Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

or maybe you could leave the house, and everyone else in the world can stay home?

the main reason 'other businesses are open, but not schools' = it's a helluva lot harder to shut businesses down without severe blowback from rich corporate monsters

also i'll be sure to let my friend who is a black hairdresser who is deep into qanon now because he's lost 90% of his income this year that he's a rich corporate monster

With COVID, just leaving my house is a risk

also this is total nonsense! if you leave your house at 2 am and go somewhere where there's no people and come straight home, there's literally zero risk! you get it from other people, it's not radioactive fallout

Yeah I think the blowback is just as much from wage workers in industries that can't be done from home and small business owners who can't operate from home, especially people who don't have much savings or safety net. People in the US are unfortunately more dependent on their work to survive than in any other western country. I think that has a lot to do with the pushback on closures.

i mean jeez i get it you guys don't like uncool conservative opinions, why are you even here?

it's not like i come onto the outbreak thread and poo poo your doomposting, recommend you save your righteous meltdown for someone on a different thread who cares

I read a NYT story last week showing that the problem isn't classrooms -- there's little evidence students and faculty contract it on campus. The problem is travel and bars.

oh shit this story has a photo of benches my son and I have sat on while playing pokemon go

students DNGAF about masks or distancing but a lot of them seem to have not returned after thanksgiving so that's good at least

xp yes there are people who just seem to have remained stuck in March mindset, when we didn't know anywhere near as much about spread, risk, treatment, etc. Death rates are lower now, "long covid" is still a question but probably overreported (and any virus can have longer lasting effects), and if you're under 75 and healthy your risk of death even if you get it is very low, getting lower as you go down in age. Of course I still minimize my contact and take all precautions, because I can, because the cost for me is low so why not help slow the spread, because I don't want my post-cancer FIL to get it, and because who wants this thing even if it doesn't kill or debilitate you. But we are making some wrongheaded choices, and the most notable one is closing schools.

Death rates are lower but 3k people are dying per day. Death rate also means dick if hospitals are overcrowded (which they are) and have to ration care (some do), and if the rate of transmission and number of cases are going through the roof (which they are).

We're seeing recordsetting levels of transmission in the US. We can't act the exact same as we were in times of year when the pandemic is receding.

I am not saying nobody leave their house, and with schools, idk what the "right" answer is, but some big-assed downplaying of the pandemic itt rn

Like it's great that the mortality rate is shrinking because we've been better at treating this, but hyperfocusing on death rate is the type of thinking that got us here to begin with.

I'm glad it's lower cos I can't imagine how many would be dead otherwise

it's not like i come onto the outbreak thread and poo poo your doomposting, recommend you save your righteous meltdown for someone on a different thread who cares

― the late great, Thursday, December 17, 2020 1:26 PM bookmarkflaglink

It's not me who is "melting down" itt rn

Hell, you sent me four replies before i came to respond to one

nobody's downplaying the pandemic, also i'm well aware of the basic facts you keep helpfully repeating

You literally dropped the "lol people die in accidents, we aren't banning cars" line

so?

We should definitely ban cars btw

maybe, or at least tax gasoline more

No we shouldn’t raise consumption taxes

disagree, but ok

death “rates” are a nonsensical way to frame the problem. the denominator doesn’t matter when the numerator is as gruesome as this

I do agree that there have been some wrongheaded policies from people who ought to know better. elementary schools should be among the last things to close but when community transmission is as high as it is, the effect of any additional infections are amplified further. man alive, can you link to some of the research you’re citing about risk to teachers? I’d be interested to read it

ah the kate steinle argument

tlg I gave you a hard time about the car and whatever else thing because it’s a conservative talking point, your first mistake, the implication that because people die of other things we should be less concerned about this thing that a lot of people are currently dying from that no one ever died from a year ago is not terribly sound

ah the kate steinle argument

― the late great, Thursday, December 17, 2020 4:02 PM (forty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

haven’t the slightest clue what this means tbh

"who cares if the vast majority of illegal immigrants don't break the law, even one preventable murder is too many"

We should definitely ban cars btw

― is right unfortunately (silby), Thursday, December 17, 2020 3:49 PM bookmarkflaglink

tbh i agree with this

xpost uh wow is that really the analogy you wanted to make there

that's not my implication though

yes that is the correct analogy, why?

xpost wasn't k3v's either

you have this tendency when you feel strongly about something to immediately and disingenuously insinuate that your opponent is saying this thing that you know they are actually not saying or implying

has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve read on ilx recently lol. take a nap or something

Thread title delivers, I guess.

Doesn't deliver pizza though

my implication is that we aacept a certain amount of risk and death in allowing ppl to do daily life activites and whether you think it's acceptable to close schools (or ban guns, or drugs, or fossil fuels) etc etc in order to reduce risk and death is not an objective question, and there's tradeoffs involved

yeah the kinetics of viral spread complicate that a bit

great counterarguments, guys! you really engaged with the substance of what i was saying, and i feel so ashamed to have disappointed you now

Some local councils in London have been trying to shut schools only to be told, "Don't you dare!" by the government.

did i misunderstand what he meant by numerator and denominator?

i figured he meant when the outcome is so gruesome?

I hadn’t seen his posts when I posted mine but I was essentially stating what neanderthal was a different way. the percentage of people who die does not really matter when the absolute number is so high

oh, okay. well, i misunderstood. but that's not in the realm of what i'd call a fact, that's more like your opinion maaaaan

It's currently the third leading cause of death in the US, no? Right behind heart disease and cancer, neither of which is a virus iirc. And the overwhelming majority of Americans haven't had it (yet), so… things could obv. get much, much worse, and we don't really want that, do we?

What would an acceptable death toll look like iyo?

what's weird is that i actually agree w you guys. i would rather close schools than close nothing, and since the state can close schools but can't close businesses, suppose we have to close schools

what's extra weird to me is we can't have a rational discussion abt the pros and cons of it without you guys acting like it's some kind of obvious foregone conclusion, not to mention the yr weird horror abt ever being in agreement w someone who voted for the other guy

who cares what's acceptable to me, i'm not in a position to make decisions abt it

you have this tendency when you feel strongly about something to immediately and disingenuously insinuate that your opponent is saying this thing that you know they are actually not saying or implying

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Thursday, 17 December 2020 21:08 (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is hardly, tbf, a novel approach around here

tlg, we can def talk about the pros and cons, I'm just trying to understand how many deaths you deem acceptable, if we're going to quantify this crisis (and we can't help but go there, whether we like it or not). 300k is a fuckton seeing as only about, what, 10% of the US population has had it so far? And this assumes partial lockdown, face masks and other preventive measures across at least some states. Fwiw here in Quebec where primary and secondary schools did stay open during the fall semester, it seems to have yielded approximately 25% of all cases since September, according to the latest data, i.e. half the amount of work-related cases and on par with the fallout of illegal house parties and the like. Maybe it was worth it, maybe it wasn't. Maybe other policies would have worked better, such as forcing everyone to WFH whenever possible instead of merely counting on the good will of our philanthropic employers. All I know is that hospitals are now edging closer and closer to being at capacity, and the post-Xmas period is going to be a nightmare despite the fact that the ban on indoor gatherings will not be lifted during the holidays.

i don't bother making judgements abt how many deaths is acceptable

it's a dumb question so you can ask but you're not going to get an answer because i don't have one

it's a dumb question

lol ok, I guess that settles it then.

i don't see how that settles anything but ok

i mean do YOU have a number in mind that's ok? or do only i have to answer that question?

time to weigh up QALYs on both sides of this debate