U.S. to close..

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

You may be right... but if the vaccines do reduce or eliminate the chance of the receiver becoming seriously ill, then the refusniks will mainly be infecting each other. Freedom! I fully expect that once this is apparent, many of them will slink off to their doctors for the vaccine, on their way to the next liberty rally...

It's to be determined how much the different vaccines reduce transmission. In the Oxford trial for example monkeys who were vaccinated then infected were found to have positive nasal swabs, such that to some degree they could infect others with nasal secretions even when the vaccine prevented serious disease in the subject monkey.

In other words, natural selection has no qualms with taking the path of most resistance.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Do you recall the title of this OECD project?

A different response to this question.

Consider that Eastern philosophy sees two sides of any conflict as ordinary, and one's role in the world to seek less conflict between them. Western philosophy is sort of like the legal/political industry: insofar as there are two sides to every conflict, every different type of conflict is seen as a de-novo conflict, discrete and unique, meriting years of research, many books written, many opportunities to demonstrate prowess in seeing how the new conflict is different than the old one--a fundamentally divergent exercise. Completely counterproductive circle-jerk kind of behavior, but it soothes those who participate, routinely making them rich...which by nature intrinsically takes disproportionate wealth from the community into individuals, where disequitable distribution of wealth is seen as healthy and productive (gulp).

I agree with Jung et al that prior to ~2,300 years ago there was no difference between what we now call Eastern philosophy and the epistomology of the ~philosophers about the Eastern Mediterranian. The rise of the sophists (BS artistis who exploit differences for profit) followed by a religious infrastructure that basically forced linear thinking for 1,500-2,000 years was very problematic. Note that passing learned behavior genetically is a thing.

If you Pubmed research (links below) "east vs west eye tracking" you see that Eastern folks quite literally are much more apt to see the big picture. When an American and Japanese person are shown the same picture, the Japanese person's eyes spend more time looking at the details in the periphery of the picture, while the American eye zooms to the flashy thing.

So if you read a bit into linguistics, Wittegenstein's language games, and simply notice peoples' word choice, I suggest you can pick up quite a bit of which perspective they take. People who routinely rely on "we can't know XYZ....it's too complicated" sort of have a functional thought handicap, perspective bias that must help in some life circumstance, just not the one they are trying to describe (unless they're talking about stuff like quantum field theory or some such).

E.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102058/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3154403/
"As reported by Nisbett and Masuda (2003), adults from collectivist societies in East Asian countries (e.g., China, Japan etc.) process visual information holistically whereas adults from individualist Western countries (e.g., USA, Britain etc.) employ analytical processing strategies, resulting in fundamental differences in thought, behavior, and perception. Adults from Western societies are inclined to focus on focal objects, make causal attributions and group objects based on categorical rules. By contrast, Easterners are more likely to display interest in context, make situational attributions and group objects according to relationships "
---

Comic says "most people" vs "scientist"......I suggest that most people think that they have the scientist/Eastern view where to some degree they do.......just they don't realize when other people have a 24/7/365/80 much more detailed and intense relationship with all the details of their environment. In the extreme, the Westerner's eye and thoughts track from flashy-thing to flashy-thing, not connecting dots....the Eastern/scientific eye/thoughts spends all day cross-linking patterns in the environment---a fundamentally convergent process.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

You may be right... but if the vaccines do reduce or eliminate the chance of the receiver becoming seriously ill, then the refusniks will mainly be infecting each other. Freedom! I fully expect that once this is apparent, many of them will slink off to their doctors for the vaccine, on their way to the next liberty rally...

In the spring, we're going to have data that will show that in the areas that maintained good compliance with masks, physical distance, no big gatherings, they will have knocked the stuffing out of influenza as well. You might even see greater uptake of general mask wear, as practised in some Asian countries.

Your chance of death from this virus WITHOUT a shot was already under 1%, how much lower do you need it?

I mean the men who fought for your freedoms has a wee bit higher of a chance of death, tossing the hard earned freedoms and liberties paid for in blood away because a sub 1%. chance of death freaks soft people out, that’s not a good look.

Here’s the thing,
if you get the virus: over 99% chance you’ll be fine, MAYBE you feel sick for a week or so
if you give up your freedoms and individual liberty: history has shown the only way to get it back is with a ton of violence, blood and death


Sacrificing their sacrifice




Because you’re afraid of this




Just imagine talking to a Normandy vet just back from the front line, or a vet from the independence war, about how you were you want to give away your, AND HIS rights, because you might catch a virus with over a 99% survival rate.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Singularity

Yes and no. First, I'm quite comfortable with the concept of doctors pulling plugs, as are most doctors and frankly most old patients. But families are not. Just a few years ago there was a proposal that if A) a patient created a end of life healthcare plan, B) the doctor followed that plan, that C) the doctor would effectively get a bonus (technically a payment modifier). But this was lambasted as "death panel" type stuff. Can't win for losing.

Been thru it a few times. Just 2 months ago with my aunt. But as I said, it's a "move toward" we aren't fully there yet and it will never be an easy choice of when to let your loved ones go.

Hospice started as a good idea....basically "look, we'll give you a nursing home bed or home health, comfort measures only, in exchange to withdrawing care." It has morphed into routine de facto free (except for raised taxes) nursing home care, skilled care in the home, and hospitalizations if "not what was going to kill you" problems crop up. In summary, hospice in some areas has become more expensive than things were before hospice. In healthcare, like the movie Field of Dreams.......if you build it, they will come....but unlike the movie, you can't let the corn grow back. Sunk costs galore.

Depends...when you are talking full time in a hospital room with extensive tests and procedures, full time home nursing is still cheap. Again, we will likely never get to a perfect system but it's certainly better.

I'd love...love it if it were possible to have a reality TV show, with cameras on the wall and microphones on the phones to record what people say....what people expect when no one is around. In public everyone says don't spend money...in private they threaten everything to get what they want.

What perhaps is not intuitive is to understand that we already do this to a very, very large degree with every disease state.....but the calls to do this for Covid...the manner in which people oversimplify the calls to do this for Covid....ought to be understood to change the rule book for all the other diseases.

Frankly I could give a chit less if society wants to change the rule book. I just want people to play by the rules behind closed doors as they do in public. Pro-tip: the bigger the complainer against "socialized medicine" the more cry-baby and inflammatory one is when it comes time for them to receive service. Such people see themselves as some kind of John Galt or whatever, "already paid too much into the system, they all got too much, now it's time for me to get too much, and I'm not taking no for an answer."

If you ever have to wait extra for your doctor to see you, this phenomenon might be responsible for the majority of the wait, no kidding.

Not sure what your comments about "rule books" are on about but everyone wants the best for their loved ones and in a panic situation, they don't want to talk about cost until their loved one is taken care of. Doesn't matter if they are socialist or capitalist.

This applies to Corona also. People are in a panic, so they don't want to talk about the costs or effectiveness...they want action...even if action is massively expensive and may do little or nothing. But as they say in politics (all sides)...never let a good crisis go to waste.

[atoll]

Wait until people find out they will need a vaccination certificate to cross regional and international borders,get a job or use public transport.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

~150,000 Americans haven't died of turbulence. They are dying because they have encountered a novel coronavirus. Trying to claim that their deaths are caused by something else is to intentionally obfuscate the impact of this new disease.

So you are agreeing that the "official" number is off? Current numbers as of the date of your post are ~250,000.

I think the 9,000 numbers are equally wrong but Obfuscating is refusing to consider the full picture and just sticking to the number that supports your position particularly when it's at the extreme ends of the spectrum and not supportable from a logical position.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Singularity

Here's the logic problem with that statement.

The reason that the #1 cure is the #1 cure is because it's the #1 cure. This doesn't mean that people will execute the #1 cure correctly, such that you have to make the policy idiot-proof. And herein is the US's (in particular) problem with the Covid response....there practically was no policy. The people responsible for making things idiot-proof....simply didn't do it...no policy book was on the shelf 100 years after Spanish flu. As far as I'm concerned, Trump saved their bacon (so far) by acting as a distraction...wherein some good amount of his criticism of CDC folks was quite fair (even when he didn't know how to bring resources together to overcome CDC failure).

But the #1 cure worked in China and other countries to a very high degree. This cannot be overlooked, discounted, etc, if we are to learn anything.

I would change it to: #1 Response...so far we have no "cure". Even with the extreme response in China, they are no where close to out of the woods unless a vaccine is viable. Even in China if this just drags on, eventually, the people will rise up and say enough...they can just get away with extreme measures for longer before that happens.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

.....Just imagine talking to a Normandy vet just back from the front line, or a vet from the independence war, about how you were you want to give away your, AND HIS rights, because you might catch a virus with over a 99% survival rate.

I suspect you'd find many wanting to beat you with a rifle butt.

WWII US numbers:
408,000 dead over 3.5 years (combat survivability 9 out of a 1,000 were killed in action 3 per 1,000 other causes)
672,000 wounded

American Covid-19 dead 247,000 in the first 10 months

WWII Russian dead:
16,000,000++++++

US homeland:
Both political parties increased marginal tax rates to over 90%; income subject to this rate dropped 2,400% from $5,000,000 to $200,000.
Wages harshly controlled.
Benefits harshly controlled.
All manner of personal goods, including foodstocks, rationed.
Price controls across the board.
People encouraged/did save money; had more money but less free time/opportunity to spend it.
Govt monitored people felt not getting with the program.
Forced detention of citizens and suspect people.
News folks self-censured for the common purpose.

I suggest to you that historical references to make your point just isn't your strong suit. As a veteran, I suggest that the sacrifices made by the men in the photo, and the Americans back on the homeland to support them, were in vain if/when people such as yourself neglect your duty to learn history in the first place so you don't end up turning into the kind of people they specifically were fighting against. If one cannot discern collective effort from communism then the person is fundamentally civically illiterate.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Singularity

I suspect you'd find many wanting to beat you with a rifle butt.

WWII US numbers:
408,000 dead over 3.5 years (combat survivability 9 out of a 1,000 were killed in action 3 per 1,000 other causes)
672,000 wounded

American Covid-19 dead 247,000 in the first 10 months

WWII Russian dead:
16,000,000++++++

US homeland:
Both political parties increased marginal tax rates to over 90%; income subject to this rate dropped 2,400% from $5,000,000 to $200,000.
Wages harshly controlled.
Benefits harshly controlled.
All manner of personal goods, including foodstocks, rationed.
Price controls across the board.
People encouraged/did save money; had more money but less free time/opportunity to spend it.
Govt monitored people felt not getting with the program.
Forced detention of citizens and suspect people.
News folks self-censured for the common purpose.

I suggest to you that historical references to make your point just isn't your strong suit. As a veteran, I suggest that the sacrifices made by the men in the photo, and the Americans back on the homeland to support them, were in vain if/when people such as yourself neglect your duty to learn history in the first place so you don't end up turning into the kind of people they specifically were fighting against. If one cannot discern collective effort from communism then the person is fundamentally civically illiterate.

I should have been more clear, I meant the allied parties, I know the Germans or Russians would probably use violence against someone speaking for individual liberty.

But those folks wouldn’t be having it, just look up the battle of Athens. When you see your buddies head turn into a canoe fighting for freedom a world away, you end up less tolerant of some two bit coward mayor or governor stepping on your rights back home.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Not sure what your comments about "rule books" are on about but everyone wants the best for their loved ones and in a panic situation, they don't want to talk about cost until their loved one is taken care of. Doesn't matter if they are socialist or capitalist....

By 'rule book' I meant to refer to the phenomenon where there is a public discourse of expectations of what should/shouldn't be done for XYZ medical situations....what people say in public...and what they say/do/expect/threaten behind closed doors is very different. Agreed/understand that stress largely causes this, but this isn't ever part of the discussion...as it should be.

I don't mean to speak to the massive fraud problems in healthcare (it's own issue that, frankly, to put it one way, is a works program for people who have no other place in the economy). But specifically regarding decision-making to provide more/less care in which circumstances a largess of these John Galt/self-made man/rugged individualist type are whiny crybabies behind the scenes. Like Blanche DuBois they fundamentally always rely on the kindness of strangers.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

Your chance of death from this virus WITHOUT a shot was already under 1%, how much lower do you need it?
... a sub 1%. chance of death freaks soft people out, that’s not a good look.
... if you get the virus: over 99% chance you’ll be fine, MAYBE you feel sick for a week or so...

Wrong (again).
As Yihang opined (#465), “I'd hate to see your (SalingSue) social media feed.”

Globally, as of 10:08am CET, 17 November 2020, there have been 54,558,120 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 1,320,148 deaths, reported to WHO.

1,320,148 deaths

That would work out to a 2.42% Worldwide Case Fatality Ratio (CFR), not 1% (99% survival) - which is, itself (1% CFR), 10-times more lethal than the seasonal flu.

Cases and mortality by country
Mexico: 1,009,396 cases, 98,861 deaths, = 9.8% CFR
China 91,872, 4,742, = 5.2%
United Kingdom 1,394,299, 52,240, = 3.7%
Canada 305,449, 11,075, = 3.6%
Australia 27,758, 907, = 3.3%
USA 11,202,980, 247,202, = 2.2%
Netherlands 459,837, 8,603, = 1.9%
Finland 19,419, 371, = 1.9%
Denmark 63,847, 764, = 1.2%
New Zealand 2,005, 25, = 1.2%
Iceland 5,205, 25, = 0.5% CFR

More countries ➥ https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

I should have been more clear, I meant the allied parties, I know the Germans or Russians would probably use violence against someone speaking for individual liberty.

But those folks wouldn’t be having it, just look up the battle of Athens. When you see your buddies head turn into a canoe fighting for freedom a world away, you end up less tolerant of some two bit coward mayor or governor stepping on your rights back home.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

I would suggest that using an anectdote of local numbskullery in backwoods America as a lens to aprise the course of human events of tens of billions of people about the globe over thousands of years does not help one attain much of a useful grasp of understanding the nuances of history. [but for that matter, there are battles in another Athens that are more useful]

In school they call this phenomenon observation biasing...where one only sees in the world some combination of a) what they saw before, b) what their brain causes them to focus on, presumably based on evolutionary needs. Not everyone ever takes those classes, but in popular media you can see this phenomenon routinely lampooned. Here is an example, augmented for this subject:

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by atoll

Wait until people find out they will need a vaccination certificate to cross regional and international borders,get a job or use public transport.

If there is a successful vaccination, at most it will be a short term thing and most people won't be traveling during that period anyway (particularly the hard core anti-vax crowd). So other than a few apocryphal stories meant to stir things up, it's not going to be a big deal.

Once there is widespread vaccinations in a country, a stray incoming case isn't a big deal in terms of controlling the spread.

Of course the whole anti-vax thing is mostly a media/political thing where they purposely trigger people suspicious of the govt. If you look at kids going to school, the numbers not vaccinated are tiny.

There are some legitimate concern that vaccines are being rushed to market but since it's likely to take 6-12months for widespread coverage, those with concerns can simply wait until further into the process and if no serious complications arise, their concerns will largely evaporate.

Bottom line a viable high effectiveness vaccine will quickly end the panic....um I mean pandemic.

[goboatingnow]

Your chance of death from this virus WITHOUT a shot was already under 1%, how much lower do you need it?

I mean the men who fought for your freedoms has a wee bit higher of a chance of death, tossing the hard earned freedoms and liberties paid for in blood away because a sub 1%. chance of death freaks soft people out, that’s not a good look.

Here’s the thing,
if you get the virus: over 99% chance you’ll be fine, MAYBE you feel sick for a week or so
if you give up your freedoms and individual liberty: history has shown the only way to get it back is with a ton of violence, blood and death

This the height of Trumpian nonsense and pedaling mistruths

You need to look at the case fatality rate , secondly its not all about death , many Coivid patients have ongoing medical conditions , permanent damage to various organ damage and chronic fatigue . its not all about simply dying or not dying

to compare this to a war is utter nonsense

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Singularity

I suspect you'd find many wanting to beat you with a rifle butt.

WWII US numbers:
408,000 dead over 3.5 years (combat survivability 9 out of a 1,000 were killed in action 3 per 1,000 other causes)
672,000 wounded

American Covid-19 dead 247,000 in the first 10 months

WWII Russian dead:
16,000,000++++++

US homeland:
Both political parties increased marginal tax rates to over 90%; income subject to this rate dropped 2,400% from $5,000,000 to $200,000.
Wages harshly controlled.
Benefits harshly controlled.
All manner of personal goods, including foodstocks, rationed.
Price controls across the board.
People encouraged/did save money; had more money but less free time/opportunity to spend it.
Govt monitored people felt not getting with the program.
Forced detention of citizens and suspect people.
News folks self-censured for the common purpose.

I suggest to you that historical references to make your point just isn't your strong suit. As a veteran, I suggest that the sacrifices made by the men in the photo, and the Americans back on the homeland to support them, were in vain if/when people such as yourself neglect your duty to learn history in the first place so you don't end up turning into the kind of people they specifically were fighting against. If one cannot discern collective effort from communism then the person is fundamentally civically illiterate.

You cannot compare combat deaths with COVID deaths. This gives a totally distorted impression of the human cost of the pandemic. Which is huge, but not at all on the same scale as WWII. Average age of COVID deaths: about 77 years in the U.S. (85 in Sweden). Life-years lost: 2.5 million on the high end (not taking any account of pre-existing conditions, so certainly overstated by at least 2x or 3x), or about 758 per 100k population. Average age of U.S. soldiers in WWII: 26. Life expectancy in 1944: 69.5. Life-years lost in WWII by U.S. soldiers: 17,634,857, or 12,742 per 100k, which is UNDERstated because does not take account of FEWER pre-existing conditions among front-line troops in the war. So most likely about two orders of magnitude greater, than COVID deaths so far.

And can you possibly stick to arguments and facts, and refrain from personal insults like "civically illiterate"?

Originally Posted by SalingSue

Your chance of death from this virus WITHOUT a shot was already under 1%, how much lower do you need it?. . .

I would however point out that this is also not correct. Your risk might be 1% if you are healthy and under 60 (or even less than 1%), but the risk is much higher if you are obese, have heart or lung problems, or are over 70 years old. 1% (or 3%) is the average temperature in the hospital -- not meaningful.

Just because you think you might personally survive, doesn't mean you want to catch the disease (and having survived it myself, I'm here to tell you based on first-hand experience). And even if you don't even get sick, you can transmit it to others if you fail to vaccinate, and catch it.

By all means, don't get vaccinated, if you don't want to -- with 90% or 95% efficacious vaccines and a relatively small number of anti-vaxxers, we can handle it. But don't hold this out as a model for everyone to follow.