Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Don't use a thread like this to fulminate or flame. It helps no one. It adds toxic fumes. Regardless of how right you are or which color the fumes, that points in the direction we're trying to avoid in this community.
There are important and interesting issues here. It's fine to debate, but do it within the guidelines. You'll do a better job of making your substantive points that way too.
Maybe the text in italics ("Be kind. Don't be snarky...") should be always shown above the HN comment box? It'd be nice to get the reminder every time we are starting to write something unkind or snarky...
Speaking as a frequent reddit user where various subreddits have added their versions of such an instruction, I think I've never really been reminded by them to behave a certain way.
Parts of the UI like that can really only be seen once: once the user has seen that it is just a warning that is always there, it becomes an uninteresting piece of clutter that is zoned over and never again influencing the user.
I think the current system works much better: a thoughtful and appropriate comment written by a human when deemed appropriate (or possibly copied, I don't know).
This reinforces the ideas when necessary, and by itself is already a push for humanity, while a robotic repeating reminder serves only rarely to reinforce good reactions.
IIRC, Stack Overflow shows the link to the site guidelines when you have under a certain amount of rep. Something similar here might solve a lot of problems.
I don't think we should have to be constantly reminded to be kind and discuss in good faith. Maybe it is necessary for some, but I expect better of HN users than to need their hands held. The regulator of HN behavior should be the users themselves; that responsibility should not have to fall on the administrators.
Why has a question mark been added to the title here?
IMO by HN's usual standards it makes it a worse title, not better.
I assume it's to present it as a debate for discussion rather than appear partisan? (Let me say here I'm British, live in the UK, don't really care for US politics, at that level at least.) But we have controversial titles all the time that are presented as fact (the author's opinion, the author's title) and yet discussed all the same.
If we need a '?' to have a discussion, then every submission needs a '?' suffixed.
We do that sometimes when a title is particularly contentious, to explicitly encode the contentiousness into the title. It tends to bring down title fever, and it seems to help discussion be more substantive.
Precisely. Your wording is reminiscent of an old thing pg wrote, which I love:
Comments should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.
I understand it to mean, do not pick at small faults in others arguments. Cross examination is good in a courtroom trial, but does detract from the flow of conversation.
I think the gist is to avoid aggressively picking apart minor details, and instead discuss the main points. This is in line with another section of the guidelines:
“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”
It’s a good idea in principle, the problem is that the devil is often in the detail and people can say things that seem broadly like a decent argument while slipping in details (whether intentionally or not) that completely reverse the meaning or make the meaning quite different.
This is why cross examination in needed in trials - of course everyone tries to make a plausible argument, so noticing the incongruities is important.
Assuming good faith and cross examining are not mutually exclusive.
Pointing out, or asking about, incongruities is fine. How one does it makes a difference, as does the intention with which one does it. If you want to call all of that cross-examination, that's fine, but in that case we're using the term differently. The main distinction the guidelines are trying to draw is the one between open exchange and destroying enemies.
In curious conversation, people want to know what the other person really thinks and what their experience has been like. In cross-examination, the goal is to defeat an enemy, so people are aggressive, try to make the other person seem as dumb or awful as they can, and generally seek to back them into a corner.
In one case the goal is to receive information from others' comments, in the other case it is to fire weapons into them. One can't do both at the same time. I think there are even physiological reasons for this: one is in a very different state when doing the one vs. doing the other.
Moreover, since curiosity evokes more curiosity and aggression evokes more aggression, the effects are systemic, meaning they apply to the site as a whole. We must choose which one we want, and we choose curiosity. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
When you make a call for civility the people most likely to exercise increased self-restraint are those who would in any case tend to be more judicious in how they express themselves.
Meanwhile those who spew racist hatred will not be deterred and moreover they will now face lesser pushback calling out their barbarism.
Source: this thread.
I didn't make a call for civility. The specific words matter.
I haven't read this whole thread, but the parts that I saw definitely did not lack for pushback. The question is how best to push back. Denunciatory rhetoric doesn't work. Its purpose is to provide momentary relief to the denouncer, at the cost of damaging the container and evoking more, not less, hatred from the other side.
There are better mechanisms for pushing back against hatred: flagging, downvoting, responding within the site guidelines, and in egregious cases emailing hn@ycombinator.com.
Quoted from a letter from 1,000 health professionals on the virus and protests [0]
>However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators' ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders."
Why are many taking this position? One can recognize that the protests are risking an increase in virus transmission while still recognizing that it is a risk worth taking. Don't tell us there is no risk from these protests, but there is a risk from stay-at-home protests. The virus is not selective of political beliefs. It completely ruins the credibility of many health professionals. Almost no one's opinions will be swayed either way if they acknowledged that the protests do carry a real risk of transmission.
> However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission
That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They are saying that the protest is too important to take health considerations into account, but they are reluctant to speak plainly and tell people there's risk but they should be adult and choose to manage the risks themselves and maybe neglect small risk in order to achieve bigger thing. Because that's what they spent last several months - and in fact, many years before - trying to convince people there's no way they can be treated as adults and just given the information and left to manage the risks by themselves. Just in this case, our betters had decided the COVID risk is less important than protesting - so it's OK for us. But only in cases which are approved by our betters. If you want to protest something else - it's still risky as heck and there they can fully condemn.
> When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks. Just a few weeks later, there wasn’t a mask to be bought in stores, or online for a reasonable price — just widespread price gouging. Many health experts, no doubt motivated by the sensible and urgent aim of preserving the remaining masks for health care workers, started telling people that they didn’t need masks or that they wouldn’t know how to wear them.
When I first started doing volunteer health assessments and triage at our local homeless shelter, I inquired if facial hair was an issue with PPE. The organization's initial response was no.
I sent them a link to the CDC guidance[1] that includes this picture regarding facial hair styles that are ok[2].
I don't think the notice at the top of said article is helpful whatsoever saying that this isn't advice for covid-19. A proper fit and seal is important. The picture could also be considered somewhat offensive to some.
It’s my understanding — which seems to be congruent with the pages you linked? — that facial hair is an impediment to medical-grade respirators that require a tight seal to be effective. With cloth/paper masks that aren’t intended to be PPE for medical workers, though, that’s not actually what we’re going for, though, right? What we’re trying to do is curtail the spread of droplets. Beards and mustaches really won’t materially affect the effectiveness in that case.
In your specific example of volunteer health assessments and triage at a homeless shelter, you probably need real honest-to-goodness PPE, and the organization’s advice was wrong. When I’m going down to the grocery store, though, a cloth mask should be sufficient — and my (admittedly short) beard is not going to keep my mask from blocking droplets from my mouth and nose, assuming it completely covers both of them.
It's an impediment with any mask which can form some kind of seal. A surgical mask will stick to your face when you breathe in, which indicates that it does form an imperfect seal.
If one's beard is creating even more space between the face and mask, it's of course going to make things worse.
Cloth masks aren't trying to form a seal. They have a few roles:
1) They capture a lot of droplets coming out of your mouth. Do you sneeze in your elbow or in someone's face? A face mask does better than an elbow, and for every breath (not just a sneeze). So does a beard for that matter; if your sneeze goes around through a beard, it's catching big droplets too.
2) You know the six-foot-guideline? They effectively increase that distance. A person talking, yelling, sneezing, etc. can carry droplets 15+ feet in a straight line. If we're both wearing masks (or face shields), it's not going in a straight line. Beards disrupt linear airflow too.
3) You can't touch your face.
They don't stop virus aerosol. That's where you need a proper seal.
I'm not actually sure facial hair makes any difference with a cloth mask. Surgical mask would be in between. And an N95 probably becomes a surgical.
Offensive or hilarious? I love the creativity behind naming each individual style. I don't think any of them are particularly offensive, are they? It's possible I'm missing some references, of course.
FWIW, I don’t think the majority of the officials intended to lie about this. It wasn’t anything that started this year or anything - they’ve had the same message about masks since as far back as the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
> But the CDC has recommended against mask use. I hypothesized that the CDC was intentionally lying to us, trying to trick us into not buying masks so there would be enough for health care workers.
> But that can’t be true, because the CDC and other experts came up with their no-masks policy years ago, long before there was any supply shortage. For example, during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, their website offered the following table:
> [table in link]
> And during the 2015 MERS epidemic, NPR said South Koreans were wrong to wear masks:
> “[ . . . ] Masks can be helpful for protecting health workers from a variety of infectious diseases, including MERS… But either type of mask is less likely to do much good for the average person on the street…Wearing a mask might make people feel better. After all, MERS has killed about a third of the people known to be infected. But there are no good studies looking at how well these masks prevent MERS transmission out in the community, says Geeta Sood, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University. “On the street or the subway, for MERS specifically, they’re probably not effective,” she says. One problem is that the masks are loose fitting, and a lot of tiny airborne particles can get in around the sides of the masks.”
> So if studies generally suggest masks are effective, and the CDC wasn’t deliberately lying to us, why are they recommending against mask use?
I think you’re right. I don’t understand the general tendency of assuming malice when a combination of uncertainty about the virus, poor supply chains, and not-very-good underlying data would do just as well.
It’s also unclear what “masks” meant in the initial phases. An N95 respirator? A surgical mask? A homemade cloth mask? Each of these has different uses and effects. I seriously doubt most people knew the difference in early March, I only had a vague notion. The surgeon general likely is thinking of respirators, because all MDs in hospitals get fitted for it. They know how hard it is to put it on and take it off safely, and know how critical it is for it to be a good tight fit. None of those things are going to be true for most people in early March 2020. If that’s your frame of reference, then it makes total sense that you’d recommend people not buy masks.
Everyone going out and buying N95s when they’re not particularly useful to most people unless in a close confined space is a bad thing. It doesn’t actually save many lives, but does make it harder for people who need it (docs/nurses in close confined spaces, particularly with patients on respirators that aerosolize the virus).
People wearing surgical or cloth masks may help some, probably mostly in enclosed spaces and mostly for exhalation rather than preventing you from inhaling a virus from someone else.
Even then, it’s my understanding that the data isn’t awesome here. Many of the papers I’ve seen are under fairly odd scenarios (for example an airplane, lots of the same air, recycled all over, for hours, where the paper showed positive mask benefit). We don’t have much for bandanas, or masks that were washed 3 weeks ago, or masks that are tighter, masks that are looser. I’d wager it helps, a little, especially indoors.
In other words, this shit is complicated, why assume lying when instead we could just say, “it’s complicated, they didn’t get it 100% right.”
I'd be much more OK with this explanation about how complicated it is and how hard it is to get it right if on any disagreement with the same experts one wouldn't get yelled at as "science denier" and accused in willing to murder millions of people by his stupidity. I mean I get it, there's a complex question whether masks help (depends on which mask, in which circumstance, how long is the contact, how skilled you are in wearing masks, etc.) But isn't that why we are paying the CDC guys - to have clear guidelines about such stuff?
OK, let's say CDC guys screwed up and got caught with their pants down (oh man did they...) and now we have no clear guidelines about it. Then come down from the ivory tower and tell us what you have and let us decide without politicians yelling at us and jerking it around - one day you are an idiot murderer because you're wearing mask, next day you're an idiot murderer because you don't. It just breeds contempt for the whole setup.
I completely agree that the rhetoric around “Science!” has gotten increasingly more toxic. I say this as a trained scientist, we really do at bad job of communicating. This is made worse by a media and a general public that isn’t used to thinking in scientific terms.
By that I mean we spend so much time as scientists living with and making decisions about which course of action to take in the context of uncertain data. Other fields obviously do too, but for a bench scientist, every day is is a constant tradeoff on which data you buy, what experiments will you run to confirm/exclude it, and what’s the downside of that decision. The best rarely speak in full certainty, they talk about probabilities.
Contrast to public messaging or journalism which is, “do this, not that.” This has led to people holding “science” as an identity, a talisman of righteousness. That’s not how science works, but people want to feel better by judging people so here we are.
I personally would have preferred a short, coherent statement on what we know for sure and what we don’t, how confident we are about the same, and to treat people as adults.
The problem with summing up a multi-dimensional tradeoff as simplistic negative advice is that it creates FUD that sticks with us indefinitely. Instead of acknowledging the goal we needed to work towards and getting everyone onto the same page, we end up arguing over a trivial issue as the nonsensical advice continue to echo. The biggest benefit to everyone wearing masks would be that we could finally stop talking about masks.
Remember spending a few weeks agonizing over how to ramp up ventilator production, rather than focusing on masks? And then finally coming around to masks could be useful, with everyone championing DIY cloth masks? We're four months into this thing and most everyone is still proudly wearing those ersatz face-rags, even spending effort to "improve" them as as fashion accessories. Meanwhile a proper N95 costs around $3 to produce and distribute - I thought we were supposed to be an industrialized society!
This isn't complicated at all, it's only been made to look so by governments and organizations caught with their pants down.
Not wearing a mask offers zero protection from an illness which is mainly transmitted through droplets and aerosols.
Wearing a mask offers some protection, ranging from little to very good depending on the type of mask. In the mean time we know that surgical masks offer pretty good protection in particular, but there were studies about SARS, MERS and influenza going back years showing that both FFP2/N95+ and surgical masks do help.
We even have studies comparing incorrect, partly incorrect vs correct usage.
The conclusion is inescapable: even if people on average wear masks incorrectly and even if the masks they wear aren't even close to 95% effective, they reduce the rate of transmission.
Why on Earth would you not want to reduce the rate of transmission even if by a few percent?
You are assuming that people’s behaviors are identical when wearing and not wearing masks.
This is what we do not know (still).
There are plenty of results in life science far more counterintuitive than the hypothesis, “people are less strict about social distancing when wearing masks.”
There are countries - including in the EU - which made masks mandatory or highly recommended them. If "we" do not know how people behave when wearing masks, we could simply ask them.
Although we don't strictly need to ask them, since the head of the Chinese CDC said more than a month ago that using masks is essential and that he doesn't understand why Europe doesn't do it. KCDC specialists said much of the same thing, although I don't know if they expressed concern at Europe's lax attitude toward masks.
And finally here's a couple of anecdotes:
* people in supermarkets seem a bit more careful now, since the masks have been introduced. But keeping 1.5-2m distance at all times is hard and this is certainly not always respected. That's the whole point of why one needs masks instead of relying on distancing - distancing doesn't always work, but having a mask on is pretty simple. And even if the wearer screws up, at least they don't easily infect the others.
* before the mandatory mask thing people generally got out of my way when they saw me with my mask on.
I think on balance you’re right masks probably don’t hurt, and this is a change from my initial views. I don’t think they’re quite as magical as people seem to think. For example if you wear glasses you’ll notice how easy it is to have them fog up with a mask that doesn’t fit well. Those are your droplets shooting vertically into the air. We don’t know how reused masks perform either esp. when they get dirty. Still, probably helps overall.
Where it does cause harm is early on if everyone gets N95s and the docs can’t get enough (which absolutely happened) then that actually kills more people (docs, nurses, and the people they would have saved).
The right message in retrospect should have been, “don’t go buy masks, save those for people who need the highest performance, but wear a cloth mask when indoors. Wash it frequently.” We screwed up, but it’s not malice and it is complicated.
There was definitely no malice or intent to mislead by health authorities in this regard and the claim that there was has always struck me as a bizarre result of selective reporting.
You can go back a few months and the WHO went on record plenty of times regarding a couple of points
- Health workers really need good PPE and there is a shortage
- When infected people wear a mask, it reduces transmission
- The benefits of a non-infected person wearing a mask are not super well understood/studied and this topic doesn't really come up much because our main audience is healthcare professionals
So they said at one point, focus on getting the masks to health care workers, and then as mask supply increased they said the infected should wear them too, and now that cloth/paper masks are easy to obtain they say everyone should wear them.
It was always a question of supply and availability, there was no conspiracy.
If you looked beyond the headlines and looked at the context it was pretty clear.
The recommendation against masks was probably a knee-jerk reaction. Or maybe a bureaucratic "we know better than you" reaction
At the same time the amount of people that think that have the mask below the nose or just at the chin or mishandling it because it feels "uncomfortable" to them is astounding. I'm not sure but I believe an intubation is more uncomfortable (and yes these are predominantly people at risk ages)
The UK did a study a few years ago on the most important threat. The #1 spot (on importance) was a pandemic and would have way more impact than the #2 threat. The report suggested various things, including e.g. masks, etc. The report was ignored.
In US there's been many warnings to subsidize a strategic PPE supply and production. This was ignored. Early on (COVID-19) a US mask producer asked officials to provide money to expand production. This was ignored.
It wasn't just easy to predict, it was predicted various times.
The problem with falsehoods is that by making and perpetuating them, you are undermining your own credibility. Yes, there are some who will think that maybe it was better to be lied to, but most will remember the fact that they were lied to. And some of those will believe that they were lied to because their life was discounted.
The problem with lying is that your intent doesn’t matter, you still lied, and in a society that is built on gradations of trust, you’re trading against your own credibility every time you lie. You don’t get a discount on the price of your lie simply because you were acting in a paternalistic manner, in fact, Officers and employees of the government taking a paternalistic position makes their lie worse and increases the cost to their own credibility in the long run.
It's a trust problem more than anything else. If I trust the medical professionals, I may accept them lying for our own societal good.
However, lots of people don't trust (various types of) "authority". And for them, the lie is further proof of their prior lack of trust.
It's a hard problem, which has been made a lot worse by the politicising of masks, in particular.
My own prior is that Asian people have been wearing masks for many years, and I am inclined to believe that masks are (somewhat) useful. However, there's been so little research on mask-wearing by the general populace that I am deeply uncertain about those benefits.
I don't disagree, but I feel like you're understating it. The reason people don't trust "authority" is because they can't always tell when they're trustworthy, and the more disconnected from their "authority" figures they are, the less they are able to figure it out. So when public health officials, the same public health officials that told us to stay home, close our shops, give up our incomes and livelihoods and stability contradict themselves, they lose trust, and let's be honest, rightfully so.
It is one thing for us as laymen to discuss the efficacy of masks, staying at home, shutting down the economy, not partaking in the activities we used to enjoy and so on. It is an entirely different thing for a person in some kind of authority, like "public health", where your primary domain of expertise is communicable diseases to step out of their lane (which is communicable diseases) and say despite the supposedly high risk of death and bodily destruction that an apolitical virus with neither vices nor virtues nor policy positions can wreck, it is entirely okay to go out and protest something, but only if it is something that "we in authority" currently agree is worth protesting. This is, by the way, not long after the 9th Circuit said allowing Churches to reopen (even with limitations) would make the Constitution into a suicide pact.
People don't trust authority because authority doesn't want to stay in its own lane. Take Anthony Fauci, he has done a remarkable job staying out of the fray as much as possible and simply acting as an advisor to the President and to the people, and people trusted him even when they wanted to imagine their own politics on him. As a civil servant, absolute standout guy, and he's now considered one of the most trusted medical professionals in the country because he stays in his lane, meaning he allows his politics to take a backseat (not even the backseat, it's back in the trunk) to his job and Office (Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases).
Forgive me, I went on a small rant, but to conclude, when you have lying in the first instance and not staying in your lane in the second, one of the effects is going to be a loss of credibility, and that's both just and understandable. Choices have consequences, and that includes lying, and that includes using your unelected Office for activist purposes. Even when you're right about something, up to and including the efficacy of masks, you've already lost credibility, and in the case of masks, you've already directly contradicted yourself. (I mean "you" as in public health officials recently, not you specifically my fellow HN).
We indeed live in an era where all things are binary.
But what is a thinking person supposed to think when the Surgeon General is saying don’t wear masks in a pandemic caused by airborne viri?
In urban (educated) zones likely to be hotbeds for outbreaks, could the state not do a little nuance and say “hospitals need the N95s and you need a bandana”
Everybody has got a bandana, but if I were to start walking into stores with one before sanctioned, someone would be calling 911. In the meantime, how many weeks go by at R 3...
Hopefully this doesn't come across as pedantic but airborne transmission of COVID-19 is rare. Not ruled out completely but not the main way it is spread. In the initial Chinese study of 75K they said there was zero airborne transmission, I think they've found some exceptions since but it's not a common thing.
The WHO actually has a definition for this, when the droplets carrying the disease are <5μm they spread further and drift around for longer and that's when they start calling it airborne instead of droplets, COVID-19 is not in this category.
It's still good to wear a mask, I've lost count of the number of times over the years that some excited extrovert straight up spit in my face because they were worked up about something. lol.
If your source that airborne transmission is rare is the WHO, then all you have is a worthless source.
Recently I've read an interview with Drosten (the German virologist which came up with one of the Coronavirus tests) say that they're starting to see airborne transmission as an important transmission factor, maybe not a strong as droplets but comparable. This is especially the case in poorly ventilated spaces.
Well, at least in the west we're starting to see it now, but we're late to the party compared to Asian countries.
We already knew for instance that SARS is transmitted through aerosols. Then a new thing comes up which is related to the above and is basically named SARS-2 and we forget about the aerosols and instead think we should wash our hands a lot. Words can't express how stupid this is.
I don't have much, but maybe this contains a hint on the effects of mask usage on the German death growthrate.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157238440973015
(Masks about 25.4 - the effect should be visible around the middle of May)
After looking closely I found a small move into the wrong direction (maybe caused by something else?!??)
There have been studies which have found that the virus can aerosolize, but it hasn't been established that infectious spread occurs this way. For example, it could be that viral concentrations in an aerosolized form aren't enough to cause an infection (or maybe they can get there, in prolonged close quarters, but by then you're being exposed multiple ways, so it doesn't matter or can't be determined). Either way it seems that the protocol for preventing transmission probably won't change much; the current protocols (including ubiquitous mask usage) have been enough for Korea, Taiwan etc. to control the spread.
As far as I have seen, currently people don't use masks for close contact talking situations (family, friends, work, chatting...).
With mask usage in Germany I see only negative trends in the growthrate of both case and death. I think to make them work something has to be changed.
There is a good chance that it now only works as a reverse placebo - it makes people feel confident and pushes them into more risky behaviour - most likely net negative.
Rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
There seems to be a trend to paint people as imbeciles who can't tie their own shoelaces without somebody standing over them, and then on investigation it turns out not to be true.
There was a story a while back about a couple who drank fish tank cleaner (containing chloroquine) after Trump touted chloroquine against the coronavirus. Come to find out the couple were not fans of Trump but were having marital difficulties, so now you've got to weigh the possibility that these two were stupid enough to drink poison against the possibility that the woman discovered a way to intentionally poison her husband and pin it on Trump:
More often than not, when you see someone doing something apparently colossally stupid, it's because you don't know the whole story rather than because they're actually that stupid. People understand nuance plenty when it's important to them.
Wait, you read a NY Post article with rumors about a married couple having marriage difficulties, and you believe you've uncovered the "whole story" that other people are somehow blind to but you can see?
Do you want the same story from a dozen different sources? This is actually a good example of the differences between partisan sources. The New York Post article says this:
> Mesa City police declined to comment on the investigation but told the paper that the probe was “normal protocol” for non-natural deaths and noted that the case has not been ruled a homicide “at this time.”
In left-leaning publications they omit "at this time" and make that the headline.
But the interesting thing about the story isn't the police determination. That hasn't been made yet, so it tells us nothing, and anyway the police would have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The whole point is using that excuse creates a lot of reasonable doubt even if it was completely intentional.
The value of the story is that it gives us some new evidence. The narrative that somebody recklessly drank fish tank cleaner after a Trump recommendation loses credibility when you learn that the person was anti-Trump and thereby not inclined to unthinkingly believe whatever he says, up to and including drinking something with a label on it that says poison. Meanwhile a plausible alternative explanation exists.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, however I now no faith in anything that the WHO, US surgeon general and to some limited extend the CDC and RKI say, because of the way they lied or hid the truth in the past.
I have much more faith in the KCDC for example and otherwise I want to see studies.
And anyway, people are unfairly accused of hoarding masks. It turns out that in the US, Australia, Germany (and probably other countries) China was buying up all the masks.
Who do you trust instead? Seriously asking, because dismissing somethig is always the easy part.
Regarding the masks, I went deepy down that rabbit hole in February and March. Most production happens in China. China didn't produce anything, needed what was there for themselves and had closed down a lot cities and ports and such. At the same time, demand increased by orders of magnitude around the world. hence the shortage. China didn't buy masks en mass from other countries, they didn't need to. A ,ot of fraud happened as soon as production resumed. No, people who, with a financial interest, tried to help sort out the shortage once the German government failed to do so, are sitting on tons of masks they bought in good faith for 5 - 10 times the normal price. Currently prces are down to roughly 2x the pre-Covid-19 prices. See the problem? People hoarding made the issue even worse.
Hordng mass during that period for retail sales or your own use, thus preventing PPE from getting to medical care professionals, is the deffinition of hoarding.
All of your mentioned institutions are publishing or using studies. Go look them up. But maybe accept that the people behind them know more about the subject than you do.
I did say I trust the KCDC, didn't I? And also the CDC and RKI can obviously do some good work, but they completely failed to set the story straight on masks and aerosol transmission while over-emphasizing the fomite transmission and hand washing. So at least on those topics they've lost credibility.
I don't know if China needed the masks, or if they needed to weld people in their apartments, but apparently they did that anyway. See for example the article "Billions of face masks sent to China during Australian bushfire crisis". This was happening around February.
Spiegel published an article in which a distributor of protection equipment got orders for months of inventory within a day from various Chinese customers. They also claimed that all the other distributors which they knew had a similar situation on their hands. In fact they got so many orders that they alerted the ministry of health about an upcoming bottleneck in procuring PPE.
Then there's the US: "U.S. exported millions in masks and ventilators ahead of the coronavirus crisis". $17.5 millions worth of masks exported during January and February.
And this is in addition to the hundreds of thousands in PPE they received as donations from all over the world.
The average Joe buying a 10 or 20 pack for himself & family is first of all not hoarding, as this is a very small quantity and secondly didn't cause the shortage.
One average Joe, no. Thousands of them? Yes, that's harding. And a problem. China got a lot donations, they also were the first to donate to Italy. The mask situation was a mess.
The proble I have is, that now people accuse every institute or offical body of lying. Because they got, in people's minds, the mask thing wrong. Why can't we just accept that even experts can be wrong? Starting to accuse others of lying is the first step towards conspiracy theories, IMHO, as it only leaves black and white. And what is it that the WHO and co. have to be right 100% right from the start and everybody else is just asking questions?
If we take Australia's case of billions of masks (let's say 2 billion, conservatively), and assume that each average Joe bought let's say 20, the actions of the Chinese government are equal to *one hundred million average Joes", not thousands of them. For one country.
It's mighty noble to donate to Italy after they confiscated all the inland mask production and bought tons of masks from everywhere else. And then they also pressured European politicians to prasise the communist party when receiving said donations.
Not every institute, just the WHO and to some limited extent a few others. Stop setting up this straw man, because that's clearly not the case for me and I listed some organizations which I do trust - because they've proven that they're competent.
Experts can be wrong, sure they can. But if their literal job is to protect us from such pandemic situations and they fuck up, they deserve some criticism.
If they persist in not recommending masks when already most countries are recommending them, like the WHO did until 1-2 weeks ago, they are uselessly incompetent and should be ignored.
I don't think _every post_ whining about the lies of the health authorities has a libertarian "fuck everyone else" subtext.
It seems to me that the original misinformation on this subject has caused a continued belief that masks are not helpful in reducing transmission. Initial public health recommendations cannot easily be walked back. Once the meme is sufficiently embedded, it's nearly impossible to dislodge.
There seems a fairly trivial explanation: they were talking about the effectiveness of a mask in protecting you from what you breathe in, not the communal action of everyone wearing a mask to protect other people from what you breathe out.
Surgical masks offer some limited protection for the wearer (20-80 AFAIK according to some study).
Respirators offer good to very good protection for the wearer.
For a long time I was under the impression that surgical masks don't really help the wearer. There are some studies showing comparable effects to an N95, but I was assuming incorrect N95 usage and I was incorrectly dismissing the benefit of even low double-digit protection.
The thing that convinced me to take a closer look was an interview with the German infection specialist Peter Walger, which said that:
* all masks protect the wearer to a certain degree
* medical grade surgical masks clearly offer partial protection. This was a grave error, which made personnel also in clinical practice not trust the masks and wear them for protection.
The last Sars or Coronavirus illnesses differed from this one, as in those cases asymptomatic people were not spreading the virus very much.
So the (reasonable) assumption was that people mostly know when they are contagious and stay at home.
In that scenario "community masks" (everything below FPP-2) don't matter much.
When researchers found that Covid-19 is different (and that has to do with the massively higher virus load in the throat, where former similar diseases built most of the virus load in the lungs), the stance changed.
That is a good thing! Learn new information, adapt your response.
What's fueling conspiracy theories now is that the messaging back then centered on "we need to preserve masks for the medical community", which was a smaller component of the motivation, sure, but got mostly conflated with the real argument. I think that is because it was much easier to explain to the public and to journalists.
In hindsight that was a mistake. But the conspiracy theories that health officials just flip-flopped for no reason is wrong, and it's damaging the fabric of society even more.
"which was a smaller component of the motivation, sure, but got mostly conflated with the real argument. I think that is because it was much easier to explain to the public and to journalists."
When wearing mask in public you're not protecting yourself - that's ineffective - you're protecting others from your own cough/talking droplets - that's effective.
Exactly. Why do you think you disagree with me there?
The point is that when almost all contagious people stay at home, we don't need community masks. We only need them because contagious people are asymptomatic (that's new!), tehrefore don't know about their status and therefore go out in public.
That is anecdata. Maybe valid for, say, January. Starting Febuary, that changed. Again anecdata, but In Germany you got up to 2 weeks of sick eave for potential COVID-19 symptoms without seeing a doctor.
I must be unlucky because my colleagues almost always come to work sneezing for a few days until (if!) they take sick days. This was right before the pandemic, when the situation was getting hot in China but not yet in Europe.
> “we need to preserve masks for the medical community”
To be fair, I remember looking it up on the CDC website when this all started, and they explicitly stated any masks are not necessary (or useful) unless you are caring for a sick patient.
That's exactly what I wrote: the working assumption was that you wouldn't be contagious (because then you'd be staying at home yourself). That turned out to be wrong. Later.
Given that this assumption doesn't work with something as banal and common place as the flu... why would it apply to a new respiratory virus, especially since people were anyways coming down with colds and the flu and had no clue what they had.
"So the (reasonable) assumption was that people mostly know when they are contagious and stay at home."
Too bad this pandemic overlapped with the flu season and with a period of time where many people had colds, thereby rendering the above assumption null and void.
In other words, the number of black lives that may be lost during these protests from the virus alone is worth sacrificing because #blacklivesmatter. Meanwhile, anti-lockdown protests, which were much smaller, are nothing but a bunch of wreckless people protesting to be able to get haircuts. Nothing to do with all the other losses and risks that myopic, upper middle class "experts" can't seem to comprehend. Unemployed black people also don't matter, I guess.
I mean, really. How can people not see the writing on the wall? All of this is political finagling. Black protestors are merely convenient instruments. The political opportunists pushing this bland disingenuous crap don't care about George Floyd in the least.
The CDC revised their risk estimates towards the end of last month.
"The fifth scenario is the CDC's "current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States." In that scenario, the agency described its estimate that 0.4% of people who feel sick with Covid-19 will die.
For people age 65 and older, the CDC puts that number at 1.3%. For people 49 and under, the agency estimated that 0.05% of symptomatic people will die."
Those CDC numbers are really weird btw. 0.4% of symptomatic cases is like a 0.2-0.3% IFR.
0.3% of the New York City population has already died of corona-virus. So assuming everyone in New York was infected that gives us an IFR of .3%. But if a more realistic 20% of the population was infected then the IFR could be as high as 1.5%.
I tried going through all the most recent research and almost all of it came up with an IFR in the 0.5-1.2% range. And the few that had a lower rate were looking at anti-body tests in places with very low base rates.
Maybe the 20% of the population was more susceptible? It seems that the outbreak was concentrated in long-term care facilities, healthcare workers (who received a larger viral load than average), and the poor (who tend to have more pre-existing conditions). If the 20% is not randomly distributed the math can still work out.
The math could work out, but if that was true then that means if NYC got 5 times as many infections the number of fatalities would barely change.
I would find that hard to believe and I also doubt they would have enough data to validate that type of hypothesis. We're still guessing at the number of people infected, not to mention how old are they, what pre-existing conditions did they have, how do those pre-existing condition affect Covid-19 mortality in different age groups, what viral load did they receive, etc..
Fair points! You could probably make an estimate with a stratified approach but if 0.3% have already died there’s no wiggle room for additional deaths.
An interesting question is this: which 20% got it? A representative sample, or a localized group with unusual risk characteristics, like retirement homes or prisons?
The problem for me is we don't have any way at this time of knowing at an individual level what the consequences are likely to be. I might have no symptoms if I get sick but I may transmit it my son (type 1 diabetic) who might die. Or maybe he'd be fine and I might die, etc. There's just no way to gauge what one's reaction might be to getting the coronavirus.
A local, healthy 8 year old girl started having symptoms last week Thursday and died the following Tuesday.
I don't expect my family's lockdown to end before well into next year at the earliest. The odds are against dying or long term complications for younger people, but is going out to dinner, a bar, sporting or music event worth the risk? Not for me. Stay safe folks.
So far it looks like these are the absolute exception, but it does sadly happen that young healthy people and kids too get seriously sick and sometimes even die.
The German pediatric association publishes some (incomplete) stats about the disease in children (https://dgpi.de/covid-19-survey-update-kw22/) and there were so far 159 hospitalizations, with 21 of those in intensive care. 140 kids were released, 1 died. ~9600 <19yos registered as sick with COVID.
Key word: Incomplete. As was Drostens study about the virus concentration in children. The German Fox News wannabe BILD tried to kill him for it. Incomplete studies and data is the norm right now. I am happy to not have to make decissions about life and death based on this. Someone has, so. And erring on the side of caution isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The DGPI data is not a study, but rather they collect data from children's clinics and it is incomplete in the sense that not all clinics deliver information to them. If anything there could be more hospitalizations and deaths, but that seems rather unlikely.
In any case I agree that the topic COVID and children is particularly sensitive and still blurry right now.
There’s the risk of death and injury, which is an interesting discussion, and then there’s the fear. With cases beginning to rise rapidly in multiple states again, I expect the latter to have a more dominant effect on our behavior
The CDC estimate (IFR 0.26%, S-IFR 0.4%) is heavily criticized because it ignores, thus predates, the 3 largest and most reliable serosurveys which all indicate an IFR of ~1% (S-IFR ~1.54%, assuming 35% of cases are asymptomatic):
The wider NY state has an IFR of 0.5%. The IFR should also be very sensitive to the demographics of the infection. Both the UK and NY State had a policy of sending recovering (but potentially contagious) older covid patients back to nursing homes and it would have exacerbated the mortality rate vs regions that did a better job at protecting the elderly.
I am also starting to hear some noise that there might be cross immunity between this virus and previous coronavirus. In a recent video Prof Raoult was suggesting it might explain the low infection rate of people under 20 [1]. I am not qualified to tell whether the theory has any leg but it may be that we underestimate the spread of the virus when looking at a specific antibody.
However they note that the official state death count (15740 deaths) «only indicates deaths that happened in a hospital or a nursing home, and does not include coronavirus-related deaths that occurred in a home, which means the official death count is likely higher than that official number»
> Both the UK and NY State had a policy of sending recovering (but potentially contagious) older covid patients back to nursing homes and it would have exacerbated the mortality rate vs regions that did a better job at protecting the elderly.
Isn't the death rate the percentage of population that dies when all are infected? Then nothing can be "exacerbated" by that alone? It then just reflects the death rate which results from the people being infected, no matter the speed?
The rate quoted by the parent, I believe, is the number of deaths divided by the number of people estimated to be infected, by prorating an antibody test sampling to the wider population. So that doesn’t assume everyone got exposed to the virus, and assumes the sampling is a representative sample (but in NY it was sampled in grocery stores, which tells you nothing about infection rate in nursing homes that made up 40% of the deaths).
> the number of deaths divided by the number of people estimated to be infected, by prorating an antibody test sampling to the wider population. So that doesn’t assume everyone got exposed to the virus
To get the rate one can indeed calculate it with smaller representative sample, but that just doesn't imply that the vulnerable people would somehow never become infected if the epidemic continues, so the deaths of the old can't be avoided then. That the old die much more is a fact, and nothing that by itself "exacerbates" the rate.
Edit: I haven't seen any argument that estimated more than 20% of NY population that were supposedly infected were somehow specially skewed sample to hit only old people, and I'd argue that if the sample is that big it's quite improbable. If the argument is that the virus got faster in the nursing homes, one can also argue that all the old people outside of nursing homes skewed in the another direction by managing to initially not get the infection, but that as epidemic progresses they would indeed eventually become infected and suffer.
Edit2: "the virus is rather showing signs of going away" claim is very curious to me. I don't see it "going away" looking at all the statistics across the different parts of the world. I see only the slowdown of the spread, which corresponds to people generally changing their behavior to slow it down.
But that sample may not be representative of the demographics of the people who got infected. It is possible that a lot more people in care homes have been infected than the grocery store sample, because of the policy of sending covid patients there (and the fact that the staff must have physical contact with each of the patients every day and therefore it will spread within a care home may very quickly).
If it is the case, you don't expect the same death rate to scale up as the wider population continues to get infected (if it is still happening, the virus is rather showing signs of going away).
In the very article you link to the case of New York is mentioned by Bergstrom, specifically to critique that estimate, and point that New York disproves it.
I verified that claim:
We know that the antibody tests in NYC gave the estimate of "all infected" of 20% of all. But there were around 20K deaths, and NYC has 8.3M population. Also even if we expect that the spread will stop once the 70% of population is infected the result is: 100e3 * 0.7 / 8e6 = 0.87%
Still much more than 0.4%. That it's closer to 1% matches all the statistics of the countries of the world that did a lot of testing compared to the number of cases and deaths.
Back to the article:
Bergstrom in the article: "Given that these parameter sets underestimate fatality by a substantial margin compared to current scientific consensus, this is deeply problematic."
In the same article, even CDC disclaims that their numbers are predictions:
"The scenarios are intended to advance public health preparedness and planning. They are not predictions or estimates of the expected impact of COVID-19" the CDC says.
So it seems you intentionally misinterpret CDC, given that it's all in the very article you linked.
I'm older than you and I've lost alot of faith in 'experts' as well.
Today I read about several published studies that were retracted for unreliable data related to covid drugs.
I'm now just using all of these things as one data point to make a decision with. News, politicians, scientific publications, experts, data.
I've also lost faith in certain political parties which I was previously a member for their fanaticism and demonization of people who disagreed with their narrative and who still can't admit their thinking was flawed.
> no wonder people don’t believe in global warming, these “experts” prioritize politics over everything
I read this as a clear expression of your frustration. Completely reasonable given the situation.
Are you familiar with the YouTube channel "Smarter Every Day"? There's this three-part series that might offer a new perspective on the distrust and disillusionment you seem to be feeling:
In particular, the channel creator Destin Sandlin explores how YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are being used as a sort of vanguard in a meta-game to undermine our trust in the social institutions we rely on.
It's a pretty dystopian-sounding and bleak theme. However, Destin is really good at conveying a message of hope.
Use your Critical Mind, of course, but also realize that there's a personal cost to adopting absolutist views like `"experts" prioritize politics over everything.'
> to undermine our trust in the social institutions we rely on.
Is it YTs fault that the WHO was the absolutely dead last institution to recommend face mask usage on the planet? That even some countries that are having a very poor response have already recommended (or made mandatory in some circumstances) the use of masks?
That the WHO is accepting all manners of political interference from China?
Is it YTs fault that Lancet and NEJM published a completely fabricated article about HCQ usage at the point where this has become a contentious point? Sure, in the same week we have had other serious studies about it, but that one was, most likely, a fraud, that was rubber stamped by journals.
That, at a critical moment, researchers from a prestigious epidemiology centre have pulled some models they had on the shelves without enough second-guessing it and predicting very catastrophic results (which granted, there might have been unknown at the time reasons for it)
So yeah, I don't think it's solely the fault of Youtube and Facebook.
I think the point is that usually, a layman would suspect the expert opinion after being exposed to another view broadcast on social media. Social media is the source and the moderator of our contrarian/critics information.
I got very skeptical reading the reaction to the antibody studies here. Also, the total hate for Sweden really depressed me. I've always held this place in high regard but I suppose it's still just more of the same.
The prevalence is too low for the antibody tests to be reliable. Every public health expert has reported that but people refuse to listen. Sweden has admitted their strategy is not working.
They have done nothing of the sort. Tegnell was quoted as saying he would do some things differently, but was explicit that avoiding lockdowns was not something he would change.
One ting everybod gnores right now regardign experts is, that this a novel virus. We don't have any prior exerience or knowledge about it. Wich means incomplete data and potentially wrong data from day one. Making decissions in such cirumstances is incredibly difficult, and I expect every expert to change his mind when the data changes.
Does that potential confuse people? Yes. Are experts always right? No. Are they still the best resource we have? Yes.
I mean, Sweden is fairing badly next to their neighbors, and horrendously compared to countries like Taiwan and South Korea (who also didn’t have lockdowns). I don’t think people hate the country so much as they’re assessing the relative failure of their approach.
Sweden failed to protect their own elderly, mainly because national authorities simply assumed that local authorities were ready to fight a pandemic, when they were in fact hopelessly underfunded and staffed by underpaid staff with no PPE and who were expected to do stay at home on their own initiative and without payment if they got sick.
The same happened in a few places here in Finland, and I am quite certain that if we'd let COVID-19 through retirement homes the way our dear neighbors did, we'd have a much higher death-rate.
The actual Swedish stragegy, i.e. a soft lock-down with strong recommendations and only minor restrictions in travelling and gatherings, could actually have worked. Unfortunately, we'll never know as they screwed the retirement home situation up as bad as they did.
Sweden did screw up the retirement home situation somewhat, but in terms of excess deaths all Nordic countries look identical. Finland, notably, doesn't even count covid deaths outside hospitals according to the THL, so comparing Swedish and Finnish covid stats is a bit silly.
The Swedish catastrophe is always another 2 weeks away, and secondary effects of a lockdown (like delaying non-critical medical procedures and not screening for cancer) are likely to be much more significant than anticipated. Let's not forget that lockdowns were a knee-jerk reaction enacted by scared politicians, not a carefully considered and data-backed policy.
> in terms of excess deaths all Nordic countries look identical Finland, notably, doesn't even count covid deaths outside hospitals according to the THL, so comparing Swedish and Finnish covid stats is a bit silly
Where did you get those numbers from? EUROMOMO doesn't include data from Iceland, but for the rest it's obvious that Sweden is an outlier in regards to the overall mortality rate:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country
Denmark, Finland and Norway are below the normal mortality rates for 65+ since the lockdowns began. Sweden is clearly above. I assume there's not another epidemic over there that we've missed?
Again, I'm not saying the Swedish strategy is wrong, I'm just saying that the failure to protect the elderly has invalidated Sweden as a data point.
There has definitely been a bunch of deaths related to COVID-19 in Finnish retirement homes, but in terms of overall mortality rates for people 65+ it's quite obvious that it's not a big problem. Actual COVID-19 diagnoses are still reported by THL, including everyone who gets diagnosed by the public health system in Finland. Finland has unrelated, considerable, issues with care for the elderly, but that's a completely different topic. :)
> Let's not forget that lockdowns were a knee-jerk reaction enacted by scared politicians, not a carefully considered and data-backed policy.
Definitely. Lock-downs are last-resort measures taken when you've already failed to do what you should have done in the first place; extensive testing of travellers and contact tracing/quarantine of people who are sick. The other Nordic countries failed miserably in that regard.
Chart cumulative all cause deaths per seasonal influenza year (meaning week 40 to week 39) for each of the nordic countries. Correct prior years for population growth. Then take the average all cause mortality of the past 7 (or 10, whatever) years and compare that to this year's all cause mortality and you'll get a completely different result. Or just eyeball the all cause mortality of the previous couple of years: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZlnYQCU0AA0jkv?format=png&name=...
It's so "obvious" that Sweden is an outlier that people don't bother to look at the data more seriously. Sweden didn't lock down ergo it must be a disaster, the data be damned.
> in terms of overall mortality rates for people 65+ it's quite obvious that it's not a big problem
That's correct. The overal mortality of all Nordic countries is completely unexceptional. Politicians panicked because they believed that this disease would be very deadly (it isn't), kills healthy young people (it doesn't), spreads exponentially (it never has), and spreads through asymptomatic hosts (it doesn't).
I think Sweden’s strategy is on the bad end of the spectrum and Taiwan and South Korea’s on the great end. I don’t anticipate any more catastrophe for them than their relative peers in the bad response group, but they did do quite bad compared to liberal democracies in SE Asia. Taiwan has had 11 deaths and South Korea about 300. Sweden has about 4700.
South Korea uses exceptionally privacy invasive types of tracking and tracing, so their approach is better described as "police state" than as "liberal democracy"
This coronavirus hasn't made in a big impact anywhere in SE Asia, even though countries responded in very different ways. This suggests that the virus doesn't take hold for a different reason, e.g. pre-existing immunity.
South Korea is not a “police state.” All of the same info is collected by advertising companies and 3-letter agencies in the US.
> This suggests that the virus doesn't take hold for a different reason, e.g. pre-existing immunity.
No, it suggests the variety of their responses were on the effective side of things, while Sweden’s was not. Taiwan’s VP is an epidemiologist who has guided their response from day one and should be credited for that work.
Maybe people are so hostile about Sweden because people keep insisting they be graded on a curve, contrary to the real success stories.
So it's not bad because the US is doing it too? Or, maybe, the US doesn't respect the privacy of its residents either.
Taiwan started taking action before the first case had even been reported. And yes, they do deserve credit for that.
Sweden's response was also effective, given that the virus had already spread widely across Europe by the time the politicians woke up. There is some variation in the way cases/deaths are tracked between countries, but when you look at All Cause Mortality it's clear that Sweden is right in the middle of the pack, and they accomplished that without the massive externalities (both human and financial) of a lockdown. That's a success, but yes, Europe should have responded aggressively in Dec as Taiwan did.
Sweden cooperates with the US on all that surveillance, so you can’t really argue that they’re better relative to the US or South Korea. Arguably worse, because South Korea actually saved lives with it while Sweden got no pandemic-fighting benefit in return.
The South Korean and Swedish responses began at about the same time, so again, this seems like special pleading. South Korea has more direct exchange with China as well.
If your argument is that Europe overall hasn’t done a great job, and Sweden isn’t that far of a deviation from that performance, ok. But again, that’s not an accomplishment relative to the actually successful countries like Taiwan and South Korea. I don’t understand how having many times more deaths be considered “effective” relative to these countries? Again, they didn’t have any of the economic damage caused by lockdowns either.
This isn't weasel speak at all. They're pretty clear that it's risky. They're just saying that they won't condemn protestors as taking frivolous risks the way anti-lockdown protestors or fun-seekers are. Police brutality, systemic racism, income inequality are all major public health risks in their own right.
I don't understand -- are keeping people out of work and isolated at home not public health risks? If non-Covid related factors are being considered in weighing against the risks of exposure they should all be considered, not only some of them, selectively.
I didn't hear any virologist claiming that isolation isn't a health risk.But it seems to take more time to have serious effects, COVID-19 on the other hand has the short term effect of overwhelming a health care system an causing thousands of deaths. And the lock-downs have never been planned to be permanent, were they?
Don't be obtuse. Of course all factors were considered. Keeping people out of offices and shops is not a public health risk. People becoming impoverished and losing health insurance is. That's why the federal government spent $2T protecting people's financial health to offset the damage. The bigger question is why health care access is tied to employment, but there's no way the current regime would consider dealing with that issue.
Also, you're comparing government policy with an academic opinion.
No. Unemployment is generally regarded as a public health risk, beyond the immediate insurance consequences. There will moreover be people who suffer long-term impacts that these short-term payments can only partially mitigate.
A number of countries have implemented wage subsidy schemes, in which the government pays employers to keep employees on payroll even while there is no work for them to do due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Those schemes are in some ways better than unemployment benefits, in that they maintain the employer-employee relationship which increases the odds the job will still be there to go back to when the crisis is over.
That's a unique US thing. In countries like New Zealand people in the service industry get the same minimum wage as anyone else ($18.90 per hour) and don't rely on tips, they're normal employees and go through the same normal tax system.
That's why there is the joke about people from overseas not knowing how to tip.
Seems to be a US thing. In Germany, every company can as for "Kurzarbeit", short-wok, or all or part of its employees. Which are on the payroll, thus properly registered, unless the company cheated. In whch case I wouldn't be surprsed of that company just closes shop and fires everyone.
It gets tricky for temps and contractors, so. If you are a temp, and employed by a third company lending you ut, that company can ask for Kurzarbeit. In agriculture and food processing, most of the work force are temps emplyed by sub-contractors. Thearetically, they are covered. In praxis, they are more often than not screwed. The sub-contractors sub-contractor is potentially ot evena german omany to begin with.
Shining light on this, is one of the few good things about Cocid-19, if you ask me.
Well, in Australia's case – the wage subsidy comes from the Australian Tax Office (ATO), which is our equivalent to the IRS. So if you haven't been withholding income tax from your employees, you can't get the subsidy for them (unless you confess your past tax evasion, which obviously you aren't going to do.)
But, paying employees cash only is much harder than it used to be. Many customers now only want to pay card. The tax office sees the card payments coming into your bank account, if you try to pay your employees cash it is easy for them to catch you. So, I think the number of workers actually hurt by that is relatively small.
COVID-19 has accelerated the transition from cash to card payment, because the health advice was to avoid cash payments (due to risk that cash may spread Coronavirus), and many businesses responded by refusing to accept cash entirely.
Unemployment is not the real problem there—people not having money is.
If the government would continue—and increase—the individual stimulus checks, it would matter much, much less how long the lockdown must continue. People would still be able to support themselves and keep themselves healthy.
> Keeping people out of offices and shops is not a public health risk
Telling people to stay at home all the time does have a negative impact on many people's mental health. It can both exacerbate pre-existing mental illness, and in some cases even cause the new onset of mental illness.
Fauci doesn't set policy. The CDC doesn't set policy. Even the White House has limited authority. Policy was a mishmash set by governors and mayors with or without support from DC and based on recommendations from multiple health, public safety and economic advisors.
I'm not for or against Fauci. He did what he was asked to do. The problem was he was thrust to the front as The Expert. Again, not his fault. However, that did compromise our ability to have seats at the table for all the unintended consequences.
Actually that's a good point and damn scary: anti-lockdown protests are very risky, but these are supposed to be fine?
Not being in the US, I hadn't realized the incredible double-standard at play. The US seems to be almost completely paralyzed in trying to deal with this virus, various social dynamics that have been festering for decades are coming to light now.
"Andrew Sullivan calls our attention to epidemiologist Tara C. Smith, who moves with that curious herd of 'experts' suddenly not terribly concerned about social distancing when the protesters filling the streets are left-wing rather than right-wing. Writes Sullivan: 'The message to normies: going outside is killing grandma. The message to woke kids: never mind!'
"So which is it? Were people like Smith lying before about the danger of spreading the virus, in order to promote a political agenda? Or being honest about it but now willing to endanger countless lives, in order to promote a political agenda?
"Adding smug cluelessness to her dishonesty and/or recklessness, Smith also sniffs that the difference is that those who rallied to end the lockdown were merely 'protesting for their ability to get a haircut.'
"Yes, of course, haircuts. It had nothing to do with wanting to get back to work in order to support their families, salvage businesses it took a lifetime to build, avoid depleting their life savings, get their kids back in the classroom, etc. It was all about haircuts." [0]
I think that excerpt makes my point for me, so I won't belabor it. Unless you want to apply the obtuse label to yourself like you did to bmmayer1.
To me, that seems like fairly precise language. They’re saying they do not believe the risk level is sufficiently high to condemn the gatherings. It doesn’t seem much different than saying grocery store visits are not condemned as risky, while music store visits are condemned as risky. The virus doesn’t care about what you’re shopping for either, it’s just that shopping for food is more important (by their estimation) than shopping for some vinyl.
That, and it's a healthy dose of pragmatism. If nobody is going to comply with your advice, you're doing more harm than good.
You can realistically tell people to shop for vinyl from the comfort of their couch, and they might do that.
Given the level of outrage, there were going to be large groups of protests across the country either way, but they were successfully convinced to wear masks, use hand sanitizer and spread out where they can. At least here, every time the mayor talks she urges people who went to protests to get tested.
"They’re saying they do not believe the risk level is sufficiently high to condemn the gatherings."
But that's obviously nonsense, given that not all of the participants wear masks, distance cannot be kept, they stay at the same location for a longer time and some are chanting/yelling.
It it nonsense though? If that's true it sounds like there was no need for anyone to weigh in at all; it was evidently obvious that these protests must be condemned. Do you believe that's the case?
> That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky.
Another excerpt from the article state:
> "We created the letter in response to emerging narratives that seemed to malign demonstrations as risky for the public health because of Covid-19," according to the letter writers, many of whom are part of the University of Washington's Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response. We believe that the way forward is not to suppress protests in the name of public health but to respond to protesters demands in the name of public health, thereby addressing multiple public health crises."
They are not thinking about it in terms of supporting/opposing the protests. Rather the protests are a fact and you need to deal with them somehow. You can do that by either suppressing them or addressing their concerns. They do not want their concerns of COVID-19 to justify suppressing the protests, especially if addressing the protestor's concerns is a viable option.
> They are saying that the protest is too important to take health considerations into account, but they are reluctant to speak plainly and tell people there's risk but they should be adult and choose to manage the risks themselves and maybe neglect small risk in order to achieve bigger thing.
This seems almost exactly the sentiment they are addressing in the letter. COVID-19 is a public health concern, so is racial disparities that result in racial disparities in medical outcomes. Their concerns over COVID-19 transmission should not be taken as justification for suppressing the protests.
From the article,
> "Staying at home, social distancing, and public masking are effective at minimizing the spread of COVID-19. To the extent possible, we support the application of these public health best practices during demonstrations that call attention to the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy," the letter says.
They are still giving the same advice they've been giving. The letter also states protest-specific COVID-19 harm mitigation strategies for protestors & police.
> Just in this case, our betters had decided the COVID risk is less important than protesting - so it's OK for us. But only in cases which are approved by our betters.
A more charitable interpretation is that some medical professionals do not believe that the risk of COVID-19 spread is a compelling reason for suppressing protests against racial inequality, especially when the risk of COVID-19 spread can be addressed by responding to the protestors concerns & therefore advancing public health by both mitigating the spread of COVID-19 and addressing the role racism plays in medical outcomes.
The letter is gobbledegook. Police brutality isn’t a “public health problem.” It’s a bad thing, and it may well be that reasonable people feel like protesting police brutality justifies taking the risk of increased COVID-19 transmission. (I certainly feel that way.) They’re deciding that “protesting police brutality is worth some excess deaths from COVID.” But the authors don’t want to own the fact that they’re making a value judgment. So instead they resort to literal newspeak to make it seem like they’re making a scientific judgment instead of a political one.
Their letter makes it clear they are taking about racism, not necessarily just in police brutality.
The letter to me reads as 100% political because it is suggesting that you can get rid of the protests by addressing their concerns. That option is available to you. Their motivation for writing the letter is largely to say "hey, you can stop the protests by addressing their concerns" and to point out that addressing their concerns in this case also advances what they consider to be a public health interest.
It is possible we had different interpretations of what they wrote, but this felt more like "1000 doctors make a poltiical statement about the protests" rather than "1000 doctors say in their scientific opinions that protests are justified."
> They’re deciding that “protesting police brutality is worth some excess deaths from COVID.”
Why are you putting your own characterization in quotation marks as if you're quoting someone else? Or did I miss something and this is a quote from the the health professionals in question?
Not to mention, I have family in the field, I grew up with probably a dozen public health experts attending Thanksgiving dinner, and did my first internship at a public health company. At no point in hearing decades of shop talk did I ever hear police brutality being mentioned as a public health issue. Words have meaning dammit.
I've seen some indications that many people in the public health field feel that everything that affects morbidity and mortality is potentially within scope for them, including, for example, intentional actions like assault or murder.
A difficulty with this view, at least potentially, is that it seems to allow everything in the world (certainly almost every area of public policy) to be in scope for public health, because almost everything in the world has potential to affect morbidity and mortality. At one level this broad view seems obviously correct, but at another level it seems obviously crazy (or at least likely to bring the public health profession into conflict with everyone over weighing in on every kind of decision that anyone ever makes).
In the past there was a fight between some CDC researchers and Congress over something about handgun policy because the researchers were studying something about guns and violence that made some gun rights activists nervous that there would be an argument presented under the banner of public health to limit access to guns. I believe the conclusion was that they told CDC to stop studying this, which, again, seems to me to be susceptible of some mix of "there might be a lot of legitimate reasons to have this information" and "does the public health profession get to weigh in with claimed expertise on every issue?".
I think it's a legitimately thorny conceptual problem because if you think of health as something like "flourishing" or "people having success in living the way they want" or "eudaemonia" or something, almost every public policy question can be conceived of as a "health" question. (Or even, maybe, "minimizing all-cause mortality"?) But if someone says that the policy answer to each question is therefore obvious because a particular profession thinks it knows what would maximize things it thinks it knows how to measure, I imagine a lot of the public is going to say that this doesn't match up with its notion of what health is.
Edit: after writing this, I had this weird imagine of public health as like a superintelligent AI that's super-focused on one goal and doesn't understand, or doesn't care very much, that people might have other goals too. We think there's obviously something that's going to remain outside of the scope of the AI's interest, but since the AI is smarter than we are, it discovers a way that that thing is actually relevant to its interests according to its utility function, after all! (I realize people have also had this kind of concern about other institutions that are happy to define their scope of action more broadly over time, such as profit-maximizing corporations, or militaries. The corporation says "we need to figure out what actions will maximize profit" or the military says "we need to figure out what actions will maximize our capacity to win wars" and perhaps the scope and ambition of their actions are soon larger than anyone would have expected.) I feel like this analogy is actually weirdly apposite, at least for some audiences. :-)
Yeah, that is a really broad definition. That results in everything becoming everything. For example, everything has some kind of economic impact, so everything becomes economics. Or, everything can have some affect on the arts, so everything becomes arts. This kind of failure to make distinctions makes the scope of every field to encompass everything, which eliminates the very notion of separate fields of study.
Probably a more sensible approach is to say the medical field concerns itself with the operation of the human body, and how to correct malfunctioning operations.
However, public health continues to actively distinguish itself from medicine (they're different degrees and different departments in universities, for example, and you can get both an MD and a DPH), so I don't think your proposed definition for medicine will satisfy public health experts as a definition of their field. Although county health departments are often led by someone who has both a medical and public health degree, many of the people working in them will have public health training but not medical training.
Even looking at classic public health activities like sanitation/environmental health and epidemiology, sanitation and epidemiology aren't really about the functioning of the human body! They're more about conditions under which the human body is more likely to experience some particular kinds of morbidity...
Even your definition of medicine might be unsatisfactory to some people in the medical field, for example because they think mental health is medicine, or because (to pick an amusing example from my health insurer's claim form) pregnancy is not a disorder or malfunction of the body, but it requires a lot of medical expertise to manage its outcomes well. Other examples could be pain management and anaesthesia (pain, for example during surgery, is not necessarily a malfunction of the body—typically you would like the body to make you aware when it's being cut!) and elective surgeries.
Should public health officials weigh in on all issues? Yes. In my home state, every bill before the legislature has a financial assessment tied t it, because most laws cost money. The same should be true for health: we should figure out if an issue is positive, negative, mixed or neutral on public health. It should be part of the deliberation process.
Take your gun example: people should know that if they support the status quo gun laws how many people will die, or what the impact of a new lw is. That doesn’t mean the CDC regulates guns, but it does mean they should have a voice in the conversation.
In my country, what counts as a 'public health' matter is essentially arbitrary. Or at least seems that way to me.
For example, smoking, sunblock usage, sugary drinks, STDs, binge drinking and falls by elderly people are widely seen as public health issues.
Safety nets on trampolines, malnutrition, illegal drugs, suicide, bad diets and road traffic accidents are sometimes seen as public health issues.
Skiing, rugby, workplace fall prevention, migrants using unseaworthy boats and violence between drug dealers are almost never seen as public health issues.
If there's a clear dividing line, I can't see what it is :)
Out of curiosity, were guns or poor maternal outcomes for black women discussed as public health issues? The former has long been thought of as a public health problem but it is rarely discussed due to politics. The latter has been a problem for decades but only acknowledged recently. I recognize you have some expertise here, but I don’t think there is a finite set of issues that can fall under ‘public health’.
I’ve never heard of guns spoken of as a public health issue by public health experts, as opposed to politicians. This is among a fairly uniformly left-leaning bunch of people. The worse maternal outcomes for black women is something I’ve heard discussed, because maternal health is a central focus of public health (it happens to be my dad’s area of expertise). Maternal mortality for black mothers is a problem everywhere in the world. Most developed countries don’t have enough black people to have rigorous data on this. Some that do, like France, don’t track these statistics by race as a matter of formal policy. But the UK has about the same maternal mortality rate for black women, (40 per 100k) as the US (37 per 100k). The gap between black and white is actually bigger in the UK (5x) than the US (3x). Nobody does a good job with maternal care for black women, and nobody really knows what the problem is.
By the way, I have no public health expertise myself; just recounting as a lay person what I’ve heard public health experts talk about as a proxy for the metes and bounds of the field.
Yes. But the Feds won’t allow government funded research into gun violence. For black moms the issue is wrapped up in obstetrics in the US which basically has refused to use checklists, crash carts etc... I am not sure if this has changed but there was no national standard protocol in the US. It varied by state! This has been widely reported on if you do a few google searches. Lastly there’s also a lack of access to prenatal care.
It really just makes it undeniable how political the official advice and accompanying commentary is. The slew of new rules put in place for BLM protests are incredibly dubious, from both a legal and safety perspective. It’s not up to the government to decide what speech or cause for assembly is important, and health officials should not have their risk assessments swayed by political considerations.
All such advice/regulations is weighing the benefit of imposing the restriction vs. the cost of imposing such restriction.
And, importantly, all this is not in the context of individual risk, but population risk. The distinction is tricky but important, and one that trips most people up. For any single individual, the personal risk from COVID19 tends to be small, often seemingly vanishingly small. However, since we don't have immunity, it will affect everyone and even a small individual risk multiplied by (almost) everyone is a large impact on the population in terms of overall deaths.
Anyway, how many political protests have you attended in the last 10 years? How many social gatherings?
For me, it is easily 1:100, if not more. Thus, the aggregate transmission risk from protests is much smaller, therefore we can be more permissive of them. And it is the aggregate risk that policymakers care about.
On the other hand, political protest is considered a very, very fundamental right of our democracies, restricting it something to be done only with the greatest reluctance.
The freedom to practice religion is also a very fundamental right of our democracies, yet it is still illegal in many places due to the lockdown such as California.
Yes, the frequency that people attend protests is on average much less, but the number of other people that one is exposed to is much greater hence why "larger gathering venues at a pace consistent with public health and safety, such as nightclubs, concert venues, and live audience sports" (which are often outdoors as well) are in the very final phase of California's reopening plan. If policy makers agree that protests have a low aggregate risk, why would they place things like concerts or sports events which happen mostly on the weekends in the final phase when there are now protests happening every day?
I do agree that political protest is a very fundamental right and rarely ever be restricted, but many who share your opinion were against the anti-lockdown protests which is contradictory if one believes BLM protests should not be restricted because they are political protest. People protesting the lockdown is also democracy in action, even if one believes the reason for protest is not as important. The democratic right to protest is not dependant on how important the issue is seen to be.
The lockdown policies inevitable have political component, because they are made by politicians and will be evaluated in a political framework. And for a politician it is always practical to err on the CYA side - one extra day of lockdown costs the politician very little, as the costs of it are not born by them personally and are largely very hard to quantify, they are distributed among the population and spread among many consequences, small and large. However, if the politician raises the lockdown prematurely, the blame - in a very quantifiable and ready-for-election-ad form of raising case numbers - would be directed personally at the politician. If the political power of those who suffer from the lockdown is not large enough and organized enough to exert significant pressure, the smart politician would extend the lockdown until there's no conceivable risk to be blamed if anything happens. Virus research, vaccine research, etc., is science, but decisions on what to do with it is always political. And thus those who want to influence it obviously make a political action.
With the current protest, the political situation changes. Opposing these protests is a political suicide. If you can't oppose them, the only way is to have some contrived argument where you are for lockdowns (because see above) but also for protests.
> health officials should not have their risk assessments swayed by political considerations.
You can publish raw information about risk - which is complex and uncertain, and step back, but then you will have little influence on political decisions that follow it. Or you can recommend a policy - and by that inevitably contaminate the scientific assessment with political stance and become invested in certain policy. I'd much like the former, but vast majority of the policy in the US lately completely rejects the idea that the population can be trusted with full information and making its own decisions about it.
The ruling paradigm is that the government should limit people's choices for their own good, and push them into actions that it thinks are beneficial for them. And most people expect that from politicians and blame those politicians which didn't limit their choices enough and allowed them to make choices which ultimately brought bad consequences. So, the politicians and people that want the political action to happen play the game that the public wants to be played.
> The lockdown policies inevitable have political component, because they are made by politicians and will be evaluated in a political framework
This is true for the policies, but absolutely not true for advice from public health officials. Globally the policies made in response to this pandemic have been justified almost entirely by appeals to the authority of health officials. The supposed basis of these policies was that those officials were providing expert and politically neutral advice on risk management. Having the expert health and safety advice show a readily apparent political motivation undermines all of it.
> That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky.
Perhaps it’s not so much weasel words as a carefully coded “caveat emptor”
Observation: “weasel words” gets used a lot in HN comments as a cop out. I wish that phrase could be banned from this site because it is intellectually lazy. Commenters love to discredit articles and other commenters using that phrase rather than engaging in the actual effort to retort with facts. It’s the kind of broken culture that’s been turning HN into the same kind of cesspool that happened with slashdot.
The commenter seemed to have explained why they see the phrasing as "weasel words":
>They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They are saying that the protest is too important to take health considerations into account, but they are reluctant to speak plainly and tell people there's risk but they should be adult and choose to manage the risks themselves and maybe neglect small risk in order to achieve bigger thing.
Is there anything about that explanation which is unsatisfactory? It's not as if they simply condemned the statement to be weasel words without any explanation as to why they see it as such.
They're being flagrantly irresponsible. If nothing else, messaging and public trust are key parts of any epidemic response. Right now, a conservative might look at this letter and come away with the impression that this is a case of quarantine for thee but not for me. An opinion that wouldn't be unjustified: can you imagine them doing the same thing to provide cover for abortion protests? The right to religious gatherings? It burns goodwill and trust, making significant public health interventions harder both now and in the future.
The reason, of course, is that ignoring the potential for disease transmission in these protests is necessary to stay in the good graces of woke circles.
Your comment is a case in point: the takeaway the general public will have from this letter is that the virus doesn't really matter, and you should feel free to disregard it if you can come up with a vaguely plausible reason why your particular circumstances mean you should be exempt from caring about it.
Which we kind of were at anyway, but now public health figures have given their signoff on that interpretation.
The virus doesn’t seem to matter for police forces either, spraying tear gas as salutation and forcing anyone at reach to burst out as much body fluid as they possibly can.
TBH from the outside it seems that whatever the death count is it never really mattered to a majority of people in the US.
The CDC already failed us. Public health figures have been wrong repeatedly at the local, state, and national level.
I understand people's frustration with them, and I understand why people don't care about their "signoffs" on what we're allowed to do, especially when the guidelines are completely nonsensical like in California.
Where are the free clinics? Where are the free tests? Where is the free quarantine hotel room? None of that, instead we just get chided for being stupid and uncooperative by leaders. This is completely unacceptable, they failed us, not the other way around.
And the police might actually kill me today, unlike the virus.
the virus doesnt care, it's going to infect as many as possible. One thing is for certain, if there isn't a huge jump in infections then there will never be a lockdown in response to a pandemic ever again.
It is a straw-man but I think the woke circle isn't that different from religion for some proponents. Different dogmata, same zeal.
And while I don't like people being too sensitive that you refrain from stating anything substantial in public without PR support, this statement is particularly bad.
The lockdown protesters make clear that experts don't decide about their freedoms. This statement just provides evidence for the validity of their point in my opinion.
Where'd they "tell us there is no risk from these protests"? The letter you linked explicitly advises us to "prepare for an increased number of infections in the days following a protest [and] provide increased access to testing and care for people in the affected communities, especially when they or their family members put themselves at risk by attending protests."
They just seem to think protesting America's rampant institutionalized police brutality is more worthy than protesting the lockdowns themselves, and I can't say I disagree, but even if I did I wouldn't be able to say they're being inconsistent, because they aren't. They just haven't stuck their heads in the sand of relativism.
> They just seem to think protesting America's rampant institutionalized police brutality is more worthy than protesting the lockdowns themselves
That can’t possibly be a valid scientific opinion on the basis of public health data — until recently the virus was killing more people per day than the police kill in an entire year.
It’s a political opinion and this was a political letter.
From now on, when public health experts give advice, we must all wonder if it is based on science, or if it is just political messaging which has no more claim to truth than any other political messaging. That’s dangerous ground to be on if you want science to be taken seriously by the public.
It is important to keep in mind that this is not about protesting just police brutality: police brutality is just one part of systemic inequality affecting POCs, especially black people, in the US.
With that in mind, it is important to put an understanding of public health data in context with systemic racism, and why the data looks like it how it does.
For instance, black Americans are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic itself. Protesting that “Black Lives Matter” during a pandemic that takes black lives seems self-defeating to me.
We've heard a lot from black people over the past week or two (and much longer, if you cared to listen) about what typical American policing is like for them. It's not good.
It's perfectly valid to see those issues as important but still not worth the risk of spreading COVID-19, but by boiling this down to a contest of how many people each Bad Thing killed in X amount of time, you miss a lot of the nuances in both issues and really preclude any reasonable, rational, productive discussion about the nature of the tradeoffs that are being made.
If you want to ignore all those things and walk away convinced that it's a political stunt, nobody can stop you.
I happen to agree: several hundred, or even several thousand more people dying as a result of COVID 19 is a worthwhile trade off for the progress and change these protests are enabling. If that’s your opinion, own it. But that’s a political opinion, not a scientific one. Scientists have no business trying to clothe that political value judgment in the garb of expert analysis.
The problem the public health sector has worked itself into is that it dismissed any attempts to analyze “trade offs” when we were talking about economic trade offs. So now they have to pretend like we’re not talking about trade offs at all. Hence the completely non-sensical premise that protests are okay because police brutality is a public health problem.
I don't really think this letter is trying to be anything other than an articulation of a value judgment made by people with a certain perspective that gives visibility not just into the effects of COVID-19, but other public health issues that disproportionately affect black people.
I'm also not super convinced that "the public health sector" was never receptive to questions about economic tradeoffs. We have a dysfunctional federal government and the same in many local jurisdictions, but where I live the local public health institutions have been working hand in glove with state and local governments to open as quickly as possible while staying abreast of the disease's spread.
Scientists are no more qualified at discussing the trade-offs of economics and racial justice and policing than anyone else. By attempting to do so they politicize science and thereby reduce public trust in science.
My problem with their letter is that they made a judgment about these trade-offs and attempted to portray it as a scientific one, when it really wasn't. Based on the data alone, there is no way to reach their conclusion.
> White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19. Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police compared to white people, but the effects of racism are far more pervasive. Black people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress. Black people are also more likely to develop COVID-19. Black people with COVID-19 are diagnosed later in the disease course and have a higher rate of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death. COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.
Is that all BS, then? No, I don't think so.
I wouldn't call it a "scientific conclusion", but the point that black people have poor health outcomes relative to other demographics has a lot of merit and honestly who else should be making it but medical professionals and scientists?
Well, a point I've made elsewhere in this thread (possibly not here) is that I don't think they did claim it's an objectively truthful conclusion.
I can reason about moving a heavy object from my car to my house using the general knowledge that dropped objects fall downward and often break when they hit the ground; I don't need to whip out the graph paper and prove it.
A protest is a political stunt. That seems to be an essential part of what it means to have a protest.
And at risk of being too on topic and reading the article, the issue is that the gloom-and-doom arguments that a lockdown is necessary and correct have been well and truly rejected by the activist wings of politics, and implicitly by a large portion of the commenting-class of journalists. And business. And possibly the public at large. They clearly don't agree.
I don’t have a particularly strong opinion here either way, but I think it’s worth pointing out that all medical advice is (or at least should be) sensitive to the broader context of a person’s life. Consider: is it safe to take morphine? If I’m a healthy 20-something looking for escape, absolutely not. On the other hand, if I’m an 85 year old hospice patient, anything harm morphine causes is vastly outweighed by the good it does.
It doesn’t seem an irresponsible or unprecedented extension of that principle to say that if your country is rocked by civil unrest, dealing with that is more important than preventing the spread of disease.
Worthy isnt the number of deaths involved, its the amount of justice it might achieve in response to.
Protesting the lockdown is not a just cause.
Saying "Well now anything doctors say is political!" does not show good intent or faith, but someone looking for a gotcha statement so they can say "See, they were political actors all along!"
Who decides? Reasonable people can believe that protesting orders that shut down people’s’ livelihoods is a just cause. Publix health officials sure as hell shouldn’t be making those judgment calls.
Public health officials can presumably take a non-political stance for lockdowns. This it seems to me that even given a neutral stance on BLM issues, there can be a non-political basis for discriminating between the value of the goals of the two different protest movements.
Actually that's the point of opinion, you get to decide what you think of other people's causes.
Nobody said you cant protest to your heart's content, you can protest over anything. It's just calling out one of those protests is a mite's buzz of a complaint to a lion's roar of shame for the treatment of black people by America.
If anything, this simply lets regular people peek behind the curtain - it's mostly politics all the way down.
Science is a minor concern within a sphere of human influence.
When mathematicians of all people, reject prizes for making undeniable progress in their field [0], you can only imagine what happens in all the other fields that are inextricably tied to politics (economics anyone?)
Here's a depressing quote from Perelman's wiki:
"It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated."
Am I missing a double negative? Even if protesting police brutality has negative value, surely protesting lockdowns has even less than that. It would even be valid to say, "Protest anything you want except lockdowns" (assuming the speaker believes the virus is the greatest threat).
Policy prescriptions are always political. Science is a method of creating accurate predictions. It's a valuable tool to inform your decisions, but it fundamentally cannot tell you what you should do. Deciding which outcome is most desirable is a value judgement that has no scientific answer.
On average the police kill ~80 unarmed people each year, of any race [1]. By comparison, 40 million people are unemployed as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. Certainly, the impact of someone unjustly killed is vastly larger than that of someone laid off or furloughed. But is it 500,000 times greater? These are different issues. They aren't equivalent, but they're comparable at least. Pointing out the inconsistency here isn't "sticking one's head in the sand of relativism."
They are not only protesting the killing of unarmed black people, but all aspects of the structural bias of American police and the justice system against blacks. These biases affect much more than the extreme cases of the killing of unarmed black people.
And far more harm than just one year's worth. We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that. If people are finding the timing of the current protest inconvenient, well, they've had their whole lives to fix the problem. They shouldn't blame the protesters for their own lack of action.
I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil rights protests "unwise and untimely". [1] Somehow it's never the right moment for justice. Anybody suggesting an indefinite delay should be aware that their arguments are indistinguishable from those of people for whom "later" actually means "never". If people really want to end these protests now, instead of arguing for delay they should quickly enact deep structural changes.
I'm not sure how much "structural" racism actually exists in the US at this point. There are no doubt pockets and they should be rooted out.
Personal racism exists and will probably never go away. It would be nice if it did.
I do think people get profiled and hassled because other people who look like that have done XXX and cops see a possible pattern. This isn't fair to innocent people at all but I suspect this has been what is happening rather than anything "structural".
I learned this firsthand like 20 years ago when I grew long hair and a beard John Lennon style for maybe 8 months. I was very quickly pulled over, hassled and searched (very rudely I might add) on made up charges by a rural cop. This did open my eyes to maybe a small part of what black America goes through in dealing with cops. I cut my hair back to military style, shaved, and it was back to letting me off with a warning and have a nice day.
I feel like this kind of thing is a good part of antagonism but I don't see it as "structural". More many cops (including minority cops as far as that goes) not liking certain types of people. They need to serve the community imo and it would be better for everyone.
I think the Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper incident from a few weeks ago was the most important 'teachable moment' that we've had in years. I am somewhat disappointed that it was overshadowed by protests against police brutality, because I thought it was a very 'teachable moment' that illustrated the type of racism that still exists behind a facade of tolerance.
Police abuse is sort of a separate issue relating to training and accountability. While it is very definitely fueled by racism and classism, I feel like it is an issue that affects all races, albeit blacks more because of long standing economic and cultural issues. The 'warrior cop' mentality affects us all, and is something that has been slowly improving in many large cities.
"Personal racism" is tough. Racism is a broad term for many things. If my neighbor plays their stereo too loud and they're white, I might call them 'white trash' in private conversation, and depending on their race I might adopt a different epithet. That isn't to say I would deny them opportunity or hate them because of their race, just that their race is a convenient attachment point for my general dislike of them. Now I'm not saying that is good or excusable, but I think it is a different thing than denying someone rights or opportunities because of their color, or making assumptions about them based on their background.
When people of color don't feel safe to walk the streets of their own neighborhood because a Karen can report them as suspicious and the authorities take that seriously and escalate the situation, there very definitely is systemic, structural racism at play. If this were just happening to blacks who appeared 'urban' you might have a point, but it affects even well dressed black people and there are countless stories backing that up. Hell, ten years ago an aquaintence was profiled because her dark Italian skin made her appear Mexican to some stupid AZ cops.
I am a long haired white guy who has also been bald, so I get what you're saying. For years I could guarantee I would have the last open seat on a plane next to me, I'm assuming because of the way I look. That doesn't negate the experiences of people of color, it just adds another facet to the way people can prejudge you. If anything, it should illustrate how bad things could be if you weren't white.
I think "structural racism" is one of the biggest branding failures of the whole movement.
To begin with, it uses the word "racism" to refer to something unintentional, when it normally implies intentionality. That needlessly makes people defensive. So then they want to deny that it's happening rather than admit there is a problem, which is the first step to solving it. Before even step one you've already lost.
Then the definition comes out as something like, structures that produce a racial disparity. But before controlling for confounders that's just everything. There are a slew of factors that correlate with race -- income, culture, in some cases biology (e.g. for Vitamin D). If lower income people get worse outcomes then all else equal, black people will get worse outcomes as a result of lower incomes. Which implies a poverty problem in those cases rather than a racism problem, which means you need anti-poverty solutions.
If you try to insist on a racism frame there, all you're doing is making enemies out of lower income white people who might've been your allies against the actual root cause which affects them too. And you make it all too easy for opponents to reveal the confounders and show that the "racism" isn't there, even though the problem is still there, because the problem wasn't "racism" (as it's commonly understood) to begin with.
It's easier to actually solve the problems if you stop having to constantly fight with people over calling it that.
If you think one single word is all that lies in the way, feel free to pick a different one and start using it. But once you actually do the anti-racist work, you'll find that isn't really the problem. It's that white people generally become irrational and defensive whenever race comes up. See DiAngelo's "White Fragility" for more on this. Her 2011 academic paper on this is here: https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116
A pretty clear example is what happened with the phrase "Black Lives Matter". It doesn't involve the R word. And yet, it sends a lot of white people into a rage. Literally, as here, where the menacing white man is shouting: “Black Lives Matter? Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10223827665665524&se...
And it's not just that guy. For many, there is no acceptable way to point our racial injustice. The only acceptable level of protest is one so quiet that it is entirely unseen, unheard. MLK addressed this in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" if you want to read more.
> It's that white people generally become irrational and defensive whenever race comes up.
It's more that white people become defensive when you accuse them of racism. Which, when racism means intentionally hating black people, you can understand -- they know whether or not they hate black people and then you're accusing them of something they know isn't true.
Having to explain that it means something else in this context is just handicapping yourself from the start for no reason. Call it structural injustice or something.
> A pretty clear example is what happened with the phrase "Black Lives Matter". It doesn't involve the R word. And yet, it sends a lot of white people into a rage.
In this case the phrase is the name of a group. Now the group is holding mass protests after everyone has been told to stay home because of a virus pandemic. There is a non-frivolous argument that doing that right now could end up killing a lot of people. That has the potential to piss people off completely regardless of what is being protested.
You can certainly find examples of people saying nasty things against the lockdown protesters and trivializing their concerns -- and that even had a reason to be happening specifically now and not a year ago or a year from now. (King's "later is never" doesn't really apply to a temporary public health issue which can't be used as an indefinite excuse.)
But the phrase itself was kind of an own-goal to begin with. The best way to hear the trouble is to compare it to "Blue Lives Matter" -- the tone deaf response that raises the question, compared to what? The original has the same problem, you just don't hear it when it's your team.
The phrase taken literally states something so uncontroversial that it carries the implication it has to be relative to something else in order to mean anything. So people hear "Black Lives Matter More Than ___" and are invited to fill in the blank with something important to them and then get upset.
It was also just waiting for opponents to claim the middle and respond with All Lives Matter, which makes you sound like jerks because they're being inclusive and you're implicitly saying you only care about black people.
Good messaging is hard.
> For many, there is no acceptable way to point our racial injustice.
It seems to me that calling it "racial injustice" rather than "injustice" is not adding anything useful. If there is an injustice not related to race, should we ignore it? Does the racial injustice have some uniqueness to it that requires it to be addressed separately and using some unusual methods not suitable to ordinary injustice?
When you look at something like police brutality, it disproportionately affects black people. But what does a solution have to do with race? If we address police brutality in general, does that not solve the problem? Does that not make it easier to build a larger coalition?
More than twice as many white people are shot by police as black people. This is proportionally not as many. But what does that mean? You bring that proportion of white people in, the ones suffering the same as you, and now your coalition is three times as large. But you have to set your sights on the injustice and not just the "racial" injustice.
> It seems to me that calling it "racial injustice" rather than "injustice" is not adding anything useful.
Yes, it seems that way to a lot of white people, especially ones who haven't studied the topic. But there are deep historical roots here, and white bias is a major cause of the problem. Continuing to erase that means the problems will continue to remain unsolved.
If you'd like to learn more, I'd suggest Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist. For the historical roots, Kendi's history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning is fascinating, too. To understand the white pattern of reaction and erasure here, DiAngelo's, White Fragility is a good resource (as is her 2011 paper by the same name).
If you think you can solve these problems via focus on just a generic injustice, feel free to take a swing at it. But I don't think white armchair critique of anti-racist activists is helpful. And I haven't for some years: https://www.facebook.com/williamp/posts/10105565800812373
"Structural racism" is not a branding failure, it's an academic term that has been used for a long time and it only takes a minute or so to explain to anybody willing to listen. People don't become defensive because of the word "racism", people become defensive when they're told that behavior that used to be okay is no longer okay, and that they have to change. People don't like being told they're wrong no matter which words you use.
Your poverty example strikes me as disingenuous because poverty for black people is considerably worse than poverty for white people, even when you control for the big confounders, precisely because of racism. Which means that anti-poverty measures can be a great thing but they will not by themselves be sufficient to level the playing field.
It's funny how it's always --other-- people who are getting defensive, who will refuse to listen, who are lost before the arguments have even been expressed. You're fighting on behalf of a demographic that doesn't exist: people who aren't racist but are unwilling to listen for 2 minutes to an explanation of systemic racism. I bet you just dislike the concept of systemic racism yourself and you're using hypothetical alienation of ignorant poor white people as a cover.
It is pretty clear that you and the parent's author aren't using the same definition of "systemic".
It is very difficult to devise reasonable plans of action when the core terms in the dispute are ill-defined. There also seems to be a current of thought that any attempt to clarify or analyze the situation is an attempt to diminish the grievances. This anti-intellectualism coupled with the chaos and violence of a mob is frightening.
Instead of expecting every commenter to live up to your standard of evidence - lest the entire movement be labelled an anti-intellectual mob - why don't you go get educated yourself?
Here's a movie, Thirteenth, which VERY CLEARLY defines and examines structural racism in the criminal justice system in the US, and how it evolved directly from the systems of slavery and its sequel, Jim Crow.
This analysis and conversation has been building for literally decades. It's like showing up for the fifth week of an algebraic geometry class and calling it 'anti-intellectual' because you can't be bothered to pick up Euclid...
I did not say either interpretation of "systemic" was wrong, just that they were not identical. Both interpretations can be used to have meaningful discussions but only if it is clear which definition is being used first.
And thanks for proving my point that some people view any attempt to analyze the situation as an attempt to diminish the grievances.
I said nothing about 'diminishing grievances.' I was responding to a) calling the protestors an anti-intellectual violent mob, and b) an apparent ignorance of the basic terms of the discussion. Again, go educate yourself.
Why did you assume that my comments about the violent mob was in reference to peaceful protestors? I was clearly talking about the looters and vandals that have used the legitimate protests to shield their activities. Is it that hard to discern the meaning of "violent mob"?
Your willingness to jump yet again to the conclusion that I was attempting to dismiss legitimate grievances is frustrating and again an example of the behavior I was trying to call out.
Examine your defensiveness. Where's it coming from? Why are you angrily splitting hairs over phrasing and putting words in my mouth, instead of engaging with my core point: that you should actually put in a bit of effort and go learn about this stuff?
When I pointed out that "systemic racism" means different things to different people and that lack of agreement on that point made it difficult to have a meaningful discussion, you told me to "Go educate myself" and proceeded to lecture me about my ignorance regarding the criminal justice system.
How did you determine I was ignorant about anything? I happen to agree that our criminal justice system has some deep problems, so you just attacked a potential ally.
It seems to me that you jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that I had challenged some assertion about "system racism'. But by doing so you illustrated my point that it was difficult to have a discussion when terms are so ill-defined and that it was even more difficult to do so when people assumed that any attempt to clarify and understand the meaning behind the words was some attempt to minimize or diminish the grievances.
Your reaction was exactly the behavior that I was pointing out as making it difficult to discuss these issues.
You are upset that I am "splitting hairs over phrasing" and that is an example of what I would call "anti-intellectualism". The meaning of words is supremely important if we are to find common ground and be able to work rationally towards addressing the legitimate grievances being expressed in the protests.
"That doesn't negate the experiences of people of color, it just adds another facet to the way people can prejudge you. If anything, it should illustrate how bad things could be if you weren't white."
Yep that was exactly my point and why I related the story. I learned that people really are profiled and harassed based on their looks or certain assumptions about them. It really does happen.
Maybe I'm not understanding the term "structural". To me the word indicates institutions officially set up to behave in a racial manner, i.e segregation. Obviously we don't have much or any of that anymore. But I agree racism and profiling (which I think of as a separate issue... note, I do think it's an "issue") exist. I just balk at the use of the term "structural". Structural is rounding up Muslims in Western China. Structural is passing a law that says if you are black you can't come in. We don't do structural anymore. Which isn't to say we don't have racism or racial problems or classism or profiling or injustice, obviously we do.
Unlike the average San Francisco resident I've actually spent a lot of time around blacks and black communities so this isn't theoretical one dimensional abstract signaling of the type that is unfortunately too common lately.
The issue is deep and not nearly as simple as one sided "structural racism social injustice". A lot of it comes down to culture and how people feel about proper behavior. Along with contempt for cultures that don't have the same values. And willingness to engage in violent behavior.
But I don't deny black Americans have a rough time with the police and I do think we should do something about that. Maybe that is what is meant by "structural" in which case I agree, no argument.
I'm not sure what to do about people not liking each others culture though. I expect the bigots are the ones missing out, but I don't know if we can legal that problem away.
Something doesn't have to be encoded in law to be structural. If a cop racially profiles a black man and harasses him and his boss doesn't discipline him, that's structural. The structure has failed to provide the right outcome.
Those are examples of individual racism. You cannot make a law that erases individual racism. You can make one that erases structural. If a department of cops are individually racist and therefore have the effect of profiling people regularly, there is simply no law that can prevent that.
I don't think "structural" can usefully include only things that explicitly say, "Hey, we're racists, and here's the racist thing we're doing." That became taboo during the 1960s, so all but a white fringe stopped. But the attitudes and policy choices didn't magical end when people stopped being honest about their goals. They just became hidden. See the Southern Strategy, and especially Lee Atwater's quote here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_(1...
I don't disagree with your point on racism existing.
I personally believe profiling is not the same as racism, both have clear definitions. Both also sweep up innocent people and lump them in with miscreants who "look like that" so it's not something to go to the mat over. I basically agree.
What I don't agree with is your over the top rhetoric.
"We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that."
This disregards John Brown, the civil war, the civil rights act, affirmative action and a multitude of programs policies and attempts to bring justice and some measure of equality of opportunity to the minority. It also ignores the widespread support of the current protests and paints America with an overly broad brush of racism. In short, it does exactly what racists are accused of doing. I realize you likely read this kind of thing in a book. That doesn't make it any better nor more fair or accurate.
When you say "structural" and attempt to equate profiling with slavery or segregation, both of which were structural in an attempt to imply we are exactly the same place legally and in terms of opportunity, and how the system treats minorities when we manifestly are not, it's offensive, inaccurate and it raise hackles.
I really didn't want to get deep into this, and I'm not debating, but I think this point needs to be raised because there is entirely too much hot and shallow speech about lately and it detracts from the core point.
That's a different definition to what is commonly accepted.
Structural racism is often called systematic or institutional racism[0]. It doesn't have to be deliberate, but instead is something that perpetuates reduced status of a racial minority by the way laws or institutions are structured.
A commonly used example is the difference in laws and sentencing between crack and powered cocaine. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act created a mandatory minimum sentence on 5 years for 5 grams of crack cocaine, but the same Act made the 5 year minimum sentence apply to 500g of powered cocaine[1].
This doesn't appear to have been deliberately racist, and instead it was mostly in response to media hype about crack. But it had the result of meaning blacks were much more likely to be sentenced to prison for minor drug offences.
I understand you have your personal suspicions. I used to have similar thoughts. But please understand a) this is a well-studied topic, and b) a major component of America's endemic racism is white minimization, deflection, and denial, something made possible by pervasive white ignorance.
As an example, you might read Loewen's "Sundown Towns". He covers the Nadir, the post-reconstruction period that includes events like the Tulsa Massacre. He demonstrates pretty convincingly that white-led ethnic cleansing was widespread across the US. Through a variety of historical records, including extensive use of census data, he demonstrates that in town after town, all across the country, white people violently drove out any black people and then used violence to keep them out. And then they quietly erased that history, despite keeping otherwise extensive historical records.
Was any of this covered in my high school or college education? No. That's even though it demonstrably took place in towns all around where I grew up. That a lot of suburban growth was driven by racism. That wealth distribution was driven by racism. That made it easy for me to think that racism was this thing that happened long ago or far away. When instead I grew up soaking in its structural effects.
> I cut my hair back to military style, shaved, and it was back to letting me off with a warning and have a nice day.
You said this experience opened your eyes, yet you say structural racism doesn't exist. That was literally structural racism. Do you not agree? This is called white privilege; a black person can't change their skin color, but you can cut your hair.
> I'm not sure how much "structural" racism actually exists in the US at this point. There are no doubt pockets and they should be rooted out.
Well if you're "not sure", they why are you posting your own narrative without becoming sure? It's like if I said, "I'm not sure how cars work, but here's a theory that sounds good to me: it involves lasers and hamster wheels, and so I will now believe it."
This is the one of the biggest issues in America, would you consider attempting to GET sure about it?
Perhaps you should ask for clarity. Here, I'll go:
Structural [institutional] racism never left the US. That's what millions of people are protesting right now. It's not some vague notion.
Here are a few off the top of my head:
- Drug laws that target blacks (crack sentences are 10x longer than cocaine)
- Wealth accumulation that holds back black families (not getting loans means not getting houses means not passing wealth down to children; the GI bill that rejected nearly all black applicants and was primarily responsible for middle-class Boomer wealth accumulation)
- Education (poorer zip codes get less funding and end up less educated and poorer, a vicious cycle)
- Job applications (black sounding names get rejected more frequently)
- The vast sentencing disparity between whites and blacks committing the same crimes (blacks are guilty till innocent, and shot for being black in the wrong place or misdemeanours (jogging, selling loose cigarettes), whites are "good kids" who don't deserve to have their lives ruined by a felony rape)
All are structural, institutional racism that are alive and well today.
Do you think I am way off base, or do you reject what I'm describing as factually incorrect or politically motivated? Or anything other than examples of structural racism. I personally don't know anyone who believes structural racism doesn't exist so I'm in a totally different world here...
>We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight.
The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me. Do you really have 400 years worth of evidence of literal outright racism? How can we hope to inspire change with rhetoric like this? This is the equivalent of simply screaming louder to get a point across. Highly ineffective unless annoying them into submission is your goal.
>The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me.
We had slavery in America from 1619 until 1865. Jim Crow and segregation for 100 years after that. The Civil Rights Act, and related laws, eliminated much of the legal basis for institutional racism. But as we all know, that didn't eliminate racism. Safe to say, there's plenty of racism left in this country. Especially in institutions like the police. That's 401 years.
ETA: That's focusing purely on the black population. If you count what was directed against the native populations, you can go back even further.
1,000+ includes all people killed by police, most of them armed. You need to filter for unarmed killings. Hover over "weapon" and click unarmed. It's 350 from 2015 to the present.
The time I was arrested at a protest, I was charged with carrying a sharpened stick (aka, protest sign). I didn't even have that, though... It was a lie in the report.
The police regularly distort their reporting. There is no centralized collecting of police violence statistics, in large part because they have organized against the collection of those statistics. The 1,000+ number will be far less subject to manipulation.
Here's some additional reporting. The 2014 Tampa Bay Times project to track police violence found 827 people shot in a year. In Florida alone. They spent a huge amount of effort on the reporting because the statistics were sometimes not collected and usually not trustworthy where they were.
another ~140 were armed with "toy weapons", such as the infamous shooting of Tamir Rice. But it's unclear whether that should go into the category of "unarmed" since this is still a threat perceived by police. Here is an image of Rice's toy gun: https://www.cleveland.com/resizer/CbjnPy-8-HkfIl1ApQ431f_Dlh...
Weirdly, hundreds of people were wandering around state capitols with much more dangerous looking weapons, and no cop shot them on site. It's almost like going by "perceived threat" (as determined after the fact by cops) is a giant hole that allows racial bias free reign.
In Rice's case, police were responding to reports of shots fired in the vicinity. By comparison, the protestors in Michigan (presumably this is what you were referring to) were attending a planned protest in a state with legal open carry.
While it's fair to say that bias was a factor in Rice's shooting, and I'd agree, pointing to open carry protests as evidence of this may not be the most effective line of argument. Especially since armed Black demonstrators carried out their own demonstrations not long afterward: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/michigan-law...
They were not responding to "reports of shots fired."
Police were responding to:
> "There's a guy in here with a pistol," the man tells a police dispatcher during the call. "It's probably fake, but he's like, pointing it at everybody."
referring to legal open carry, California changed the gun laws after the Back Panthers did the same back in the 60s.
The problem with systematic racism is the "percieved threat" part. When I have that racisit bias, I obviously will percieve a black person more as a threat than a white one. I may not even be aware of it, and facing ones own biases is a hard thing even more so for such serious things as racism and police brutality. When this bias is combined with the kind of training US police is getting, it a given to end up where the US ended up.
The only nice thing is, it also shows where to sart to remedy theissues. Once the police and the poluation accepted to see the issues.
Racial bias is absolutely disgusting. Nothing about the color of a person's skin or their family lineage could ever give indication of the actions they're likely to take. Culture on the other hand, which by definition includes behavior, can be a pretty good indicator. Either way, the room for error grows as the time taken to make a judgement decreases and unfortunately in the situations police find themselves in they have very little time for consideration.
Why should they shift that risk onto the public? Why are they lauded as heroes when they err on the side of killing innocents? Why shouldn't they be the ones to die instead of the people they've miscategorized as threats? Why are their lives worth more?
Seems like one option would be to discard the notion that we should attempt to categorize someone’s ‘culture’ without speaking to them, especially if you are assessing whether or not to use violence against them.
>Where'd they "tell us there is no risk from these protests"?
In this quotation: "we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission". "As risky" seems like a very specific choice of words because they could have said "we do not condemn these gatherings because of the risk" but did not.
Similar to how a judge might say "I condemn you to death" is designating the sentence of death to a subject, "condemning a gathering as risky" is designating the attribute of risk to a gathering. They do not condemn the gathering as risky, so they consciously decide to not designate or apply the attribute of risk to the gathering.
Of course, it could have simply been a mistake to word the sentence in this way, but "as risky" does not seem like the obvious choice of words, "because of the risk" does.
And yes, they do later go on to say to prepare for an increased number of infections and do recognize that protestors can and likely will spread the disease, but that just goes to show that the statement is contradicting itself. They are specifically being inconsistent in the earlier mentioned sentence.
It's certainly not how I'd word it, but if you read the whole letter they clearly and unambiguously acknowledge and restate the risk. That's the beginning and end of it for me.
>>However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission
This post is pretty double speaky because these doctors can't quite come out and say stay home because the virus is still here and dangerous. So they say things which are self contradictory and therefore ultimately meaningless but allow themselves to signal their support for the cause.
It's what happens when your institutions become explicitly partisan.
1.) I don't agree with taking such "both sides" a view of equating the two: BLM protests are about protesting police brutality, religious congregations are not. Quarantine protests are underplaying the dangers of coronavirus: people participating in BLM protests, by and large, have no misconceptions of coronavirus. Whether or not you prioritize this above or below police brutality is of course something you place on your own moral scale, but trying to equate the two like this is super disingenuous.
Additionally, what are you even going to do? Use the violence of the state to tell people not to protest against the use of violence conducted by the state?
2.) Lower income minorities are the ones who are often afraid to call the police, due to the widespread racial bias in policing across the US. Do not speak for them if they themselves have very low confidence in the police: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/09/29/the-racial-confid...
3.) It's not racist to criticize the Chinese government. It is, however, racist to misattribute the actions of the CPC to the actions of "the Chinese", which happens far too often.
4.) I don't even understand this point. You can't easily pick and choose what people are deciding to protest about: there is nobody at the top saying "we should protest about BLM and not the Chinese government." And especially don't conflate property destruction with what these protests stand for.
> 1.) I don't agree with taking such "both sides" a view of equating the two: BLM protests are about protesting police brutality, religious congregations are not
It isn't a matter of equating the perceived importance of the gatherings. It is a matter of the government not being content neutral in its actions. If the government is going to restrict public (and private!) gatherings for public health reasons, the restrictions can't be selective based on the speech content of the gatherings.
> Additionally, what are you even going to do? Use the violence of the state to tell people not to protest against the use of violence conducted by the state?
> Especially when his opinions are factually unfounded and result the gross misuse of public resources.
Factually unfounded? It is pretty clear that opportunists and provacateurs have used the legitimate protests as a shield for their illegal activities.
Protection of property and safety of citizens is "gross misuse of public resources"? Do you think the people living above the stores being vandalized and lit on fire would agree with you?
> Absolutely no one was giving a free pass to looters.
I call shenanigans on this one. The mainstream press has downplayed the looting and violence very consistently conflating criticism of the illegal activities as criticism of the legitimate protests efforts. And there is a vocal minority of voices actually legitimizing the violent activities as an appropriate and necessary extension of the peaceful protests.
You're wrong on every single point. Yes, opportunists took advantage, but the right-wing media echoed by top Republicans is the protest were terroristic at their core and there was zero acknowledgement of the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of demonstrators. Looting got tons of coverage. It was plastered all over cable news and got a heavy response from local governments. The misuse of public resources I refer is the attacks on protestors who were not looting. Most egregiously in Washington DC acting on orders from the White House.
Experts are incentivized to maximize results corresponding to their field /in isolation/ - with little or no trade-offs considered. This preserves their reputation, and allows them to recommend within the bounds of their knowledge.
If an expert recommends religious institutions continue to hold only remote meetings, they are not going to suffer any consequences, both directly and as a response. Anger over such a decision will usually be directed to the politicians, instead.
If an expert recommends these protests be halted due to risk, they themselves will likely be affected, and charged with racism and bigotry, likely - in our current environment - leading to total destruction of both professional and personal lives.
The calculus is quite simple, and absolutely dangerous.
Thank you for stating this. I’ve spent a nontrivial amount of time recently on self analysis. To wit: am I racist because I find the doublespeak regarding quarantine/protests to be entirely illogical. Asking these questions on social media is a genuine reputation risk.
but reality doesn't care. when people start falling sick, and the curve steepens while the cries of "why weren't we warned!" become loud and clear what's going to be these "experts" answer then? Surely they've thought that far ahead. right?
Or maybe the lockdowns were a massive over reaction and this is a subtle acknowledgment.
Regardless which way the cookie crumbles, the damage to their reputations is done. Neither outcome is good, though one is obviously far more desirable in the short term: the one with less resulting death. Though, if they have lost credibility the next time this rolls 'round...
Their statements make sense if you realize that public health experts have not been speaking to the American people the way scientists would speak to an informed audience. They were being political because they didn't think the people could handle nuance.
They oversimplified the explanation of the science and pushed for lockdowns at all costs with no exceptions. Now, by admitting there are exceptions, they reveal that they were not being straight with us all along.
"pushed for lockdowns at all costs with no exceptions."
I have never seen anyone say there should be no exceptions. They have always said essential things must continue. (although with different ideas of "essential")
Can I see sources for the four claims? I'm not sure what your idea of MSM is (some use it as an alias for "media that I don't agree with"), but for point #2 there's an article for vox that seems to contradict your claim. https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...
> This is the type of schizophrenic messaging that happens during societal collapse.
Maybe it happens as a matter of social change or economic stress? What evidence is there that "societal collapse" (or what that even means?) has anything to do with these headlines?
It’s the epitome of hypocrisy. How could anyone take them seriously now that they’ve shown to be complete frauds? Is it any wonder that half the country doesn’t trust the government lockdowns?
“Stay inside”, “don’t gather in groups”, “cancel your wedding”, “wear a mask during sex”, but oh hey, it’s OK to go downtown and riot, burn down buildings, and throw bricks at the police.
No one will take you seriously as a new user with the name "throwmehaweh". If you actually believe the things in your post, I recommend you use your actual account to state your beliefs. Your description of the protests as going downtown to riot is the type of misrepresentation we expect from children, not adults.
Sure, I don't disagree with that, but when the name is a "throwaway", it is a new account, and its only posts are half explanations of simplifications or just outright lies on highly divisive topics, I have no issue connecting the dots.
HN has many accounts with "throwaway" or something similar in the name that have been in use for years now. You can't conclude anything from such a name.
Which parts are outright lies? The now flagged and dead post said this:
“Stay inside”, “don’t gather in groups”, “cancel your wedding”, “wear a mask during sex”, but oh hey, it’s OK to go downtown and riot, burn down buildings, and throw bricks at the police.
These things are all true of the UK. As someone with a family member in the UK I can assure you they had to cancel their wedding, they were limited to an hour of outside time per day, they were told not to gather in groups and notoriously the government just told people if they live apart - even if they're in a relationship - they're not merely required to wear masks but cannot meet at all.
"A Virginia police chief fought back tears during a press conference as he described how rioters set fire to a home with a child inside and then prevented firefighters from responding as quickly as they could have"
It's a pathetic show from the HN userbase that the post is flagged and dead. Do the people here have any idea how many hundreds of millions of people are thinking exactly the same thing right now?
The public health community's credibility is now zero or lower. Only the most naive in society will ever believe them again. Every time we think they can't fail worse, they do. Their models are always wrong and the most influential was filled with basic C programming errors. They can't decide if masks work. They lauded China at the same time as complaining internally they weren't being given any data. They demanded a massive programme of ventilator production and then none were needed. They demanded censorship of "misinformation" even when that misinformation came from Nobel Prize winners and turned out to be correct. They've published an openly fraudulent paper on a possible treatment championed by Trump that led to trials being suspended, whilst simultaneously tweeting about how much they hate Trump. They demanded the economy be destroyed and the world placed under a totalitarian police state. Virtually all of them protect each other and refuse to criticise each other's work even when it's clearly wrong, and now the final salt in the wound: they decide that protesting against racism is healthy, but protesting against their decisions is not.
The second half of your post is so dishonest and childish as to not require a response; you have proven exactly what I said. Everything you mentioned is either amusingly out of context or simply trying to describe events as they did not happen. I urge you to get help, but if you cannot do so then I encourage you to follow your own advice and not follow quarantining rules in the future.
I second this sentiment. I would even take it a step further and say that "throwaway" accounts are a good thing, it allows a poster to give a less-than-politically-correct take on a topic and actually encourages candid conversation.
Why are they taking this position. Simple, it cost them nothing to do so all the while letting them claim they understand. This is nothing more than #hashtag politics. A do nothing stance because no risk is taken
So yes of course there is risk. However as with anything political no honest discussion is permitted. This is why people calling out the violence and looting are being hushed or intimidated because politicians don't want to talk about that side of the issue. The same politicians who have been building up the police state in blue cities for generations.
Right. It’s not the job of public health officials to make judgments about what risks are worthwhile. If we can protest with acceptable levels of risk, we should’ve been able to keep more of the economy operational with acceptable levels of risk. The advice shouldn’t differ because public health officials think social justice is more important than the economy.
> Prepare for an increased number of infections in the days following a protest. Provide increased access to testing and care for people in the affected communities, especially when they or their family members put themselves at risk by attending protests.
The sentence "we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission" is a bit ambiguous, maybe on purpose. The idea is that they won't use the risk of COVID-19 transmission as a argument to disapprove of the gatherings.
They cannot say the gatherings are safe, because they aren't, but they also want to support them. That's how you get such an ambiguous message. I would have preferred a clearer stance as well like "We, as health professionals, recognize the risks, however, blah blah blah. You can minimize these risks by doing blah blah blah".
A clearer stance would help, but I feel like there's a fundamental problem with taking any stance. For public health authorities to affirmatively endorse political causes severely compromises their authority as neutral arbiters.
It is not "public health authorities". It is not a message from the government or any organization in a position of power. Instead, it is an open letter from health professionals.
They express themselves both as medical experts and as human beings, so having a political stance is no problem, as long as they make it clear which part of them is speaking. I think it is not clear enough in their letter, but in my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with their message.
They're not expressing their support for the protests as a personal or political question separate from their medical expertise. The letter says that "white supremacy is a lethal public health issue", racism is "the paramount public health problem", and the protests are "vital to the national public health". This is beyond simply not making it clear enough; they're deliberately invoking their medical expertise as a source of authority for their political judgments.
The problem is not that they took a political stance. If a group of doctors wants to come out in support of Flat Earth, so be it. The problem is they potentially compromise the health of the public at the expense of their political message. Again, nothing was stopping them from acknowledging there is a risk, but that it is worth it.
This is not just the US, I just realised that in Germany, Munich, there were some "rednecks" and weird people protesting the Corona measures. So they closed down a 100 acres area where Oktoberfest takes place for a 1000 person protest (that's how much they were allowed). Now I live in that area and on that weekend we were stopped by the police while going shopping, and they were stopping everyone to make sure you're not going to the demo. They had more security forces there than people at the protests. These protests are mostly stupid and fringe, and I am really grateful to be living in a country like Germany (not a german) that from my point of view handled the situation quite well as you don't have many reasons to protest the Corona measures here.
Now, this weekend they had a protest here to support the ones in the US, and we just had 25000 people in a smaller place to show their solidarity. How is that going to help people's trust in the decisions taken by authorities, it just makes everything political.
The one where police stopped us from going grocery shopping was exactly one week before, so it's not that far back. It's still not allowed to have mass protests, no matter the cause.
You mentioned to be stopped by police and to be told to not go to the demo. Theydidn't stop you from going shopping, at least you didn't say so earlier. Seems to be two different things.
All assemblies have to be registered upfront, regardless of COVID-19. SO if the assembly isn't permited, police will break it up. Happened more than once in the last weeks, didn't it? So I doubt your last point.
They closed down a ridiculously big area and were stopping people. I had no issue with that, but there were also other people not planning to go to the demo that were quite upset and were arguing with the police. Thing is that in the end this is just double standards, for some cases where you have some weirdos that were well under their 1000 limit, you stop to question residents and block streets for the entire Theresienwiese area, and for the other demo which was officially registered for something like 250-500 people and 25000 join, all is good.
Political statements like that can really hurt their credibility as public health officials, especially if increased transmission from protests causes them to call for another lockdown. Either say large, outdoor gatherings like this are risky or they aren't (or maybe they're just slightly risky). Don't get into "protesting these things is ok, protesting these isn't."
Exactly. If all of these civilians where smashed together in Trump rallies or concerts or sporting events, would they have the same petition circulating?
There's been a lot of talk in the last few years about "believing in science" pushed by politicians. However, there is a long history of science being "adjusted" to fit political agendas.
Public health is concerned with the health of the public -- which includes health issues induced by stress, poor nutrition, pollution, etc. (Ever notice how African Americans' life expectancy is much lower than that of white Americans? Public health experts have. They study it.) So, in this case, they're calculating that making strides against inequality will be worth the cost of more COVID-19 cases.
there are no calculations being done. They believe in the cause therefore it is justified. They dont believe in the cause of the other side (freedom of movement/commerce) and therefore dont believe they are justified.
They are pretending to base it on science, when it is just another political opinion.
Calculations on what, exactly? There are calculations done on how police brutality and systemtic racism contribute to decreased quality of life for black americans. It's considered widely acknowledged within the healthcare industry that black americans have statistically significant health disparities compared to other races, and that additionally it is statistically known that the covid19 shut down primarily affect the service industry, which hits people of color disproportionately towards white people (as people of color are less likely to have jobs that can be worked from home).
I mean, the idea is also that the 3 month lockdowns themselves have hard numbers behind them. From what I understand economists have themselves already modeled out the effect of covid-19 without a lockdown and found a lockdown is still more economically beneficial.
That is absolutely not the case. Furthermore there is nothing wrong with inequality, the only way we could all be equal is if we were all the same person. Even then we would exist in different physical space and thereby find different opportunities. Consider how mentally sick a person would have to be to think they have the right or even the ability to weigh the value of someone else's life against the value of someone else's inequality.
In my country, the church protested that holy gatherings won't spread COVID because it is graced by god. What these scientists are doing is on an equivalent level of medieval stupidity. It's really sad to read this , and even more sad to see the media reproducing it without criticism.
Outbreaks in mass gatherings are responsible for entire epidemics in italy, spain and germany. I can only imagine what will happen in a month, when racial minorities start accusing each other for the scale of the second epidemic.
> Why? Would you prefer that because someone is "professional" they discard all their personal ethics?
it's never black-and-white like that.
if my professional doctor's personal ethics includes clauses that motivate him to seek non-standard and unproven treatments, yes, i'd prefer they discard those.
I would prefer it if employees at Planned Parenthood didn't have personal ethical clauses that caused them to purposely give incorrect data and wrong phone numbers to women seeking abortions because their personal ethics sway them to do so.
If I were a very famous politician that had polarizing views on something, i'd prefer if my taxi driver remained a professional rather than kicking my ass out of the car because their personal ethics required that they do that to someone that they view as a political enemy.
I'd prefer prisoners be fed , even if it's against the personal ethics of the food service workers to feed and take care of felony rapists.
There are a lot of professions that require professionals to have a certain level of detachment from 'pedestrians'. It's not at all uncommon.
Absolutely. It's not possible for _anyone_ to have an infinite perspective, nor one even close to wide enough that I would trust them to make my decisions for me. If you're a professional it is your _duty_ to ignore your personal beliefs. Otherwise you'd end up with doctors refusing to treat people they disagree with, lawyers refusing to defend people they disagree with and so on. This opens the gate to emotional and psychological manipulation wide, and given the rise of social media and this modern lemming mentality I see so commonly that would be an absolute disaster.
So then, if I am a “professional” software developer, and my employer asks me to put a secret back-door in some code to be shipped to consumers... I should say nothing, because I’m a “professional?”
Or what if I’m doing renovations, and someone asks me to make something I know to be unsafe. I point that out, but they insist... Again, do I just do what they ask because, “professional?”
I suspect you are conflating “professional” with “mercenary.” To me, being a professional means approaching my work with a sense of ethics.
In fact, I suggest to you that saying nothing in these cases is also injecting ethics into my work, only it is my personal investment in “The Status Quo.”
You can’t escape ethics, you can only support the existing structure by pretending you are above petty “ethics” and “politics.”
What you certainly don't do, if you're doing renovations, is sign off on something that you know to be unsafe because the people who built it are fighting systemic racism.
I believe it's important to note that public healthcare itself has disproportionately worse outcomes for black people. To indicate that being a black person is a health risk in the country and supporting movements to resolve this is, from what I understand, pretty in line with what a professional healthcare personnel would be advocating for.
I was responding to the question of “professionalism” being somehow devoid of ethics, and therefore medical professionals should not take ethics into account when making decisions.
I would interpret your remark as suggesting, “Professionalism involves ethics, but there is an interpretation of those ethics that suggests these particular people should have made a different choice in this stuation.”
I could agree or disagree with your conclusion, but I can certainly support the form of your argument as sound: Professionals should have ethics, so let’s talk about what those ethics should be, and how to apply them to this situation.
———
It’s the same conversation as, “Should professional work for a social media business that amplifies and spreads falsehoods, violent rhetoric, &c.”
If someone were to say, “A professional just writes code, the effect of that code on society is not their business,” I think that’s flat-out wrong. Not taking a stand on the matter is taking a stand, but lying to yourself about not taking a stand.
On the other hand, people can and do regularly have discussions about whether there is a “greater good” served by allowing people to communicate and decide for themselves whether George Soros is behind Black Lives Matter, or whether the Coronavirus was actually hatched by Bill Gates in an attempt to use a vaccine to inject people with microchips.
I have opinions about the ethics of that too, but I can appreciate that there are people who are also trying to apply ethics to such decisions, even if they are ethics I disagree with or flat-out abhor.
If their personal ethics cause them to produce statements which are contradictory and may cause less rational people to engage in hazardous behavior (such as not wearing a mask or attempting to distance themselves from others at a protest), then yes. Otherwise, no.
Yup, public health institutions disgraced themselves in the beginning of the crisis[1], but it turns out this isn't just an unfortunate case of institutional rot: it apparently runs deep, throughout the individuals involved in the field. I'm a big supporter of the role experts play in a functioning society, but public health experts are yet another group setting their credibility on fire to provide momentary warmth to a political objective.
[1] many of them have done so for years, for anyone paying attention
Because this is an election year, so get back into place, and either support the engineered chaos or stay at home while it happens. /s <- unnecesary but these days there is so little critical thought and reading skills that you never know
> It completely ruins the credibility of many health professionals.
Not just the credibility of health professionals, but all professionals.
The big thing will be climate change. This will be brought up to say that technical professionals giving their advice are just partisan hacks who don’t care about the economy and people’s livelihoods, but do care about their virtue signaling.
Crazy conspiracy theory incoming... What if the Illuminati or whoever runs society just figured out the fastest way to get tons of young people infected to speed up the herd immunity process??
There’s a lot of risk for these protests but I do feel like protesting for some issue other than ‘end the lockdown’ is more justifiable than just protesting the lockdown itself. Even if it were an anti-abortion protest, for example — something I am ideologically opposed to — I wouldn’t stand in the way of a group that wanted to do that.
The lockdown will be directly responsible for an estimated death of 40 million people globally due to famine, hunger, job losses and lots of other directly related issues. Is 40M people not good enough to protest against the lockdown itself?
I'm not really this much of a hack, so forgive me, because what you are saying is true in the most literal sense.
But if you believe in capitalism, a political system, the virus will treat you better if you're rich -- a beneficiary of that system. It's not as reductive as better health care. As a rich person, you can easily stay at home without working, infinitely. The federal government's most effective anti-COVID intervention was actually saving the markets, it's the one promise the government delivered. And the biggest parts of that story are (1) that our society is oriented to protect capitalists, so of course there will be an effective and fast intervention nowadays that protects equities, like a five trillion dollar equities buying scheme, and (2) you can go ahead and sell your stocks to the government now, essentially, and live off this largess. You can go on ordering shit from Amazon and working from home for Facebook. You can shelter in place pretty much indefinitely.
We're not even talking millionaires, we're talking about middle class people, programmers, health officials, pretty much everyone on this forum working for more than the 75th percentile income.
This point of view doesn't even require the bullshit of categorizing your preferred kind of protestor. The reopen people, the peaceful protestor, even the looters all share a common political belief - let me illuminate it for you. None of those teenagers looting Best Buy have trusts, they don't have savings or anything that goes "up" and lets them or their parents stay home when the government props up the stock market. It's not as reductive as simply being poor (i.e. being on the wrong side of the system), or even being bored or angry. It's in opposition to the system.
Imagine 18-78 years of "fuck you, you have to choose to die for money or die from homelessness and starvation" every single day. It's not just the pandemic times, though that exacerbates it immensely, for millions of people. It's like being born directly into jail. You'd go blow up a Best Buy too! You'd show up at the state capitol threatening people with guns!
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren lost the Democratic primary, to the relief of basically every venture capitalist I know. But a series of idiosyncratic votes, as should be obvious to everyone, isn't the end-all be-all refutation to socialist politics, even temporarily.
And just because you don't hear political leaders or even ordinary people taking the leap and asking, "Well is there a point to looting a modern art store?" doesn't mean that there isn't a point. It might be political suicide, send along the down votes, but I can sympathize with people who are mad as hell about not being given the resources to shelter at home as comfortably as rich people do while simultaneously being told to shut the fuck up about it. The only solution to that is straightforward socialism, which lost in the primary but did not lose in the hearts and minds of millions of people. It means allowing stocks to drop, IPOs to dry up, tech workers get laid off, and people being paid to stay at home long past July and not work -- all ideas verbatim rejected by Republicans, venture capitalists and seemingly most on this forum.
Socialist politics are stronger than ever. That health care officials may sympathize with those politics -- that it's a very specific capitalist system we have that is culpable for brutalizing minorities and failing to protect many people from a pandemic -- isn't surprising; they're smart people who have a very special perspective on what suffering really means. They, like many peaceful protestors, want to show solidarity with losers of the capitalism system without appealing to violence or coercion in the pursuit of an abstract goal like declining infection rates or whatever.
Systemic inequality is a component of the clinical presentation of the covid-19 pandemic in the United States. Black Americans have been dying from the disease at twice the rate, as a group, than the population in general. In my home state, half of the reported cases are among Native American communities.
Limited access to healthcare is not a theoretical challenge. The link between historical injustice manifests every day in the pandemic crisis. And the nature of this virus - rapid, asymptomatic contagion - means that any vulnerable population can be a source of ongoing infection in the general population.
Never has the bond in our common good been more clear.
So sure, there are political positions to be taken in how best to move forward, but the virus doesn't care.
>
Limited access to healthcare is not a theoretical challenge. The link between historical injustice manifests every day in the pandemic crisis. And the nature of this virus - rapid, asymptomatic contagion - means that any vulnerable population can be a source of ongoing infection in the general population.
Why are we assuming it's systemic access to healthcare and not say Vitamin D deficiency? Healthcare access is worst in Africa and yet their numbers and outcomes are exponentially better. So what are the differences between African communities in the US and the ones in Africa?
It just seems so politically American to assume that it must be evil systemic racism anytime a population does not do as well as white people, and yet not a peep is uttered when white people are lapped by another population.
> Don't tell us there is no risk from these protests, but there is a risk from stay-at-home protests.
The difference is the stay-at-home protesters overwhelmingly didn't wear masks [1] and the BLM protesters are overwhelmingly wearing masks [2]. Hong Kong has proven it's possible to have massive protests while wearing masks and not being vectors of infection. [3]
I've watched dozens of videos from the protests, and while some people are wearing masks, many do not, and of those that do, many routinely remove them - e.g. to chant, or wear them only on part of the face, or even move them to the neck or forehead for extended times. A lot of them frequently readjust them with their hands - without washing the hands of course, which kinda defeats the whole purpose. Regular masks aren't super-efficient at long-time mass close contact anyway - they are lowering risk when you are walking on the street passing another person, with contact time measuring in seconds, but I don't think they would provide significant defense when staying in close contact for hours, especially while moving around, running, chanting, etc. Even less goes for homemade cloth masks, which many are wearing, which provide even less protection than surgical ones.
Then why were laws put into place to shut down everything if it's okay to participate in large-scale group activities as long as you're wearing a mask? And more importantly, why were Americans being told specifically not to wear masks during the opening months of the pandemic?
It's worth noting that Hong Kong has very few coronavirus cases, and most/all the current known cases are from travelers who are being closely monitored.
The risk there is much thus lower than places that have already have tens of thousands of cases, although it also depends on how long the protests continue and whether an outbreak can be caught early through testing.
Not apples to apples at all. This is the average daily COVID-19 deaths with extreme restrictions - so imagine comparing this heart disease with large-scale mandatory exercise, or cancer if cigarettes were eliminated entirely.
I'm comparing actual stats of natural deaths that have happened, and you are saying it is better to compare hypothetical/imagined stats with the real ones to be more accurate?
Should we now also imagine/project the homicide death rates if all civilians were peaceful and happy and compare it with that of the real deaths caused by the police?
> Should we now also imagine/project the homicide death rates if all civilians were peaceful and happy and compare it with that of the real deaths caused by the police?
Almost. We'd need to compare actual homicides to an imaginary world where everyone cooperated with the police while being arrested.
The police killing someone is, on the face of it, a significant problem. But some percentage of police-caused deaths are justified and would be acceptable after careful review of what happened.
I think everyone would prefer 0 police-related deaths, and all options are on the table to get there. But to compare oranges to oranges properly it would be necessary to split the category into police abuses of power vs unavoidable/reasonable uses of force.
Well, I suppose I wasn't being entirely clear. Let me try to put it all in one post with vague apologies for letting the thread build up:
Your "oranges-to-oranges" comparison isn't. It compares homicides - which are overwhelmingly going to be negligent accidents or intentional crimes - with police caused deaths. The police are people we purposefully send into situations where violence is likely or respect for the law has broken down. It is expected that they will cause some deaths in the execution of their duty.
I can certainly see an argument that getting the deaths caused by police to 0 or close to is a worthy goal. But it isn't comparable to homicides because it is normal for the police to be sent in to uncontrolled situations. It'd be nothing short of a minor miracle if police-caused deaths were comparable to background rates given how seedy the US gets. We certainly can't get a feel for the justified/unjustified/negligent breakup of the figures which is germane to the debate.
Its unfortunately time to get philosophical, which is usually a signal to me that a debate has veered off the topic and become pointless. Anyway, here goes...
In philosophy, there is a subject and an object. An object is what the subject observes. An object consists of of properties (has-a) and relations (is-a). Take an orange for example. An orange is-a fruit, and an orange has-a rind, flesh and seeds. It makes sense to compare oranges with oranges (a type of fruit); and orange seeds with orange seeds (the same parts of an orange fruit). Its a stretch to compare an oranges with orange seeds, as they are not the same type of object. Or to put it another way, its like comparing oranges to apples.
> Your "oranges-to-oranges" comparison isn't.
It is, because I'm comparing instances of the same type of philosophical object. Lets take another very relevant example: homicide.
A homicide is simply defined as "the act of one human killing another". So comparing homicides done by policemen with homicides done by civilians, in the same year and country is a valid oranges-to-oranges comparison. Regardless of the circumstances of the homicides, they are all homicides whether justified (e.g. self defense), unjust (murder) or unintentional (man-slaughter). My comparison is not concerned with the parts of the orange (rind, seeds, flesh), but the oranges as a whole. If you'd like to compare police acts of man-slaughter against civilian acts of man-slaughter, that's fine. That's a valid oranges to oranges comparison, just on a lower level of the conceptual heirachy. And even if you did present these statistics, my original point still stands. You cannot however, come up with an invalid comparison (oranges to orange seeds) then try and use it as a straw-man argument against my valid comparison (oranges to oranges).
I'm with you in that there are other stats which we can compare which may be more similar, but I do feel that the context is still important for those that don't have a real frame of reference for death tolls. "apples to oranges" is very context specific and becomes an argument of semantics quickly. Yes, heart disease kills more people... but is that really pertinent to the discussion of whether or not the protests are worth the risk of the further spread of covid 19?
The US is no5 in the world for police homicides, just behind countries like the Philippines, Syria, Brazil. Not a record to be proud of - 1,536 in 2019 according to wikipedia.
Other countries manage to achieve numbers like 2 for Japan, 3 for the UK, 11 for Germany which is nowhere near even adjusted for population. American police kill more people per capita than almost every other country. Per 10 million people that's:
Do you think it's intellectually honest to compare countries with very, very low rates of firearms access to a country where firearms are available to anyone who wants one?
You're comparing the USA, which has about 100k shootings per year, 36k deaths involving guns of which 33% (~12k) are homicides, to the UK which has 50-60 cases of homicide involving a gun per year.
The fact is that the US police are far, far, far more likely to encounter a suspect with a gun in the course of their duty than the UK police are.
38 US police officers were shot dead in the line of duty last year. The UK had 3.
300 million stat is old, I think now it's somewhere around 393 million.
Coronavirus and the riots have also created far more new gun owners among a lot of people (making an observation from my friends and other people I know).
Of course there is. There are legitimate reasons for owning a rifle in rural America (hunting), there are no legitimate reasons for owning an assault weapon, and guns can easily be made gradually less attractive. If you don't accept this even as a possibility you are part of the problem.
The other major news story is about police brutality and defunding/reducing the police force.
Exactly how do you expect people to defend themselves from violent threats when the number 1 counterpoint of "call the police" is taken away or severely limited?
The defund/dismantle/disband movement is, as I understand the movement, more about replacing the police-as-an-institution with a fundamentally different approach or set of approaches to law enforcement, not reducing the total resources or number of persons assigned to law enforcement functions.
The same way every other country has gone about this.
This has been done after wars for example (after WWII), and after many different conflicts in different countries in Africa. It would take a long time and would require tightening laws gradually and at the same time encouraging people to hand in their weapons.
This is not particularly difficult logistically, the only difficulty is in the American psyche apparently, which seems completely incompatible with this simple common-sense measure. The outcome would be fewer deaths by cop, fewer deaths in burglaries, and fewer mass shootings.
There is abundant evidence from around the globe that limiting the ownership of guns helps limit deaths.
No other country has anywhere near the absolute or per capita number of firearms that the USA has. We own almost half of all civilian firearms, more than 100x the US military, more than every military and law enforcement agency in the world combined[1]. Nor would a forced attempt at disarment be peaceful given our history and attitude towards government infringement.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has already ruled that total ban on firearms in common is unconstitutional[2][3]. Hence why DC and Chicago no longer completely ban handguns. I also don't think the in common use standard will hold since the Supreme Court more recently reiterated "the Second Amendment ex-tends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms"[4]. It is the opinion of some that DC v Heller was watered to get Kennedy on board. Moreover, as California has already argued, you cannot ban something then down the road argue that it's not in common use since the low numbers are artificial.
> To the extent that magazines holding more than 10 rounds may be less common
within California, it would likely be the result of the State long criminalizing the buying,
selling, importing, and manufacturing of these magazines. Saying that large capacity
magazines are uncommon because they have been banned for so long is something of a
tautology. It cannot be used as constitutional support for further banning. See Friedman
v. City of Highland Park, Illinois, 784 F.3d 406, 409 (7th Cir. 2015) (“Yet it would be
absurd to say that the reason why a particular weapon can be banned is that there is a
statute banning it, so that it isn’t commonly used. A law’s existence can’t be the source
of its own constitutional validity.”).[5]
Actual looting has been occurring in New York [0] as we discover that the police either lack the willpower or resources to actually protect American businesses. And who knows what is happening for ordinary law-and-order problems.
If someone manages to carry a "disarm and leave it to the police" argument with that evidence in recent memory it will go down in the history books as one of the great political accomplishments of the 21st century. Anyone who ever argued in favour guns in self defence was talking at least in part about moments in history like these.
It's not crazy to understand that limiting firearm access to law abiding citizens will provide an upper hand to criminals who couldn't care less about breaking laws, with the number of firearms currently in the U.S.
This is the kind of thing that gun advocates like to tout as "a priori" knowledge. However, "criminals" respond to incentives just as all people do. You need to make the incentive to not own a gun stronger than the incentive to own a gun. Weak gun laws currently make it very easy to obtain a gun without any permits or background checks.
There's also a false dichotomy between law-abiding citizens and criminals. Anyone who has always been law-abiding can commit a crime, and if they own a gun, there's a much higher chance that someone is killed as part of that crime. There's a much higher chance they kill someone accidentally, and that someone is often a member of their own family. And a higher chance that they will successfully commit suicide. These are all facts when comparing gun owners to non-owners.
The government should disincentivize persons from owning guns no more than it should disincentivize persons from voting, from associating, or from speaking, etc.
Unfortunately, the US is incomparable (in the neutral sense of the word) when it comes to most socio-economic issues. There literally is no other country that is similar to the US across more than one or two important factors.
Yeah, but GDP is one of the most important socio-economic factors there is. Which makes drawing analogies between the US and Brazil not very useful most of the time. And even race, where I think the comparison is most apt, there is an important difference, in that the US has more ethnic diversity among its elite class. I believe Brazil's elites are almost entirely descended from European Catholics, whereas the US elite class has been split between WASPs and Jews for at least 100 years and is now being cracked open quite rapidly by people of East Asian and South Asian descent.
Yes I do. That easy access to guns on both sides is a big part of the problem. Militarised police and easy access to guns are IMO one of the biggest reasons for this discrepancy. It can be fixed, it just requires gradually tightening gun laws and changing police culture.
There are also cultural issues - policing should be with the consent of the population, if you lose that trust and end up in an adversarial position, violence moves from the last resort to the first resort.
In Europe in general police operate on the principle of “plice lives < civilian lives”. This means that you as a police officer do not shoot if you are threatened, you shoot only if _other civilions_ are threatened.
Or put it another way your job is to protect civilian lives, even at the cost of your own life.
As far as I understand in the us its the other way around - “police lives > civilian lives” - e.g. shoot when threatened directly. Or it is acceptable to kill civilians to save police lives.
In the long term that kind of doctrine is bound to have consequences on stats like deaths caused by the police, no matter how good / bad the intentions of individual officers are.
And it frames how the public reacts to events as well. Like if you are a cop and you shoot a person trying to rob a bank in the US your friends and family might congratulate you on a job well done, where as in europe you’ll be looked at with disdain by your loved ones.
Lack of guns and also a totally different attitude to policing.
British policing isn't without problems but the idea of (say) police barging into someone's house guns blazing without announcing themselves (as happened recently) is absolutely unimaginable in the UK.
British police operate on consent whereas American police operate on fear (is the stereotype)
What point are you trying to make? Systemic racism is way bigger than just police killings.
Do you want to ignore the (non-lethal) evils of prejudice, and just play a numbers game with fatalities? From some back-of-the-envelope math, the average POC in America will still lose more years of their life from simply living in a racist society than from COVID-19.
Life isn't a pissing contest of "my problem is bigger than your problem".
The first means "it doesn't make sense to compare these."
The second means "Even though you're trying to compare these problems, you've massively underrepresented the impact of systemic racism by simplifying it to the number of police killings."
>Systemic racism is way bigger than just police killings.
A single protest movement isn't going to end systemic racism, no matter how large it becomes. Even revolutions don't end conservatism -- just ask Leon Trotsky.
However, the coronavirus epidemic is here today and it may well be gone in a year. This may be the worst possible time for a protest movement since the Spanish Flu.
Black people in America have a measurably lower life expectancy than white people [1]. For people born in 2015, it's down to about 5%, but as recently as 1970, it was over 10%. That's a lot of years of life being cut short.
(There are well-known social causes for this which are direct consequences of racism, like access to quality health care, housing, education, credit, etc.)
COVID-19 deaths aren't taking nearly that many years. According to [2] (about 1.5 weeks old), 1 in 1850 (or around 0.05% of) black Americans have died from COVID-19. Even if this continues for the rest of the year, it still can't hold a candle to plain old racism.
Joking aside, you can sometimes prove causality. It's just not as easy as proving a correlation. The most broadly accepted method would be a RCT (randomized controlled trial), though it is often unethical or unfeasible.
You can also build on causal assumption that everyone agrees on. (Like: A person's gender cannot be caused by a government policy. A person winning the lottery is not caused by anything other than playing the lottery.) From such knowledge you can build a causal graph, and (in some cases) draw new causal conclusions from statistical data.
Long story short: you cannot just dismiss a correlation as being useless for any proof of causality.
I sympathize with a lot of these problems, but I wonder if the police issue getting all the attention is going to prevent these other issues from getting serious attention. :|
Their letter has a paragraph addressing some of their concerns:
> White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19. Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police compared to white people, but the effects of racism are far more pervasive. Black people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress. Black people are also more likely to develop COVID-19. Black people with COVID-19 are diagnosed later in the disease course and have a higher rate of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death. COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.
Edit: these aren't the calculations you asked for, but should give you an indication of what they are thinking about.
Yes, unfortunately black people are disproportionately poor, so they bear the brunt of issues associated with a lack of money in America. In the present day, I suspect most things people call systemic racism is rooted in and perpetuated by how disproportionately poor blacks in America are.
It's really hard not to read this as "my mass killing is okay because I have a good reason." I assume that's not what you mean. Can you help clarify the differences between deaths downstream of these mass gatherings and deaths downstream of more conventional violence?
I quite like it when someone drives by with a two sentence decontextualised comment that goes on to invoke hours of conversation.
Is your intentional action here to be purposely superficial in order to invoke to deeper discussion? It’s an interesting style that seems particularly suited to this forum.
Not many lives are ended via homicide vs other ways of dying (eg heart disease), but it’s just the unfairness and preventability that makes people angry about the former. Injustice also creates stress inn society, it is difficult to live with it.
I see the intent... but scale is drastically different. You’re comparing a yearly figure to a daily one that is nowhere near the daily max to begin with.
Without context, it’s hard to ascertain if the point the parent is trying to make is either:
1) Police Killings are low.
2) Covid deaths have bottomed.
In the context of police killings, that 1,000 figure doesn’t indicate if it’s innocent killings- sure some may be, but how many are suicide by cop? How many are due to hostage situations? Or how many are due to being fired upon first?
In regards to Covid deaths, 1,000 daily deaths is low compared to the 3,000 we saw at the peak.
A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio).
It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic and now we're just left with the pulpy mess that no one really wants to deal with.
I fear it might be more pernicious than that. There’s reason to believe states are misreporting their numbers to hide what’s going on with it. But I think the media senses the protests and racism issues have to take up all the available oxygen, “or else”.
I think this is a lot of it, for better or worse. I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about anything but the protests lately, lest they be branded as not supporting the protests.
>I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about anything but the protests lately, lest they be branded as not supporting the protests.
That's exactly it. I've some friends who are on the whole rather apolitical, in fact I'd call them politically ignorant as it's not something they tend to invest any time into, but who either run relatively large social media pages as a side hustle or do so professionally on behalf of the company they work for.
From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. The companies want to get info out to customers, however feel that if they post without the promo post first they'll be castigated for it. Those with influence pages want to retain engagement and are in the same position.
In essence, those actually supporting the protests have created an environment whereby they'll never be able to judge the true sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed. Something that, in my eyes at least, has dangerous potential.
> From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case.
This tells me the protests are working. When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege and the plight of other groups. But, growth doesn't occur without first being uncomfortable.
> sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed
Sentiment will be judged through action and change.
>When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege
Unfortunately you're very correct there, though not in the way I think you're assuming. Force people with influence, power, money, ability to be above common problems, to see what's happening and you're not going to get a pat on the back. Change is certainly going to happen, and it's not going to be the change you're hoping for.
> In essence, those actually supporting the protests have created an environment whereby they'll never be able to judge the true sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed. Something that, in my eyes at least, has dangerous potential.
I support the protests. What can I change in my behavior to stop creating this dangerous environment?
What’s crazy though is for the first time in my life I actually fear for the future existence of the US. I watched 9/11 in real time and that didn’t feel as much of a threat to our existence as this does. There’s an actual civil war movement among the extremists now. I don’t think that existed during the civil rights movement days, even. Nor even the Vietnam fallout.
I think there's a lot of rose colored history about the civil rights movement. We're mostly taught one side of it in school - that good people protested and won out over bad people.
We don't, in general, talk about the horrible things that were happening back then. Only unlike a lot of racial problems today, they happened in plain sight and were celebrated. I know Rand Paul got a lot of hate for his recent speech against the legislation to make lynching a federal crime, but the things he talked about happening back when lynching was a frequent problem really opened my eyes to how bad things were.
We don't talk about the fact that before MLK was assassinated, he was widely disliked by the american public.
We don't talk about the fact that a lot of American gun control we still have was passed as a reaction to the civil rights movement - as a way to disarm minorities and weaken their ability to protest.
I wasn't there, but I get the feeling we're still a long ways from things being as bad as they were during the 60's civil rights movement.
Most people don't even know who Fred Hampton was. Even people who lived through the civil rights movement don't recall his name. My own parents downplay the violence of the 70s in favor of the rhetoric du jour that they're fed from mainstream media, and they lived in DC from 1972 until late in 1980 (and, all things considered, they are leftists, not liberals, which makes it even more astonishing to me). It's quite astounding just how fragile our memories are and how easily we can be (emotionally) manipulated.
"Days of Rage" by Bryan Burrough is a good read on the subject (political violence in the late 60s and 70s). There's a good blog / semi-book review that I link people to when they seem intent on learning more of the history (which I originally got from a comment on HN during the 2016 election cycle) [0].
This is fascinating to me. The more I see about America's protest history, the more it seems like the last 20 years have been abnormally calm and your normal state of affairs is more like the mood in 2020. A quote I liked from your linked article:
>You have to understand: in 1968, many radicals absolutely believed that the United States was getting ready to collapse. One Weatherman puts it: “We actually believed there was going to be a revolution. We believed 3rd World countries would rise up and cause crises that would bring down the industrialized West, and we believed it was going to happen tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, like 1976.”
> ...it seems like the last 20 years have been abnormally calm and your normal state of affairs is more like the mood in 2020.
There are periods of calm and periods of dramatic unrest. The history of political activism / protests in America touches the civil rights movement, the worker rights / labor movements, etc..., and goes all the way back to the first taxes the newly formed United States federal government tried to levy against domestic goods (in the form of the Whiskey Rebellion [0]). The American revolution itself was the result of a series of protests that started with the Stamp Act of 1765 [1]. It is a truly fascinating history.
I didn't know who Fred Hampton was (I do now; this comment prompted me to read his Wikipedia article), but I did know his name, from Gil Scott-Heron's poem/song/rap, "No Knock".
And it's worth noting that through one lens the Manson killings were an act of political violence. His stated motivations (to start a race war[1]) were certainly political.
The black panthers [1] emerged precisely because of police brutality and the lack of recourse / accountability. The difference this time is that the internet and cameras made it possible for people across the country to hear and see the stories up close. Suddenly the victims weren't random people in a far away land -- they had an identity, and watching their last moments makes the racial bias all too clear. History might not repeat itself, but it definitely does rhyme
> A First Amendment violation might be harder for some Republican senators to stand behind.
Not really, as senators their first loyalty is to the voters who elect them. Polls show trump has >80% loyalty from GOP voters, who are the ones who control senators via primary elections.
Even a single GOP senator voting against trump in the first trial was a shocking and unexpected result, it’s likely if impeachment was done again the Senate would simply vote to ignore it and not hold a trial (as they have done in the past re: certain judicial impeachments). The only reason the first ‘trial’ was held was to provide political cover for certain moderate senators in their 2020 races.
Sure, and the other ones look the other way. Totally "good" guys just lettin' bad guys be bad guys. Until the "good" guys start going after and punishing the "few bad ones", they are all bad.
If we're going to use the "just some bad apples" argument, then it might be prudent to apply it to the protestors, too?
At this point it's borderline ignorant to be unaware of the ongoing police brutalities. And if one -is- aware, it's disingenuous to compare what they're doing to some stores being set on fire- turns out people really, really care about property damage suddenly. [0] [1]
> Sure, and the other ones look the other way. Totally "good" guys just lettin' bad guys be bad guys. Until the "good" guys start going after and punishing the "few bad ones", they are all bad.
You seem to have misread "not all the violence comes from police" as "not all of the police are bad", here.
The post I replied to was saying that 2020's riots were different than LA or Orlando because this time "protestors aren't the ones engaging in violence, the cops are". Which seems pretty inaccurate from where I'm standing - earlier riots also included police brutality, and these riots include violence from the side of the rioters.
I'm saying you have not a damn clue how terrifying and violent the LA and Miami riots were.
18 people died during the Miami riots and 63 people were killed during the LA riots. Friend of mine spent four days being sheltered in a black families house during the Miami riots. In the LA riots looters were driving up into the LA hills to loot wealthy houses.
Meanwhile 2020 'riots' you have people taking their children to protests. And a few Walmarts and other shops got looted.
White supremacists have wanted civil war since... the actual civil war? I'm not sure there has ever been a point when civil war was not on the table among extremists. Do you have particular current examples that are especially disconcerting?
I mean, people like to throw around race war occasionally now but I only hear about it from the far-right.
Nobody on the far-left is advocating for the extreme violence. During the 1960s, I believe Malcolm X was ready to have a real war to defend Black Americans. Now, at worse the discord is about justifying some looting that has diminished.
I think that's a metaphor like they want to destroy systematic racism or prison industrial complex? But I haven't seen those posts. Anything public you wanna share?
I live in the middle of NYC, which has had several scenes of looting not 30 min from me broadcast to the entire nation, and I haven't heard of any such movement here. Maybe this is my east coast classist bubble, but I'd appreciate being educated on this matter?
So there’s the boogaloo movement. There’s the Calexit campaign that was propped up by Russia in California last election. Probably you’re not seeing it because you’re not being targeted on social media for it and not going those parts of the internet. I really hope Zuckerberg was serious about policing foreign governments from buying ads on their platforms.
For the record there are some of us who actually have uninfluenced interest in breaking apart the US either into separate countries or at least geographic regions with a significantly weakened federal government modeled after the Articles of Confederation from 1781.
My general feeling is that it is too difficult to manage democracies over large geographic areas because the people at the edges tend to not have enough interaction with each other on a social or economic basis to recognize each other's problems.
So I don't know about CalExit but I have definitely spoken about New England or Northeast Secession (heh NExit) as something I'm at least interested in. I just hope if the opportunity ever comes up we can do it peacefully...
There's been a lot of reporting on it as they've stepped up action over the last year. Did you not see the news stories about these individuals stationing inside the Michigan Capitol with assault rifles?
"Boogaloo" is a longstanding meme that refers to a possible upcoming civil war, that the media has recently misconstrued into a movement trying to cause a civil war.
I got about 1/5th through before I couldn't help but wonder if this was a satire site. He's uncomfortable with decades-old common internet acronyms, and unable to recognize a joke, taking several used in the article completely seriously.
One of the comments there puts it better than I can:
> Honestly, most of it is genuinely trolling. I don’t go on it anymore (used to more often), but really the whole thing is a meme. Sure, a few people take it seriously, but I have no doubt it is no statistically different than any other group that has a subculture.
> 4chans entire subculture exists to start trends, meme, and get a reaction. The boogaloo movement was always a meme and it is only now being legitimized because of mainstream news coverage. Now, people who aren’t about of the Chan subculture see it and start to believe in it legitimately.. when that never was the case to begin with.
> They did this with the “OK” symbol, Waterproof Iphones, TayTweets, and most recently Boogaloo.
> Now they are doing it with #goBaldForBLM (or at least trying to).
> Just kind of sad to see a credible investigative journalism site constantly spending time to focus on 4chan.. when it’s trolls.. and the only people who take it seriously are the ones who read about it through the lens of an article.
It's the media not understanding the internet and creating their own boogeyman.
Err.. I hate to break it to you, but the Chan trolling culture has been used a a deliberate way of pushing extreme views into the mainstream for a long time now.
Look no further than Pizzagate and now QAnon. Boogaloo may have started out like that but people quickly made it a real thing long before mainstream media jumped on board.
The whole "oh it's only trolling, can't you take a joke" is just a front used for people to shield their true beliefs behind.
Here's a criminal charge[1] against one Boogaloo person. I'd note this sentence: "During the rally LYNAM stated their group was not for joking around"
Where have you been? There's been groups pepping for a second civil war (the meme-name is "boogaloo", as in "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo") for at least a decade now.
I'm optimistic that red and blue America will have something more like Czechoslovakia's Velvet Divorce involving minimal bloodshed, but I'd be surprised if the USA makes it to 2100 as a single polity.
Like in Italy, where people are now protesting against their goverments overreaction of COVID; mishandling of its elderly, actually at risk, population; and the inflation of death numbers attributed to COVID.
I have noticed that as well, the media across the board is no longer using the numbers to score points for their team. Certain politicians are no longer touting the death counts as political leverage. They've all moved on in the span of a week or two (they must have received their talking points update).
They can't tout how horrible and scary the pandemic is (forcibly close all businesses! we're all gonna die! put people in jail for failure to socially distance! take their kids away from them!), while cheering on protests. They're in fundamental conflict and it became too obvious, the obnoxiousness of the contradiction was being pointed out constantly. They had to pick one, so they pivoted.
Don't worry though, they plan to go back to focusing on the pandemic after the protests fade. There is more political juice there yet, perhaps in the fall if the virus picks up.
The daily numbers are often misleading due to patchy reporting, lags in test results, and the vagaries of weekly testing patterns. New case numbers are often not put in context of number of tests being done. There are lots of pretty graphs but, lacking or obscuring this context, they don't provide much useful information.
When I do see or hear numbers pop up in local media, it's often offered without meaningful information about larger trends and lends itself to the same horserace/it's all sports mentality that afflicts political coverage.
I put together my own spreadsheet based on my local health agency's data to try to get a more objective sense of how things are really progressing:
It's more than an academic exercise. I've been citing it as my small company discusses whether to reopen our local office. (There's no business need to do so. Our office can operate entirely remotely -- and has been for several weeks now.)
I'm also trying present the data in a meaningful way -- relative to testing and reopening guidelines. If you're frustrated by local reporting, I'd encourage you to do some something similar for your region.
Airtime is finite - editorially, it's unsurprising the story took a backseat. NYC curbed infection rate, there may be seasonality, numbers in general are going down in this country.
If we see another phase it will be A1 material again.
I wonder how much longer the words "A1 material" will even make sense to people? Like, they will probably think you are talking about quality of meat or something.
Funny. I am 40, certainly old enough to remember newspapers, but I didn’t get the reference until the last line of your post.
Also, sorry you are getting downvoted. Emotions are running high. I’d guess folks are interpreting your snark against newspapers as snark against the parent.
Number of new cases and new deaths have dropped off a bit and mostly flattened out. Health care capacity is handling current loads. Economy is opening back up..
There is still plenty of talk about COVID-19, but I'm not sure how much cynicism is required to explain why something that is no longer a critically urgent emergency is no longer being reported as a critically urgent emergency.
This is correct. It's not generating the clicks anymore, so they've moved on to other things. The media only cares about whatever gets the most eyeballs.
its a similar effect on fivethirtyeight, they were closely monitoring covid with most articles, then switched to 'protests good, what is covid-19?' as the 'justified' protests have taken place
Either the vitriol people received for protesting the lockdown, wanting to reopen their businesses and resume life - they were labelled essentially as murderers and #COVIDIOTS - was justified OR the mass protests, flouting of concern about the virus, etc. is justified.
You cannot have both.
So either those out and about without masks, or protesting the lockdown, etc. AND the current protests are justified as COVID isn't actually a real concern, OR both sets of protests are unjustified because a lack of concern for COVID is in essence negligent homicide, and the current consort should be labelled as the previous.
What you cannot say is that the first set of actions were unjustified but the second justified, whilst in the midst of the same conditions with the same virus making its way through our people. You may try to insert a "but" in there somewhere, but that will be merely a reflection of your political biases or adherence to the narrative of your chosen publication.
I think your perspective is a bit too rigid, and it's resulting in a false dichotomy.
Yes, obviously the novel coronavirus is still here, and it is still a huge concern. This doesn't mean that people who are fed up with generations of police brutality and have taken to the streets to pressure their local leaders to put an end to it are somehow being hypocrites. They are simply demonstrating that ending police brutality is a much more important issue, one they are willing to risk their own health for (not just from the virus but also from tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper sprays, LRADs and more).
At the end of the day, humans are complex and everyone's calculus is different. I have friends who want to protest but have decided not to because they are immuno-compromised. I also have friends who have gone to the protests, and have since been self-quarantining (including calling in sick if their employers have called people back to the office). I also know people, like you, who think protesters are being irresponsible since packed crowds will no doubt intensify the pandemic.
Instead of judging these groups, we should strive to understand where they are coming from and why they may have made those choices, based on sets of circumstances and experiences that will be unique for everyone.
>I also know people, like you, who think protesters are being irresponsible since packed crowds will no doubt intensify the pandemic.
Just to be clear, I didn't state my position above. I support both sets of protests, and believe both to be justified. That's not something I want to derail the thread with though, so was merely pointing out the approach to logical consistency in my first post.
Spot on. Exactly. And it is that sort of double-standard that will erode the remaining trust in the government and media. One day, if you leave the house you are being accused of bein ascoail and a potential murderer, and the next day you are being praised for defenging civil rights. This is nuts. And people realize that it is.
The law has to be blind to different ideas being expressed; they are all valid, with reasonable limitations. And so it was: despite being overwhelmingly unpopular, antilockdown protests were generally carried out unimpeded.
The popular perception isn't bound to be equitable in this way, nor should it be, nor is it obliged to be uniform.
It is totally valid to carry the opinion that protesting lock downs is less legitimate than protesting police violence. There is no contradiction or injustice here.
Somebody that holds this opinion might argue that while both sets of protestors are willingly putting themselves at risk, one was campaigning for an action that would put others who didn't consent at greater risk and the other is campaigning for action that would protect people. That seems very consistent to me.
I think it is perfectly rational to believe that one set of protests support a bad or unimportant cause and another support an important and good cause, and thus judge that one set of protests is justified despite the risks, while another is not justified. Why would this be an irrational/hypocritical position to take?
Of course, the belief in the importance or validity even of the causes of either protest can vary between people, so various people may support none, one or both protests, according to their particular beliefs. I wouldn't call any of these people irrational (though of course I have my own beliefs and only agree with one of these positions).
> A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio).
Well I've noticed that the firing of Inspectors General hasn't been in the news lately. With the Controversy of the Week with Trump, it's kind of hard to keep up.
Which has been his (and Bannon's) general strategy:
Keep in mind it's an election year, and the biggest failure in the US and the world, New York, is extremely Democrat.
It is critical to the Democrats to shift the conversation. Clearly blaming Trump for the city's failure isn't going to work, so the pivot was to waiting until there was one particularly bad case of police abuse against a black person and then light the powder keg. If you look back this year there have been some awful cases.
For example, one stands out from February where a man was murdered execution style with 4 shots to the head and back[1]. Never heard of it in the media? That's because the person murdered was white so it was not politically useful to the Democrat media machine.
The takeaway for me is that this is only going to get worst. Elections are still in November. Biden is a terrible candidate so they're going to go absolutely nuts trying to sow discontent, instability, and outright rebellion. Can the US survive it's own media and it's two-party system, especially as foreign actors amplify the media's destabilizing message and focus on polarizing people?
Doesn't look like this victim was murdered by the police. We should hold the police to a higher standard since they have a government sanctioned monopoly on the use of lethal force.
Lately, I started to think we make a mistake when we guess what motivates large, poorly defined groups like “Democrats”. I say “we” because I do it all the time, too. Maybe the way back to a less polarized society is to focus more on what people do/say and less on their perceived motives.
I don't see why America would be outraged by the man in Philadelphia? Like it seems a terrible murder but what do you expect people to rise against?
I'm glad the Democrats are shifting the conversation. You think this hasn't been happening regularly for decades? At the very least this has been brewing since 2014 and Ferguson.
They might try to blame Trump but honestly he's given the Democrats enough material just by literally stoking the flames instead of trying to be conciliatory.
Just wanted to add that the abolish the police sentiment isnt as inane as it sounds on the surface. Abolish the police is about taking away responsibilities that police have today and giving them to people more suitable. Police - people trained for aggression with weapons to stop violent criminals should not be handling:
1) mental health
2) homeless
3) drug addiction
4) domestic violence
5) traffic stops
etc etc
They should be called to handle
1) robbery in progress
2) active shooters
etc
The Not police should be trained in deescalation and should be familiar with all the social resources necessary to help people in the community. The not police should not be armed
Unfortunately, items 1, 3, 4, and 5 are all extremely dangerous. The Not Police would be in grave danger. There is a reason that the Police Police are armed.
That guy on drugs could stab you, you could pull a car over and that person could have a gun, you could go to stop domestic violence and get attacked.
Police brutality goes up proportionately with violent crime in their area. In other words, the more police deal with very dangerous people all the time and the more their reactions become more aggressive to everyone.
It is no excuse for murder like what happened with Floyd, but there is a reason we don't send social workers out to domestic violence calls or drug calls...
Plus citizens have the right to own guns (which I am ever thankful for now with rioting breaking out across the country). Unarmed Not Police would be a joke.
I'm sure there is great data on police calls but from my experience with calling 911 social workers wouldn't really help. Earlier this year there was a homeless man waving a knife at pedestrians a few blocks from my house. I know this is a mental health issue and we need do do more for our homelesss - but I couldn't ask officers to deal with stuff like that on the regular with little or no protection.
I've also called 911 in the past when my house was burglarized, two men on a highway got into a fist fight after one's car hit the other, and once when a man was wandering into the middle of the highway trying to get himself run over. You could limit the number of guns but there are real issues that I think you'd want a well-equpied force for.
> Earlier this year there was a homeless man waving a knife at pedestrians a few blocks from my house.
That's sort of the point. That's a situation that may require both an armed officer and a social worker. it's not to say that there is no situation that would require it in a heavily armed nation like the US but frequently it does not. In fact many would say sending heavily armed officers where it does not require it can escalate things, and affects how these officers view and police their communities.
In such mental health situations the social worker could be the commanding officer (essentially commanding police officers), relying on violence if deemed necessary.
The important point is that the structure of decision making inside the police is totally messed up. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail …
So the leadership has to come from somewhere else, basically.
One huge obstacle I still see is that US police basically completely gambled away trust inside the communities. They have to build up trust and are unwilling or unable to do that. That’s tragic. One way to change that would be to tip the balance way in favor of anyone not in the police, e.g. the police having to be right in fact when they apply violence to a problem (i.e. if they shoot the person they are suspecting of having a gun better have a gun or else they go to prison).
This would obviously lead to less effective policing, but that might be needed to lead to a change of strategy by the police. Because if you have to be right in fact you will act differently.
> Earlier this year there was a homeless man waving a knife at pedestrians a few blocks from my house. I know this is a mental health issue and we need do do more for our homelesss - but I couldn't ask officers to deal with stuff like that on the regular with little or no protection.
This is actually a symptom of a much larger problem: the US defunded public mental health institutions years ago, and many people that are a danger to themselves and others became homeless. When you defund the very institutions designed to help these people, and militarize the police, you get the expected outcome: mentally ill people getting shot for "resisting arrest."
> The Not Police would be in grave danger. There is a reason that the Police Police are armed.
That don't need to be armed with firearms. That's overkill (literally overkill, unfortunately) for community policing. They could have batons. Firearms should be restricted to specialists deployed only when needed for a specifically authorised task.
You're asking police officers to be less armed then the general public. 43 states are "shall-issue" and allow residents to conceal carry a firearm after completing required training and submitting an application.
> You're asking police officers to be less armed then the general public.
But most policing tasks don't involve interactions with people looking to fight to the death. Do people really react to being stopped for speeding by starting a firefight? Is that genuinely a routine concern?
Statistically speaking it's very rare, yet many cops unjustifiably spend all day of every shift on edge like they could get into a gun battle at any second. And it shows in how frequently cops unjustifiably escalate situations to deadly force that didn't remotely require it.
What's wrong with most police not having lethal weapons? If police are in danger, they can request SWAT backup, specialized firearm users who won't shoot in unwarranted situations. Regular cops could even have tasers or rubber bullets to deal with threats in a less destructive manner. Why do they need lethal force for helping their own citizenry?
> You're asking police officers to be less armed then the general public.
Can we at least agree that off-duty police officers working as security guards at a hospital or elsewhere should not under any circumstance carry a weapon (other than perhaps a stick or something) while on non-police duty?
> Soon, from inside the room, there was shouting, sounds of a scuffle and a loud pop. During an altercation, two off-duty Houston police officers, moonlighting as security guards, had shocked Mr. Pean with a Taser, fired a bullet into his chest, then handcuffed him.
> Mr. Pean said he was informed of the dismissal of the assault charges against him in a phone call to New York, where he is finishing college. He said he was relieved but remained deeply disturbed by his experience, noting that his family spent more than $100,000 in his defense. “If I was someone else, I could have ended up in jail,” he said.
> After the incident, federal health officials conducted an emergency investigation and faulted the hospital for the shooting, saying that St. Joseph had created “immediate jeopardy to the health and safety of its patients” and ordered that it restrict use of weapons and provide more training in dealing with mentally ill patients.
In addition, perhaps if a police officer is not "on duty", felony assault charges should not be possible. This may sound harsh but imagine a bus driver goes on a walk and someone hits him on the head with a stick. Does that carry felony assault charges as well?
I think many people are saying a police officer's testimony should be void in a court of law if they do not have other evidence (in which case the evidence can stand on its own without the officer's testimony).
Hospitals have millions of dollars worth of equipment, contain huge amounts of narcotics, and deal with psyche patients. They need to be armed.
My mother was a nurse and had guns drawn in the hospital by opposing members of a gang there to inspect someone who was shot.
There are three main problems. District attorneys who do not like to charge cops. Police unions protecting cops. And the justice system requires a unanimous jury verdict to convict. This is to protect the accused.
If you think the riots are crazy now, wait until the jury is hung or acquits Floyd because one juror has doubt. Floyd had fentanyl in his system.
The lawyer only needs to convince ONE juror that it wasn’t just Chauvins fault that the fentanyl contributed to it and you can’t know BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that it was all Chauvins fault and boom, he gets off.
This has a reasonable probability of happening. I hope it doesn’t and he convicted. But this is the real second wave I am worried about. More than Covid.
Wouldn't it be better to review and synthesize the duty logs of several dozen police officers, maybe grouped by the amount of crime they deal with on average, over several years?
People that don't know the average day don't have any basis to accurately imagine the average day, it's not a useful activity at that point.
The obvious answer is to make the public less armed than police officers.
The less obvious answer is to stop glorifying violence, including gun violence, war porn, drug kingpin lifestyles, cop/detective lifestyles, and other forms of abusive aggression in the media.
Considering that the US seems to go insane when a nipple appears on TV without a formal invitation, it's really quite strange that you can watch dramatised blood spurting out of fatal high-calibre organ wounds multiple times an hour - if you really want to.
This whole riots debacle being endorsed and justified by the media has done more for the cause of gun ownership that the NRA ever could.
I never ever considered owning a gun in my entire life, but I have one now and not afraid to use it if needed. Several friends have also done the same.
The debate for gun ownership is probably dead for 1 or 2 generations, and I do not want to see a single person blaming anyone about it when I was literally told by the police the other day that I am on my own during the night of looting in NYC.
In US liberals have this idea that police will protect them, but in all documented severe crisis events police was first to run away. Which basically means that everyone is on their own, or at least with their friends/neighbors.
Anyway, take a two day training course on how to use a gun (not “safety” course), otherwise owning a gun is pretty useless. Also, you need to periodically go to the range, and clean the gun after. And stock pile some ammo when you can - you are not going to be able to get any during any crisis.
> There is a reason that the Police Police are armed.
Not all Police are armed (see UK). Also, other countries, while armed, seem to use their firearms much less (e.g., the entire country of Germany seems to use fewer bullets than a single US city).
The vast majority of police forces are armed, even in low-crime countries.
> the entire country of Germany seems to use fewer bullets than a single US city
So perhaps guns are not actually the problem? There's commensurately little crime occurring in Germany, crime is not punished as harshly and criminals are not armed to the same degree.
When somebody is getting arrested in the US, they're looking at years in harsh prisons. They're likely to use any sort of irrational means to avoid or resist getting arrested.
Police officers in the UK are armed with both chemical weapons and high tech batons.
Most officers do not carry firearms, but snipers and other firearms carrying officers are generally available at a moments notice. In larger cities they are in roving vehicles.
Not really ‘unarmed’ although not carrying firearms to every situation may be a good policy.
If officers don't engage because they are insufficiently equipped, you effectively have less policing. Less policing causes more violence and more deaths.
Why pick out a random statistic like knife crime? It sucks, but matters much less than the following statistics:
US has 4 times more intentional homicide rate vs. UK. US has 18 times more murder rate vs. UK.
I think the evidence is quite clear that the UK with police that are less heavily armed have better crime statistics, fewer police deaths, AND fewer civilian deaths caused by police.
I disagree. Almost every country on the planet arms its police force and all of those countries are rather low in crime, at least compared to the US.
When there's a situation that requires guns, they stay put until the police with the guns arrives. Or they become a hero and get stabbed in the process:
In many non americas, the police police are already not armed, (although they do often carry non-leathal weapons). For example, the famous "bobbies" of the world's oldest operating police force.
I admit that I also fell for some of the police union marketing material and automatically assumed that being a police officer in the US must be one of the most dangerous and deadly professions, however, the numbers from BLS don't back that up. It isn't even in the top 10: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-i...
So, I believe as a public we have been misinformed on how deadly it is to actually be a police officer in the US, and this is somehow used to justify extra-judicial killings of potentially innocent civilians. You certainly don't see loggers and roofers unions talking about how they are the "thin brown line" protecting society from the dangers of uncut trees and leaky roofs.
That’s an interesting point about police brutality vs. violent crime. Is that supported by evidence or just a supposition? Not trying to send you on a wild “source?” goose chase. If it’s just supposition, that’s fine.
I understand you see two roles that should be separated, and I won't weigh in on that - perhaps you are right. But let me highlight something that isn't so obvious in this discussion:
Job #1 for police is to keep everybody alive, even the criminals. Everything else is secondary. They are not primarily trained "for aggression with weapons", they are trained in deescalation, social resources, helping the community, etc. And contrary to most TV shows and movies, use of a weapon is a rather rare event in a police officer's career.
Whether police should or should not be armed depends entirely on whether the criminals are or are not armed. Here in New Zealand police have arms, but they are in lock boxes in their cruisers, and only brought out when necessary. Then there is a special "armed offenders squad" which comes in with sniper rifles and such and takes care of hostage situations, mass shooters, etc.
If the current 'abolish the police' sentiment intends to send the message you are expressing, it's not sending it very effectively. My fear is that police will quit/retire in droves and not be easily replaced. That will cause inner city gang activity to increase. As I understand it, there are a small number of powerful remorseless hardened criminals forcing inner city youth into a life of crime via credible threats, and using them as pawns to distance themselves from the day to day criminal activity. The police are the only ones powerful enough to fight this and to protect these kids.
Yes, they often do a shit job at it, and yes, they often are infected with racists and overly aggressive assholes, and even criminals using that position for the power it affords. But I think we'd do better if we focused on finding and weeding out the bad cops, rather than throwing out the entire institution.
This is the strategy used at Burning Man, and it seems to work quite well from what I’ve heard, though it’s admittedly not a very representative slice of society. There are “rangers” who deal with safety issues or disputes, and camps devoted to caring for people who might be having a bad trip (or other kind of episode) in a compassionate way. They will only call the police as a last resort.
I think a similar approach at the community level would be great to see in the US. Rather than fighting the police head-on to try to make them respect our rights as they should (a tall order), we could instead try to make them largely redundant. Of course, there will always be some situations where armed police are necessary, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s less than 1% of the calls they’re currently responding to.
I'm a Ranger. One of rules though is not to put ourself in danger. Which is opposite of what a cop might need to do.
We have a few must reports (rape, lost child, and sexual assault) that we must call in but anecdotally I've rarely heard of a Ranger calling in LEO (law enforcement officer) to handle anything that isn't a gun/weapon or a must report.
But Burning Man has no guns and everyone is there on vacation. It doesn't apply.
Like you said, that's not representative. It means nothing.
Of course, if you just add up all the cases across the country, then you don't need armed police in 99% of case. The problem is that you don't know which one percent does need armed police.
You want police to be able to bring the situation under control as soon as possible, you don't want to wait for people to get stabbed or shot by some guy who couldn't be stopped otherwise.
It may not be the answer to all our problems, but when tens of thousands of people on tons of mind-altering substances are able to keep the peace without police or guns present, it certainly means something. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of issues to deal with—issues that would surely be handled far more violently and less effectively by the police if there weren’t alternatives.
“The problem is that you don't know which one percent does need armed police.”
Perhaps there are more intelligent ways to triage than treating every situation like a military engagement?
Often the cops showing up with guns drawn is what turns a situation violent.
> It may not be the answer to all our problems, but when tens of thousands of people on tons of mind-altering substances are able to keep the peace without police or guns present, it certainly means something.
Anything that a bunch of yuppies do in their leisure time is not representative of anything else. It can not to be used to draw conclusions on what to do about, say, crime in the inner cities.
> Perhaps there are more intelligent ways to triage than treating every situation like a military engagement?
> Often the cops showing up with guns drawn is what turns a situation violent.
Cops generally don't draw their guns unless there is a perceived threat. If there is a perceived threat, not having a gun puts cops at a severe disadvantage.
Of course there's the option for cops to just not engage and let the situation play out. There's the option for cops just to not do any policing, to not even show up. That'll reduce victims of police brutality for sure. That's already happening in some areas and all these calls for defunding the police will surely have an impact there.
"Cops generally don't draw their guns unless there is a perceived threat."
Yeah and these "perceived threats" include kids with toy guns, unarmed people with their hands up, and people lying on the ground dying.
Many cops have learned, whether through training or culture, to point their guns first and ask questions later, at a huge cost to society. It seems you don't have sympathy for the people affected by this, but many of us do.
I have a lot of sympathy for police too. They have a dangerous and thankless job, and we all rely on them. But my sympathy ends at those who abuse their power, and those who protect the abusers in their midst.
People who would rather kill another human than accept any risk in trying to defuse a situation peacefully don't have what it takes to do this extremely difficult job, and they should look for another line of work.
> Yeah and these "perceived threats" include kids with toy guns, unarmed people with their hands up, and people lying on the ground dying.
Yes, unfortunately, those people were perceived as threats and the officers involved weren't taking any chances.
Those are, for the most part, accidents. How many children are run over because people are carelessly driving? Would you ban cars for everyone?
> Many cops have learned, whether through training or culture, to point their guns first and ask questions later, at a huge cost to society.
Yes, many people have had bad training or are just not made for the job. These are still people whose lives are at the frontline and they aren't even paid that well. I don't think the solution is to defund or disarm everyone involved.
> It seems you don't have sympathy for the people affected by this, but many of us do.
This is a disingenuous statement. You have to look beyond some exceptional and sensationalized cases, at the day-to-day reality of policing. If you disarm the police, they will stop policing those areas that are affected by crime the most. Criminals with guns will get free reign. More people will get shot, just not by cops.
More affluent people will not be affected by this, they could have it either way, it wouldn't make a difference. Their sympathy may be real, their intentions may be good, the outcome will still be bad.
> I have a lot of sympathy for police too. They have a dangerous and thankless job, and we all rely on them. But my sympathy ends at those who abuse their power, and those who protect the abusers in their midst.
I second this suggestion. If you want to take guns away from police at least allow me to legally defend myself. Imagine criminals being the only ones with guns.
"but that'll lead to more school shootings!", cry the people who've apparently never considered that school shootings are premeditated and the shooters tend not to care about the law.
So when we have notoriously violent neighborhoods, can we send all the social workers to spread love and friendship and solve the problem?.
If you believe police is not needed as a form of authority, you have been living in a privileged bubble for far too long. Travel, look around, and you will see the world is not as nice as you think it is.
When I see health experts saying we can have groups of up to 12 people outside BUT protests up to 100 people, it really does not look good for the credibility of these experts.
Nobody denies that the pandemic is/was a real thing. But at that point it has been politicized ad nauseum and this is bad.
It will for sure have an impact on how much people trust experts, and general trust in experts was already bad before this. But now nobody should dare blame anyone for not believing an expert after the sham we have all seen.
Very sad that the pandemic has stopped being about science but moved to being about politics. Good luck getting compliance if there is, god forbid, a second wave or another more deadly virus in the future.
Everything is politicized, especially that which affects the economy and elections. The pandemic will continue even if public health experts are not willing to go against the grain and admit protests will lead to more infections and more deaths. These experts may be succumbing to pressure and there is clearly backlash against non-woke voices within the left.
The comment thread here, and the national attitude more generally, is the literal embodiment of cognitive dissonance. Science and facts are only useful insofar as they are convenient to our ends.
I suppose, in light of the shortcomings of human nature, it would be a lot easier to make the point that needs to be made if we were dropping bombs on coronavirus victims and broadcasting the carnage instead of rolling them up into statistical output. Their crime, apparently, is dying in a way that isn't direct and emotionally resonant enough for other human beings to grasp the magnitude of it.
I think you're right that "science" and "data" are only believed when they align with one's views.
But people seem to care a lot more about coronavirus deaths than deaths from war, flu, air pollution, traffic accidents, cancer (since screenings are down since lockdown), etc, so I can't agree with you on the other point.
Let's not forget that the data is far from all collected, and the science is not settled, wrt either the true impact of the virus or the effectiveness of various responses to it. I don't think it's wise to assume that science will bear out any one particular point of view, once there is better data, more perspective, and a scientific consensus.
You're digressing from the core, indisputable truth: these protests, in the present environment, will result in a significant number of deaths. Sure we won't start to have a sense of just how many until a few more weeks have passed, but we can say with relative certainty it will be "significant".
The reason people are dodging this is because it makes these protests morally indefensible, on balance. This is terribly inconvenient if you've entrenched yourself in a particular way of thinking and no longer wish to question it.
Are all the state-wide openings in May, the opening of casinos, and the festivities of Memorial Day Weekend, of which we are already seeing COVID impacts, more or less morally indefensible than the BLM protests?
When all these other non-protest gatherings of people were taking place, were you this outraged? If the answer is no: explain yourself.
Yes they are morally indefensible. Many of those decisions didn't make sense to me and yes I expressed outrage about it to friends.
But your point is also a straw man. For the most part, there are still prohibitions on large gatherings of people. These protests have been blessed as an exception. Why? Because the government's hand was forced by political expediency. In essence, the government has failed to protect the people from themselves.
And let me flip the question on you: why do we need to protest so urgently now, during a global pandemic? Why can't it be postponed until after we've resolved that problem and can permit it to go about safely?
I'll answer that for you: BLM has found outsized effectiveness because of coronavirus. Because people have more time, and are feeling less economically secure, and are more emotionally vulnerable. They were better primed to respond to the movement and organizers are capitalizing on that at the direct expense of human lives, even if that isn't obvious to them.
Worst of all, history suggests that these protests and the consequent loss of life will buy Black people next to nothing. Categorically the wrong solution to a very complex problem.
Painfully true, and very well put. I hope for the day that twitter realizes most of America is not actually on twitter and trending hashtags do not represent the common sentiment.
The concerns are right but public assembly is critical in a democracy, and cannot be put on hold indefinitely. It's probably the most fundamental right in any civil society and with all these takes I have seen on twitter about COVID and the protests, a lot of people seem to seriously unerestimate the value that free assembly has.
Covid as bad as it is will be an issue of the near future, civil rights gains or losses will have an impact in decades to come.
Assembly is valuable, but there's a certain misery that comes with self-isolating for two weeks living on canned beans, having many businesses shut down, and working so hard at this to protect the lives of your elderly parents or your asthmatic sibling...
... And then watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress.
It's not just misery, it feels fundamentally unjust. Basically some rule violations are deemed more equal than others, so why should I care anymore? If we're not "all in this together" why should I suffer?
>It's not just misery, it feels fundamentally unjust. Basically some rule violations are deemed more equal than others, so why should I care anymore?
Politicans politicize all that they can in order to use it as ammo against their opposition. The mainstream media creates and editorializes narratives in the name of garnering and sustaining attention and therefore advertising dollars.
If you're engaging with either, you have to approach it with skepticism, try to find balancing viewpoints, and make the best decisions for yourself, your family, etc. as a result.
Unfortunately, in the current case, healthcare professionals have allowed themselves to become tools of the above parties and have massively discredited themselves and their institutions in doing so. We're now even at a point where someone could rightfully be completely confused as to whether something as small as buying/wearing masks is a fruitful endeavour or a waste of effort, which is a dire state for us to be in.
That has long been a principle of law, not all violations are equal because of extenuating circumstances. One sizes fits all ignoring circumstances is foolishness, not justice even if it leads to 'equality'. There is a difference between smashing a window of a car to rob it or for shits and giggles, and doing it to save a life.
Is this law? Do these governments even have the authority they claim they do to issue these selective lockdowns? It's a gray area at best, and I'm sure many judges would consider these lockdowns actively illegal as is what happened in Wisconsin.
Far more lives are threatened by coronavirus today than will be threatened by police brutality over the next several decades [1]. You're basically saying that immunocompromised and elderly persons are acceptable collateral damage.
One thing that's been lost in the noise is that death by police brutality is a vanishingly small problem: less than 0.0003% of the population per year (and most of those are White people).
And the ultimate irony is far more Black people are going to die as a result of these protests (since Black communities are disproportionately affected by the virus) than will be saved by whatever temporary curtailment of police brutality this yields.
Those are the real facts. Not the alternative ones you and people like you would like us to focus on. It's like it suddenly became acceptable to wantonly suspend rationality because it suits certain interests.
It is important to not the latter did not mitigating police brutality as a public health interest, but racism in general.
From the letter:
> White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19. Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police compared to white people, but the effects of racism are far more pervasive. Black people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress. Black people are also more likely to develop COVID-19. Black people with COVID-19 are diagnosed later in the disease course and have a higher rate of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death. COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.
The remainder of the letter goes into strategies for mitigating the spread of COVID-19 during protests.
I think it's incorrect to only count deaths as the fallout from police attitude towards minorities. An entire group of people is effectively controlled and held back my the police. As we have already seen, the impacts are generational and have gotten us to where we are today. COVID-19 is the thing will most likely be forgotten next year with some sort of vaccine or herd immunity arising. Even if the protests are successful, it will still be only another step on a long road of equality.
> In my mind, there is almost no cause that warrants the avoidable death of even a single person, let alone tens of thousands
I agree with you! I don't think I was clear in my original post. The human toll of systemic racism and police brutality is much greater than the 'deaths by cops' number. Look at how COVID-19 is much more dangerous to the Black communities. Why is that? Lack of adequate healthcare, opportunity, and lagging economic outlook linked to systemic racism.
You see the deaths from COVID-19, and they are horrible. I'm thinking about COVID-19, and the next 10 pandemics that will disproportionally impact Black and minority communities. In aggregate the death toll could dwarf COVID-19. How do we avoid those deaths?
> From the perspective of the protesters, taking this opportunity to protest and possibly achieve change means hopefully lowering the general mortality risk for generations to come, not just in the immediate COVID future.
I didn't mention police because this was never just about the police.
It's not clear to me how this protest attempts to solve racism, even if that is a goal of participants. Demands I've seen have exclusively been for changes to policing. The words Black Lives Matter refer to police violence.
I definitely agree that it would be morally acceptable to suffer even a hundred thousand deaths in exchange for a permanent end to racism. And I could even be persuaded to believe that such actions should be taken now, as opposed to say a year from now. But that is not an outcome I expect, as I haven't even heard proposals for how that might be done.
I'm all for the reform people are asking for. But it is not my belief that the net effect of this right now will be positive.
Race war ideology flamewar is not allowed here. Yes, related topics are of the moment, but you crossed the line, and the resulting subthread was particularly wretched. No more of this please.
My opinion is policing of minority communities is generally ineffective and counter productive. Which leaves members of those communities at the mercy of both the police and criminals. At it's worst you have collusion between the police and criminals operating in minority communities.
The "general narrative" is about rampant police brutality that first and foremost disproportionately affects people of color. It's a problem that's existed since the inception of a police force in the US and that's what this movement is about. No one is trying to play a silly number game of which race kills more of what other race.
You're stopping short of spelling out your conclusion.
The aims of the protests are to shine a spotlight on police brutality and qualified immunity / defund the police / ensure that killer cops are prosecuted / damage property in pursuit of anarchy / score a new TV / whatever. It's all fairly clear and makes enough sense.
Your idea, however, leaves us with nothing but a knowing look and an appeal to not trust the narrative. If you can read any broader frustration here, it's because all the "but what about white folks?" people in my social circle have been following the same playbook.
So where does it go? Does your argument conclude that the police should be harsher still towards black people? Does it suggest that police who kill should suffer less scrutiny than they presently do? Is the status quo fine, and the resolution should be that everyone just shut up and go home?
What's your call to action here, and what would be the immediate real-world consequences of your worldview?
The playbook is the knowing look and the consistently not reaching conclusions, or perhaps not amongst polite company. They're quite free to think differently to me.
If they had said that the protests were fine but next time we expect a shout-out, then the discussion could move on. Much like in this example.
Thank you for this thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion. I would also like to add a global take into the discussion. Who stands to benefit from the American people being both divided among white / black, male / female, old / young, and distrusting of the media? Certainly not anyone in America.
Not OP. When considering this line of thought, I think of meme's in the original sense of the word. So one could take a mildly-conspiratorial take on it and say that the "meme" itself stands to benefit from this sort of division rather than a nefarious agent or group. It's a self-feeding cycle because I would argue that this cause done in a bad/unfair way sows more racial/gender/etc division and as such creates more reason for itself to exist.
> Police brutality is wrong and there is reason to think that it is a worse problem for black people than for white people. At the same time, we recognize the disproportionate extent to which white people suffer from black violence. We may perhaps disagree about the extent to which the discrepancy is due to systematic racism or socioeconomic issues, but we recognize your concerns. We want to reach across the division and work together to fix all these issues
So you want to dilute the protest which is specifically about police violence against black people into something entirely different? You're essentially arguing to destroy the entire protest for something it's not at all about.
Protesting police brutality against black people is protesting police brutality in general.
I think anecdote, personal experience, and most importantly, history, are valuable when the groups in question (law enforcement) are collecting the data in question. Would you believe a survey taken by Coca-cola about what soda is the tastiest? A lot of the initial reactions of law enforcement to incidents of police brutality start with denial, and they don't change their story until there is video evidence to contradict them. In so many incidents where there isn't publicly available evidence, they get to shape the narrative. No amount of data are meaningful if the source benefits from them supporting certain hypotheses.
And I focus on arrests made in situations such as incidents of weapons possession, aggravated assault, or the violent crime aggregate, I don't see much of a discrepancy versus that 2x. For example, for the violent crime aggregate it breaks down as 288620/187470. That's about 1.5x. That is, 1.5x as many white people as black people got arrested for violent crimes. Yet 2x as many white people as black people got shot by cops in that year.
You're normalizing to raw population. You want to normalize to "armed conflicts with the police" or similar.
Using the above FBI 2018 homicide statistics, blacks committed 3177 homicides in 2018, while whites committed 3011---in other words, blacks account for ~50%, despite only being 13% of the population.
Taking that proportion as a rough "criminality index," and multiply 53.5 by 13/50, and things look very different.
The whole point of the comment you are questioning is to also normalize it to something besides total percent of population. The new comparison seems to say that if you are a violent criminal your chances of getting shot by the police are higher if you are white.
This population measurement is not useful for determining racism. It does not consider that blacks make up 13% of the population, but commit 52% of the homicides. It doesn’t consider if the shootings are justified. It doesn’t consider black cops shooting black suspects.
There is in general insufficient data to support or reject that there is systemic racism.
Yeah but that’s only one way to calculate it. Other ways might be to calculate based on number of encounters, or number of criminal acts, or to control for location, or control for income. Etc.
I think it’s important to be really careful saying a given statistic, any statistic, says what we think it says.
It really doesn’t and I sense that you seem to be downplaying the whole concept that statistics can be interpreted in many different ways.
Edit: I can’t reply to your reply, I think it is a new hacker news feature that’s trying to slow down these back and forths. I listed several ways we could control the data, and I’m not proficient enough in statistics to do all that myself.
One talking point is: per police interaction, an unarmed non-Hispanic Caucasian person has a 4 in 10000 chance of being shot while an unarmed African American has a 3 in 10000 ... so the only huge person actually has a higher level of risk per interaction.
Again, this is not my area of expertise.
I’m not suggesting what all these numbers mean. I am suggesting that when you bring numbers, it’s only fair to discuss different ways to view the numbers.
> It really doesn’t and I sense that you seem to be downplaying the whole concept that statistics can be interpreted in many different ways.
Statistics can be presented in any number of ways; data can be used to lie in any number of directions.
But if you're not going to come here with a counterproposal, you're only undermining the movement Black Americans have been struggling with for so long by stating obliquely that these numbers are a lie.
Edit per yours (sorry you've been hit by rate limits. I get the feeling):
> One talking point is: per police interaction, an unarmed non-Hispanic Caucasian person has a 4 in 10000 chance of being shot while an unarmed African American has a 3 in 10000 ... so the only huge person actually has a higher level of risk per interaction.
The unknown variable here is the number of police interactions by race and whether they were the initiator or the intended target (or suspect, if a crime had taken place). That's why it's normally just reduced to shootings by police.
If you have the details and the exact breakdowns, it'd be helpful. But the BJS doesn't seem to discriminate between whether someone initiated the contact or whether they're the target of law enforcement action.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This is one of the commonest and most inflammatory clichés of race war that exists, so your comment reads like concern trolling.
Thank you for taking the time for an individual reply. The thread was young and I was genuinely baffled, as I do not get much exposure to this type of... thinking in my daily life. I regretted my engagement the moment the response came back :(
I believe you that it was unintentional. In my experience, most of what looks like trolling actually is, which is why I try to use qualifying language like "reads like". Unfortunately, the troll effects are the same regardless of intent, and effects / likely effects are what we have to moderate by. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I should have been clearer earlier: given the replies that my question prompted I completely understand why my post was flagged, even in isolation. I have no qualms about any of it.
The comment was not meant as "who does he think he is, putting words in my keyboard, I'll set him straight!", but rather a humble "whoa! instead of simply flipping an invisible switch, he took the time to explain what and why to some nobody: this is so cool!"
Thank you for sacrificing your sanity and keeping this site what it is ;)
Pretty typical of everyone that I have (anecdotally) ever met who contends that black violence on whites is the primary issue. They say one thing based on their intuition and when they hear any response that complicates their view they are out to lunch. A lack of curiosity about your own biases is not a great look.
Also worth noting is that the term homicide can only be applied by law enforcement, whose systemic bias against people of color is.. you know, the topic of the day. It does not include many or most of the cases of wrongfully being killed by law enforcement and it certainly doesn't include the illegal killing of people in other countries by our armed forces. I would be very interested in seeing these numbers included.
> Pretty typical of everyone that I have (anecdotally) ever met who contends that black violence on whites is the primary issue.
Wait, is this directed to me, or to the comment above me? Because I'm arguing the exact opposite of this, specifically that focusing on and misrepresenting Black-on-White violence takes away from the struggle against oppression endured by the Black community.
It's the OP I'm replying to who's been arguing the Black-on-White violence angle. I'm merely pointing out that they're using a strawman to defend it and that I have no intention of staying engaged when there are a broad array of fallacies being employed one after another.
This really only works if you consider said statistics to be reported in good faith. Black Americans tend to be disproportionately targeted by law enforcement and disproportionately punished. For example, black Americans are around four times as likely to be charged for Marijuana offenses compared to white people despite using marijuana at equal rates.
White-on-black crimes I would argue are far less likely to be reported, especially apparent by the bias that the police employ against black people.
This people keep pointing to black incarceration rates as a symptom of a racist judicial system. When debating I focus on murder victims as that has nothing to do with the racist judicial system.
Still there is a problem with government tyranny and it doesnt matter if it is just a handful of people. Being killed by a thug vs being killed by the govt really are two different things even if you are just as dead either way.
It's pretty easy to lie about it and say you were 'afraid for your life' or 'he charged at me' though, as we've seen in multiple high-profile murders of black people. It's almost like that's what kicked off this entire protest.
If you're not charged for murder, then it doesn't get reported.
The issue is the double standard with which some protestors were condemned while others were lauded based solely on which causes (and which classes of people) the commenters happened to politically support. It's transparently unprincipled, to the point of being a sad joke.
That isn't a double standard but a fundamental result of judgement of costs, values, and outcomes. Somebody who shoots an armed and dangerous spree shooter is lauded as heroic while someone who shoots a kid thought they was shoplifting a one dollar drink is regarded as a psychopath with no regard for human life. Circumstances and outcomes vary, a form of 'neutrality' that ignores that fundamentally isn't a useful metric.
But that’s not a good analogy. The right to protest is important precisely to protect unpopular (but still widespread enough to have many supporters) demonstrations.
If someone calls for protests to be illegal in one case and not the other then that’s a double standard and not such a great argument. (There are some subtle differences here, though: The situation a month ago was materially different – both in terms of the epidemiological picture as well as in terms of new scientific evidence about the relative dangers of being inside and outside – so it is possible for someone to argue for a difference on that basis, though I do acknowledge that’s a very shaky one.)
What’s happening here, though is that people judge the content of the protests: The content of the protests against the restrictions was irrational trash, so engaging in them is irresponsible stupidity. That’s a value judgement and it is perfectly valid to arrive at different conclusions with such a value judgement.
>That isn't a double standard but a fundamental result of judgement of costs, values, and outcomes.
What do you think the definition of a 'double standard' is? You know, applying a different standard to the same behaviour (protests).
>Circumstances and outcomes vary, a form of 'neutrality' that ignores that fundamentally isn't a useful metric.
Sure. And it's still a double-standard. You just associate the phrase 'double-standard' as a negative and you don't like to apply something negative to behaviour you approve of.
I don't think it's a double standard but yeah I agree with you that cause is important here. 100% it matters what you're risking yourself for.
Lots of people on the left were calling for more support from the government to handle this. EU unemployment is half of what the US is. Germany's at 3.5%. So risking yourself, for the economy didn't seem worth it especially when other nations did so much more. Lots of states started eviction moratoriums to protect people.
There is a difference between a couple dozen cosplaytriots showing up with guns to protest not getting a haircut and a hundred thousand+ of the general public showing up without guns to protest people getting killed and maimed live on camera--including the press.
However, if you want to talk about double standard, where are the cosplaytriots who were sooooo concerned about their rights? Where is the groundswell of Second Amendment defenders out protecting these protests against the government like the Black Panthers did back in the 1960's?
They all bluster about standing up to the government--here is the time. So why is silence all I hear? Seems like they don't really care about those pesky rights so much, after all. And it seems like they don't really like standing up when the government might actually shoot back. Cowards.
I'm torn, a little bit. Against your point: The current protests are at least mostly respecting the fact the disease exists, and encourages masks. Also, these protests are much more organic than the "re-open America" protests. And the left-wing who got mad at the anti-public-health protests never called for cops to shoot them or round them up. IOW: We respected their freedom to be out there, no matter how fucked the cause.
Toward your point: I fundamentally don't respect most conservatives, much less those who think they need to protest against public health measures. So to an extent, yes, this is a lot more important than what they were complaining about.
> I fundamentally don't respect most conservatives, much less those who think they need to protest against public health measures.
You're conflating political stance with intelligence. Also, you need to respect everyone. That doesn't mean agree-with or follow blindly, just recognize their inherent humanity and worth. I feel like that must have been a sentiment promulgated by someone famous at some time in the past.
I don't think they are "worth less" than someone else, and I certainly know there are intellectually honest, well-meaning conservatives in the country. The line starts to blur <somewhere that I have defined> but that gets too politically specific for HN.
That's not a double standard. That's just a standard. When one group of people is holding signs that say "stop murdering people" and the other group is holding signs that say "I need a haircut," and you're mad that "the commenters" are not treating them the same, the problem is not with the commenters.
> When one group of people is holding signs that say "stop murdering people" and the other group is holding signs that say "I need a haircut," and you're mad that "the commenters" are not treating them the same, the problem is not with the commenters.
This is at best an extremely distorted comparison of the two messages.
40 million people are unemployed. The stakes are much larger than just getting a haircut.
Yet those were the signs being held. There are clear goals for police brutality protests. The anti-quarantine protests had no clear goal, the narrative seemed to be “the government hit their ‘disable economy’ button and we want them to turn it back on” as if relaxing legal restrictions would suddenly make everyone ok with the rampant disease and go spend time rubbing shoulders again. People were self quarantining before it was a legal requirement.
There were many other signs being held. You’re choosing to focus on the people holding a haircut sign.
In any case as a legal matter it makes no difference. Government restrictions on 1st amendment rights to assemble and protest can only survive strict scrutiny if they are viewpoint-neutral.
As soon as governors are deciding which protesters to fine/ticket based on their agreement or disagreement with the contents of their protest signs, as a matter of law the protest/gathering ban is done for. (See the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision where justice Roberts ruled that, at the time, there wasn’t evidence that church services in California were being treated unequally with other equivalent non-religious services. When the case comes back up again with Gov Newsom’s approval of protestors marching outside, but not Christians marching in religious processions, the ban is going to fall apart in court).
With the exception of restaurants, people mostly do seem to be going about their business now that legal restrictions are relaxed. As we've seen this past week or two, even giant crowds don't stop people.
You're making my point. You politically support one side more than the other, right down to belittling the side you unsupport as "I need a haircut". Maybe I agree with you politically, but when arguments from principle pivot from one week to the next based on which way the politics point, it's not really about principle.
One group of protestors makes awful points, so I judge them to be engaging in pointless and risky behavior.
The other side doesn’t, so I’m much more supportive of their protest, even though there might be associated risks.
As long as I don’t call for the first protest to be made illegal this is a perfectly consistent argument.
Sometimes you have to look at the content of a protest to judge if it’s valuable or not. And it’s perfectly ok to judge a protest as not being valuable.
That might have been what one sign said, but picking that as if it were "their argument", let alone the best argument, is sample bias and clearly intended to belittle. That's politics: build up your own side as much as possible, smear the other side as much as possible. If someone actually wanted to be fair, they'd reference a stronger case for protesting the lockdown, such as the economic pain it has inflicted and the case that it also leads to deaths, such as by suicide and addiction, as well as social ills like increased child abuse and domestic violence. I'm not trying to take that side, just pointing out that intellectual honesty is the first casualty of politics, just like truth is the first casualty of war.
So because one of the "protesters" for BLM was literally holding a sign and going on live TV threatening to put fire to property, should we be equating all of BLM to that?
Now to dare dumb down the argument to being only about haircuts is, well everyone can understand what I would say, but I don't want to run afoul of the rules.
I could say: "One group is holding signs that say 'Let us reopen. I have 2 children to feed' and another group is calling for police abolition while smashing in the windows of small businesses and murdering people" and it would be just as valid of a description as yours. It's not a fair description though.
Maybe your framing is the result of not having a wide enough array of news sources.
If by "I need a haircut" you mean to say "I am unemployed, verging on destitution and eviction, along with 30 Million other Americans" then maybe you have a point.
The trivialization of other people's causes, especially those that should engender sympathy (literally 10's of millions of those in the weakest economic situations), is a 'root cause' here.
If a very serious healthcare issue is politicized, we're all in trouble.
neonate I agree with you. "I need a haircut" is a proxy for economic freedom of choice and freedom of movement, regardless the purpose. Freedom of movement only for the causes you believe in is not freedom at all.
They want to be the judges that get to determine which movement is worthwhile and which movement is not worthwhile.
I don't agree that "I need a haircut" is a good argument, or even that what it is a proxy for is a good argument. It's also lousy politics because it's so easy to dismiss.
The good argument is that if we care about mitigating suffering and death, we should also be looking at the suffering and death the lockdown measures lead to. Counting one side and not the other is dishonest.
I strongly disagree. Many people seem to believe this without any substance. Some people, as evidenced by comments here, only believe this when it aligns to their subjectively self valued concern.
According to Wikipedia assembly is an example of a civil liberty. The preeminent doctrine on civil liberties is On Liberty. According to John Stuart Mill the greatest destroyer, as addressed near the top of chapter 2, of civil liberties is populism whether from an aggressive majority or angry mob.
Assembly only really means anything, to those observing, if the participants are assembling for a purpose of individually formulated passion opposed to an exertion of social pressure. That, as it would appear, is the difference between a protest versus an angry mob.
That said I would say the most fundamental right is freedom of expression which can occur from a group or individual and be every bit as powerful and influential.
I think a lot of people strongly believe things without substance, sometimes based on wikipedia and interpreting stuff written by people that died centuries before problems manifested in paradigms that would have been unimaginable to them.
I'm a fan of John Stuart Mill's writing, but having a memorable book title does not make a permanently relevant tome that applies to all of history backward and forward.
My understanding of assembly (no wikipedia reference here) is that it's a form of expression (which you also kind of said yourself).
Are saying that assembly isn't good or necessary for society? Or is this entire post specifically about the OP's word choice?
In either case, are you citing J. S. Mill as a form of "proof" for your assertion?
Thank you for your clarification that the post was entirely a critique of a single bit of word choice.
Out of curiosity, what other philosophers do you consider to be so absolutely correct (and so clear in their statements that misinterpretation is impossible) that rise to the level of proof or evidence when cited?
This is what people reference when they say: I think, therefore I am. I find that is not at all accurate to the writing. Really it says a thinking machine that can doubt can doubt away all things but doubting itself so then that ability must exist.
Commerce, working, mourning the dead, having weddings, creating art, performing music.
How is the ‘free assembly’ you are talking about more important, and even if it is to many, am I required to have come to the same conclusion, or to follow the conclusion someone else has made for me?
I have a feeling a lot of freedom of assembly protections were really more about the ability to get together and discuss stuff than it was about marches and protests.
In that case, our freedom to assemble has been massively curtailed for months.
Who gets to decide what assembly is worth violating the lockdown for?
I agree with this statement. At least here in Seattle the protesters and police are packed closely together and are yelling at oneanother. Very few if any police are wearing masks (I was ~20ft from anyone & wearing a mask but wanted to see things 1st hand).
IMO this will create a level of pandemic similar to NYC unless we really start testing and contact-tracing. It does feel like much of the left is OK with this, whereas everyone was freaking out when the reopen protesters were protesting. This is inconsistent, and unfortunate as I do have somewhat left-leaning views.
Taking down a list of people who dined at a restaurant during a certain time period is one thing.
How are you supposed to contact trace a 10,000 person protest? No one is going to know the random people they happened to be standing next to and chanting at a specific moment.
If these protests are super spreading events it blows a huge hole in any attempt at contact tracing & targeted quarantine/isolation. Hopefully it turns out the virus somehow can’t spread well in these conditions otherwise this is a huge setback for a country that just sacrificed so much to reduce the virus prevalence.
If COVID can’t spread as well due to higher heat and wind that would be great. But literally this evening I saw the same thing again walking around with the thousand protestors in close proximity to the police. According to the CDC the last super-spreader event in this area was 53.3% to 86.7% infected [0] but that was in an enclosed space.
Consider that when people are yelling and standing tightly packed together, even if there's wind it won't blow away the droplets, just the aerosols. And new aerosols will be continuously generated...
Agreed. Protesting in my country is going on but funerals are restricted and weddings forbidden. Grandparents haven't seen there grandchildren in a long time...
I agree that public assembly is essential regardless of what is going on.
But why were the people protesting the lock downs and business shutdowns and the limiting of freedoms the yahoos and crazy murderers? Why did nurses block them from protesting but not one would block someone now?
What ever the answer is (and I don’t think there’s a non-partisan one), we’re screwed. Hopefully we’ll get new data on masks giving us a 80/20 solution since I don’t think either side of the political divide is going to buy the stay-at-home order much longer. “How come they can break it but we can’t?”
We are screwed. Partisanship has been extended to such a degree that it guarantees that "both sides" remain opposed.
Science should not be a partisan topic. Mistakes get made, but those should be learning opportunities rather than a chance to discredit your "opponent".
Science is partisan because its being misapplied. It cannot tell you what you should do, that is the realm of leadership. All it can say is whether a course of action may lead to a certain outcome.
Whether such outcome is desirable vs the trade-offs is not a scientific fact as desirability only exists in the minds of each individual.
Science has found no universal "utility" function that applies to all humans. As such its impossible for science to maximize utility, or in laymens terms "outcomes" globally for all humans. We must choose what we find important and there is no scientific tool to do so.
Once you've decided what's important sure you can apply science to help you make the best decisions to achieve that outcome.
Well, science is partisan the moment it is being applied at all.
The most science can tell you is what are the consequences of some act. Deciding if they are good or bad and if they are worth taking is a completely politic act.
Don’t get me wrong. I agree with the thrust of what you’re saying. It’s just that the parent said it was partisan because it was being misapplied as opposed to applied at all. I was trying to point out the contradiction in the comment. That’s all.
I do believe you can apply science once a goal or desired outcome is decided upon. There is no known science that can help you come to a goal. E.g. science can't tell you that we should reduce pollution but can help if we decide that's a worthy goal and worth the tradeoffs.
Perhaps as we better understand the brain that may change.
There was a lot of science denialism in those protests, conspiracy theories, and (based anecdotally on photos which are the best we have to go on) mask usage seemed a lot lower.
But now we're seeing science denialism on a whole other scale. Over a thousand "scientists" signed a document that says protests for their preferred causes aren't risky, but protests against their policies are.
Why should anyone be criticised for denying this so-called "science" when the people who made it are now openly denying it as well?
Also, whilst mass gatherings themselves can act as a vector for disease transmission regardless of what the cause is and despite some forms of masks, the objection to the lockdown protests wasn't that participants might put themselves and their immediate families at risk so much as their stated goal was to end the lockdown, and thus see millions of people not involved in the protest expected to go back to work and encouraged to socialise.
> the first group was protesting not being able to go to Applebee's
This is such a terribly uncharitable assumption and ruins any sort of ability to have reasoned discourse.
Are you aware how many people are unemployed in this nation right now because of the lockdown? Are you aware how many people’s businesses are destroyed, shut down permanently? And your assumption is that the only reason anybody could be upset is because they can’t go to their favorite restaurant!?
These protests are going to result in the deaths of thousands of people. They are clearly irresponsible during a pandemic. Gathering in large groups with no physical distancing is tantamount to conspiring to commit mass murder.
The problem of racial inequality has existed for "hundreds of years" so why not push the protests back 1 year so it won't unnecessarily cost many people their lives?
There is no reasonable suggestion that police will kill thousands of innocent black people in the next 12 months. There is no actual emergency here that can justify killing thousands of people.
It is incredibly obvious that the urgency here is false. The false urgency is driven by pandemic-related issues like stress and unemployment. Anyone can see how clearly thse protests have become an outlet for a number of issues, only one of which is racial inequality.
It is possible to fully support racial equality, elimination of poverty, and modernization of policing and also believe these protests have been carried out in an incredibly unethical and irresponsible way.
Claiming to support a good cause does not make it okay to inflict death on innocent people.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Edit: The parent edited their comment with no edit note, so my comment might not make as much sense because it remains unchanged
There is a lot to unpack here but I will do my best.
> I shouldn't have to say this but people these days: I fully supports racial equality, elimination of poverty, and modernization of policing in the U.S.
It doesn’t appear that you do, as you are actively speaking out against an anti-racist movement supported by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
> The problem has existed for "hundreds of years" so why not push the protests back 1 year so it won't unnecessarily cost many people their lives?
This is not how social movements work. You can’t just “push it back”. Additionally, black people a disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, so these issues are not completely separate.
> It seems incredibly obvious that the urgency here if false
I suspect you feel this way because you are not an affected demographic. The police have been terrorizing and murdering black people in their own neighborhoods for hundreds of years. If this was happening to you, I’m sure it would feel ‘urgent’. Additionally, the president of the most powerful country in the history of the world has literally been calling for the military to kill protesters and labeling them as terrorists. This is incredibly scary and I’d say speaking out against this is very urgent.
> they were protesting because many of them thought the virus was a hoax or because they couldn’t get a hair cut or buy lawn fertilizer.
This is such a terribly uncharitable assumption and ruins any sort of ability to have reasoned discourse.
Are you aware how many people are unemployed in this nation right now because of the lockdown? Are you aware how many people’s businesses are destroyed, shut down permanently? And your assumption is that the only reason anybody could be upset is because they can’t do low-priority things!?
5 Plain clothed police officers break into your house and execute your wife or daughter in their bed, then say it was a mistake and walk away scott-free (no charges)...
Would you stay quiet and wait for the covid threat to die down before protesting or taking action?
This happened in Seattle like 10 years ago to a white guy. It’s horrible. All these things are horrible. Absolutely disgusting and inexcusable.
It is also a tiny fraction of the number of deaths from the virus.
Also no one demonstrated regarding that guy. I wish people would have. Maybe we could have reformed no knock warrants, and the people you are referring to would still be alive.
>Would you stay quiet and wait for the covid threat to die down before protesting or taking action?
Absolutely. The only reason you'd ignore a pandemic and risk your life (and the lives of your friends and remaining family) is an expected and completely valid emotional response. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do (or safe), though.
I wouldn't risk being directly responsible for killing more people (especially people I know and their circles) just to protest something a few months earlier than I should.
Because they compared governors to Hitler and their plight to how Jews were persecuted during the Holocaust. They also lynched an effigy of a politician they despised. That is why they were the crazy ones.
But there are clear enforceability issues with trying to establish "protests are allowed unless they're crazy" as a rule. Who gets to decide what's crazy?
and that is why the right to assemble is called an inherent right. it is owned and arbitrated ONLY by the individual. I know that this stuff seemed so boring in civics class, but it is all really rational. You cannot limit free assembly, because that limitation would have to be arbitrated. If it is arbitrated it must be arbitrated by the government. If it is arbitrated by the government the government can become corrupt and self serving and arbitrate based on self-interest... ie. TYRANNY. So it must be the individual that decides. And there are always and perpetually costs and challenges created by this arrangement, but it is the only alternative to tyranny.
Not getting a haircut won't kill you, the police will. Also, for the most part, anti-racism protestors are wearing masks, anti-lockdown people, for the most part, are not.
Losing your livelihood can kill you, however. If you are a small business owner, for example, and it's illegal to operate that business, your life is also in danger and your situation deserves empathy. Empathy is not finite resource. We can extend it to all people in bad situations, not just people we prefer.
Which is why the federal government passed a never-before-seen stimulus package that included forgivable small business loans and expanded unemployment income.
There is no equivalent safety net for people who are victims of positional asphyxia.
I know several small businesses that are closed forever despite that bill. Many reasons why, I’m sure; however, the most cited one I’ve heard is that the monies had too many strings tied to uncertain outcomes whereby the business owner could end up still out there f business but also with debt that they wont be able to service.
> If you are a small business owner, for example, and it's illegal to operate that business, your life is also in danger and your situation deserves empathy
This is a false dichotomy. Sure, these people (and their workers) deserve empathy and support, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to reopen. You can support business owners via financial aid or other measures while their business is closed.
no, this is not about empathy but personal autonomy and sovereignity and autocracy. Why not allow someone to do something if they are willing to take the risk, why treat them as criminals?
If you believe that you get infected at a store, don't go to the store ... case closed. On what basis is the state "protecting" someone that does not want to be protected? On what basis is someone considered a criminal when a crime could only potentially be committed?
what if the person is immune to the disease, already had the disease, or does not mind getting infected?
> Why not allow someone to do something if they are willing to take the risk, why treat them as criminals?
Because we live in a society and our actions affect others. When you take this argument to an extreme it becomes pretty obvious that it is fallacious. For example, do you think it is okay for someone to actively burn their garbage, venting toxic smoke into their neighborhood because they are “willing to take the risk” of developing health complications?
> If you believe that you get infected at a store, don't go to the store
It would really nice if this worked but it strikes me as a grand oversimplification of how society operates and diseases spread.
> what if the person is immune to the disease, already had the disease, or does not mind getting infected?
These people still risk infecting others and perpetuating the pandemic, which is why you shouldn’t do it, even if you aren’t afraid for yourself.
I've been considering this line of reasoning for a while: if opening your business disqualifies you from medical treatment, what else does?
Being obese? Smoking? After all, both of those are the direct result of your choices and less dependent on other people than getting a virus.
Most people say "Oh, that would never happen!" but if we have a time where rationing healthcare becomes the norm or even just vital, it will just as it did in Italy a few months back.
Much of that purported "willing" is driven by an involuntary need to service debt. Without acknowledging this, it's disingenuous to talk about the shutdowns in terms of autonomy. I'd wager that the shutdowns actually allowed more people to act with their desires than they prevented. For example had the shutdowns not occurred, how many companies that are pure WFH right now would have just continued telling everyone to come into the office?
Why is "Reopen all the things!" the only solution, though?
Part of the reason why people got angry is because none of the people involved around the cosplaytriots wanted to consider any other options, and there are many.
1) The fact that losing your job costs you your healthcare is a political problem. The government can decide to extend healthcare by fiat, expand access, or several other choices.
2) The fact that people weren't getting paid unemployment that they filed for is a problem.
3) If you really believed in choice, give people $2,000 per month unconditionally but allow them to choose whether they wish to go back to work. Now we can see the free market in action.
Instead, the only thing on the cosplaytriot protest agenda was "Stay home and die or get back to work and possibly die". That's not exactly a protest sentiment that's going to get much grass roots support.
Putting a gun to people's heads is going to make them angry.
Additionally, mask usage is seriously high at these protests. I’ll literally be marching down the street and see folks on rooftop bars, beers in hand, elbow to elbow, not a mask in sight. that scares me more than a protest where you can freely trail behind at distance.
I went to a protest in my town and there wasn't an unmasked person in sight. I think that if you showed up without one, you would get called out and asked to leave.
Serious question from non-US person - isn't one of the main reasons to also get some anonymity? As IT guy I know damn well how good face recognition software works these days, en masse. With all the biometric data US govt has on everybody, pairing would not be that hard for many.
The (peaceful) protests aren't illegal so anonymity isn't a major concern. Police might be violent towards protestors in the moment, but there's zero risk of the government tracking down and punishing protesters after the fact.
As a matter of policy I would be pretty sure about it. If you weren’t looting or setting fires there will be no organized attempt to find you. Individuals within the government may take on personal vendettas from this but the risk of that to the average protest attendee is so low due to sheer numbers.
That's very good sarcasm right there. Perhaps the many years in the corporate world have made me too cynical, but I'd expect all and every protestor to be captured on cameras, identified later with face recognition software (remember that Amazon's FaceRekognition had contracts with PDs?), matched with photos on driver licenses and over the next few months they would be quietly, but mercilessly punished for the dissent. The only real question is whether the FR software work when face is mostly covered with a mask and sunglasses? It technically can, because ears, hair, head shape and shoulders shape is a unique enough combination.
The current consensus on face masks is they might/probably help when used in addition to social distancing. There haven't been enough good studies, second-order effects (like a sense of invulnerability, induced demand) aren't studied, and materials and construction vary too much. I have no idea how to feel about not seeing them, and I've seen enough common sense turn out to be wrong that I won't fall back on it.
masks, when worn by the general (or asymptomatic) population have not been proven to reduce the spread of SARS-COV-2 - no seriously there is no evidence to support mask usage - the belief that mask do anything is nothing more than a superstition - the virus take the form of an an aerosol that is not stopped by a little cotton thing in front of your nose
do you honestly believe that a little rag in front of your mouth will reduce the spread in big crowd everyone screaming at the same time?
the protest might just prove false all the scaremongering, this is what I see very as a likely outcome
and that the disease does not propagate outdoors, that the disease does not propage by touch etc.
The studies that show that masks reduce the R0 of COVID-19 are many and broad. https://www.livescience.com/face-masks-eye-protection-covid-... The latest ones that I have read indicate an 85% reduction of transmission and infection between two people wearing masks, a double 85% reduction.
Where is an instance of a study that indicates the opposite? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I find it interesting that the paper suggests that contracting COVID through your eyes is twice as prevalent compared to breathing it in. See 3% rate for non-mask vs 6% for non-eye-protection. Why are we not all wearing eye protection too?
> the authors note that the findings on face masks and eye protection are based on limited evidence
You also have to consider second-order effects like a sense of invulnerability from the mask and added social interactions because people feel safer. Those haven't been studied.
if they’re outside and elbow-to-elbow, then it means they’re likely not continuously spitting in each others’ faces. it’s marginally better if they stood a little farther apart but that risk shouldn’t scare you. worry about real risks, like police with riot gear.
too many people are beholden to irrational fear with this pandemic, rather than understanding. going into a bar is not a problem for your at-risk friends or family. it's what you do inside that matters.
having a physically distant beer with a friend (assuming an uncrowded bar, as is required in most places) is quite low risk. geting hammered and carrying on with a bunch of in-your-face strangers is not.
just avoid exchanging spit with strangers. being outside is the easiest and best method, and maintaining a little distance is a close second. wear a mask indoors if you can't maintain distance. it's easy.
then you can set the fear aside and move on with your life.
> Covid as bad as it is will be an issue of the near future, civil rights gains or losses will have an impact in decades to come.
There is a lot of truth in this.
In any war there is a level of acceptable losses. For most of the spring, the modern culture wars were on hold and there were no hills worth taking. Now there is something going on that has the potential for long term consequences, so the level of acceptable losses has gone up.
Maybe people are just sick of being told they have to put the economy above all else. Can't have single payer healthcare because economy, can't have more days off because economy, can't have a higher minimum wage because economy, etc.
Ask me to take a risk because it is good for the economy and I'll tell you to fuck off. Ask me to take a risk to help reform violent police forces that oppress minorities and I'm more willing to do it.
Like quite a lot of lockdown supporters you appear to believe that there's this optional bit of frippery called the economy which can be switched off like a light switch, without consequence.
Let me explain some of the consequences.
In the UK people have been pulling out their own teeth with pliars because the dentists weren't allowed to be open, not even for emergency surgery. It was "too dangerous" for dentists to be close to their patients.
In India, all the factories and shops were closed. But because it's India the government wasn't able to replace people's incomes overnight. Those people started to starve so they tried to go back to their home villages, in the hopes of getting some food from the land. But because of the lockdown they couldn't get transport either, so they started to walk, in some cases they tried to walk hundreds of miles. And some of them died because of it.
Even places that stayed mostly open got huge hits to their economy due to caution from people. For the economy to not take a hit you would need to force people into Applebee's even if they live with grandma, etc.
"So the level of acceptable losses has gone up." Yeah, right. But no one wants their own grandma to die though, for the cause.
All these meetings are meaningless, because they do not address several problems:
1. There is a serious neglect of educational system in black neighborhoods. There is no discipline in the schools in these areas. There is a lot of push from ultra-left to keep the things as they are "because this is black culture"; lots of ultra-left derive political capital off of misery of minorities - if there was no misery, there would have been nothing to fight against, to become somehow important.
2) Most of black people are killed by the black people in their neighborhoods. The numbers are of different maginitude when compared to police brutality. If the protesters were really concerned about well-being of black minority, they should have argued for better policing, security cameras, better schools, better foodstores in these areas. ASk any protester if they would part with their monety for that cause, raise taxes for exmpale, NO way, They would not.
Unless you assemble because you want to work. Then the media will paint you in the worst light possible an act like you are actively murdering grandma.
assemble with weapons because blm and it will be much better. and covid will make sure to stop existing because this is too important to listen to science.
Obviously a “values” question, but if “tackling collectivized problems collectively” ain’t on the government’s list, I’m not sure why I’m paying taxes, and our government’s bi-partisan efforts to collectively address this pandemic are currently the most pathetic in the world. The only place you see half-way decent propositions is before they hit the chopping block on Pelosi’s desk—this ain’t partisan.
Frankly the US government is rapidly losing any legitimacy to rule, though of course this is my humble opinion.
One can support the rights of any americans to freely assemble while being puzzled and horrified at the reason for the protest. To wit: I would support the right of assembly for anti-vaccination advocates and would support the ACLU in defending those rights. Hoewever, I feel that Anti-vaccination advocates are wrong, their actions are destructive and they horrify me.
Covid will last for decades, the virus will become a new common way to get sick. Theres simply no lying about the numbers, the virus will kill old folks in massive numbers, disproportionately those of color as well. Sad to say many lives will be lost, I hope some positive change is wrought despite the spikes in infections we are bound to see.
Strongly disagree, I think the freedom of speech (the ability to disseminate information widely) is massively more important than gathering in large crowds. How would you even know there were protests or something to even protest without free speech and press?
The article’s authors are losing sight of the original justification for the lockdowns: “flatten the curve” was about preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed.
Of course cases will increase when people leave their homes. But have the hospitals been overwhelmed in any of the states that started to reopen several weeks ago? No! In that case the lockdowns have served their purpose.
The authors of this article are arguing more from a pro-lockdown position than from an anti-virus position — they seem to care more about defending the lockdowns than they do about actually solving the problem, even though it’s becoming obvious that new solutions, like partial reopening, are working.
In addition to preventing hospitals being overwhelmed, the lockdowns were intended to give us time to develop the infrastructure for adequate testing, tracing, and supportive isolation. With those things in place, we can re-open and still keep the virus in check.
If we don't have those things in place, the problem is not the re-opening, which was inevitable since indefinite lockdown and isolation is not sustainable anyway.
this seems like retcon. I never heard it before now, and there's not been agreement on the method or role of contact tracing in a free society. Am I going to be quarantined if some app says I got near a person who tested positive? That seems ludicrous. States are reopening without tracing or supportive isolation.
This is why I hold the "discordant" opinions that we should reopen the economy (with reasonable caveats like 6 feet distances, masks, and outside dining when possible), but am still staying inside myself like the past 3 months.
I'm going to do my small part in not being a vector. But there's no way the US is ever reaching New Zealand's success at discovery, tracing, and isolating before a vaccine's available. The virus is still an awful pandemic and will have major consequences, but we have no good choices anymore.
> The virus is still an awful pandemic and will have major consequences, but we have no good choices anymore.
this is what is unbelievably frustrating. most people in the u.s. basically hold the opinion that everything wasn't so bad, and that things came out okay. meanwhile, most of the numbers point to the u.s. being one of the worst managed countries with respect to the virus. it's really sickening there is this dissonance with people.
i don't feel safe in the u.s. and will be staying away from people as long as possible. it just feels sickening though, because that length will be indefinite in the u.s. until a vaccine arrives.
Flattening the curve is just stage 1 of dealing with the virus. Yes you start to re-open in stage 2, but you do it carefully and while maintaining much of the social distancing and having effective contact tracing in place to control any outbreaks, this is how other countries have opened up. Does the US have the required infrastructure in place to support the actions taken in other countries that have been effective?
Ideally you get the virus to low enough levels where you coast along until we get effective treatment or a vaccine with a new normal that disrupts the economy and daily life as little as possible.
> The article’s authors are losing sight of the original justification for the lockdowns: “flatten the curve” was about preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed.
i think you've lost sight of what flattening the curve was about. flattening the curve, from the beginning, was giving up. it was about accepting that we weren't and still aren't prepared for the virus, and that tons of people would get sick and die. at the moment, the deaths is a rather sickening 100,000+. the "flattening the curve" movement was an acceptance of this and was just meant to spread out the sick and deaths over time. meanwhile, other countries successfully managed the virus where they didn't even have to flatten the curve. they squashed it.
because then, in the end, the fact that the u.s. flattened the curve could be seen as a successful handling of the virus, when it was anything but.
it is still a legitimate threat in the u.s., while other countries came out of lockdown much, much sooner with much less cases and deaths.
> The article’s authors are losing sight of the original justification for the lockdowns: “flatten the curve” was about preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed.
Lots of areas have actually mostly eliminated the virus, just not the USA and Europe. Avoiding hospital overwhelm is avoiding the worst case. But if that’s all you do then life is still heavily abnormal until a vaccine.
This article seems to completely ignore that, instead focusing on positive test results, even though the vast majority of infections are mild or even completely asymptomatic. If anything, America is giving up on the breathless projections of mass die off that aren't supported by reality.
Treatment of the coronavirus has been anything but trivial. The monetary cost per year of life saved has been out of line with that of any other intervention for any other disease or threat to human life.
Recalibrate your assessment with the 14-21 day incubation rate factored in and with a critical eye on states like Florida, who are actively trying to minimize reported cases/deaths.
Florida has restricted test availability until mid May, had fired a data scientist who contends they are juking their numbers and has been (along with several other states) not counting deaths of people with covid symptoms as covid if the patients were not tested while living.
21 days indicates the incubation period plus adequate time for an infected person to become ill enough to seek testing or treatment. Cutting the number at 14 is a way to minimize assessment of impact.
Time from infection to symptoms is 1-15 days. Then add the time that you’re in the hospital trying to be saved before you die. “ Yang et al. (4) reported that the median time from symptom onset to radiological confirmation of pneumonia was 5 days (interquartile range [IQR] 3–7 days); from symptom onset to intensive care unit (ICU) admission was 11 days (IQR 7–14 days); and from ICU admission to death was 7 days (IQR 3–11 days). Therefore, a median of 13 days passed from pneumonia confirmation to death ([11–5] + 7 = 13).” ( https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0320_article )
There has been a lot of confusion if FL does/will list deaths from 'snowbirds'. IMO, this highlights the weakness of poor federal oversight and leadership in the pandemic.
According to CDC policy, a person's state of residence is where their death should be reported. That mitigates the likelihood of double counting, etc. Unfortunately, that does create a delay but that's neither a new nor deceptive practice.
I'm a little frustrated with public health officials who say we need to wait 14 days between lockdown steps because of the incubation period. 14 days is for quarantine, but you'll have the data you need by 10 days (assuming a lag between the onset of symptoms and testing) at the latest.
Deaths are a lagging indicator though. Daily infections are have stopped falling and are slowly creeping back up. Hopefully it’s just noise or increased testing.
Deaths is a tricky metric because the first wave more heavily impacted people who were at-risk (think nursing home deaths).
Now, if most people have mild infections, what death rate are will willing to tolerate? It's definitely more than zero. Was Sweden's big mistake how it handled migrant communities and nursing homes?
Deaths lag infections. Some increase in cases may be increase in test capacity etc., but to the extent infections are increasing and we haven't come up with much better treatment protocols, we should see an increase in death. One hope would be with outdoor exposure being more prevalent now relative to cramped indoor recirulating air exposure, exposure dose may be lower and result in better outcomes per infection. I don't know if there are any studies yet on how big of a difference that can make though.
use that same site that you linked to and view countries like south korea. ask yourself, why are these graphs so different?
the answer is that america gave up from the beginning. that much is clear from the graphs. other countries, like south korea, didn't just flatten the curve, they eliminated it. a total of 100,000+ deaths is a mass die off.
in the united states, out of every 100,000 people, 35 have died. and it's likely more because the united states has manipulated death numbers by underreporting them.
in south korea, out of every 100,000, only 0.5 people have died. by those numbers alone, the u.s.' handling of the virus is 70 times worse. i'm sick and tired of people like you spreading misinformation and shrugging this thing off like it hasn't been a big deal. it hasn't been that big of a deal in countries that have handled it. that does not include the united states.
Being an American (Naturalized), I am unable to understand where are we headed. It's often said that America always bounces back. That American spirit and innovativeness is unmatched and capable of overcoming any obstacles. However, the current environment feels surreal. We have had the most Covid infections and most deaths in the world. Mass protests against police brutality, being met with more police brutality. Widespread looting in the shadows of the protests. Toxic politics deeply dividing people. Sometimes I get calls from worried (and shocked) relatives living in other parts of world, inquiring about our well being and why things are so bad in America. Where are we headed relative to rest of the world? Is America going to be the leading light for the world again?
>That American spirit and innovativeness is unmatched and capable of overcoming any obstacles.
marketing hype. That's what America is good at it. Yes, America is a leader in innovation and technology and business. No, there is not something "exceptional" about the US or Americans relative to other free market, liberal countries that makes it "capable of overcoming any obstacle" other than its very large market size, possession of a resource-rich landmass with a relatively small population density. Yet instead of recognizing their luck and good fortune, Americans tell the world things like: God chose us, we are exceptional people, we are special, etc., which is nonsense.
I think Biden should choose a moderate Republican as his VP. That is the most symbolic choice he could make that he is serious about bringing this country back together. It’s just about the only thing he could do that would unite this country. Going further left will destroy this country, not because I disagree with the policies but because right now we are in a crossroads for this political divisiveness.
It's tragic watching this play out. 4chan's /pol/ amongst many other racists love it. They don't have to do anything while everything implodes. They see Covid-19 as a nothing burger, and health experts giving these protestors a pass vindicates their belief. But if Covid-19 is not a nothing burger, then these protests will end up with many black people and other minorities sick and possibly dead. People on the alt-right have mostly avoided doing anything and are telling their side not to engage. Because as far as they are concerned, right now it's just leftists burning their own leftist cities down.
If they love it, perhaps they do because it proves what they have been saying: that this has been politicized from the get-go, in so many ways, and all of the staunch denials of it become ever more ludicrous as this continues. Don't worry, the WHO says that there is no human-to-human transmission, China told them. Don't buy masks. What are you doing without a mask on, do you just hate the elderly? Anyone re-opening early is going to destroy America. But get out and protest! The Lancet has assured us that Trump as usual didn't know what he was talking about.
On and on.
They love it because, like anyone, they love being proven right. If you want them not to love it, then do not prove them right.
We shouldn't have let politics drive all of our COVID-19 policies and responses, but we did, now it is evident, and we're going to have to pay for that with a loss of trust.
the information war is being fought with bricks and 'boogaloos', nothing about 9 days of riots and protests goes against 4chans goals and desire to throw the US into chaos.
you don't even need disinformation when articles will back you up based on your political alignments
I never said I thought Covid-19 was a nothing-burger, and I have nothing to do with the right-wing online crazies.
Nevertheless it is clear that public health experts have not been straight with us. You don't need to be a right-wing loon to see that their open letter contradicts what they have been saying until now.
Why did you personally attack me and associate me with the 4chan nutters with no basis whatsoever?
> I never said I thought Covid-19 was a nothing-burger, and I have nothing to do with the right-wing online crazies.
I never said you did.
> Nevertheless it is clear that public health experts have not been straight with us.
Depends on the public health officials you listen to, eh?
> You don't need to be a right-wing loon to see that their open letter contradicts what they have been saying until now.
I agree. Mass protests during a pandemic are irresponsible although understandable, in my opinion, and the open letter people are talking about in this thread sounds to me to be pretty irresponsible as well, although I haven't read it.
I just watched a bunch of videos of demonstrations happening today all over the world. While my heart soared a little voice in the back of my head was saying "...but covid is loving this..."
> Why did you personally attack me and associate me with the 4chan nutters with no basis whatsoever?
I didn't attack you, I wasn't even responding to you. I was struck by the pattern match, that's all. I apologize for the offense, and wish you well.
Something odd I noticed in my local area is that for the most part all the protestors are wearing masks, yet people happily lounge around _inside_ restaurants without masks (and many times the staff themselves aren't wearing masks). I really feel like the protests are less of a vector than people think they are given this behavior.
Perhaps it's like the car accident paradox where streets that would seem more dangerous have less actual accidents, because people pay more attention when driving them.
AFAIK, we don't yet have a definitive conclusion on how effective the cotton masks that most people have actually are. we're pretty sure they're better than nothing, but that's about it. in my city, we've had thousands of people in a densely packed crowd marching on the interstate. they seem to have exhibited good discipline in wearing masks, but the masks would have to be really effective for that to be less of an infection vector than tens of unmasked people gathering in restaurants at a time.
imo, arguing that the increased transmission risk is justified by the importance of the cause is reasonable. arguing that thousands of people gathering in the streets doesn't really move the needle for covid infections is a fantasy.
One thing that really frustrates me is that mask usage among protestors in Seattle is very good. Well north of 90%. I look around in the protests and in hundreds of people see one or two not wearing a mask.
The you look across the lines at the national guard and the Seattle PD at see one or two masks at most! Why aren't the NG and PD wearing masks? Like, it's the smallest sign of caring and they don't do it.
Yeah. We never were going to be able to keep everything closed for much longer. There is a very anti-handout ideology here, and the amount of political will for more bailouts was dwindling.
> Protests...
Sorry about this one. There are more important issues that need solving right now, and momentum and timing are very important. Right now we're in a perfect storm where a large amount of people can protests. Day after day after day.
The only way we could have kept the pandemic at bay if it was the only thing in the news and on everyone's mind. And more important things came along.
is it just an ideology? At a certain point, you do have to actually work to make the economy spin. No economy, no money for healthcare. People die from no economy. So this is not an ideology so much as acceptance of reality.
Protests are also the only thing people can do together and not likely to get arrested/fined. I wonder how many people care about the issues vs those that are out there just to have something to do?
> The virus has not mapped neatly onto American political narratives, either. While some questions remain about their accounting, Georgia and Florida—where leaders opened up early and residents seemed relatively defiant of public-health advice—have seen relatively flat numbers, while California, which took a more conservative approach, has seen cases grow. The state most poised for major trouble seems to be Arizona, where the outbreak is spreading very quickly. Not only is the state (which lifted its stay-at-home order on May 16) setting new records for positive tests and people in the hospital, but the percentage of tests that are coming back positive is also growing. So much for warm weather and sunshine alone stamping out viral transmission, as some had hoped: Phoenix saw only a single day’s high under 90 degrees during May. The state’s age demographics also haven’t played an obvious role: The state is slightly younger than the U.S. as a whole.
This may be the most striking thing at the moment. The pandemic isn't evenly distributed in the US. Several factors compound the problem, including:
1. the time between the enactment of policy and the consequences varies
2. there may be an underlying seasonal component that's modulating stats in certain states
3. states show varying degrees of commitment to complete, accurate reporting of test results and rigor
4. positivity rates (# positive results vs # of tests) are rarely, if ever reported so it's nearly impossible to assign weight to increases or decreases in cases/fatalities
Throw this all together and you get one big, fat mess. It's nearly impossible to figure out exactly what's happening with respect to viral spread or why. National-level efforts to track or contain the spread are weak at best.
We should all hope that point (2) is not a major factor in this. If it is, a bigger, badder sequel of the early spring, starting around fall seems inevitable.
I support the protests, and believe they can be done safely, but we can't forget about the virus. A quick googling gives me numbers between 300 and 1000 people dying of police violence per year. Call it 1k-2k per year. If we eliminate 50-100 years of that, we match what coronavirus has done in a couple months.
However, places are starting to relax the shelter-in-place rules already, so people going out now isn't comparable to people going out a month or two ago.
I do wish it weren't an either/or. Protest with your mask, and keep distance. To most people I know, this is how the protests they've been to have gone, so that's great and we should stop giving them shit, the same way as we shouldn't label the whole movement by the actions of some looters.
I don't agree with the comparison of dying of a natural cause, which Covid is, to being murdered in some cases, killed carelessly in others, by people you and fellow citizens pay and give special privilege to so they would prevent crime rather than commit it.
I guess it’s certainly “possible” that US cops justifiably shoot and kill more people every year than most counties have done of the last hundred (assuming they have ever done it at all), just not very possible.
It is important to note that this isn't just about police brutality. There are a number of racial disparities that result in more black deaths. From the letter:
> lack people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress.
So 1k-2k per year would be a low estimate. Some will correctly point out that that 1k-2k killed by police includes people that are committing violent crimes (ie, killing them may not be unjust). The response to that argument is to look at the intersection of poverty and race to see how systemic racism drives crime in black communities.
Indeed, white people in the US on average live 3.5 years longer than black people in the US.[1]
Did you know that an even greater health/life expectancy disparity exists between men and women?
One gender on average lives 5.1 years longer than the other.[2]
>decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress.
Likewise all of these issues affect men disproportionately compared to women.
Why is it so popular to talk about these same issues as systemic oppression against group X (relative to group Y), while ignoring or the fact that those same issues affect group XY, often to an even greater degree (relative to group XX)?
To be perfectly upfront with my own beliefs, I believe economic disparities is the mother of all other disparities and that many of these statistics that show disparities in outcomes for whites vs blacks are just echos of that economic disparity. That, I think, is the core disparity and the core way in which "the system" oppresses people across generations.
That being said, I don't think gender is a good counterpoint given that biology does have a significant role in some disparities in outcomes for men & women (for example life expectancy). With race, as cited in the letter, biological explanations aren't enough to explain the differences.
> Why is it so popular to talk about these same issues as systemic oppression against group X (relative to group Y), while ignoring or the fact that those same issues affect group XY, often to an even greater degree (relative to group XX)?
Speculatively, with respect to blacks in America, I'm going to guess that it isn't any single issue that is concerning, but the totality of them. Yes, a given issue X might affect group Y more than it does blacks, but blacks in the US as a population are affected by multiple such issues and I can't think of many areas where they have a leg up over other groups.
>To be perfectly upfront with my own beliefs, I believe economic disparities is the mother of all other disparities and that many of these statistics that show disparities in outcomes for whites vs blacks are just echos of that economic disparity.
I agree my friend, thank you for the measured response.
>given that biology does have a significant role in some disparities in outcomes for men & women (for example life expectancy)
How do we know biology is the most significant factor that causes women to live longer than men?
How do we know biology is not a significant factor that causes white people to live longer than black people? It's a biological fact that black people in the US suffer greatly from vitamin D deficiency[1]
I don't know, numerically, if the large protests ongoing now are hugely more contributory to existing open<state> protests. For one, the large protests currently are highly masked, while the open<state> protests were highly unmasked (plus they put pressure on states to relax containment standards without any plan for contact tracing or similar).
Death is one metric, but what about feeling safe participating in normal daily activities? With COVID-19 that fear will be gone in a year for some people once a vaccine has developed. From what I hear from pretty much all of my black friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, the threat of murder, violence, harassment, or unjust arrest from police is something they have been dealing with for their whole lives, and will continue to deal with long after a vaccine is found (unless we take start taking meaningful actions). People rightly talk about the toll of lockdown and fear of the virus on mental health. Now is a good time to start conversations about how fear of abuse of the criminal justice system affects mental health.
This is a pretty heavily politicized article for something that is marked as "Science" by the publishers. The authors have a clear political agenda that bleeds through onto the page.
> In Politics, The Atlantic will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea.
But I'd still generally describe them as a respected center-left new source. I wouldn't go as far as saying they have an "agenda."
We now have a big unplanned experiment. We will see within the next few days if the protests lead to significant spikes. Personally, I think that the virus probably doesn't spread that easily outdoors, so while we will see a spike, it will be small enough that it will only make the case for opening up outdoor activities sooner. Fingers crossed.
I'm not sure if this is a big unplanned experiment any more than states already opening up and existing protests for opening up have already been doing.
The weirdest thing to me is that we have people protesting for fairly deontological reasons - i.e. a reasonable 'killing is wrong', while being ruthlessly utilitarian - 'covid deaths are a price we must be willing to pay for reform'. Interesting!
Having your community brutalized by the very organization that is supposed to provide protection is very different from having members of the community dying of disease. Both are extremely awful, but at least the disease doesn't seem to be trying to undermine civil society.
It seems like the coronavirus precaution phase is over, and I think it's somewhat political.
A week ago, a Facebook friend of mine posted a passionate post about the importance of wearing masks. This weekend, the same friend posts a photo sitting around with friends, sans-mask.
This same friend is very politically active. Honestly, some of his actions seem linked to whatever the current hot-topic is. I think there's been a shift in emphasis, hence the lack of caring for the mask this week.
We had large BLM demonstrations yesterday here in Germany. Demonstrators did not follow Corona virus rules (compared to e.g. fridays for future). If COVID-19 spreads in those circumstances (outside, mostly with masks, but close contact + chanting), this'll have been the last of those demonstrations here.
There are few black people in Germany. They are racially profiled, probably just as much as middle-eastern looking people, but excessive police violence against them is rare, and usually properly investigated and punished.
In Germany, much of the ire around unpunished excess police force is around riot response squads who regularly use excessive force against leftist protests (anti-G20, anticapitalism/Occupy, anarchists), especially if some of the protesters turn to vandalism, start setting fires or attack the police.
So is Europe. Apparently fueled by the protests in the US there have been demonstrations in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona and other cities. Not only are they protesting against racism but it seems like there are quite a few also protesting against the lockdown measures.
Once the weather gets better again you can bet that all along the European coasts hoardes or people will be ignoring the laxer provisions. In fact, they already are.
Europe (at least Western Europe) is also giving up on the pandemic. At this rate there's going to be a second wave. I have no idea if this will create better conditions for the virus to mutate and possibly herald a third wave keeping us in until 2022.
What I can’t even begin to understand is why would there not be a second wave? Nothing biological has changed. Prevention measures have been mostly a temporary lockdown which obviously has a extremely high cost in money and goodwill.
I'm afraid it was obvious US would not be able to deal with this.
Powerful people have lost all sense of empathy. Their power is much more important to them than the lives of some poor people.
The, rational, social darwinistic ideology has its grip firmly in the minds of Americans. I'm not even talking about the obvious culprits. I'm talking about us, we are obsessed with money and consumerism. We think optics is more than reality, We talk about political identity, where the obvious problem is class. We are shattered to tiny pieces fighting each other while a handful of people (not just white, mind you) keep their power.
Its nuts how big our societies have grown where hundreds of thousands could die and it wouldn't really matter (assuming you were willing to be a complete psycho about it). I really just can't see it affecting my life
People, and not only in America, is just giving up on their hope that the governments would really start fighting pandemic, like produce tests, implement contact tracing, etc. The lockdown isn't a pandemic fighting tool, it was just a timeout to give governments the opportunity to start doing necessary things. Well, it hasn't happened and doesn't seems to in the future.
The point of the lockdown is to prevent overloading the medical infrastructure. No one agreed to stop being around each other until the virus is gone. Since the overloading doesn't seem to be happening no one cares anymore.
There's every reason we should see a good increase in cv19 spreading, because there is no reason for it not to. Washington State's daily number on Sunday, June 7 is 450 new pos cases, [1] which was last seen on the first of April. 2 months later coming back to early April numbers. [2]. We are testing 50% more per day (about 4k/day in early April, 6k/day now). Even though we increased testing by 50%, it was only recently that WA state got daily pos counts matching 2 months ago.
My opinion is that standing up for the current abhorrance of police violence connected to BLM is worth some endangering behavior on their own choice (i.e. going out in crowds, because it's a multi-100 year problem), whereas getting a haircut is not the same, but I see why that's contentious. 1000 more people getting a positive case that wouldn't have otherwise will lead to a few deaths, and they will spread it and kill a few more. It's personally horrible to just write down that fact and not know what to do with it.
The haircut comments drive me up the wall, particularly if you know someone who owns a small business and their accompanying struggles. Economic money movement was stalled, which can have an enormous impact on livelihood. While I can absolutely understand being critical of when protestors wanted things to re-open, it shows a deliberate attempt at being unable to empathize.
I am empathetic with those who will lose small businesses. I have someone in my family personally affected.
I think the potential customers who wanted to get a haircut or their nails done were making a less important request than the person who is losing their livelihood. That is a different issue than the impact on the small business owner who is devastated by this. Someone in my family is facing financial devastation because they work in the wedding industry and all weddings are of course on hold. This person could lose everything. Yet I don't want my or anyone else's old relatives to die because of more spreading. Also my niece has a job in a restaurant that isn't open any more - they tried to open but not enough customers came.
With the people going to protests, we are certain to have increased infections in a week or two.
These protests are a complete rounding error compared to how many personal interactions were going on in a single day back in March when everything was still open for business as usual and no one was wearing masks.
COVID-19 cases will go up when the economy reopens. Until then I'd be surprised if we even see a statistically noticeable blip from these protests.
San Mateo County health officer: "The third modification of the shelter in place order is being made on 6/1/20. These modifications are being made in attempt to strike a balance. They are an attempt to find a way to increase the immunity of the population (in public health terms, this is called “herd immunity”) slowly and methodically, while minimizing premature death, with equity in mind, while not overloading the healthcare system, and minimizing economic damage. Many of these considerations work in opposite directions."[1]
The current US death rate is about 1,000 per day, and that probably won't go down much until there's a vaccine or until 70% of the US population has had the disease. This is a "bury the dead and go on" situation. The US hasn't faced one of those since WWII.
Meanwhile, don't bunch up, get good masks, and wear them. The mask supply situation has improved, although too many of them are junk. The US could probably beat this thing with enough N95 respirators.
N95 is overkill. You likely bring down the R0 below one if everyone wears just cloth masks. Less covid droplets in shared air. I still don’t see how will public transport for example resume in the next year. My bus was always packed like sardines and couldn’t fit everyone in it at the stop
Anything which leaks when you inhale doesn't protect you.
If you take a deep breath and don't feel the mask pulled against your face, it's not working.
There's now a huge supply of poor to useless masks available, many with phony approval markings.[1] That's most of what's being sold on Amazon. It's moderately hard to make a mask which seals tightly, doesn't offer too much resistance to breathing, and filters to N95 standards.
A real N95 mask (3M 8210) is about $1.25 if you can get it. Some of the fakes are much more expensive.
The science shows a well fitted “cheapo” mask can protect you better than a poorly fitted N95 mask. Even a surgical mask provides a little protection: if they provide 25% protection and 50% reduction in transmission, and everyone uses them, that is a huge reduction in R0.
Not everyone can invest the time required to learn how to source a real N95 mask.
My impression is you are trying to educate the uninformed, while sweeping under the carpet important nuances. I’m sure that isn’t your intention, but that is how it comes across to me.
In Asian countries with low transmission everyone use a "surgical" style mask, not N95. You almost certainly cannot convince a large number of Americans to wear a N95 as it makes breathing quite a bit harder. Especially if you have any underlying health problems or poor general health (again, that's majority of Americans).
My prediction is that hand washing turns out to be unimportant.
I believe the vast majority of cases are transmitted by respiration, and the recent news that super-spreaders dominate transmission will eventually find that they spread the disease by air, not by contact or fomites.
I have yet to see any evidence that washing hands reduces transmission by any significant amount (say 5%).
If you are right then covid 19 doesn't work like any other virus that spread via droplet transmission or even like any other virus in the corona family. I.e I don't think you are right. :)
There is ample evidence showing that hand washing reduces the spread for viruses that are similar to covid 19.
I agree there is a lot of evidence that washing hands reduces the spread of viruses. However I haven’t read anything that measures the percentage of transmission of corona viruses via contact or fomites.
We obviously should wash hands regularly and well. Even a 5% reduction for a simple action is really worthwhile (and hand washing is clearly critical in a healthcare setting).
My main beef is that in my country I think there has been too much attention paid to hand washing and fomites, and not enough information given on enclosed spaces or mask usage. The turnaround on mask usage is a classic example of seemingly obvious misinformation. Another classic is the news clips of government employees in Asian countries spraying roads and buildings - powerful images that misdirect.
That's just incorrect. The US has faced this every year (by percentage), since it's inception. Hundreds of thousands of people die of disease every year of cancer. Not just disease. Tens of thousands by car for most of the 20th century.
The hyperbole that COVID-19 can be considered historically notable, is in the scale and type (optional, changing recommendations, etc) of social measures that have been taken.
Without a vaccine, if people keep social distancing, we'll never have herd immunity. Suppose the US gets 25,000 new cases daily. That's 9.1M per year. OG SARS immunity lasts three years, and other coronaviruses are similar. We need more like 300,000 new cases per day to have a shot at herd immunity. The big caveat is we have 25,000 reported cases per day. How many asymptomatic people are getting tested? There needs to be more antibody testing so we can answer these questions.
>These numbers all reflect infections that likely began before this week of protest.
If I were a machiavellian populist facist president of the USA I would ignore this reality and immediately start blaming the protests for increased case incidence of SARS-II. I don't think this ends soon, in fact I suspect this political fight will get worse before it gets better.
I wish our scientists would be completely apolitical and stay within their realm of expertise when speaking publicly.
For the non-factual topics, such as whether there an epidemic of unjustified police violence against black people (the data does not clearly show that there is - and in fact imo shows that there is not), stating their opinion on the political topic means their scientific opinion loses credibility immediately for significant percentages of the population.
Why do any scientists talking about the spread of virus need to say that they support the cause? When they say that they do support the cause, why should the 40% of the country who voted for Trump and watches Fox News still follow their scientific advise?
I can't help but look back on the anti-lockdown protests and sympathize with those people's skepticism and animosity toward scientists.[1]
It feels to me as the hard sciences have been inflicted with the same political ideology that has dominated the arts+social sciences and that the scientists are scared to share their scientific opinions in an apolitical way. The same reason that your dishsoap company emailed you to let you know their political beliefs.
I think that, even after other things are opened up, they should continue to ban business travel and commercial airplane travel for some more time. This will mitigate international spreading (I don't how by how much, but it will help a bit). More testing would also be helpful. This way, you might have better data to work with.
Yes, and the reason why is unfortunately articles like these which only compare US states to each other or the US to Europe. If you look in these places, there is no good solution. But all we have to do is look across the Pacific Ocean.
There are many Asian countries aggressively stopping the virus without lockdowns. Their citizens are leading fairly normal lives right now except many still must wear masks everywhere. They have achieved this by contact tracing every single case and stopping all new outbreaks. But the US is still trying to learn how to do contact tracing, and without federal leadership on this it is unclear if the US will be able to get proper contact tracing working.
Trevor Bedford (Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington) noted today that the protests will add 200-1100 deaths per day of protests: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1269533303536664576.
Mapping Police Violence (https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/) notes that police killed 1098 people in 2019 in the US. Per the Washington Post, the figure is 1043 but that's specifically for shootings (which covers almost all officer involved deaths): https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic.... And in all likelihood, most of those situations were handled properly and professionally and the deaths were justified (without wrongdoing on the police's part).
So we've just taken on far more undeserved deaths due to irresponsible protesting and rioting than the very brutality we were outraged about in the first place! How was this even allowed? It is completely irrational to permit these protests, and to tolerate these super spreader events given the harsh restrictions we placed on our lives in response to COVID-19.
I cannot believe that healthcare professionals and public health officials are lining up to excuse the protests. This, just a couple weeks after they were all criticizing moderates/conservatives who wanted to see orders relaxed. The healthcare professionals and public officials who've jumped on the train of rationalizing their flip flopping are simply too afraid to admit that they're willing to tolerate the risks for activities and causes they align with, but they still want to force others to make sacrifices with the activities that they value. In other words, one set of rules for them, another set of rules for everyone else. I've lost faith in our elected officials, public institutions, healthcare providers, and academic bodies as a result of this hypocrisy and failure of logic.
A more fair and just handling of COVID would be to let every individual assess the risks and benefits of their activities themselves, as individuals, and let them go about their way. If a business wants to stay open, so be it. If a customer wants to visit a business, so be it. Those who are risk averse and afraid of exposure can choose to deal with that risk by impacting only their own lives by sheltering themselves.
Most people who I talk to don't really care about it anymore because they are convinced that the statistics are inflated as a direct result of Hospital administrators fighting for more funding.
I think for every 100 covid deaths, it's probably closer to 1-5 actual covid deaths and the rest just get conflated.
No, not giving up. Just reprioritized. All I think we’ve proven is that a large percentage of the population is more comfortable risking a infection and far less comfortable with the police violence.
There’s nothing in here about disregarding recommendations from epidemiologists. It’s about saying enough is enough on a persistent threat, not an acute one.
> All I think we’ve proven is that a large percentage of the population is more comfortable risking a infection and far less comfortable with the police violence.
The problem is a large percentage of the population has very little to fear from this virus. The reason quarantining and other tactics had to be top-down mandated is that individuals acting selfishly threaten other people. That has not changed.
In short, a large number of immunocompromised and elderly persons are going to die as an almost direct consequence of the protesting. Apparently, we're okay with that.
> a large percentage of the population is more comfortable risking a infection and far less comfortable with the police violence
The chances of experiencing life-changing injury or death from either are vanishingly small. Too bad we can't get people this excited about obeying traffic regulations.
Unlike people, not all deaths are created equal (in my opinion). What I mean is: a death caused by systematic oppression/racism (especially from an entity whose core purpose is to “serve and protect”) is in some deontological sense worse than a death resulting from e.g. a car accident or even a virus. Some things defy utilitarian calculus.
Also, you have to consider that there is widespread and life changing psychological injury (trauma) inflicted on minorities from years, decades, centuries of systemic injustice along every axis of life. Imagine being a child and growing up with a worldview that you and your loved ones are in constant danger (from people that are supposed to protect you, no less) based solely on the color of your skin. I keep thinking of the powerful words of George Floyd’s friend Stephen Jackson in this clip (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JdWfUJYYU):
>”We, as black men, have seen a lot of stuff as far as people being murdered and taken from us, right? But now, not only it’s been seen by us and our brothers, but it’s been seen by our children now. So I’m sitting there watching this and my daughter...my daughter tells me, ‘Dad I can’t leave you, cause I seen what happened to your friend, and I think you need me.’ My daughter is 6 years old. For my daughter to see that, and tell me that I need her at 6, imagine the pain and frustration that’s in my mind right now”.
I've been a multi-sigma outlier my whole life. So, in a sense, I can relate. But in another sense, I envy the kind of community cohesiveness I have witnessed in the black community. I never had that kind of support when I was growing up. Always alone to deal with whatever aggressors crossed my path.
In my teenage years, I worked as a low status laborer in shops where I was one of a very few white people among mostly blacks. Most were indifferent to me. A few (all Christians) were saints, really, and I remember them kindly to this day. And a few, including my crew boss, were "unfriendly" at best, and in retrospect, racist as all hell. I don't particularly blame them, but I cannot condone this sort of behavior either.
I sympathize with those who suffer. We all suffer. And we all deserve such sympathy. Suffering, really, is the nature of being alive in our reality.
Is there more to do along this road? Yes. Are the killings and maimings we have seen over the last week in any way justified or "worth it"? No.
Some physicians noted that, for example, a whole lot of cancer screenings didn't get done in the last three months. There are healthcare consequences from the quarantine, and there will be (different) healthcare consequences from lifting it.
Overblown stay at home / quarantine measures are the biggest harm done to the citizens of (Western) countries, since their last respective big wars.
The damage is and will continue to be immeasurable. How will the years of life we saved measure up to the years of life and quality of life we have ruined? We will never know.
So no one is going to talk about how the Model is a mathematical model which follows Bayes Theorem in it's core. It updates it's priors based on new evidence presented every day.
The whole point of the Model is to detect things which are uncertain by nature. Being wrong is not bad, it's good TBH.
Good question that the media seems to be avoiding. I'll be watching our infection rates closely over the next 2 weeks and have some real questions about everything if they don't spike.
Why shouldn’t they? People were browbeaten for having the audacity to want to return to work. Now politicians are out marching shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other people.
We also were told that Georgia was going to be a disaster for reopening too soon and that has not come to pass.
It’s good to know that “believe science” and “stay home stay safe” are completely negotiable based on what is politically expedient.
The “open letter” signed by 1200 experts stating that protesting was no risk, except for protests against the lockdown itself, was also mind boggling in its audacity.
"One in every 1,000 Black men and boys can expect to be killed by police in this country". If we presume average years of life lost per black person’s death is 50 years, then Covid is less deadly.
To lower risk, black people could stay at home and wait for better times...
Those numbers seem to be vastly more than reported numbers of police killings. Whom are you quoting? Because I like to keep track of who makes such exaggerated claims.
It says that between 2013 and 2018, about 96 in 100,000 (approx 1 in 1000) African American men were killed by police in the U.S.
Death from Covid is also lifetime risk.
It is a commonly reported statistic if you want to find other publications that say the same thing. Did you try googling for it — for example google: "1000 black men and boys" police
I'm team "stay home" and I have an uneasy relationship with these protests: I don't love protest as a form of engagement in the first place (it has its place, but its has a lot of limits), and an epidemic wouldn't be my choice for timing it.
That said:
* We had the "I don't wanna stay at home" and "masks are tyranny" protestors a month ago, too... but as far as I know, most governments pretty much let those happen. Hell, they let a lot of those happened with the protestors heavily armed. Protestors drew a lot of criticism but more or less got to do what they wanted.
* Similarly, it's pretty clear that most governments aren't thrilled about BLM protest crowds from a public health standpoint, but have adopted a range of tactics from "cooperate and keep peace" to "actively suppress." Protestors have drawn a mix of support and criticism and... in some cases got a beat down and trip through arrest processing, but in other cases kinda got to do what they wanted. It's not like social justice was just given a pass here; in some ways it actually has faced heavier resistance.
* If we're comparing motives here, are we weighing "the audacity to want to return to work"? Or the audacity to want other people to return to work? And how would we compare that with, say, the desire to be free from being murdered or otherwise singled out for selective enforcement or brutality by officers of state?
* Government direction didn't cause a retreat from social/economic engagement, it coordinated it. Most people would have done exactly the same thing they're doing now absent official direction, just at different times/thresholds, leading to the same eventual economic results but less effective epidemic mitigation. And the only thing that will get everyone back to work is either nihilism or trust that risks are well-managed.
You do understand that the poor are the one that suffer from the lockdown and its side effects?
I'm making sweet sweet benjies while "working" from 3 bed home with garden and managed to gobble up stocks on the cheap when we were in sky is falling mode.
Do you have an example of any economic system in any country in the world, past or present, that could survive the majority of able-bodied people not working for a long period of time?
How do you figure—where would the threat come from? We can certainly still produce necessary goods while the majority of the workforce stays home. In that light—every industrialized country, probably. Certainly other countries every where you look on every continent seem to be doing markedly better at this than the US, including countries that are opening back up. Our best parallels are the goddamn UK and Iran, the former of which is trying to hang itself and the latter we've been trying to choke out for 40+ years.
Anyway, I can't even guess how you think the economy works if you think we need to open up or something bad will happen that nobody ever names. Oh no, a U shaped recovery and not a V shaped recovery? How will my 401k ever recover in the next six months?!? Think about all that risk to my capital! :'( How can this country ever recover from such a critical loss of portfolio value?
Instead of actually ensuring people can survive this crisis, we've bought corporate debt and told people to get back to work. It's a goddamn joke of any understanding of economics. Honey, every person that's ever read adam smith could do better than that. "developing countries" are putting us to shame, and good for them, because we're on the bus in Speed.
GDP shrinkage leading to a major decline in level of economic development.
> We can certainly still produce necessary goods while the majority of the workforce stays home.
Sure, I'm not claiming that we will starve to death en masse -- though that might indeed be a problem in India, it won't be in the US.
> How will my 401k ever recover in the next six months?!? Think about all that risk to my capital!
Not sure why you keep bringing up this strawman. Are you aware that the economy and the stock market are not the same thing? And that economic downturns cause real misery for real people, especially poorer people who don't even have 401(k)s at all?
I’m not sure why the GDP is a concern, frankly. How does this affect citizens in a material way? That is why I keep bringing up the 401k—to illustrate the absurdity of using an abstract measurement (GDP) to justify material loss of life.
GDP per capita is one of the most strongly correlated metrics to quality of life.
If you think people are living better in Denmark or Ireland than in Mexico or Turkey, how do you explain this other than GDP per capita?
Again, this has nothing to do with 401ks or the stock market. Some countries have been rich and others have been poor since well before stock markets were invented.
If you don’t think life is better in richer countries than in poorer countries, I’m not sure I can convince you of anything.
It's not just America. Here in Ontario, at least in my city, the lockdown in mostly over. Social distancing is the mildest suggestion in the parks, virtually nonexistent in many businesses. Pizza slice joints, grocers, most things are pretty normal, outside legal orders against work.
It seems to me that there is U.S. tribe that worships the lockdowns despite the evidence, for no articulable reason other than a hatred for the President, or a proximity to the culture surrounding that hatred.
We have been delivered a blessing, in the reality of the matter, and it seems like some people are more upset that the good news demonstrates the hubris of their attempts to control the outbreak.
It's interesting (to me) that centuries ago, plagues could last for decades and the rapidly-declining populations had to put up with this. Obviously they didn't have the scientific knowledge that we have now.
However, although we have more knowledge now, we don't yet have a vaccine, nor a political system that puts people first instead of profits, so might we find ourselves in the same situation as our ancestors? Sure, we also have the ability to complain to more people, more quickly, but that's about it.
Everyone is giving up on the containment strategy of shutting down all public spaces, some do it slowly to give the illusion of control, where as other simply open up and let people sort it out on their own but i doubt you will find a single state/nation waiting on the magical vaccine(that might not arrive) that fixed the issues with zero side effects to start returning to normal.
Some of that is due to the fact that the number seen in context(https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death#what-do-people-di...) are not as extreme as it was feared/hyped, and that the containment measures were to little to actually stop the pandemic and never designed with that goal in mind.
Not a surprise, COVID19 is pretty soft compared to the historic pandemics. I'm actually suprised that this continued for so long, I gave the lockdowns 4 week, but I guess the media propaganda blessed it with longer life.
Just to clarify about Covid:
-The highest deathrate from it is around 1%, CDC reports 0.30 lately.
-Hits predominantly the old parts of the population
-The death comes in a normal way - pneumonia -> death, nothing like the bubonic plague or ebola symtoms
Let's not forgot the poorer countries that simply cannot sustain a lockdown for long periods, as it will kill more people than save. UN is now predicting 130 million starving due to the hit to the global economy.
The problem was never the death rate alone. It was the death rate plus the high infection rate that was problematic. Even a low rate of .3-1 (which was always the estimated rate iirc) is going to kill a lot of people given how infectious COVID-19 has shown to be.
Not sure why you were downvoted as your statement that an IFR of 0.3 to 1 was always about the expected rate is completely right. E.g. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387 published by Dr. Fauci and Dr Redfield on February 29.
Weirdly I’ve seen a lot of attempted history rewriting, I guess by people who in March didn’t understand the medical literature and confused CFR with IFR.
> Not a surprise, COVID19 is pretty soft compared to the historic pandemics.
Well, it isn't done and I'd say in terms of raw deaths it's pretty significant. Particularly when you recognize that a lot of those previous bad pandemics coincided with terrible water/sewage and insufficient healthcare.
Interesting because the CDC and NIAID were signalling well in advance of that they wanted at least 8 weeks of shut-down.. Anyone with their ear to the ground(actually reading articles from and watching interviews of epidemiologists and health officials) would have known everything was going to be shutdown well into May and that school was out for the summer. Marriott furloughed employees until end of June BEFORE the major March shutdowns.
Not really, no. You can go back to medical journal articles from early march and see they were using Chinese and Korean data and predicted between 0.1-1% death rate per infection (IFR).
> On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2
Link to source? Current data on cdc is 1,920,904 cases and 109,901 deaths which is 5.7% (and it doesn't appear to be changing much). That's about 20 times higher than your figure of 0.3%.
Just to those who downvote - if someone poses a question or argument which you think is easily refuted, by downvoting or removing that question you remove the opportunity for anyone else with the same argument to learn something.
And maybe this is part of the problem with the whole covid discussion - labeling all these simple arguments from all sides as "wot a moron!" instead of presenting them clearly for people to learn from.
This is the amount of confirmed people that tested positive with Covid, not even including once that were discovered with anti-bodies. CDC has mathematical models to predict the actual death rate:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/05/fac...
Nuance is not so important in this situation. The effect is that people have been effectively given a pass to disregard the virus, as long as they're "protesting". Look at the protests and all the riots, do you see social distancing happening? People are throwing punches out there my dude. It's chaos.
It seems you see this in terms of idea and theory. I am looking at things from a greater view, seeing the actual effect and impact of things. This is the same thing when health experts told everyone masks don't work. They were wrong. And you will be wrong as well.
Since if you believe I am against the protest, then it's in my benefit that the protests continue, so all my supposed enemies die off. Believe what you want :)
The "masks don't work" message the beginning was a tragic mistake. I think I understand why it might have come to be, but it was a mistake nonetheless.
Mistakes happen. If we learn from them they become lessons.
I do see this in terms of idea and theory, as well as practice. These protests are a legitimate response to systematic abuse. It clearly has peoples attention, and that's a good thing from my perspective.
I don't want to be wrong, so could you clarify exactly how I'm wrong? In supporting protests? In taking the letter you cited on its word that social distancing and other preventative measures should be taken by protesters?
I can only guess that you are against these protests, in that you quoted them as "protests" and can only cite the the negatives you see (not enough social distancing and too much violence).
If the current administration prevails, I will indeed be on the wrong side of history by virtue of who is writing it, and why. I'm proud to be on the side that opposes fascism and I don't need external approval to know that authoritarianism does not promote a just society.
When I said you would be wrong, I'm talking about the effects of that letter. The letter probably does mention that social distancing should be taken by protestors. But that is not what's happening and will not happen. So the main message the letter is: Coronavirus bad! Shut down your businesses and stay home. Except if you're protesting.
As soon as you have a confrontation here and there, the virus is no longer of concern. If you are someone who is legitimately concerned about the pandemic, you should be angry at all the health experts who signed that letter. For they have delegitimized the pandemic and vindicated those who do not believe it to be the threat it was made out to be. As with the WHO masks thing, these kinds of actions have only destroyed the credibility of the science community, or whatever's left of it. The effects of that are to be seen. But you will see them.
I don't know if I'm against the protests or not, perhaps it's more like I am against poor strategy. What has the protests done other than become co-opted by looters, dirty the perception of African Americans and other minorities, and now caused the science/health experts to disgrace themselves further? This is a big win for our enemies. I believe it's time for the protests to stop, so that we could see who's left, who are the people co-opting this movement to further their political goals. However pure and legitimate the protests are, to continue them is to continue providing a cover for those who would like to use the protests to further their political goals.
People living in a certain form of hell aren't afraid of dying of corona... I personally would rather die of pneumonia than 20 or so bullets to the back from an agent of the state operating with a hair trigger and impunity.
Do people really think MLK felt safe when he was protesting? He was brave, new assassination was likely, and still marched.
Yeah, but if all the proponents of BLM die to Covid-19, who is going to be there to keep up the fight afterward? This is all very short-term thinking. There are other ways to protest.
Instead of destroying local businesses and terrorizing innocent people in their own cities, maybe they should be targetting the rich multinational corporations? Those corps will bend over for basically anything if to avoid backlash and protect their profits.
If BLM could get enough people to boycott corporations who have benefitted from this status quo, then they could force them to push through the changes they want.
If you have numbers, theres a bunch of things you could do without even stepping outside, let alone go and protesting, causing mayhem and chaos for our essential workers during this pandemic. My idea may not be the right one, they'll have to figure it out.
Here's the thing: I'm not advocating for violence and neither are most of "us". This violence is not because of the protest, it's because of interlopers.
You only see these protests as exercises in violence and mayhem, which is exactly what the powers that be want. It completely delegitimizes these First Amendment protests in the eyes of many.
Much of that violence comes from interlopers who hijack the effort, and of that violence is manufactured by outsiders intentionally stirring up shit. The recent "antifa" account that was really a white nationalist organization comes to mind.
Consistently framing the protesters as being the ones who are inciting or participating in this violence can only be disingenuous at best.
Again, violence is bad, m'kay? We get that. It also means that it's bad when it comes from the police as well.
Boycotting is a luxury, and is a dilute and indirect route to change. Perhaps they should just calm down and file a complaint with the police department and a manager will straighten everything out just right?
Please don't paste boilerplate lists of links or talking points into HN threads. This isn't conversation, and the site guidelines ask people not to use HN for political or ideological battle.
I think that is irrelevant to many of the protestors. Most know that black Ferguson, Missouri protestors started to mysteriously die weeks after the protests ended (suspect foul play), they know the state may target them for the rest of their lives, and many made peace with putting their life on the line for this cause -before- they walked into the streets.
>There are other ways to protest.
Feel free to share any protest ideas you have that keep them safe and achieve Civil Rights Act level reforms without requiring people in the streets making the powerful uncomfortable.
I think that restaurants and so on could decide for themself if they want to open or not, and what to do, and then the people can decide to go or don't go. But the people ought to be warned, regardless.
My read of the CDCs numbers [0] seems to suggest to me that the CDC thinks 25M in the US have HAD the virus. It's also likely that the people willing to protest probably are among those that already caught it, so infection spreading may actually be minimal.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Don't use a thread like this to fulminate or flame. It helps no one. It adds toxic fumes. Regardless of how right you are or which color the fumes, that points in the direction we're trying to avoid in this community.
There are important and interesting issues here. It's fine to debate, but do it within the guidelines. You'll do a better job of making your substantive points that way too.