For those opposed to lockdowns
As I was walking online, I saw these questions
8. If deaths from this virus were disproportionately occurring among younger, otherwise healthy, middle-to-upper-middle-class, and white Americans, would you still be as cavalier about opening everything back up and taking the risks associated with doing so?
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lol. Tim Wise: race hustler turned epidemiologist.
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what do they call this type of fallacy? ad hominem?
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Yes, but given anti-white ad hominem polemics are Mr. Wise’s only stock-in-trade, it’s totally justified. 😛
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Hahaha. I didn’t have that history of him and yes, to an extent you have a point. But then again, i think he lives in a country where maybe the non white population are over represented among the dead or seriously ill. So that would inform that question. For a different context, that question maybe irrelevant but the other questions could still be answered on their own merit
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Well, according to page 10 of the following report, the non-white population is also over-represented in American obesity rates. So perhaps there might be a might be a strong correlation between unhealthy lifestyles and increased vulnerability to illness and/or death due to illness.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170906074842/http://www.newobserveronline.com:80/2017/09/american-obesity-by-race-american.html
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That would be a reason for concern. It is unlikely that an entire group has decided to adopt bad lifestyle choices, don’t you think?
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Not at all. Americans, in general, do not take very good care of their health. And worldwide, those who adopt the standard American diet (SAD)–a diet rich in highly processed foods containing lots of fats and refined sugars, but low in fibre, nutrients and complex carbohydrates–soon succumb to the same ailments and health problems as their American counterparts.
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Direct link to report:
Click to access TFAH-2017-ObesityReport-FINAL.pdf
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he makes some good points.
it’s not about ‘me’ vs. ‘thee” as so many people seem to believe, it’s not about individual ‘rights’ to free air, speech, religion, whatEVER, it’s not about being confined and feeling compromised by that–it’s about our impact on everyone around us, and their impact on us.
For once, a lot of people are being confronted by the idea that maybe they aren’t as empowered as they thought they were. and the idea of being as vulnerable as everyone else really puts the wind up ’em, doesn’t it.
No one likes to feel vulnerable, and a lot of them get scared by that. It means they’re human.
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it’s about our impact on everyone around us
THIS is what so many want to ignore. They simply don’t care so long as their “freedom” isn’t being compromised.
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It’s a complex scenario with no easy answers
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Well…um….but….uh…oh….I, um….Oh….but…….but…….ad hominem…ad hominem…..ad hominem…..And, on top of THAT, your mother wears combat boots, chews tobacco, and has a friggin’ beard! So, THERE!!!!
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Hahaha
You always have a way with words
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I think ad hominem applies. However I also think opening up the economy willy nilly, will cost more lives and money lost in the long run, than it would to keep lockdowns in effect until the numbers (confirmed cases and deaths) go way down.
Also, I generally disagree with anything and everything the orange idiot and his R cult say and do.
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The willy nilly part-I agree with. It has to be done very, very carefully. And too many politicians are not going to be that careful.
But I question the idea that the virus CAN be battled in this way very effectively. What if it comes back? Evolved so the vaccines being rushed into production (doesn’t that make one a little queasy as well? And I am no anti-vaxxer!) don’t work very well? Shut down the economy and society next year? Flu is an every year situation. And it kills thousands very year. And we get colds every year (a coronavirus, I might note!)
And I would counter Nan’s comment with another observation: Many of the officials and experts and journalists and certainly Republican politicians are “safe” economically. They are not losing jobs…and homes…and cars…and their health care. Like the blogger who I no longer follow (Ed at Gin and Tacos), these “little people” have jobs that are not very important, anyway. Amiright?
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On the vaccine question, I did ask in a previous post what if they don’t work? Do we stop going out? And for how long?
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Just spray all of your cans of beer with disinfectant, maka. You should not be drinking beer anyway. I wonder if I should start soaking all my food in germicide now? Gotta be safe! safe! safe!
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Whiskey is much better.
Wash vegetables in whiskey.
Drink whiskey and kill all germs
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I have an uneasy feeling you are right. Even if a vaccine comes out in a few months, evolution is a bitch. Viruses evolve around vaccines/medications all the time.
Also this virus is so massively successful it’s going to be hard to stop it even if a vaccine is highly effective.
My fear is this thing is going to be with us for a good long while, most of us are going to have to catch it, and if we survive, we can only hope we develop antibodies. I have been seeing cases of recurrence with some who have had it already. So even antibodies is in question.
This virus is one bad mofo. And we are going to have this problem for a while yet.
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The virus is going to be here, just like the flu. We must be prepared to accept this possibility & plan on how to rescue what can be rescued while protecting those segments of the population most vulnerable
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That sounds as sensible as we can get.
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I think we have found ourselves in a box that it’s not easy to open, especially because of the actions leading to this point in time. If the powers that be say we open willy nilly, then we will question the restrictions in the first place.
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Good point, with any leaders who give a shit. We in the US don’t have that luxury. The entire situation has been made worse here, because our orange idiot accepts blame, criticism, derision, or fault, for nothing.
This louse cares not about lives, but only wealth for the wealthy and the power of the office.
He has shifted from pretending to care about the virus to “Get the economy going at all cost”
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To get the economy going, there has to be participation from the masses. It would be great to know what percentage are ready to go out and continue doing what they used to not long ago
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For countless people, the proposed scenario would NOT be an option! Naked hugs, my Kenyan brother! 😉
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But we live our lives accepting a degree of risk every day. I am a road cyclist who is currently on a course of blood thinners. Some would say that is a high degree of risk. And I would never ride a motorcycle, In the last two weeks. alone, I have observed two horrific motorcycle crashes in which the bike was utterly demolished, We are talking a 1929 situation potentially. Too many “everyone stay indoors and the police should shoot spreaders” people ignore the horrors of the 1930s on public welfare and, yes, health,.
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Being a cyclist is to live with risk everyday.
I just had a close shave with a van not so long ago.
I saw a clip yesterday where the speaker said covid19 is here to stay and to a great majority it presents no risk at all. Let me try and retrieve it
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In some respects, my view on the situation is GLOOMIER than the “Just isolate ourselves and spray everything with disinfectant” folks. All this sturm und drang is not going to get rid of the virus. The dire reports that the number of diagnosed people is increasing! increasing! increasing! seems suspect to me for the simple reality that there are now testing vans in every neighborhood, so of course the number of cases is “increasing”. Some people think the virus has been here since last summer.
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I saw a report that in France, the virus could have been there a month before the first case was even reported. It could be more.
With more testing, we are bound to have more cases, then what? That to me is the question I want answered
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You got it. These pinheads look around them and don’t see people like them being severely affected. This fits well with a running subtext in their thinking: Bad things happen to dirty, naughty and weak people.
If that is the case, then why try too hard to stop bad things from happening? It’s God’s will, and at worst, the upstanding can be blamed for a modest lack of charity, if they fail to intercede.
You see this subtext undergirding Trump’s statements equating the risk of viral transmission related to reopening schools with the risk of being involved in a traffic accident while driving to school. Same reasoning that says don’t wear a motorcycle helmet ’cause it will snag and break your neck, or that you shouldn’t wear a seatbelt ’cause it is better to be ‘thrown clear’ in an accident.
Sure, most of the little bitches spouting this bullshit have never taken a real, self-conscious risk in their lives and so are bad at risk assessment. But the skids of the stupid-sledge are greased with the assumption that things work out for the chosen, as the chosen deserve.
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Are you so certain that the “risk assessment” of the medical community is so valid, keith? It seems very narrowly focused. Especially when many of the advocates for “shut everything down” dismiss (condescendingly-just like you here) all the jobs and livelihoods and lives being damaged as of little value anyway?
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This is kind of what I’m on about. The medical community is concerned with public health risk which is only tangentially related to personal risk. The public health concerns are for the integrity of the system which renders aid to those in need, as well as for ultimate containment of the pathogen.
Individuals – all of us- do take the hit in pursuit of those goals. The hit should be distributed across the society in the name of defending our most vulnerable citizens, whether they are vulnerable in terms of health or wealth.
It was the job of the motherfuckers in charge to explain the above situation from the start, so that we could get on with it. Now we are stuck with no transition plan from mitigation to containment, and we are arguing about Plaquenil.
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I agree with you, actually, about the “job” of those in charge. But we don’t have a bulletproof understanding of the situation that can be explained and a REALISTIC plan for dealing with things. And no, locking everyone in their apartment or house for six months is not a realistic plan. The other problem is American “conservative” politics is all about catering to the worst elements of American society. It’s all about telling people what they want to hear. Those in charge could all be Lincolns and Roosevelts rather than Trumps and the governor of Mississippi and a good percentage of the population would be unwilling to listen to them, anyway.
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Yep, the lockdown served to keep the health system from being overwhelmed, and it bought some time, which has been squandered.
Of course, what we really need to be doing is monitoring our beer to sausage ratios…
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Our country was put under movement restrictions the day the first positive case was announced. Borders were closed soon after. Planes grounded and all but what we have seen is a daily increase in cases. Maybe the lockdowns here didn’t have the desired effects.
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Mitigation is mitigation, and not prevention. I’d guess that officials were either far enough behind the curve when it came to testing that the virus had already become widespread by the time it was recognized, or things got missed in the details of the restrictions.
All of this stuff happens on prior experience and general principle. Isolation has been a mainstay of public health response to infectious disease outbreaks for a long time, and it has generally been successful in slowing transmission. What we really ought to be doing, besides isolation, with this specific pathogen, won’t be known until the outbreak is over and hashed over thoroughly.
This is a “dog that didn’t bark” argument, I know.
I have to circle back to what is, for me, the most remarkable aspect of the pandemic. In the US of A for sure, but it seems more generally, this event has been fixed in the public imagination as a natural disaster. If we duck and cover, the winds will die down, the tsunami will wash over us, and the shaking will stop. But that is not the case. We should be working feverishly to sort out how we can operate in the presence of this disease, but such efforts are spotty at best.
Maybe we have just lost our collective awareness of infectious disease as a day-to-day concern.
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In your second last paragraph, I think Brian and I would agree with you that ducking in the hope this will somehow go away and things return to normalcy is not the right approach. We must begin to ask how do we continue to live with this virus around us in a way that doesn’t cause harm to the greatest number of people.
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