I usually glance at the stuff he posts but now that he admits he does not even read them 1st, why should I?
Again this idea that it's the economy or lockdown is somewhat of a false dichotomy. To what extent the lockdowns have worked I agree is an open question but from what I've seen they do appear to have worked somewhat. Remember the idea was never to absolutely stop the disease. Not even in Wuhan which did have a lockdown like what RayRay10 described was the disease completely stopped. It was to slow transmission enough to so that our healthcare system could keep up with it. In many states that does appear to be the case and it very well might be that even though we're still seeing infections along with deaths rise we haven't seen the steep climb of deaths like we did in the early days. Obviously lockdowns of any sort will hurt the economy but having a lot of people sick and dying at a rate that is overwhelming our medical structure would also hurt our economy too. At least with a lockdown we have some control over how we shutdown the economy versus just leaving it to the virus to decide.
"De Blasio Orders Creation of Coronavirus Checkpoints To Interrogate Visitors to New York City": https://reason.com/2020/08/05/de-bl...nts-to-interrogate-visitors-to-new-york-city/
What the flaw is in these papers and articles is the inclusion of countries that either A. Didn't have a chance to put in precautions as they were flooded with cases before they knew it (Italy, Spain, France), or included countries that had the opportunity to prevent cases, but didn't do so until it was too late for mass deaths (UK, Ireland come to mind). This is a question of intellectual honesty here,. For example, let's say Biden gets elected, and let's say he clears the cases up within 4 months of his presidency through a strict lockdown (unlikely but just a hypothetical) would it then be fair to say "HEY look, America had this crazy strict lockdown but still had so many deaths!". No, I don't think so because so many deaths would be before the lockdown happened. The same type of dishonesty, but not a hypothetical - New York got flooded with cases before it was able to react, didn't have the test set up, never put in precautions with public transportation, mass infection was rampant before they locked down. Is it fair to say "HEY look, NY had so many deaths despite a strict lockdown!". No, again I don't think so, those deaths were inevitable due to the spread pre-lockdown. Countries that locked down in time, we can see clear examples of, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Singapore, Slovakia, Czech, Slovenia, Uruguay, Greece, Lithuania, Estonia. Then the question begs for the countries that locked down late - like Italy, Spain, France, UK, what would have been the death toll if they never locked down? Why isn't the "one could never know" ideology applied to this thought? Is it really "articulately hesitant" to believe lockdowns don't prevent deaths? Or is that "inarticulate certainty" based on manipulations of data without context? To me this one of those things that kind of simple, the stricter the lockdown, the more precautions are taken, the fewer interactions people have, the fewer cases people contract, the fewer deaths people suffer. The question is what is the correct balance of lockdown vs accepted deaths, not whether lockdown prevents deaths. Also, like you mentioned @rocketsjudoka, it can even be a false choice of lockdown vs economy loss, due to the reality that a lot of people just won't go out during a pandemic.
I agree. We have to compare the numbers from lockdown and be careful about mixing in pre-lockdown numbers to assess how well a lockdown works. Also following up regarding lockdown versus the economy that tradeoff didn't work in Sweden. They not only have more cases and deaths than neighboring and comparable countries their economy is also suffering. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...nomy-posted-record-slump-during-pandemic-peak
Sweden now has the highest unemployment rate amongst Nordic countries, up +7%. Their GDP is doing slightly better than Norway's, which I believe had an 11% loss, but was the much higher death rate, and loss in employment worth it? I don't think so either. This tweet in that article is a good example of what I was talking about Comparing Sweden to Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, UK, is ridiculous considering the context, from cases to economic impacts. Germany is a slightly better comp, but the best ones would be Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
Honestly, the tweet is right that the jury is still out. We won't know who did the right thing for years. One possibility is that America is "dealing with" the virus fastest and will get past it first: we're doing a Normandy invasion with massive death toll. But, if a vaccine comes pretty soon, it's pretty dumb to die today huh? If herd immunity is impossible, these deaths are 100% useless.
What???? Governor DeWine is asymptomatic....... Everyone knows it's safe to go to work and school with asymptomatic people. That's the whole foundation of our national strategy. Unless . . . it's actually not safe. . . .
I found this webcam page with 3 cams from Sturgis. It's going to be interesting once this thing kicks off and all the bikers get there. I was watching a hotel webcam on the main street, which scans around. One view showed all the people coming up and down the sidewalk in front of all the shops and bars. Not a single mask on any of them. It's just crazy to me how all these people can so blatantly not give a damn. What a selfish bunch of people. Just think, after 10 days of mingling the thousands will ride away, and carry their virus all around the country. https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/l...cle_c76cccb4-959a-563e-bae1-63d733dd46dc.html
Yet you didn't say a peep when the BLM protesters and looters where out there not social distancing...
