“Who has Scott kilt?”
You could only see him as courageous if you know he arrived at his views independently. Instead he fecklessly carried water for Trump’s strategy of pissing on our heads and telling us it’s raining. He’s an absolute coward and absolutely not independent.
What information and principles did you use to arrive at this belief? Perhaps we can help you figure out where you’ve gone wrong.
Perhaps this attitude, this one of such certainty, about things that are inherently uncertain, is part of the problem.
I’d say you’ve mostly got it right in terms of the principles, even if you (still) characterize it in a wrong way. It is not, for example, an inconvenience for a child to have such a significant disruption to his or her education. It is not an inconvenience for families to lose their livelihood. That word misses the mark by much more than a matter of degree. Much more.
Okay. So without knowing when or if a vaccine would be available, your position on the management of the pandemic is to let it take its course and spread without the precautions of state and local government mandated lock downs, social distancing & mask wearing. You feel that the overwhelming majority of the medical and scientific community overreacted in making these recommendations and the government authorities were wrong in following them. It is your position, as a lay person, that a “herd immunity” approach would have been the wiser course of action despite the fact that the cost in human life would have been much greater than it has been to date. Have you considered the risk/cost factors if America did take that approach? If you knew that the cost in human life would have been not a quarter million (to date) but far greater, perhaps 1.M or more, would you consider that acceptable? Have you thought about the possible consequences and costs on our existing medical system that reached over 100% capacity at the beginning and is currently at risk of doing so again, had we allowed the virus to spread without precautionary measures? How about the economic impact on other industries? The potential for social panic and unrest? Shortages of food and supplies and workers and means of production?
Can you honestly say that you have really thought this through beyond a very superficial evaluation of facts and consequences, and came to a conclusion based only on positions expressed by a few callous mavericks who you admire because they stood up to prevailing experts?
Amen. Those who advocate letting the disease run its course to avoid cratering the economy or interfering with “mah feeeedom” need to have their feet held to the fire. Just how many deaths are acceptable? We’ve already had a quarter-million dead. How about 675,000 – that how many Americans died in the 1918 epidemic?
But wait a minute – the population now is three times greater than back then, so surely 2-million is not too much to ask, is it?
How many dead is acceptable?
Before I reply, could you please let me know if you are also a ‘lay person’?
What I want to avoid is wrecking people’s lives, in many more ways than one. And, what’s more, wrecking countless, countless more lives than the virus ever would or could. Many, many orders of magnitude more.
Freedoms are nice, and so are healthy economies, provided there are societies in good enough shape to enjoy them. Those things are not what this is about.
I am. But be careful in your assumptions. I worked (indirectly) for Dr. Anthony Fauci at the NIH/NIAID. Been in the room with him a few times, and I’d like to think a little rubbed off.
There is evidence that suggests that even those who survive have lasting negative health impact. We don’t even yet know how it will impact long term mortality rates. Preventing infection is more than just about saving lives of those who will not recover.
What’s it all about, Alfie?
In that case, do you want to reframe what you said as ‘from one layperson to another’, in keeping with a discussion on a message board or around the water cooler or in the public square? In that case, neither of our views would be any less inherently legitimate than the other, correct? Or do you want to frame it as the views of a ‘lay person’ versus those of an ‘expert’, or a group of experts? If so, I can go ahead and tell you that I don’t claim any originality of my own when it comes to these approaches. I’m reading and listening to experts, too. Just not the same ones as you, I’d imagine. Or not always drawing the same conclusions if so.
Do you believe that there are public policy experts? Or, that there is a monolithic consensus about proper public policy approaches? The bulk of the debate surrounding this pandemic is about public policy matters, not epidemiological ones.
There’s evidence lots of things have lasting health impacts. I’m getting a little sick of covid being described as some mysterious vehicle of future calamity. Sure, maybe it’ll give us all cancer. So might the vaccine.
Is there evidence to suggest that apart from the health impacts from contracting the virus, there are negative health impacts on others, who are affected by externalities? If so, have you…considered those?
What I want is for you to be intellectually honest about this all. I am more than happy to grant that there are benefits to preventing infection. Are you happy to broaden your own analysis, or at least the way in which you present it here?
There are meds in wide use today that are used to treat chronic disease that may lead to cancer in an established populations of patients. Hell, some meds can put a patient into shock or even kill them on first try. Medical professionals and patients make risk management decisions every day. Would you like to die of complications due to your chronic illness two years from now or risk a 50% increase from normal of getting lymphoma 20 years from now?
Are we talking about co-morbidities? Like: The fat bastard would have dropped dead of coronary disease if Covid hadn’t taken him first. That kind of thing?
No, no, not at all. I’m talking about the worse shape, in terms of both physical and mental health, people are going to be in as a result of this year (and who knows how many to come), not having to do with the virus.
There are experts of all types. Including those on public policy. But even those experts defer to health experts when they make public policy. And it most certainly is about epidemiology when people insist on taking wrong medical advice from a radiologist.
So the health experts…are the public policy experts? Or, are also public policy experts. Interesting.
Said it before, I’ll say it again. You might not want to put the marine biologists in charge of coastal development. You can be exactly certain what answers you’ll get, before you even ask the questions.
Ah, yes. That is a concern and absolutely should be of concern to everyone. But here again, I refer you to the example of treatment decisions for chronic or life threatening diseases. There are meds that treat the immediate threat but which, over extended period of use, can cause other unrelated health risks. It’s a risk/benefit analysis that doctors and patients make all the time. Do you want to die now, or risk a possible thing 20 years from now and treat that new thing then with possibly new meds that will help deal with it when/as needed?