First, the next time you want to lay accusations of wall so text I seriously think you should look at your posting strategy.
Second, I did answer your question. It was a loaded question and you know it. No matter what I answered to that you were going to throw it back at me one way or another. And you did based on what I answered.
I answered your question, you answer this one:
Would you want your family to go bankrupt to pay for your healthcare?
You avoided my “binary” question because it is inconvenient for you and you keep sidestepping it because it is making my point entirely.
Do you assert that opening up the New Zealand economy, taking from level 4 down to level 3 and eventually level 2, will not result in any deaths that otherwise could be saved if you stayed locked down forever?
This is the point where you’ll claim I’m arguing for arguments sake, avoiding both questions because you don’t like the answers you need to provide, and say this conversation is over.
A few months into a pandemic that is going to take years to resolve and you call it weak tea to say it is too early to determine which approach is better?
Based on your criteria, Belgium, UK, Netherlands and others have all chosen a worse path than the US.
That was a straw man, I did not said that, what I said was: “Unless Sweden does not do more changes” as in: except if they do change, meaning also that I hope that they do change too.
BTW I cited why you where wrong about Belgium too, not just Sweden
me:
Sweden and New Zealand are great examples of something, but we aren’t sure yet of what.
It is far too early to start comparing the results of the different approaches. Only history will be able to make the final determination.
You:
For that weak tea reply you have there, it is clear that New Zealand is doing better than Sweden.
me:
A few months into a pandemic that is going to take years to resolve and you call it weak tea to say it is too early to determine which approach is better?
You:
It is when you have demonstrated to be wrong many times already, like with Sweden.
Me:
You are essentially saying that because you believe I’ve been wrong before, I’m automatically wrong now.
I asked why you thought my statement, “it is too early to make any determinations” is weak tea and you said, point blank, because you think I’ve been wrong before. It is right there. There is no strawman here. You pointed to the death/million stat as proof I’m wrong. If that is going to be your criteria my statement is wrong, you then need to admit UK, Belgium, Netherlands and many other places are doing worse than the US.
The main thrust of this thread was cmosdes insisting that the economic cost of “flattening the curve” is unjustified, because under a simplistic model where no other factors change, the same number of people are inevitably going to die anyway. His argument seems to be that we should abandon lockdown and social distancing and go ahead and let a lot of people definitely die sooner rather than maybe die later unless we can meet some burden of proof to be absolutely sure that any economic sacrifice to “buy time” is justified. Because the idea that a few extra months of the application of human ingenuity and massive technological resources might lead to ways to lower the ultimate death toll seems so implausible to him, or something.
I kind of gave up on the last few pages because he just dismissed and ignored any counterarguments, but today’s xkcd seems apt:
So you think that after showing you where wrong about Sweden that by mentioning “automatic” that your statement is then ok? Your reply here also shows that you missed what happened in Belgium.
And I see that he misses the point about New Zealand spectacularly. Again **less **people will die when there will be no surge of sick people overwhelming the health system.
Unless you have a time machine and can definitely show that Sweden ends up worse overall from this you haven’t demonstrated squat about Sweden vs. New Zealand.
Seriously this is inane. You make a baseless claim that my argument is wrong because you feel I’ve been wrong before. I call you on it, you say that is a strawman argument (moving the discussion to something else, I guess), it is quoted back to you showing how it was no strawman, and you decide to again stand behind your assertion that Sweden is definitively going to do better than New Zealand when all is said and done because they have fewer deaths now.
There is a nonzero chance that a space-time wedgie will open up over Sweden and erase it from existence. Or that space aliens will come and torment us all with terrible poetry. We can’t even calculate the exact probability of these things happening (we don’t know how many space wedgies appear, or how many aliens are in existence, or how bad their poetry is).
What we can do is form reasonable guesses, based on observable trends.
The observable trends ALL say New Zealand is doing vastly better than Sweden. There’s a non-zero chance that those trends will suddenly reverse themselves, sure, but we don’t entertain all non-zero chances as if they were equal, lest we also must entertain the space alien angle.
You are wrong because you’re trying to treat two claims as having equal validity when they quite clearly do not. A position centered around a claim that fits the preponderance of existing evidence is more valid than a position that doesn’t.
Timelines include the present and the past, it is silly to ignore what we have now.
Most of the people here and experts out there think that about your arguments.
Yes, and it is clear that you can not counter that but by hypothesizing what we **could **get if we had a time machine, I rather deal with the evidence we have now, and historically speaking you are still wrong as it was shown by the experience from cities in the USA during the Influenza pandemic of 1918.
BTW it was still a straw man when you did not expand, clearly I did say that there was a chance for Sweden to change while you claimed that I said that there was no change possible.
I don’t disagree that the early indications are that Sweden is suffering more now. However, it doesn’t take a wedge in the spacetime continuum to realistically understand that trend can be altered, significantly.
Should a vaccine never become available, Sweden’s approach will mean any subsequent waves of the virus will have diminishing impacts on Sweden, maybe in terms of mortality rates and/or economic impact.
A vaccine is not a given, nor is the timing of it even if one is found. Subsequent waves are more than possible. Those, combined, more than allow for a significant change in the outcomes taken on by Sweden and New Zealand.
This is precisely the reason Trump took so freakin long to respond to this and was ill prepared. He looked at what was presently happening and didn’t want to bother looking at what could be happening. Congratulations, you are supporting Trump’s arguments for a lack of preparation. This is the point where you scramble and say we need to look at both and not just the present. Yet, you told me I’m wrong because you are looking at just the present. Pick one. If we need to look at both, then WE DO NOT YET KNOW WHICH APPROACH IS BETTER. If you only want to make judgements on the present situation, you are no better than Trump.
Sure, we can compare how a society that was dealing with a world war, primitive medical and analytical skills, rudimentary understanding of viruses and transmission and archaic medical systems to try an use as a model for this.
Actually we do have historical and present evidence of what likely works better, yours is really just the fallacy of demanding perfection when the good is there.
Uh, you really want to claim that the Triple Entente invaded the USA? This is really silly when one considers that even with a war going on elsewhere, cities in the USA showed what made a difference then.
You like to jump to entirely different arguments when you see the one you are trying to defend is devoid of all basis, don’t you? You said Sweden, factually, is worse than New Zealand because of what is happening presently. It is right there. Need me to quote it? I contended we won’t know the final results until some time. NOW you are claiming we can predict the final results based on the oft quoted comparison between St. Louis and Philadelphia. So pony up. Take a stance and stick by it. Are we going to judge the approaches of the two nations based on what is happening immediately or at some point in the future when this is behind us?
If you want to judge it by final results, perhaps we should wait for those final results. Unless, of course, you are claiming you know what those final results are going to be.
If you want to judge but the current situation, you are no better than Trump, making judgements not based on long term desired outcomes, but on what you see now.
Unless the particular city is dealing with an invasion they aren’t affected by what is happening when the country is at war? Well, that certainly is a position to take, to be sure. And, again, to claim the same approaches used back then will result in the same outcomes now ignores the orders of magnitude of changes we’ve had in technology, medicine, society and economics.
Maybe. And maybe the rapture will happen and no one will die. And maybe the rat king will rise up from the sewers and launch a crusade against the surface dwellers. All of these have a non-zero probability of happening.
You clearly aren’t getting it, or don’t want to get it. Maybe means nothing. Maybe is an invalid line of argumentation, because anything is a “maybe.” Maybe the laws of physics are wrong, and unicorns will cure us all.
Show data that says Sweden is trending better than New Zealand, or stop mentioning it. I don’t care about maybe. I don’t care that maybe Steven Segal will find a plant that cures us all. Maybe is not a valid line of argumentation. Data walks. Maybe talks.
Like I said, you do not like the answers so you have to continue with no new ideas. What is noticeable here is that ponying up does not dismiss what I said, even though you would like that.
This is really a nonsensical reply.
Read it again, that is what you proposed, I only noticed how silly that was since Germany or the other enemies never invaded the USA.
Tell that to the historians and epidemiologists that use the information gained then to tell us what is the best we can do now.
and he steps to the left, right around the question because he doesn’t want to address it. Brilliant! Haven’t seen moves like that since “The Matrix.”
I said the country was dealing with a world war. There are many was to need to have to deal with a world war even if not being invaded. You are clearly claiming “dealing with” means being invaded. It is nonsensical.
You mean the same epidemiologists that said we will be overrunning medical systems even if we put full lockdowns in place?