It is more like saying, "a loaf of bread in 1950 cost 10c, and you can buy a loaf of bread for the equivalent in today's dollar. But if you want that brand-name bread that people are out-bidding each other to buy, it is going to cost quite a bit more"
I posted this elsewhere but you are just incorrect.
Yeah because those countries often allow someone to be turn themselves in and then offer the accused freedom of movement for 250 dollars (10% bail).
Oh wait they just poison (Russia), disappear (China) or hang (Iran).
Are there problems in the US? Oh certainly. But don't belittle the activists in authoritarian countries by saying someone who was arrested for downloading PII is somehow equivalent to poisoning members of an opposition party.
The response to her actions seem to be overkill. With that said, what she is accused of doing is illegal (especially downloading PII from the government).
Also, she is reaching far beyond her grasp. And sensationalizing quite a bit. I am sure she is intelligent and competent in her role, but that role is not that of an epidemiologist, data scientist or public policy expert. Why does this matter?
Well, focusing mainly on the public policy, nothing is cut and dry. Understanding how semi-dependent systems work together is incredibly complex. She is so heavily focused on COVID that she lacks the insight into all of the competing forces that make up a society. And yes, getting those forces wrong will also cost lives.
Finally, her dramatization of the number of deaths implies (as many people imply) that any actions (that are not blatantly unconstitutional) could appreciably decrease deaths. Outside of the island nations and China, deaths have a weak correlation with public policy. More suggestive correlations exist for population density (cases) and average age (deaths). And yes, there are outliers (Japan is older, Vietnam is denser) but there are even more outliers on the shutdown argument.
The reason this is myopic focus on lockdowns is dangerous is that if undermines the effective mitigation efforts that can help without ruining society. As soon as any leader attempts to ease anything you have the pearl-clutching "give me lockdown or give grandma death" crowd sensationally crying foul. Our ability for reasoned disagreement was a dead horse years ago, but Covid continues to beat it senseless.
No relationship. Just bored on a day off. I am passionate about Covid related topics because I am frankly concerned by the rhetoric around Covid. It boggles my mind that this has become so politicized and opposition is equated with homicidal disregard for human life.
There is also so much sensationalism around Covid that it's impossible to actually discuss. Mask compliance for example. I've heard so many times that if only dumbfuck America would mask up we'd be sitting pretty. Except the US has some oh the highest mask compliance of western nations. People talk about anti-lockdown protests as being pawns for the far right and hating science, yet these protests are not unique to the US or the Right.
Essentially our response to a pandemic has devolved into people shouting memes at one another while 30 million unemployed are liking up at food banks. It's fucking crazy
I think in this case, you're getting back what you put into the conversation. I've never been accused of disregarding human life, and I've had a bunch of conversations here and elsewhere about COVID-19 response.
It feels like you're in what I call a "contrarian headspace" where you believe you've discovered something that's under-reported or under-represented, and you've grabbed firmly onto that belief, riding it into every conversation you can. Here be dragons, especially on HN.
I think, to retain my own sanity, I'm going to bow out of this conversation, but I do suggest you take a good hard look at how your beliefs landed you on the same side as the system crushing Rebekah Jones. What they're doing to her is, regardless of legal technicality, problematic, and if you're not able to see that because of your feelings about COVID coverage, you're in some trouble.
And likewise, you inability to see her as anything but a martyr against an oppressive system is informed by your tightly held belief that the government is for some reason downplaying Covid.
Oh is that not the case? Then don't attribute some armchair psychology to my motives. I in no way think I've "discovered" something underreported. I know full well that millions of people, from credentialed scientists to dumbfuck hillbillies see the same things I rail against.
I've been accused of disregarding human life for my views on Covid response. Which is funny as Covid has touched my family in painful ways.
Humans are complex beings, more so than your coined phrase captures. But I still love you! I hope someday we all can have a calm, reasonable discussion about epidemics. Because this will happen again, so we need to study our response here as much as possible
Police are raiding her house, pointing guns at her kids, continuing to come back with technically illiterate and nonsensical reasons to arrest her, because she's said something that someone in politics did not like. Why is this discussion even about covid? This is not an epidemic discussion, this is a political liberties discussion.
Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for and the guidelines ask everyone not to do it:
The discussion is about covid because that's the only factor informing people's opinions on the matter. If we didn't know anything about her Covid work - if the only information we had was that some random government ex-employee was arrested for allegedly misusing government credentials - nobody would presume to know what the full story is or what's motivating the prosecution.
This is a discussion about Covid because the accused was motivated by Covid. My argument is that the hysteria we've whipped up over this pandemic has caused people to take crazy risks to further a cause which only exists in our hysteria.
I believe Ms. Jones earnestly believes that she had to do these things to save tens of thousands of lives. If those weren't the stakes in her head, would she have downloaded PII and misused an alert system?
Essentially our rhetoric around Covid is mentally dangerous for many people and can cause them to act beyond reason due to their misinformed notion of risk
If the state’s data is garbage in the first place then the chance of a good-faith debate happening drops even further. I’m more than a little disturbed by the narrative that it’s OK for the state to lie as long as they are advancing a cause that you agree with. The underlying issue (covid) should not matter.
I’m not the person you’re replying to but I do think anyone who comes to HN to discuss primarily one narrow (and politically contentious) topic isn’t participating in HN in good faith. There’s no effort to “gratify one’s intellectual curiosity” or “have curious conversation” if you’ve arrived with an agenda.
Because you know the links I click on. Or maybe, and I know this is crazy, but maybe this isn't my primary account as people have been mobbed and cancelled for having contrarian views on Covid!
I didn't interpret that comment the same way at all.
I think the gist of it can be summed up by (purportedly) Winston Churchill:
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
If, as you suggest, you're using a semi-throwaway account specifically to discuss COVID, unless other folks know that, your posting history with this account would likely give that impression.
Well, in salmon30salmon's defence: the mainstream media are completely and utterly missing in action when it comes to COVID.
They only parrot what the gov tells them and investigate nothing these days.
There are countless credible scientists saying that we are getting this incredibly wrong on so many levels yet mainstream media does not mention anything other than government narrative.
When did you see any news coverage of criticism of the "vaccine"? I mean, on a scientific level, not government ineptitude at rolling it out.
Edit: I can't reply for some reason but here's a video talking about the "vaccine"[0] and here's the Great Barrington Declaration[1]. Here is criticism from the BMJ [2] stating that (according to my maths) it's only 19% effective... in addition, it's designed to TREAT the symptoms, not cure you... what kind of vaccine is that?
I love you and thank you for coming to my defense but please do not link vaccine distrust with my views. I trust the data and the science behind the vaccines and believe we need to be getting them distributed as soon as possible
My point wasn't about vaccine distrust although that's part of it. It's more about not having a competent media that will at least say "we will question everything" and investigating along those lines. COVID is the prime example in my opinion so I provided links when asked.
I think it isn't the media not questioning, I think the media realizes that Covid is the gift that keeps on giving and they won't look that gift horse in the mouth.
It's like the trope about media coverage of plane crashes except instead of being an acute incident the media can play off of our fears day after day
This is the first point where 300 odd people were excluded from the analysis because of protocol deviations. Worryingly, this number was much higher in the treatment group. While I hope that blinding would have prevented any motivated exclusion, it's still quite concerning.
His second main point (which is actually really interesting), is that there were 3500 cases of symptoms consistent with Covid-19 that weren't revealed by a PCR test. I'm not sure what to think of this (and note that this number swamps the actual numbers of confirmed cases by about 10x), except that it matches with anecdotal evidence I've seen around negative tests in the presence of symptoms.
Credibility is in the eyes of the viewer: what you view as credible may not be what I view as credible.
And, to that end, whether you would agree with the criticism or not, there is none anyway. No questioning or investigation by media of any sort around COVID science. That was my point.
Even if a hillbilly right-wing conspiracy theorist came onto CNN to talk about aliens or lizard-people that would at least be something but there is nothing but acceptance that what the government says is the ONLY answer.
> but there is nothing but acceptance that what the government says is the ONLY answer.
To be fair there is a lot of non-government and also non-media sources of information about mRNA in general and mRNA vaccines.
Understanding how things work helps me make my own decisions about the safety. This talk was one of the better ones I found. It is clearly meant for other researchers or as a university lecture[1], so if they say something you don’t know or understand do pause often (I definitely had to) and get educated about the related science.
My conclusion: Most of this stuff is relatively old science. I was even taught parts of it in high school decades ago (i.e. not politicized). The only unknowns for me are the COVID specific spike protein, and potential overproduction/overreaction by my cells. Given many people (including some friends) have now been exposed to this specific spike protein, it is clearly inert from a non-COVID perspective. And therefore overproduction/overreaction seem to be not a big deal, given the inert nature of this specific spike. And of course now we have data from many people taking the vaccine that it’s not an issue.
Anyways, I don’t distrust the media, but I subscribe to “trust and verify”. Regardless of why you want to verify, the internet allows you to become somewhat educated on most topics in about a week. And if you wanted to spend 3 months you could even become very educated[2] on that specific topic. Might as well take advantage of it for yourself.
[2] it’s even possible to become an expert over the internet, but would require multiple years and enough dedication that’s it’s probably simpler to just go to college for the subject. But it’s definitely possible, so leverage it as much as you can.
The message sent via emergency comms was quite dramatic. Her insistence that the numbers were being cooked with malice to justify reopening is also attributing to conspiracy that which could be explained by differing opinions on how to clean up messy data (if someone tested positive on vacation, will they count in their home state or Florida?)
To me that doesn't pass the smell test. In my state, they've just changed the thresholds. "New science is showing XYZ so in response counties can now eat at restaurants if their shits under 20"
Right no shit. What I'm arguing is that people take the path of least resistance and it would have been far easier to announce a policy change than cook the books. I am saying that if opening up was the only reason, I do not believe that's the path they would take. Of course I'm just basing this off of my own feels.
Making a policy change has consequences. “De Santis made a terrible policy change, X people are now dead” is a very different headline than “after the data suggested Florida open up, X people are now dead”.
I don’t know if there is a conspiracy, but your argument regarding motivation is definitely not thorough.
South Korea is basically an island. Their only border is an impregnable military zone. Norway and Finland speak more to density than their geography.
But yeah, we need to learn what was different in Vietnam and Thailand. Vietnam is especially interesting, but it could be easily argued that one of their tools is unavailable here (forced detention at camps for the infected)
Chalking anything up to geography or density seems like a reach. Ireland and the UK are islands and are doing rather poorly. South Korea has high density. Canada has low density, but a highly urbanized population. It’s done better than the US which has similar urbanization but worse than the nations that I mentioned earlier.
England is an island in geography, but it has a lot of truck (lorry) traffic to and from the continent, via ferries and the rail line under the channel. It's not just containerized freight, the trucks with drivers drive on and drive off the other modes of transit.
Being an island isn't required; you need effective border controls, and effective control of population behavior. It's just a lot easier to have effective border control with an island; but England certainly didn't make use of that possibility.
Right it's pretty fucking willy-nilly no matter the conditions you are testing for correlation. The nations you mentioned all had pretty different public responses as well.
That is why I think it's dangerous to proclaim lockdowns are a panacea because with a few exceptions you end up with similar results but a fucked economy
But the real tragedy is the lack of support for third world countries due to the contraction of the global economy. Millions will die due to a reduction in vaccines and treatable illnesses in the developing world. Millions. But it seems we are okay with that as long as _we_ don't get covid
It's dangerous because poorly executed lockdowns can be counterproductive. New cases are currently higher in many locked-down states than they are in Florida - this is of course a multifactorial process, but part of the story has to be that people have stopped complying with the lockdowns.
It's relatively simple: lockdowns are effective to the extent that they reduce contacts between people. In countries that actually implemented strict lockdowns that substantially reduced contacts between people, transmission fell, R went below 1, and the epidemic receded.
The most effective strategy for countries that have large numbers of cases is to go into a strict lockdown, in order to bring case numbers down as quickly as possible. Then they can reopen to a much larger extent than they would otherwise be able to. China and several other countries have successfully done this.
That is only really accurate if the electricity used would somehow disappear were it not for the mining. Electricity (minus the energy lost in transport etc etc) is zero-sum. If the miner uses hydro, that means someone further from the dam is using coal, methane etc as the hydro company isn't selling excess on the grid.
Energy is finite on the grid, so yes mining takes energy which could have been used for (arguably) better purposes
Not here in Iceland we have more electricity than we have use for, it goes to bitcoin mining or it goes to aluminum smelting. No connection to the outside world grid.
It is beyond unacceptable for states to now be working on their vaccine plans. Anyone with any sort of understanding would have known in April the only way out was a vaccine. Why weren't tracking apps made then? Why weren't rollout plans made then?
And I know, they didn't know the details. You don't need to know the specifics to know that you are going up need a tracking system, a notification system, some sort of order of priority etc.
My state is still discussing who is after medical workers.
People are dying! Businesses are closing! Why is this being treated with the same urgency that seems to plague the DMV.
At least where I am, one of the tactics that the right-wing protestors engage in is to walk right up to the limit of the law and greatly antagonize the left-wing counter-protestors. When the counter-protestors respond, they play the victim card and the police arrest the left-wing.
Sort of like antagonizing a kid on the playground and then telling teacher when you get socked. Sure it may not be right for the person you antagonized to hit you, but you knew exactly what you were doing.
Yeah, I don't really give a shit about down-votes but it is interesting. I am not making this shit up. And I am not defending the right-wing at all, its all abhorrent behavior.
A bit of an dark pattern here everyone. The menus at the top of the site are _not_ related to the article/topic. I thought I would be looking at top books by subject and instead saw ads for online universities. Beware.
Thank you. I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible. Some may like working remotely, others may like the wider acceptance of meal and grocery delivery, others may prefer the reduction in greenhouse gases. That is the only way I can rationalize the insistence of lockdowns here on HN and elsewhere.
Either that or COVID is another social issue that is being exploited by nefarious actors to divide western nations.
> I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible.
I believe two factors at play can be identified:
1) Among ordinary internet users, the “stay home and save lives” recommendation in spring of last year became highly memetic, and although the median age of death is now there for anyone to learn, the blanket admonishment continues to be rather unthinkingly repeated across society even though in many countries the lockdown is really starting to bite the economy. It is not that people consciously like the COVID world, they are simply perpetuating the social pressures that formed at the outbreak of the epidemic a year ago. (It doesn’t help that often one cannot public take an anti-lockdown stance and participate in street protests, because then one risks being lumped in with the anti-vaxxers and 5G crazies that tend to be so visible at those protests.)
2) Elected officials cannot ease off the restrictions, because the opposition will immediately accuse them of killing grandma or whatever. In this case, the opposition may in fact be acting much like a “concern troll”; they might not really care about the elderly (and deep down, they themselves might be thirsting for an end to lockdown), but they cannot ignore the political point-scoring that they could do with such a position.
I don’t think “wanting to live and not spread around a deadly disease” is some overly-woke activist cause or concern-trolling.
It’s ok to admonish people for drunk driving, which is a lot like “horsing around during a global pandemic”: optional, careless risk-taking behavior, that is risky for both you and everyone else. Why is it fine to shame people for drunk driving but not for spreading COVID?
The people who are currently on a good WFH salary are seeing their savings grow thinking they are doing well for themselves because soon they will buy a house but what they don't realise is that eventually they will have to pay for the 400k people on the pandemic unemployment payment, the 5 billion that was lost this year in tourism, the 10 million we are spending weekly on PCR testing. This all adds up and with only 2.3 million wage earners in Ireland they are going to be stung for a lot of tax to pay for this.
There are people with short term or part time jobs who are happier to be paid 350 per week for staying at home. Why would you want to work a menial job if you didnt need to?
Like Prof. Johan Giesecke from Sweden said, the western countries got themselves into a lockdown without thinking of a plan on how to get out of it and no one wants to be seen as the person who made the decision to kill loads of people.
There's also the vaccine angle which is sure to make those companies lots of money this year.
Yeah I agree, but on that topic I think we're heading into completely unchartered territory with an event horizon beyond which I cannot see, the only wisdom I have that might prepare us for what might unfold is- "there's no such thing as a free lunch" and "there's a time when you have to pay the Piper".
It’s pretty simple to me: I like being alive and want to continue living. I’m old, but not “will probably die next year” old, and I’m out of shape. I have a family and a kid who wants to keep her daddy around. The economy will recover. People will get back to working and shopping later. What we can’t do yet is come back from the dead.
> People will get back to working and shopping later.
Yes, but...
We all have a small finite number of years on this earth, and even fewer when we're young. I'll never get 2020 back, and who knows how much of how many people's lives will be lived in poverty and other forms of misery because of the economic destruction we've opted into to slow the spread of the virus.
Would you tell someone condemned to a prison term that it's not a big deal because they will eventually get out and go back to living normally?
> And who knows how much of how many people’s lives will be lived in poverty and other forms of misery because of the economic destruction we’ve opted into to slow the spread of the virus.
Plenty of less-rich countries took much stronger steps to prevent economic destruction even with stronger control measures than the US took.
We didn’t opt into poverty/misery to slow the spread of the virus, we opted into it because the federal administration wanted to use the pain to generate opposition to slowing the spread of the virus.
We could have 1. Done a real lockdown, with strict, nationwide enforcement, trashing the economy for a few months but beating the disease. Or 2. Done nothing and saved the economy, shouldering massive loss of life as the virus ran unopposed through the population.
But, no, we somehow managed to do the worst of both worlds: 3. we implemented uncoordinated, half-assed business closures and widely-ignored “stay-at-home” schemes which both trashed the economy and resulted in widespread death. Great job!
It's unclear whether "1" was actually possible, given the political/legal structure of the United States. Who, exactly, would be promulgating and enforcing such an order?
With competent federal coordination and incentives, all 50 states could have used their emergency powers or even legislation to implement stricter lockdowns with real enforcement.
State and local police would enforce it, again, with the proper incentives. Fire the few local yokel sheriffs refusing to enforce. They have the ability, need the willingness. If they can catch me going 70 in a 45 or avoiding my income taxes, they can catch me going to Olive Garden.
We have the political ability but not the political will.
So, it would have been possible under the hypothesis that all 50 states can agree on an incredibly controversial policy? I doubt all 50 states can agree on whether the earth is more than 10,000 years old, so this sounds like a fantasy.
I think it's selfish that you'd prefer to remain unfit and see a generation of children your daughter's age lose a year of socialising and education than to choose to isolate yourself and let them live their lives if you really were so worried about a disease with a average IFR of .05%. It's a crab in a bucket mentality.
Part of the benefit of living in a civilized society is that civilized people don’t throw entire demographics to their death for the convenience of others. We are supposed to have the decency to make sacrifices for the benefit of the greater good, but our ability to do this seems to be quickly disappearing.
I’m really sorry my kid can’t go on play dates for a year, because it helps save other people’s lives. I also feel sorry that some people don’t have the empathy to understand why we need to make that trade-off. We have really lost our way as a culture if we really think grandma should die so the rest of us can live our normal lives.
Imagine we had your attitude during world war 2. “I’m not gonna go rivet airplanes or ration food because I have freedom and I want to live my life!!”
Nobody's throwing anybody to death. You seem to be advocating forcing everyone hostage in their homes, all over a virus that's not particularly dangerous (eg. 0.05% death rate for thus under 40, median age of death = 82). That's outrageous, and of course people don't want that because it's torture, and completely pointless and unnecessary. What a position of privilege to be able to advocate this garbage while being able to work remotely when many have lost their jobs and businesses.
We never had any government mandated home hostage orders during WWII.
I would liken it to missing a day at the gym. Even if you regularly work out if you start missing 1, 2, 3 days eventually you stop going altogether. The same thing has happened with WFH. People have already gotten used to working at home 100% of the time. Even if COVID was wiped off the face of the Earth there will be a large number of people who have simply gotten into a new routine and will never go back willingly unless if they are forced to.
We really need to stop using the term Nazi so flippantly. Nazism represented a systematic process of genocide. Literally treating the death of an entire ethnic group as something you use CI techniques to improve efficiency.
The US saw some cosplay that went way too far. Is it dangerous? Yes. Is it toxic? Yes. Could it lead to something akin to Nazism? Yes. Is it Nazism? No.
Don't minimize what happened under Nazism by using it as an idle insult
It’s not being used flippantly. There’s literal nazis running amok. With literal swastikas, SS symbols, derivative names. For years. Deeply embedded and actively organizing the mobs like we saw last week. Ran around chanting “Jews will not replace us” and murdered a woman with a Dodge Charger. Where have you been?
Yes, when you're Jewish and there's an armed mob of white supremacists on the street, the last thing we want to do is insult them by improper classification.
"Hey, are you guys totally committed to the 25-point program of the NSDAP or you guided more by Simmons' ABC of the Invsible Empire? I gotta make sure I check the right box."
I was curious, so I did a GIS for "capitol riot [nazi] flags" and was unable to find any pictures of people flying actual Nazi flags. There may have been more subtle things, like an article mentioned "stickers" but I didn't see anything I could identify. There was the guy with the "Auschwitz" shirt.
People did fly the Confederate flag though, so "white supremacists" seems beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yes, what I am doing is completely equivalent to actually forming an angry armed mob, and actually ransacking a building while chanting actual death threats against public officials.
I am not especially concerned about what kind of white supremacists people were.
But if it would be significant that people were flying actual Nazi flags, then it must also be significant if they weren't. To some extent. Other demonstrations did have such flags.
This is an example of a more general pattern that's been bothering me recently. It seems like a contradiction to claim that something is a heinous offense, while simultaneously claiming it doesn't matter whether a given person or entity is really guilty or not. This is saying that guilt is and isn't important at the same time.
It's absolutely ridiculous that anyone would argue that calling white supremacists "Nazis" is as bad as supporting the ideology of white supremacy. One is semantics and the other is a hateful fantasy that deserves no place in society.
Nazis committed genocide, but that's not what Nazism was. The Nazis existed and were active for years before they had the opportunity to carry out genocide, and even then many details were kept secret from the vast majority of Nazis because the leaders recognized they would lose popular support. To say the civilians rioting in the street, ransacking and assaulting as the authorities did nothing, during Kristallnacht weren't Nazis just because there were no death camps at that time is beyond absurd.
Nazism is a political ideology which combines the ultranationalism and authoritarianism of fascism with fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, and racism. To the extent that any ideology can be summed up in three words, race-based fascism is a pretty good definition. If you see someone espousing both fascism and racism, labelling them a Nazi or neo-nazi is generally appropriate. To act like nazism is some impossible level of evil that no living person could ever reach is to deny both the reality that millions of people did in fact adhere to these views in the past, and that even today a small but vocal minority see this ideology as legitimate.
Re the comparison - Yes it seems far different if you look 30's nazism as a historical artifact, in retrospect. But the genocidey things only happened pretty late in the game and was even then kept in secret for long. A better point of comparison is what happened earier, there's plenty of differences and similarities to be found there worth arguing.
People get their hopes up too much. I don't mean to "blame the victim" here, but at the same time I read all of the hype machine prior to a release and am not surprised that people are disappointed. Based on the hype and the expectations, nothing but the best game ever made will satisfy the crowd. This is the same for anything that is overhyped. Game of Thrones comes to mind as well. Everyone hated on the last season, but literally no matter what they did, it would be hated on.
People just need to relax, accept that things are imperfect, and enjoy the game once it is patched.
Telling people to relax is pretty much an ad hominem. Just because I'm disappointed and voice my criticism doesn't mean I'm being hysterical. It's art, I have opinions: season 8 was absolutely dreadful and cyberpunk is not as good as CDPR promised. The hype is a red herring.
