If a trained and determined suicide bomber can pull it off then why haven't they?

It doesn't happen more often because most people who would think of doing it are the very amateurs deterred from attempting it by the TSA.Jay wrote:
The biggest thing that changed after 9/11 was they reinforced the cockpit doors and changed the protocols for opening the doors in flight. This prevents a 9/11 style attack from happening again and required minimal fuss. A trained person that wanted to try to hijack a plane could get a gun or a bomb on board today. Nothing is really stopping them. A suicide bomber is gonna do his thing. A gunman will be stopped by the door. This is reality. All the TSA does is act as a mild deterrent for wannabes and amateurs. In exchange for this incompetent deterrence we've traded our dignity in the form of body scanners, and our time in the form of long lines and hours wasted on every trip. Is it worth it? I guess it helps people feel safer, even if it doesn't really do anything. Is that worth something? Most people would probably say yes even as they recognize it's not much more than a placebo.
But people have to recognize the limitations of what the TSA can do and not demand ever stricter measures every time something goes wrong. It doesn't make anything better for anyone when you are impacting everyone for what is really a one-off event.
When all the stewardesses are getting their throats cut one by one the pilot is going to open the door, and a door won't stop a bomb or other device obviously.Jay wrote:
The biggest thing that changed after 9/11 was they reinforced the cockpit doors and changed the protocols for opening the doors in flight. This prevents a 9/11 style attack from happening again and required minimal fuss. A trained person that wanted to try to hijack a plane could get a gun or a bomb on board today. Nothing is really stopping them. A suicide bomber is gonna do his thing. A gunman will be stopped by the door. This is reality. All the TSA does is act as a mild deterrent for wannabes and amateurs. In exchange for this incompetent deterrence we've traded our dignity in the form of body scanners, and our time in the form of long lines and hours wasted on every trip. Is it worth it? I guess it helps people feel safer, even if it doesn't really do anything. Is that worth something? Most people would probably say yes even as they recognize it's not much more than a placebo.
But people have to recognize the limitations of what the TSA can do and not demand ever stricter measures every time something goes wrong. It doesn't make anything better for anyone when you are impacting everyone for what is really a one-off event.
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-04-16 18:26:01)
Number of Saudis involved in 9/11: All of themJay wrote:
Because our troops are closer to home and provide the same free one way ticket to Allah
Last edited by uziq (2020-04-16 22:07:17)
I've argued these points over the last few pages, the response being:uziq wrote:
oh goodie we’re doing the iraq war again. mention blair!
yes the data from coronavirus is incomplete. testing is woefully inadequate. but the numbers we do have are not encouraging. the virus is many times deadlier than flu (china just revised or, er, admitted that their death rate was 50% higher than reported). under-reporting of deaths is just as common and part of the same phenomenon as the under-reporting of positive cases. the numbers are far higher, across the board.
your assumption that ‘most people have had it’ already is anecdotal nonsense. epidemiologists can model this sort of thing and estimate within a range. even if the infection rate (the r0 factor) is at the higher end of the spectrum, there’s no chance the majority of people have had it and built an immunity. that’s a huge assumption built on a huge assumption (namely, that herd immunity is even possible and applicable with coronavirus).
from a public health perspective, what’s more pressing than overall statistics is the situation in hospitals and care homes. if you let new infections take off exponentially with an ‘open and working society’, your ICUs and available resources are going to be exhausted very quickly. that’s when people die. there’s no two ways about it, social distancing and stringent controls are going to have to be a part of life until a vaccine comes along. the calculus involves huge amounts of deaths. 600,000 in the UK, 2 million in the USA. it is an affront to common decency to insist that we should throw that many people into mass graves just because it’s annoying not being able to play golf or go to a restaurant. society is going to have to economically support the most affected in the short term; solutions devised. trying to plough on and ignore it hasn’t worked for a single society in the world yet.
it’s also the case that this is still just getting started. as i said about 50 pages back, based on the preliminary findings report from an oxford malaria researcher, this is a marathon not a sprint. talk of infections having ‘peaked’ are illiterate. we’re crossing a mountain range. we know that the vast majority of people are not immune to coronavirus; it spreads exponentially as one would expect a novel pathogen to do. if we curb the infection rate now through shutdowns, it still leaves the vast majority of the population yet to be exposed. the only exit strategy is to implement extensive contact tracing and testing; the shutdown should be buying time to that end. herd immunity is a pipe dream. 60-70% of a population should develop it incidentally over a very long time frame. opening the doors to let 70% of the population get infected at once is a hydrogen bomb being dropped on your medical system. not only will huge numbers die, it’ll wipe out huge numbers of your hospital staff and essential workers, too. no epidemiologist is recommending herd immunity as a serious strategy. the UK experts have recanted their views and are already busy with the damage control.
Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-17 00:04:18)
notice the skin colour of these people, when coronavirus is disproportionately affecting blacks, latinos/hispanics, etc. no, it's middle america who live in remote suburbs with 500,000 square ft homes who are mad about this. not the people stuck inside basement flats or crowded tenements during a hot summer. nope, people in michigan are outraged. there's only 700 cable channels! whole foods' delivery is booked up for weeks!
Last edited by uziq (2020-04-17 02:20:34)
No, my main argument, which you ignored is that by the time a vaccine is found, the virus will have mutated, rendering the vaccine worthless. Because of this, all these precautions are pointless. We have to accept that people will die. We can't stay locked away forever under ever stricter quarantine measures.Larssen wrote:
I've argued these points over the last few pages, the response being:uziq wrote:
oh goodie we’re doing the iraq war again. mention blair!
yes the data from coronavirus is incomplete. testing is woefully inadequate. but the numbers we do have are not encouraging. the virus is many times deadlier than flu (china just revised or, er, admitted that their death rate was 50% higher than reported). under-reporting of deaths is just as common and part of the same phenomenon as the under-reporting of positive cases. the numbers are far higher, across the board.
your assumption that ‘most people have had it’ already is anecdotal nonsense. epidemiologists can model this sort of thing and estimate within a range. even if the infection rate (the r0 factor) is at the higher end of the spectrum, there’s no chance the majority of people have had it and built an immunity. that’s a huge assumption built on a huge assumption (namely, that herd immunity is even possible and applicable with coronavirus).
from a public health perspective, what’s more pressing than overall statistics is the situation in hospitals and care homes. if you let new infections take off exponentially with an ‘open and working society’, your ICUs and available resources are going to be exhausted very quickly. that’s when people die. there’s no two ways about it, social distancing and stringent controls are going to have to be a part of life until a vaccine comes along. the calculus involves huge amounts of deaths. 600,000 in the UK, 2 million in the USA. it is an affront to common decency to insist that we should throw that many people into mass graves just because it’s annoying not being able to play golf or go to a restaurant. society is going to have to economically support the most affected in the short term; solutions devised. trying to plough on and ignore it hasn’t worked for a single society in the world yet.
it’s also the case that this is still just getting started. as i said about 50 pages back, based on the preliminary findings report from an oxford malaria researcher, this is a marathon not a sprint. talk of infections having ‘peaked’ are illiterate. we’re crossing a mountain range. we know that the vast majority of people are not immune to coronavirus; it spreads exponentially as one would expect a novel pathogen to do. if we curb the infection rate now through shutdowns, it still leaves the vast majority of the population yet to be exposed. the only exit strategy is to implement extensive contact tracing and testing; the shutdown should be buying time to that end. herd immunity is a pipe dream. 60-70% of a population should develop it incidentally over a very long time frame. opening the doors to let 70% of the population get infected at once is a hydrogen bomb being dropped on your medical system. not only will huge numbers die, it’ll wipe out huge numbers of your hospital staff and essential workers, too. no epidemiologist is recommending herd immunity as a serious strategy. the UK experts have recanted their views and are already busy with the damage control.
'govt can't fix this'
'The rules are ridiculous'
'People won't accept it'
'It's useless'
'I have no sympathy for doctors'
'People will get their guns'
Jay prefers destruction by way of virus. Healthcare and funerals are luxuries anyway, not necessities. His position has only shifted inches away from the notion that 'it's just the flu'. Maybe it's deadly, but apparently there's no point in doing anything.
OkLarssen wrote:
That reads like a pretty baseless argument Jay.
the flu is a virusuziq wrote:
that wasn't your argument initially at all, jay, because evidently you didn't understand how viruses work at all. you thought it was 'just like the flu' when it's from a completely different family and shares no viral similarities at all. you then spoke in terms of the flu being 'a very specific thing' when the flu is more like 4/5 different strains at once, even being simplistic. besides, we actually know (because, y'know, experts and virologists have done the work) that coronavirus is a relatively stable virus. hence all the early claptrap about herd immunity. it's actually a lot less likely to mutate than flu because of its structure and the length of its RNA.
your argument doesn't make any sense, unsurprisingly. we vaccinate against flu every single year despite the fact that it mutates often and changes according to geographic region. we are chasing multiple strains of flu every year at any one time, and we still inoculate with a pretty good rate of success. it is worth doing. once again your defeatist hokum is scientific nonsense.
Last edited by uziq (2020-04-17 05:12:27)
Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-17 05:16:02)
What cognitive dissonance? That I don't believe in effective government? Is what my government is doing to slow the spread of the virus? Absolutely, without a doubt it is. But it's not stopping it. Whether you rip a bandaid off quickly or slowly, it's the same amount of pain, we're just talking about disbursement time. I think, if given the choice between long, drawn out suffering, or something quicker, most people will opt for quicker.Larssen wrote:
He's going through serious cognitive dissonance now, any moment reason is about to pop in his head he has to supress it someway. We may see him link vaccines and autism before long.