Again, Trump was the one that did choose Dr. Atlas, he knew already what he was getting, advice that discouraged a proper response to the pandemic. There are reasons why the way herd immunity was advised to be reached by Dr. Atlas was wrong.
It’s a false dichotomy. You can have the marine expert advise the decisions made by the coastal developer and then come up with an environmentally friendly public policy for development. OR, you can ask the coastal developer how much marine life damage will be caused by the planned construction and he’ll tell you that he’s never received a single complaint from a fish.
That does sound nice. Also doesn’t sound anything at all like what has happened in much of the world in 2020.
What are you even talking about? Urban planners and developers are actively working with environmentalists to build energy efficient buildings, using recyclable materials, minimize pollutants in construction and materials, and include green spaces. It’s a thing. Actually a thing. Also it’s a thing in the automotive industry and across many other manufacturing sectors.
Right, so basically what you’re saying is, when we listen to the health experts, all they are concerned about is saving lives, and they don’t care about anything other than keeping people alive. They don’t care about the economic impact of decisions that are made in support of public health. You believe that by doing this the economic impact of the public health decisions are not being considered, and that your opinion is that the economic impact of the optimal public health safety measures was too great.
Given this, how much have you considered that public health officials actually do look at economic impacts when making their suggestions? Certainly they do when considering, for instance, when it comes to the requirements for driving licenses. If public health were the only consideration there, it would be nearly impossible to obtain a license to operate a multi-ton hunk of steel going far faster than humans can naturally, but economic considerations lead the US in particular to adopt very lax standards in order to reap the economic impact of every person being able to have their own motor vehicle they can operate and not rely on public transit and finds the loss of life and other damages caused by people who are more likely to cause accidents is a trade-off that’s worth it.
Thus the question becomes, by what method have you determined that your own view on the balance of economic impacts vs. public health measures is more likely to be optimal compared to those people whose jobs are to make public health policy? Why do you reject the general consensus of public health officials that give advice to the government, when you have absolutely no training or expertise in this matter while they at very least had some sort of credentials to be hired by the government? Yes, there are some public health officials that came to the same conclusion as you, but it should be clear that these people are in the minority. If it’s simply because you’d rather not be inconvenienced, do you think the vast majority of people don’t feel the same way about the inconvenience? Most people are deferring to the majority of experts on this matter because it’s only a very very small percentage of experts who feel like you do, even if they would rather not be inconvenienced.
Well, I’ve got a close to zero percent chance of dying of covid. Want to stick that in your calculator?
Well, you certainly have the concepts right, and thank you for that. But we are very clearly talking about very different matters here than the driver license example. We’re also talking about more than just economic impacts, though the loss of livelihood is certainly a major factor and in fact will itself drive some of the other negative effects, such as the ending of marriages and the health risks that come from being long-term unemployed or homeless.
No, I don’t think that many of the ‘experts’ who have had such a loud voice throughout this have given great consideration to these knock-on effects, nor do I think that assessing them even falls within many of their areas of expertise. (I wouldn’t expect that of virologists or data modelers, for example.) And I think that’s exactly the problem.
Statistically speaking, so does everybody else. Yet, here we are.
Back of an envelope rough calculation:
271,000 US COVID deaths, divided by roughly 328 million total population = a 0.08% chance of dying of COVID.
Of course, every one of those 271,000 also had that 0.08% chance (on average) of dying of COVID. How’d those odds work out for them?
Do you know why we have so many experts in different areas? Because we need them.
A marriage counselor doesn’t sit around wondering why an immunology expert has decided to stress test a bunch of marriages. A HUD counselor isn’t blaming the immunologist for the higher need of subsidized housing. A waiter may be upset with the immunologist because he lost his job, but he should be more upset with the senator who refused to vote on additional funding to extend his unemployment benefits.
It is not the job of an expert in medicine to be an expert on every single damn other thing. They need all the other experts to come together and work shit out. And lay people don’t need to be experts at any of these things. But they do need to be able to differentiate between the various responsibilities of the various experts and blame those responsible for the jobs they failed to do rather than blame those who have done their fucking job right.
This is not true (or at best misleading). The risk of dying from COVID-19 is extremely lopsided towards the elderly and rises exponentially with age.
Infection fatality rates from the CDC:
0-19 years: 0.0003%
20-49 years: 0.02%
50-69 years: 0.5%
70+ years: 5.4%
Nope. If you’re over 85 and living in a LTC your chances are decidedly higher than zero
What are the infection rates?
I don’t know what an LTC is. But at 85, your chances of breaking a hip are probably even higher. So what is your point? Since you have a very low chance of dying of covid then your chances of transmitting it, even asymptomatically, to someone who is at higher risk are equally unlikely?
Have you not considered the greatly restricted economy that would result in a far more parsimonious regime of issuing driving licenses? Despite the number of deaths and the amount of property damage caused by auto accidents attributable to driver error, public health officials aren’t rallying for stronger licensing standards because they know the economic impact. It’s not something that’s really even talked about, as there’s effectively no local opposition. If you go back enough in time to where the economic impacts of near universal auto ownership of are less clear since they seem to be a pipe dream, you’ll find a lot more opposition to motorized vehicles on the roadways, period, because of the damage potential they have. It was a public health issue back in its infancy, but it’s something public health officials stay away from now because they know the health impacts are minuscule compared to the benefits.
To get back to the virus, I don’t think you are particularly clear on the real economic impacts of letting the virus spread wildly. If the virus is known to be widespread and more people know someone who has died or seriously suffered through a bout of it, the more likely that people will take precautions and avoid situations where the risk of spreading the disease is likely. Do you think any touring musicians would invest in hosting an event any time soon, even if they personally thought the likelihood of people spreading the disease at their events was non-existent? It doesn’t matter what the musician thinks, because the promoter will tell him that people won’t show up in numbers to justify the cost. And if they did, there might be liability falling on the artist for people who do end up sick or dead. Similarly, people are not going to be packing tourist hot spots in nearly the same numbers as they would otherwise simply because there are a lot of people who are scared, and as the virus spreads, the number of people scared will undoubtedly grow. The same is true for schools - I had friends who pulled their children out of schools when there were only a handful of cases in the state, simply because they knew how fast it could spread and how deadly it was, and didn’t think it was worth their children attending. As more and more people know those who get sick from attending school, more parents are going to withdraw their children from in-person classes to the point where there’s no reason to hold them.
As has been stated before, there is no correlation between economic impact and infection or fatality rate. The economic activity of practically everywhere dropped a bunch once the virus hit that part of the world, and the ones that are back on their feet are those that took the danger seriously and limited the spread. They are now having much better economic outcomes than those that wanted to keep their economies going at full steam, not realizing such a thing was becoming impossible.
I am aware, but the purpose of the “back of an envelope rough calculation” was to make the point that your odds of dying of COVID are slim no matter what, but a lot of people are still dying from it. The correct response is therefore not to act like an irresponsible dumbass and increase the likelihood of dying for oneself and others.
Long Term Care facility.
What does a broken hip have to do with anything? I also have about a zero percent chance of breaking my hip. What are you trying to argue or prove? Because all I was talking about is being sick of supposed super scary yet to be discovered aspects of covid.
Sit down. Are you sitting down?:
COVID-19: Long-term effects - Mayo Clinic.
Organ damage caused by COVID-19
Although COVID-19 is seen as a disease that primarily affects the lungs, it can damage many other organs as well. This organ damage may increase the risk of long-term health problems. Organs that may be affected by COVID-19 include:
- Heart. Imaging tests taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild COVID-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future.
- Lungs. The type of pneumonia often associated with COVID-19 can cause long-standing damage to the tiny air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue can lead to long-term breathing problems.
- Brain. Even in young people, COVID-19 can cause strokes, seizures and Guillain-Barre syndrome — a condition that causes temporary paralysis. COVID-19 may also increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Yawn. Some people with a lung infection will have lung scarring. Let’s all go hide in a cave.
And you say you’re pretty sure you’ve never contracted Covid, right?