We overreacted!
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@Aqua-Letifer said in We overreacted!:
a teenage emotional quotient, my pride is permanently tied to my being right
There has been a lot of that recently.
It's to be expected I guess.
Still, I hope we can all learn from it.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Copper Variants of that idea dominate all conversation. I mean it's not like anybody wishing to be taken seriously can go around saying that a certain number of deaths are acceptable. So the whole social conversation is divorced from reason.
I suspect a lot of folk have become convinced that they are among the high risk cohort, when they are not.
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The only tool in our chest right now seems to be isolation. Nothing else really works well (we don't have good testing, contact tracing, etc.)
We don't have options that help us flex risk and reward (and use an implicit or explicit cost per life metric).
At this point - either we we use the one tool in our chest or let it wash over us.
And yes that option is simultaneously the most and least we can be doing (if we want to do anything). So it can be interpreted as "we're not comfortable with losing one life" - because we're doing everything we can to avoid loss of life.
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Put another way - if there was a specific middle ground option between what we're doing vs. doing nothing - I think it would be pretty safe to bet the current administration would be yelling it from the rooftops.
I almost always fall on the side of "we're too loss-averse as a society" when it comes to security issues (e.g., TSA, mass surveillance, etc.). But I can't think of a single real thing we can actually do, except isolation.
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@George-K said in We overreacted!:
"Dr." Phil speaks:
I despise people who claim to be doctors when they're not.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in We overreacted!:
@George-K said in We overreacted!:
"Dr." Phil speaks:
I despise people who claim to be doctors when they're not.
Phillip Calvin McGraw (born September 1, 1950), also known as Dr. Phil, is an American television personality, author, and former psychologist who is the host of the television show Dr. Phil. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, however, he is not licensed to practice. McGraw first gained celebrity status with appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the late 1990s.
He's more of a doctor that "Doctor Jill Biden."
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Horace said in We overreacted!:
@Copper Variants of that idea dominate all conversation. I mean it's not like anybody wishing to be taken seriously can go around saying that a certain number of deaths are acceptable. So the whole social conversation is divorced from reason.
That's because you're drawing a silly line in the sand. It's not about X number of deaths being okay. If one person dies because we didn't do anything to protect him then yes, that's disgusting and we should damn well be ashamed of that. If several thousands die while enacting very real and serious efforts to protect all of us, then yes, okay, it's still a hit, but it's not a moral failing.
The goal is obvious: nobody dies while getting everyone back to work. Of course no one knows where the actual lines between safety, liberties, and the economy should be on this issue, it's way too complex. We're going to fuck up, and we'll make many arbitrary decisions that are going to piss people off. And lots of people will inevitably die anyway.
But the failing is not the death rate, it's the apathy. There's a difference between deaths caused by seriously trying to balance two very different calamities, and not caring about the deaths either because they're inevitable, or because people care more about the economy.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in We overreacted!:
There's a difference between deaths caused by seriously trying to balance two very different calamities, and not caring about the deaths either because they're inevitable, or because people care more about the economy.
I thought the balance was the flattened curve.
Was it flattened?
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@George-K said in We overreacted!:
@Doctor-Phibes said in We overreacted!:
@George-K said in We overreacted!:
"Dr." Phil speaks:
I despise people who claim to be doctors when they're not.
Phillip Calvin McGraw (born September 1, 1950), also known as Dr. Phil, is an American television personality, author, and former psychologist who is the host of the television show Dr. Phil. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, however, he is not licensed to practice. McGraw first gained celebrity status with appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the late 1990s.
He's more of a doctor that "Doctor Jill Biden."
I was actually alluding to the famous organist, Anton Phibes.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in We overreacted!:
@Horace said in We overreacted!:
@Copper Variants of that idea dominate all conversation. I mean it's not like anybody wishing to be taken seriously can go around saying that a certain number of deaths are acceptable. So the whole social conversation is divorced from reason.
That's because you're drawing a silly line in the sand. It's not about X number of deaths being okay. If one person dies because we didn't do anything to protect him then yes, that's disgusting and we should damn well be ashamed of that. If several thousands die while enacting very real and serious efforts to protect all of us, then yes, okay, it's still a hit, but it's not a moral failing.
The goal is obvious: nobody dies while getting everyone back to work. Of course no one knows where the actual lines between safety, liberties, and the economy should be on this issue, it's way too complex. We're going to fuck up, and we'll make many arbitrary decisions that are going to piss people off. And lots of people will inevitably die anyway.
But the failing is not the death rate, it's the apathy. There's a difference between deaths caused by seriously trying to balance two very different calamities, and not caring about the deaths either because they're inevitable, or because people care more about the economy.
You'd be lousy at triage.
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I have to say, I'm less likely to listen to people telling me to get back to work when they were previously the same people claiming the disease was no worse than the flu, and that we should just carry on as normal because, after all, people die all the time and I'll probably get killed in a car accident anyway.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@Copper That's not "the balance." At all. Flattening the curve is not some kind of magical reset button.
This is tiresome, but whatever: Pretend it did flatten, and then, everyone went back to business as usual with no safety measures in place. If we did that, and the government got out of our way, the death rate would skyrocket in a matter of weeks, people would be shitting their pants, start to stay home, health care facilities would be beyond overrun, and the economy would tank anyway. We already know that bottom-up sequestration is a threat to the economy, it's already happened here with restaurants in every state prior to their respective shutdowns. We can't have it your way, even if we tried it.
Turns out the actual economists were right: there's no fixing the economy without dealing seriously with the public health risk.
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I think you miss the point of flattening the curve.
The point of flattening the curve is to keep from overwhelming the system.
It is not to overwhelm the system as you describe.
The goal is not to stop death.
And the only alternative is not to do something stupid as you describe.
