Jay wrote:
uziq wrote:
it is statistically an order of magnitude more lethal than flu.
here is the CDC's 2019/20 stats for flu:
Deaths per 100,000 population: 2.0
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htmData released on June 16th by the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) show that the country’s death toll skews significantly younger. There, people in their 80s account for less than half of all covid-19 deaths; people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, meanwhile, account for a significantly larger share of those who die. The median covid-19 sufferer in America is a 48-year-old; in Italy it is a 63-year-old.
and you completely disregard the dynamics of young people surviving the disease because of available healthcare. you persistently ignore this. if the vast majority of a population are as-yet unexposed to the virus, and it is allowed to spread freely (i.e. no lockdown), then you very quickly start seeing people die because of no beds, no ventilators, no frontline staff, etc.
page 166 and you still do not understand why it poses a threat.
Page 166 and you still do not understand that we have more than enough spare hospital capacity, and have for several months, and yet the lockdowns continue. The economy has cratered. Tens of millions are out of work. Tens of millions more have been asked to take severe pay cuts, or furloughs. We have civil unrest across society right now, and for what? Taking precautions doesn't have to mean a complete lockdown. We're all wearing masks every day in New York. Our economy is reopening. Our transmission rates are still going down. The answer seems to be to isolate the most at-risk population, require masks for those that go out in public, and let the rest of the people go on with their daily lives. Sure, encourage work-from-home behavior. Re-think the stupid open office environments that have been all the rage for the past decade. I'm not, and have not, advocated doing nothing at all. I've warned against doing too much, and I've warned against over-reacting to doomsday scenarios that would and did prove false.
You fail to acknowledge a few crucial points:
1. The blind lockdown was an essential tool in controlling the pandemic spread in your state.
You may take the angle that 'they did too much' and that it was an overreaction, but fail again to see that they had to act on fundamentally incomplete information. When your governor and/or the NY mayor had to make a choice, he was forced to make one on information that was available at that point in time. The most complete being statistical data of Lombardy, Italy and the surrounding area, what little was known about the virus' behaviour and effects and whatever your intelligence services divulged about the situation in China. Which strongly indicated that the virus was a very significant threat and spread rapidly. Your governor perhaps being a competent man defers to his expert advisors as to assessing the seriousness of the pandemic and juggles economic and health priorities to enact policy.
While over time some nuance may have been achieved, those statements still hold true. The coronavirus is incredibly contagious and very dangerous on a community level. But instead of seeing a succesful containment effort and saying 'thank fuck capacity wasn't reached', you seem to take the angle that failing to reach capacity means that the government made a huge overestimate in their analysis. Which STILL ignores that they had to act on incomplete information and, that as far as health crises are concerned, you should ask yourself whether it's right if the government did too little or too much. Too little would in this case have meant way more death and no controlled spread. You'd still be in lockdown now.
As you're now witnessing because a significant part of the electorate yourself included are not taking the threat seriously, the growth curve has not been controlled at all. Which brings me to point 2.
2. Even if your economy opens up, it will still be wrecked.
Why? Several factors. The example of Sweden tells us countries will be strongly affected by the global economic downturn regardless of what policy they pursue. This will be true in the United States as well. Let's imagine for a moment the impossible, that the US were not affected by the virus at all, and remained open. Flight traffic would still come to a near standstill, supply from China would still be gutted, Europe would still be in a near total lockdown, tourism would still die out (which I imagine is a huge income source for NY, esp. in restaurants/retail) an enormous amount of jobs would still be lost. The example of Sweden can also tell you on a smaller scale how individual states might fare in a United States that is strongly affected by the pandemic. As states and cities are forced to close down, the economic downturn will affect neighbouring states regardless of their best economic efforts. Should then the priority be with saving lives or cruising an economy that you already know is going to endure a very hard time?
Last but not least I find your arguments dishonest. We've already established before that essentially you do not give a single fuck about the continued operation of your healthcare services and the people who work in it, and would have had no problem with massgraves having to be dug to get rid of all the bodies. I find it ironic in a way that you do seem to somehow care for people's economic livelihoods, just not their actual lives.
Last edited by Larssen (2020-06-25 14:12:40)
