As Virus Infections Surge, Countries End Lockdowns (nytimes.com) 300
Still struggling with rising coronavirus cases, India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have decided they must end lockdowns and restart their economies. From a report: At Nigambodh Ghat, the oldest cremation grounds in India's capital, the bodies keep coming. One ambulance arrives with five inside. Then another. Then another, in an endless display of death. As the coronavirus pandemic surges in New Delhi, a public health care system that was already strained might be reaching its breaking point. People can't get tested. They can't find a hospital bed. The situation has become so grim that government officials have proposed commandeering some of New Delhi's fanciest hotels to turn into hospitals. But ready or not, much of India's coronavirus lockdown has ended, as have those in other countries struggling to balance economic damage with coronavirus risk. In many places -- India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, among others -- leaders have come to feel they have no choice but to take the surge of cases on the chin and prioritize the economy.
Some of these leaders, especially those in the developing world, said they couldn't sustain the punishing lockdowns without risking economic catastrophe, especially for their poorest citizens. So the thinking has shifted, from commanding people to stay indoors and avoid the virus and other people at all costs, to now openly accepting some illness and death to try to limit the damage to livelihoods and to individual lives. A glimpse from the streets, reported by correspondents in countries especially hard hit, reveals a sharp rise in person-to-person contact in recent days -- precisely at the time that the World Health Organization is warning that infections from this highly contagious disease are roaring toward a new peak. India is now producing more new daily infections, around 10,000, than all but two countries, the United States and Brazil.
Some of these leaders, especially those in the developing world, said they couldn't sustain the punishing lockdowns without risking economic catastrophe, especially for their poorest citizens. So the thinking has shifted, from commanding people to stay indoors and avoid the virus and other people at all costs, to now openly accepting some illness and death to try to limit the damage to livelihoods and to individual lives. A glimpse from the streets, reported by correspondents in countries especially hard hit, reveals a sharp rise in person-to-person contact in recent days -- precisely at the time that the World Health Organization is warning that infections from this highly contagious disease are roaring toward a new peak. India is now producing more new daily infections, around 10,000, than all but two countries, the United States and Brazil.
People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:4, Insightful)
For good or ill, people are sick of the general lockdowns and are ready to get out. Protecting vulnerable populations is still favored but keeping everyone home is just not a winning issue any longer.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:4, Informative)
Testing, tracing, masks, all can robustly help in containment. But removing the lockdown with nothing to supplement it, is neither smart, effective, both from a public health and economic point of view.
Agreed. Testing and mask use helped my home state keep the case rate from increasing noticeably while businesses gradually reopened over the course of the past five and a half weeks.
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I posted this previously, to demonstrate the efficacy of masks:
See for yourself (Score:3)
Try typing "slow motion cough" into YouTube.
You'll find a bunch of videos of visible droplets that come out when you cough. You don't normally see them since they come out at up to 50 MPH, but in slow motion they are quite visible. Seriously, you can see it for yourself.
That's thousands of droplets, each several hundred microns in diameter, each carrying many viruses.
If you shoot clean, dry particles from a clean test tube at a cloth, and those particles are the size of a single virus, most will go through
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:4, Insightful)
Lockdowns only accomplish something as long as people obey them. The longer they go on, the more people simply ignore them in their personal behavior. You're going to reach a point, and we might already be part-way there, where the lockdowns harm businesses without affecting personal exposure risk in any meaningful way. Well, unless you have a totalitarian dictatorship that can actually enforce personal behavior.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:4, Insightful)
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>"If the virus is mild and not-dangerous we don't worry about it"
Define "dangerous"
Every virus is potentially "dangerous". The regular flu is apparently far more dangerous than COVID-19 is to those under 50. So why haven't we and don't we lock down everyone for the seasonal flu half the year, every year? How dare you endanger others??
The reality is *YOU* have remarkable control over your not contracting the flu or COVID-19. If YOU are worried, scared, or more logically- vulnerable, then YOU isolate.
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he regular flu is apparently far more dangerous than COVID-19 is to those under 50. So why haven't we and don't we lock down everyone for the seasonal flu half the year, every year?
1. The CDC estimate for the flu is 0.02% IFR for ages 18-49 (2018-2019 season), whereas various estimates for Covid-19 are about 0.03% for that age range. Definitely not "far more dangerous".
2. Only about 10% of the population gets the flu per year without lockdown, thanks to a lower R0, vaccines, and immunity from earlier seasons. Covid-19 has the potential to infect 70% of the population within 6 weeks (doubling time 3.5 days) from now if everybody starts behaving like in the pre-Covid-19 era as of today.
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The problem with focusing on IFR is that it doesn't cover the whole picture and an accurate IFR requires knowing an exactly number of infections, which we do not know sure to insufficient testing. I believe COVID-19 is arguably "far more dangerous" than the seasonal flu, I'll explain why.
First problem, which you do mention, is that with COVID-19 the R0 is significantly higher (~5.7) than the seasonal flu (~1.5) due to it being asymptomatic and transmissible during incubation. It's more likely you will be in
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Informative)
And a day later they retracted that statement.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/... [statnews.com]
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Also listing herbal/homeopathic remedies as ineffective in general but then removing that recommendation in their Chinese advisory.
Medical advice should be completely politically neutral.
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"Your right to swing your arms ends at my face." should mean exactly that, not "You have no right to swing your arms because you could potentially hit my face.".
By that logic drunk driving is fine until you kill someone.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:5, Funny)
It helps to understand that protestors are both immune to corona virus and prosecution.
At least here, we are safe from the ill effects of the virus as normal business is heavily restriction.
Unless you need to burn down a building or two.
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Can't imagine how it must have been for all of you who went into strict lock-down for months on end.
We have been able to go to bars and restaurants or go shopping since everything has been open this whole time, so it has been pretty normal in that aspect. What's been missing is the normal daily contact with older relatives, meeting colleagues at the work-place, and no nightclub
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Recessions kill people, and ruin many of those that are left alive. Some sort of line has to be drawn between the extremes, and it's not an easy task with obvious answers.
I'm of the opinion that we need to reopen with caution; I thin
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:4, Informative)
There's still lots of people like Boris who survive when given oxygen and would have likely died in an overloaded hospital situation, at least if he wasn't PM and at the front of the line, which is a reason to keep it slowed down so everyone doesn't get infected at once.
Re: People are sick of the lockdowns (Score:3)
Recessions kill people, and ruin many of those that are left alive. Some sort of line has to be drawn between the extremes, and it's not an easy task with obvious answers.
Fine. We need to open up. What I have a huge problem with is politicians acting like the only thing that needs to be done to stop the damage from the shutdown is to open up. What about all the people (50+ million in the US) who haven't had a job for the last 3-4 months and now owe 3-4 months rent? They act like open up means instant rehiring, instant full-time hours, instant regular customer base, and instant ability to pay 33% increase in rent when they could barely afford it before the virus.
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I read that the Japanese acceptance of wearing masks is considered really important in their success in managing the virus.
I think the reality of managing pandemics comes down to a large portion of the population engaging in a few critical hygiene behaviors.
I wonder what the situation would have been like if the US had adopted "weak a face covering in public" in late February/early March, with the idea that it minimizes aerosol virus emissions from infected people.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Informative)
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>"we don't know that's the kill rate. best estimates are .4 to .7% where are you getting your data???"
I can't speak for him, but according to the CDC's latest publishings:
* 0.4% of people who feel sick with Covid-19 (have symptoms), and seek help, will die.
* For people under 50 the agency estimated that 0.05% of symptomatic people will die (that is 1 in 2,000).
HOWEVER, that is not total actual risk, because many will be exposed and never have any symptoms. So those numbers are still MUCH HIGHER than rea
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Texas, for example, is seeing tests rise, and alongside this [shinyapps.io], they're seeing cases significantly rise, unconfirmed-COVID hospitalizations roughly drop, confirmed-COVID hospitalizations rise, unconfirmed-COVID ICU rates drop, confirmed-COVID ICU rates rise, and death rates drop. Basic reporting of "coronavirus-like illness" is also dropping.
I talked to a doctor in Texas about this yesterday, actually. His point was that death rates are dropping because doctors are getting better at treating COVID. As treatment protocols improve, patients are more likely to recover or not need to enter the ICU at all.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Interesting)
A handful of regional hospitals that were swamped with acute cases, having to hire additional staff to run makeshift morgues. These are not an ordinary flu, or a creation of some narrative. The lockdown should have been used to buy hospitals time to prepare supplies and staff. Lockdown and social distancing doesn't fix the virus. It still is possible to have unnecessary death if hospital beds are full.
Of course our science illiterate media amplify stupid things about COVID-19. People distrust the main stream media because it often gets things wrong, or demonstrates some idealogical bias. When we need accurate information we a media unable to express a nuance story in a clear was, and a population unable to comprehend science above a 6th grade level (even general literacy is low, not only science "literacy").
Is this a deep state conspiracy to take away our freedoms? Seems unnecessary to create the distraction, they've been quite able to chip away freedoms right in front of our faces for over 50 years while a third or more of the population create apologist excuses. I think the simply answer is we're not prepared to handle pandemics. Not as a society, not with our medical system, not with our infrastructure, and not with our leadership (all branches of federal, state, and local). When the next thing comes along that is more serious, perhaps something as contagious as the common cold but causes a man's testicles to explode into shrapnel, we'll be better prepared to handle it. Or more likely we'll fail again but have no excuse next time...
Almost all of us are either get the virus or get vaccinated for it. If we had some plan for a vaccine to be widely available soon, then it would make sense to continue a very strict lockdown until then. Without this, a sensible alternative is a soft opening. Where we minimize, as best we can, the spread while ramping up our industries and economy. Treat people who have bad cases, keep things running as best as we can without too much death. Some of this requires some big changes in process and procedure, including frequent random community testing and ideally contact tracing. We're not going to do any of that, we're kicking the door open and having a party. Where's my Mission Accomplished banner?
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" -- Hanlan's Razor
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the simply answer is we're not prepared to handle pandemics.
The horrifying thing that everyone is carefully not talking about is that we're even less prepared for the release of a designed bio-weapon. Imagine if this thing had this virulence, this long incubation time and just a 20% fatality rate, our healthcare system would have collapsed within a month and our economy would have quickly followed suit.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need anything as big or traceable as a bioweapon, just wait for an incident like the police killing a black person, spread via viral videos and reinforced with a Twitter bot army and the country will tear itself apart quite nicely without any obvious outside influence subject to retaliation.
Seriously, if you want to attack the US, get it to divide and conquer itself. And I'm not saying that as a "let's attack the US" but pointing out that the best option for doing so doesn't involve any physical, or readily traceable, action at all.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
We know there will be herd immunity? We don't even know if personal immunity lasts 6 months, 12 months, or 24 months. 24 is about how long immunity to the original SARS from 2003 lasts.
Anyway, as a younger fairly healthy person, the risk of respiratory failure doesn't concern me so much on a personal level. I'm more worried about permanently losing my sense of taste. Or maybe it turns out that you don't have any apparent symptoms, but you get cancer 10 or 20 years down the line, which is what happens with HPV. How does that affect the "kill rate"?
You want to point to "what we know", when the data we have is short-term and preliminary at best. Much of the what we "know" like immunity is just a best-guess inference from similar viruses.
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What I want doesn't matter. What nobody wants is to run blind, for the mind to be occupied by unanswered questions. Many turn to religion, ideology, one or another type of dogma pretending to have an answer. Sometimes, by coincidence, they do. The truth exists outside of these constructs which we use to understand it. My belief is that truth is revealed gradually, with great labor, through the ages.
Socrates wrote,
“The ancient Oracle said that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.”
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Luckily I am free to isolate myself, so you won't hear any complaints for me. I've used it as an opportunity to better my life - I've quit smoking, gotten serious about the guitar, and started regular exercise. I see it as a vacation. Watching people having mental breakdowns from having to stay at home for a few weeks makes me feel suddenly well-adjusted. (In late March the TV news ran a segment, "How to survive an entire 24 hours with no human contact..." which made me chuckle a bit, that someone might need instruction.)
I'm reminded of a story from my dad who used to be a whaler at sea, before that was banned. There were always some guys on the ship who couldn't take the isolation. He saw one jump into the ocean, and they never found the body.
Where I live, the mandatory lockdown's been over for several weeks. Now the graph of new cases is slowly, unmistakably, beginning that exponential curve; swinging upwards from where it was paused in early April. Within a couple months my region might be in another partial shutdown... either that, or we will be cresting the very top of the Covid wave, tractor-trailers hauling away bodies, until the wave breaks and the plague "washes through" this land, as our dear leader was fond of saying. The "Cowabunga!" scenario may actually work out better for me. I have the luxury of being able to bunker down until it washes through, to re-emerge a few months later when there's less of it circulating. No, you won't hear me complaining.
This is in all likelihood what will happen. The masses are crying out for it. Those in power had all the time & money in the world to plan for another way, and never did. Surf's up!
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is , how much value is there is slowing down the process?
It reduces the mortality rate as data from treating the initial wave of patients is used to improve the "standard of care" and medications to reduce the symptoms are explored and implemented. If we are talking about letting the process go on at a rate that swamps the health care system, then you also have to factor in all the people who would die due to a lack of medical care in that scenario, on top of the ones already postponing care (it won't matter in that scenario whether you want to roll the dice or not.) Finally, there are unknown ongoing health consequences for people who have severe symptoms but recover, which will doubtlessly cost us on an ongoing basis.
Anecdotally, personally I don't have to go out to thousands to know of a death, a few hundred suffices. Here in MA 1/1000 people have died already due to COVID-19. I imagine a lot of elderly don't have to look very far at all.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Funny)
0.1% is 1/1000.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:4, Informative)
This constant song of 'herd immunity' is getting tiring.
1) It's still unknown if exposure to SARS2-COV produces strong immune reaction, some people appear to have been infected more than once
2) It's still unknown how long any immunity will last, most other coronaviruses do not provoke long-lasting immunity. You can get a cold today from the same coronavirus that you got sick with last year.
3) It's still unknown if exposure to one strain will create immunity to others. There are at least two major and multiple minor strains in the wild already, and the thing mutates almost as fast as influenza.
The faith-based belief that if we just sacrifice enough lives on the altar of the bat-virus god it will promise to protect us is a stupid way to run a healthcare system.
Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Informative)
2) True, we don't know how long immunity lasts. But as with almost all diseases, you most likely get some resistance / partial immunity by having fought off it once. Even after losing the initial immunity.
3) Thankfully SARS2-COVis a very stable virus. It has a proofreading enzyme. Sure it mutates, but very slowly compared to other viruses.
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2) This is a logical fallacy. As a general rule, if you got a disease last year and it didn't kill you, then getting it again will almost certainly not kill you (statistically speaking).
That's not what a logical fallacy is. Perhaps lack of knowledge, but unlike flawed reasoning, lack of knowledge is not a fallacy.
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For 3, is it as true about the selection process if a disease is highly communicable before symptoms develop?
There's also the example of the second wave of the Spanish flu, which was much more deadly then the first wave. After the second wave it did just vanish or more likely mutate into a more harmless flu.
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Actually your 2) isn't true, because SARS2-COV causes lung damage and frequently long-term debilitation. You're weaker after your recovery than before and with damaged lungs, a second infection is far more likely to be fatal than the initial.
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Re:People are sick of the lockdowns -- Science? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's still unknown if exposure to SARS2-COV produces strong immune reaction,
It does, that's why you get the cytokine storm. That's how people are able to recover from the disease at all, because the immune system reacts to it and fights it off.
We Can't Stop (Score:3, Insightful)
We've constructed a system that collapses when it is disrupted. So people have to work and die, or we watch it all devolve into economic ruin. What a house of cards.
Self (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you are prepared to make your own food and clothes, build your own shelter, get your own water, generate your own power and maintain your own property, someone is going to have to work for you in one way or another to keep you alive.
Re:Self (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you are prepared to make your own food and clothes, build your own shelter, get your own water, generate your own power and maintain your own property, someone is going to have to work for you in one way or another to keep you alive.
While I was in lock down, no one missed me but my employer. My employer does not create or ship or sell food, clothes, generate power, purify water, offer medical care, put out fires or protect people.
It is nothing but a waste of time and it actually harms people. The world was a better place without them and it was better without me working for them. And I am sad to say that most jobs fit that description.
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Re: Self (Score:5, Informative)
This. The number of people needed to produce the necessities-food, water, power, healthcare--is pretty small.
You forgot firemen and police. And truck drivers. and train engineers and other railroad workers. And delivery people. And dispatchers. And fuel production and distribution workers. And folks who service and repair farm equipment, trucks, trains, ambulances, and police cars. And IT people to at a minimun keep communications equipment running. And probably a shitload of other very important jobs which I can't think of right now.
If we had a functioning government/society we could do a hard lockdown with a few well-protected people taking care of what needs to be done, while everyone else self-quarantined.
You only believe that because you have no concept of just how many people it takes to keep you sitting fat and happy in your livingroom.
Re:Self (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, farmers. truckers (to deliver the stuff), a factory that can make a harvester or tractor, another factory to make the tools to make the harvester, tractor, truck. Tires! We'll need a factory to make the tires. Guys to dig up the raw materials to make the tires, trucks, tractors, harvesters. A factory to turn the ores into metals. More trucks to deliver the metals to the factories.
Weather forecasting might be nice. And some way to communicate the weather forecast to the farmers. And factories to make the parts to make the parts to make the communicators....
Oh, mustn't forget the freezers, factories to make same, trucks and such to deliver them.
And stoves, ovens, that sort of thing, to cook the food. And factories to make them and factories to make the machine tools for those factories.
And then there's the highways, railroads, and such. And shipyards to make the ships that deliver the parts to make the factories to make the....
In other words, no, the number of people needed to produce the necessities is NOT "pretty small".
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If you truly do find it to be pointless or even a detriment to the world, why not quit and do something you consider to have a positive impact on the world? Not everything of value has to fit neatly into the categories of creating or shipping or selling food/clothes, generat
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goodness, you should find something you believe in doing more then that. I mean even janitors and sanitation workers are more useful then that. What on earth do you do?
Re: Self (Score:5, Funny)
He works for twitter.
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Unless you are prepared to make your own food and clothes, build your own shelter, get your own water, generate your own power and maintain your own property, someone is going to have to work for you in one way or another to keep you alive.
No, that's what he's objecting to. He apparently expects that stuff to happen automatically. The fact that it doesn't all happen by magic means everything is a "house of cards". Life victimizes us all in this way.
He didn't say who he thinks did this to us. I'm guessing it's one of the usual groups of people who are not like us.
Filthy people who are not like us! Always keeping The Good People down!!! The world would certainly be a utopia except for them.
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I think societies tend to undergo natural selection in their own way, but it's a lot slo
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This situation has arisen many thousands of times in the past and will arise again many thousands of times in the future.
This is nothing like the black plague or the even the Spanish flue, yet the modern governments of the world have cause a great deal more damage to the economy then either of those disease did 'for the common good'. Was what they did the 'right' thing to do? That is a moral opinion.
If you care to state your creed and definition of moral, we can always discuss that as well, but most such d
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Something can be righ
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Re:We Can't Stop (Score:4, Insightful)
We've constructed a system that collapses when it is disrupted. So people have to work and die, or we watch it all devolve into economic ruin. What a house of cards.
Your first sentence is true, to a point. Global supply chains showcased their weakness this year as we ran out of PPE due to a surge in demand along with production shutdowns where they actually made the stuff. Where your point fails is the applicability of that to "the system" of economy as a whole. To put this into perspective, take away "the system" and all that goes with it. I don't imagine you would fair any better in a pandemic. In fact, I'll argue that you're currently doing much, much better than you would otherwise.
I find the current "dollars over human lives" mantra to be absurd, because the proponents of it seem to believe they live in a world where goods and services can magically be provided while everyone remains locked safely in their little bubble worlds. You know that Grubhub driver that brought you dinner last weekend? That son of of a bitch isn't safe at home, is he? Neither are the people who made your pizza, the farmers that grew the wheat and tomatoes and raised the pork for the pepperoni. The guys in the slaughterhouses (we keep hearing about those guys and how we have to shut them down to keep everyone safe) who made the sausage on the pizza are still working. The truckers who moved all those goods from farm, to distribution, to Pizza Hut are still working. The people who sold them gas are still working. IT people that keep physical systems running (hi there) are still working--we can work some from home, but I haven't met the VPN client or webmeeting provider that can replace a failed disk in a RAID array yet.
So no, "the system" isn't somehow the problem, here. The problem is people who think that any risk, no matter how small, is too much risk, and expect others to carry the load for them.
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It's not as simple as an either/or choice. Not every country is equally resilient, either economically or politically. Each country needs to take a course that makes sense for them.
In a place like India, which is really in an impossible position, authorities have no choice but to value human life less than we would.
Advanced countries like Germany, Australia, or Norway, that acted decisively early on now have the luxury of ramping up their economy as the number of new cases is small and falling.
Advanced cou
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Nonsense. Economies are "what people do." What could collapse into ruin are some metrics that were never supposed to be used to measure economies in the first place.
What we've demonstrated is that most of our economies are resilient enough that most of the population can sit on their asses all day watching Netflix with no more ill effects than getting bored.
Title Backwards? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't it be "As Countries End Lockdowns, Virus Infections Surge"
Governments can just pay people (Score:4, Funny)
Hyperinflation (Score:2, Informative)
National governments can just print money and pay people and businesses during these times.
Germany, Hungary, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela tried printing their way out of debt. Hyperinflation was the result.
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Well put.
Deflation is terrifying. Most "savers" (and don't get me wrong, I think everyone SHOULD be a saver) like the idea of deflation because their sacrifices have paid off. But in an economy built on debt, deflation is a death sentence.
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Re:Governments can just pay people (Score:5, Insightful)
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The US did print money and pay people. Where do you think the PPP funds, stimulus checks, and the extra $600 / week CARES bonus for people on unemployment came from? You think that was like, backed by gold or something? :-)
No, it was backed by treasury bonds. The printing happens with the interest [bankrate.com] on those bonds.
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Because it would let the cat out of the bag (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, for the working class we gave people on unemployment an extra $600/week, totally around $700-$800/week. It was mostly restaurant workers and other service jobs.
For the first time in these people's lives they experienced something they never had before: Having enough money to make ends meet.
Worse, they began to realize that it's possible to have enough money to make ends meet.
If this goes on then when things go back to "normal" (e.g. constantly being on the edge of bankruptcy and/or homelessness) they're going to question why.
That cannot be allowed to happen. Because if it did, the 1% would have to pay for it.
My kid just graduated college with a Nursing degree. Major Uni, one of if not the best in the country for Nursing. She's going to make less as an RN then an LPN did 20 years ago without adjusting for inflation. It's not enough for her to live off of, and I'll be covering some of her bills for the next 2 years or so until she's established a little more. Even then she's not living the high life.
Try as I might to convince her that after 8 years of busting her ass (High School is tough for college bound kids due to intense competition, and college is worse) that she deserved more.
That's why we can't bail out the working class. Because once they realize they deserve a good life, and they come to expect it, then there's no going back. It'll be like that Simpson's joke where their Lawyer imagines a world without him.
Re: Do the math (Score:3)
You've significantly overestimated on several categories, and included unneccesaru things like "vet bills", and yet STILL even with that you've shown that yes, she can live just fine off of a starting salary for a nurse. With a bit of extra care she could have plenty of cash left over each month for luxuries. Yet you're still pretending that it's " not enough to live on".
Hilarious.
Fuck India (Score:2)
But how are hospitals doing? (Score:2)
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reopening is for the rich, not the poor (Score:3, Informative)
Re:reopening is for the rich, not the poor (Score:4, Insightful)
If we looked at what prevented a lot of today's poor, especially those in wealthy western nations, from succeeding we'd find it's largely a factor of mental illness, drug abuse, and other poor lifestyle choices. Are there some who are legitimate victims of fraud or circumstances completely out of their control? Yes, of course, but more often than not those are just temporary setbacks and those individuals will climb back out of poverty. More often than not the best thing you can do for someone living in poverty is to give them a job. Unless they're one of the people that fall into the afore mentioned group of people who are mentally ill, etc. that's about all they need.
As for the world's poor, so much of that has more to do with the control and allocation of aid. There's not much point in sending food or clothing if a warlord is just going to take it all and use it to further cement their position as a despot. Solving their plight isn't so much a matter of ensuring that they have enough, but stopping someone else from taking what they have. Even after removing that it's not just a matter of giving them food or other material goods, but helping them to grow their own economy and working to become self-sufficient or able to trade for what goods they cannot produce themselves.
Re:reopening is for the rich, not the poor (Score:5, Insightful)
If we looked at what prevented a lot of today's poor, especially those in wealthy western nations, from succeeding we'd find it's largely a factor of mental illness, drug abuse, and other poor lifestyle choices.
The US has lower class mobility than other countries: children born to poor parents are more likely to stay poor. If you were born to a family in the bottom 20%, your chance of climbing out is 67% in the US, but 74% in Sweden. Moreover, people in the US systematically underestimate how hard it is to climb out of that bottom 20%. https://www.economist.com/grap... [economist.com]
If it were just a matter of mental illness, drug abuse and poor lifestyle choices then the number would be 80%. There might be some genetic factors (e.g. mental illness) but that certainly isn't enough to explain the low class mobility in the US. The only explanation is that you missed an important factor -- namely, it's also largely a factor of the privilege you were born into.
informed decision (Score:5, Insightful)
We now have some hard data in - mortality is closer to the lower bound. Again, this isn't great, but it's not a threat to our civilization. In the meantime, lockdowns have real costs as well. I'm not talking about the general economic consequences or the "I'm-stupid-and-thus-believe-everything-I-hear-in-the-right-wing-media" excuses. Lockdowns cost lives too, just in a different way. Any country that has a malaria-prevention program absolutely depends on those efforts to prevent huge numbers from dying. Any interruption of those programs, and hundreds of thousands or millions of people can die from plain-old-malaria, as well as a bunch of other similar diseases. Same goes for food support in areas where poverty is bad. Interrupt it, and a bunch of people starve to death. Talking about poverty, even in a place like the US, for every 100,000 people who get driven into poverty, a certain percentage of them will die BECAUSE OF THE POVERTY. So, it becomes a balancing act. Which will kill the least number of people, COVID, or the economic consequences of the lockdowns, or the other consequences of the lockdowns.
It's really weird that the right-wing media in the US doesn't play up this angle. COVID lockdowns = worse economics = more poverty = more deaths because poverty is actually a fairly lethal condition in itself. This is a really strong, air-tight argument against the lockdowns. I can't figure out why it's been largely ignored in conservative circles. Most of what they spew is conspiracy crap or "don't tread on me" tropes. Geezuz, people, didn't anyone teach you how to debate?
Re:informed decision (Score:4)
It's a naturally-occurring virus. Plain and simple. It's far worse than a regular flu or cold and it needs to be taken seriously, but it's not nearly as bad as it could have been. Time to end the blanket lockdowns and put something more flexible in place now that we understand it a bit better.
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It might not be as bad as we initially thought, but it's still far, far worse than any regular flu.
Curve flattened (Score:4, Insightful)
Lockdown was to "flatten the curve". But the virus didn't do what health experts predicted, so various local and state government officials had no clue what to do. They started moving the goalposts, from "flatten the curve" to other outcomes -- different in different places at different times.
People got tired of being locked down. We all saw the government making up what to do everyday and many of us decided we could make it up ourselves rather than listen to flailing authority figures who don't seem to care about us.
Then the George Floyd thing happened and the authorities changed the rules yet again. And any credibility any of them had left on the Covid situation instantly disappeared.
Lockdowns are not coming back. People will simply say no. Courts won't back the authorities because of the way the George Floyd protests and memorials were allowed. Rules can't be different for causes you like. Rules have to be neutral.
Re:Curve flattened (Score:4, Insightful)
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Protests, by definition, aren't "allowed" by government. That's the whole point of a protest. No government "allowed" a protest to happen. They happened, because the protesters wanted them to happen.
When the mayor of Los Angeles shows up and participates, it's "allowed".
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Yes it does.
Re:Curve flattened (Score:4, Insightful)
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Lockdown was to "flatten the curve". But the virus didn't do what health experts predicted, so various local and state government officials had no clue what to do.
I think you're wrong on two counts... (1) Lockdown had two goals, first to flatten the curve, and second to get infection numbers to drop to a level where track-and-trace is feasible. It succeeded on the first count in almost all countries. It succeeded on the second count in a few like Germany and New Zealand, but not others like the US or UK. (2) I've been reading a lot of predictions, and the current situation fits pretty neatly within the bounds of predictions I read from experts.
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You're complaining about shit from 40 years ago. Shouldn't you have become a grownup at some point in the last 40 years?
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The complaint is about how the consequences of 40-year-old actions have compounded over the course of the past 40 years.
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So go back in time to 1979 and fix it? Complaining about the distant past isn't very grown-up.
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Complaining leads to awareness of the mistakes of the past, which in turn leads to brainstorming how they could be corrected in the present.
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Complaining leads to awareness of the mistakes of the past, which in turn leads to brainstorming how they could be corrected in the present.
I eagerly await whatever people have to offer besides complaining and blaming others.
Isn't the point that as soon as lock-downs.... (Score:2)
...are relaxed, people resort to old behaviors that lead to spikes in infections? And as such if we ALL follow the respective national guidelines then the infection rates would remain manageable?
I'm all for lifting lock-downs once we have a process for managing the spread. And yes, we do, but a percentage of people won't follow the guidance.
What I don't understand are the people who refuse to wear a mask, scoff at those who do, or think this is all a hoax. If you want to remain out of lock-down (or more imp
Oxygen deprivation; dew on eyeglasses (Score:2)
What I don't understand are the people who refuse to wear a mask
Some people wear a scarf or mask in public but remove it during during heavy exertion for one of two reasons: rebreathing carbon dioxide causes them to run out of oxygen, or the redirection of moist air upward causes their glasses to fog up, causing dangerous temporary loss of vision. How can heavy exertion be made safe for these people?
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Slowing the rate was simply to keep medical resources available for people who could be saved.
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Japan is one example,
Japan isn't an example of a place that didn't lock down. Japan had a lockdown, and other counter-measures. If you want to find a place that didn't lock down, look at Brazil.
Re:Drama Queens (Score:4, Informative)
People really don't get exponential growth. India has less deaths per capita than many countries, sure. And the rate is growing exponentially in India while it's decreasing in all those other countries.