to be so incapable at understanding statistics and large numbers. It's mind boggling. Ever since my freshman engineering stats class, it's like everywhere I look at where there's stupid bullshit happening, a large reason as to why the stupid bullshit is happening is because people have zero understanding of statistics and large numbers.
It's always been incredibly intuitive to me as somebody schooled in the US public education system, and I wasn't even good at math until college because the school teachers were just terrible at teaching actual concepts. And like, I know that I am very much nothing special. But to too damn many people, it just seems to completely blow over their heads...
However, the simpler parts/beginning of either course... really do seem like they should be intuitive to anybody who made it with a D through middle school math. Basic applied ratios and such. Like the fact near 5 billion covid vaccines have been administered worldwide now and there are still people vehemently arguing about the horrible things that are going to happen to them specifically if they get a vaccine...
Can you make a steel man argument on their behalf?
Or is that so preposterous that it beneath you and wouldn’t waste your time on that?
Because I’m starting to wonder if people with strong opinions like yours seems to be really are any different than the true believers on “the other side”. Or if you just feel confident in your echo chamber as “unquestionably right” because you (or I) aren’t questioned.
I find the more I know about a topic the less I make absolutes like the one I quoted. You can’t make legitimate arguments against the covid vaccines? Shouldn’t we all be able to?
Average Americans don't understand American politics.
To me, the transition from Bush to Obama was paradoxal.
One thing, Obama marketed himself as a change man, as well pretty much everybody. It's very generic.
On the other side, his true colours weren't even hidden, his electoral programme told very candidly about his national security views, views on civil rights, and etc for which he got flak later.
If I haven't seen the name, and explicitly liberal branding on these electoral materials, I could've said it's coming from a conservative, doctrinaire statist very much like Bush.
The point is people are angry at Obama exactly on the points they elected him for.
Second, if by super-majority you mean filibuster-proof, then in reality this was nowhere near 2 years.
Al Franken (the 60th vote) was not seated until the court challenges finished on June 30th.
Ted Kennedy died August 25. So that is about 8 weeks of super-majority.
Paul Kirk was seated on Sept 24, and Scott Brown took over on February 5th. So a little over 4 more months.
That is a total of about 6 calendar months of filibuster proof majority.
A glance at the legislative calendar shows a total of a little over 110 total Senate legislative days, out of a total of about 350 legislative days in 2009/2010.
So in reality, Obama had a filibuster proof majority for about 1/3 of his first 2 years.
I am probably being unfair though: cleaning up the end of the financial crisis took significant effort as well, so managing that and any single piece of significant legislation should be counted as a productive half-term. I suppose that even if all pieces of the ACA had been in place for the earliest possible vote, it still would not have left a lot of time for another significant bit of progressive legislation.
However I stand by my core point, which was perhaps not well expressed: Obama's campaign message conveyed a significant progressive agenda (at least on the domestic front). I don't think that was false on his part. I think the extent to which that agenda was not achieved is because after the mid terms there was no chance of passing progressive legislation.
Again, I think I botched my prior comment by not making that clear. I may have botched this one as well... Let me know, I like to know when I'm wrong.
In the current system, many people simply vote for the least bad option, because voting for a party that actually represented their beliefs would make their vote irrelevant (or worse, give an advantage to the party they really dislike).
I would also argue it’s why humans are bad at estimating risks regarding low probability events. See: spacecraft mishaps that seem obvious in hindsight
Traffic deaths in USA over 2 years ~80,000. Nobody cares.
Many people do care about this and advocate for less car infrastructure, safer streets, better walkability and better public transport. Car centric design was the worst mistake of the last few decades.
We live far richer lives due to a huge array of technological progressions.
An anecdote but my life massively improved when I got rid of my car and moved somewhere where walking is my only transport method needed. I'm healthier, happier, and have more free time.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN?location...