U.S. to close..

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Singularity

If one takes so much as a community college correspondence course on medical ethics they will understand, or at least be exposed to, the notion that QALYs are used to herd cattle, not to select the best cut of beef off a single cow. The underlying medical ethical conundrum with limited resources is how to keep a society functional, not to maximize the number of factory workers. Frankly a lot of people in society are, in the net, parasites, such that if they disappeared, society would be better off. These are not minorities or disenfranchised people...those groups in the aggregate nearly to an individual level take a pittance from the system in the worse of cases. To hide behind them as brethren is historically ordinary and recognized as such, and still not valid this time.

Regarding misinformation, yourself and others have repeated undocumented misinformation after I posted the below post 2 months ago.

I encourage people moderating each other's perspectives in response to misinformation which govts the likes of Germany are considering (have implemented?) plans to make some type of crime under the circumstance so as to lesson the impact of Covid on society, which incidentally is screwing with the cruising plans of a bunch of people without the unique geographic location or financial wherewithal that insulates people from the reality all else are living in. In the minimum, I'd hope that someone with moderator under the screen name is not pushing misinformation and denigrating nurses.

As posted near the bottom of the below cited thread, someone else critical of your misinformation wrote:
"I just hope the silent readers don't take the posters with the largest volume of words as the most persuasive." Shortly thereafter thread closed, probably where this one is going.

************************************************** ***
Post from 2 months ago:
My data sources with links: State of California, US CDC, State of Arizona

COVID-19
California alone:
Age 50-64 is 19% of positive cases, or 145,578 confirmed cases (total positive = 766,201)
Age 50-64 is 19% (no error) of fatals, or 2,797 (total fatals = 14,721)

2,797 / 145,578 = 1.92% of 50-64 with positive Covid test died of Covid [192 per 10,000 people age 50-64 died in California closely associated with Covid]

US CDC 2017-2018 flu season
Estimate for all of US:
Age 50-64 had 13,237,932 cases (95% CI 9,400,614 - 23,062,957)
Age 50-64 had 6,751 deaths (95% CI 4,244 - 15,863)

6751 / 13,237,943 = 0.0005 % of people age 50-64 with influenza died of it in the 2017-2018 (1-year) flu season [5 per 10,000 people age 50-64 died in the US closely associated with influenza]

---------------
For further context of influenza deaths

Age 65+ had 5,945,690 cases (95% CI 3,907,025 – 11,786,777)
Age 65+ had 50,903 deaths (95% CI 35,989 – 83,230)

50,903 / 5,945,690 = .00856% of people age 65+ who got influenza died in the 2017-2018 (1-year) flu season [85.6 per 10,000 people age 65+ died in the US closely associated with influenza]

Total US deaths from influenza 2017-2018 season...all age combined = 61,099 (95% CI 46,404 – 94,987)

-------------------------------------------------

Further, Arizona Covid experience
Age 45-54 32,246 positive Covid; 382 Covid deaths, 1.18% positive Covid died of Covid [118 per 10,000 people age 45-54 died in Arizona closely related to Covid]
Age 55-64 24,595 positive Covid; 855 Covid deaths, 3.47% positive Covid died of Covid [347 per 10,000 people age 55-64 died in Arizona closely related to Covid]

The information I posted was a direct quote from the chief scientist in charge of Europe's so far most successful pandemic response, namely the Chief Epidemiologist of Finland.


You have a different opinion which you can sort of support if you look at it in a certain way, with certain data.


That does not make other opinions, supported by data looked at in another and possibly more truthful way, "misinformation".


Nor are arguments which you don't bother to engage with facts and logic "sophistry", which is a particularly vicious characterization.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

... you have to make the policy decisions in time, even when you don't have complete information. You still have to estimate this damage, those costs, those deaths, those life-years, as best you can. Otherwise you can't make a rational decision. This pandemic was a particularly awful case of it

Bingo. Moreover you need all the available cards on the table and face-up (whoops... mixing metaphors). A more succinct expression of my point would be: we're seeing potentially wartime levels of casualties; these would justify taxation approaching wartime level. If, with this level of funding, the economic and other harm of pandemic action are still potentially significant, THEN we can start to look more closely at the relative "values" of lives harmed/lost.

btw I think you continue to downplay the total potential cost or damage from the pandemic. It's not just who dies or has a lifelong health problem. Think of the emotional and physical cost to healthcare workers, if numbers of the ill increase to the breaking point. Hard-hit regions would have lasting damage - like village-wide PTSD, maybe? Sectors like entertainment, hospitality and travel are impacted regardless if lockdowns or other measures are imposed.

-- I have said before, I am awfully glad to be just another sailor blathering about it on a forum, rather than being an actual policymaker. Hell of a job.

We both live in democracies (for the moment), we both still vote. A small but important job.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Bingo. Moreover you need all the available cards on the table and face-up (whoops... mixing metaphors). A more succinct expression of my point would be: we're seeing potentially wartime levels of casualties; these would justify taxation approaching wartime level. If, with this level of funding, the economic and other harm of pandemic action are still potentially significant, THEN we can start to look more closely at the relative "values" of lives harmed/lost.

btw I think you continue to downplay the total potential cost or damage from the pandemic. It's not just who dies or has a lifelong health problem. Think of the emotional and physical cost to healthcare workers, if numbers of the ill increase to the breaking point. Hard-hit regions would have lasting damage - like village-wide PTSD, maybe? Sectors like entertainment, hospitality and travel are impacted regardless of lockdowns or other measures are imposed.. . .

"All the available cards on the table and face up" -- completely agree, and the metaphor is fine, is apt, and in fact, is not mixed

Only quibble is you can't wait until later to balance the harm you do. You have to do your best from the beginning. You can't ignore the working poor just because you think you might be able to partially mitigate the harm. We've been round the houses about this and I guess no point in repeating myself.

Nor do I "downplay the total potential cost or damage from the pandemic". I've agreed with you about this all along -- you are correctly describing legitimate concerns. There are a whole bunch of different angles to this, and we can't ignore any of them. I'm merely protesting against ignoring the working poor, and ignoring the human cost of economic cost. You simply can't say "it's only money; we can always just soak the rich to get it", because (1) you can't; and (2) even if you could, resources are STILL limited and you STILL have to allocate them rationally. I'm just humbly pleading not to oversimplifiy it, not to politicise it, and not to ignore ANYTHING here. There are no easy answers -- you can't just throw the kitchen sink at it. A crisis like this demands a nuanced and balanced approach. That's all I'm saying.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Only quibble is you can't wait until later to balance the harm you do.

You have more latitude if the potential harm is in the future and can be mitigated by future action.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

You have more latitude if the potential harm is in the future and can be mitigated by future action.

"More" might not be "much", and in this case it's clearly not much latitude at all. As I said -- if we haven't solved poverty, or for God's sake, even HUNGER, pre-pandemic, what makes you think we can just wave our hands and solve the problems of 30 million unemployed? This is just magical thinking. It is pure madness to willy nilly throw all those people out of work, and just write it off as some future bill to pay, which we will somehow figure out. It's a here and now problem.


I fear however I'm repeating myself, for which, apologies

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

what makes you think we can just wave our hands and solve the problems of 30 million unemployed?

Even without lockdowns, the pandemic would have caused 10+ mil new unemployed and hurt or killed many businesses, especially in hospitality, entertainment and travel.

Of the 30 mil unemployed, 10 million will be rehired. 8 to 10 mil or so will find comparable jobs after a while. (a lot of rehiring has happened already, yes?) Therefore it's worth keeping them from going destitute til they're back to working.

Of the other 10 mil, some will need retraining. Some may have to take minimum wage or gig jobs, so will need supplemental money, cos its hard to actually live on those wages. Some will start new businesses. Some will just say 'screw it' and retire early.

When the pandemic's grip has been broken and some normalcy has returned, there are lots of people with money on the sidelines who will see opportunity. Plus, a little govt incentive to support new small business startups will go a long way. Pretty good time to launch some long-neglected infrastructure projects, right? If money's going out, might as well have something to show for it. Unlike just p1ssing QE into a black hole.

So that's my magic wand.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

. . . Of the 30 mil unemployed, 10 million will be rehired. 8 to 10 mil or so will find comparable jobs after a while. . .
Of the other 10 mil, some will . . .

. . . some will commit suicide, some will become alcoholics, some will join the hard core unemployed with no health care, some will become homeless -- it doesn't take a big percentage of 10 million people dead or with ruined lives to outweigh a hundred thousand or whatever dead old people.

If even that is the cost -- it is not even clear that the harshest measures save even anyone.

That's all I'm saying.

You stubbornly disagree with me, and I think you're stubbornly wrong about some things, but I really respect that you bother to understand and engage my arguments (unlike some people), and I respect your opinions. I don't claim a monopoly on truth. It's an honor to debate these things with you. I've certainly learned a lot, and in the worst case, have improved the thought behind my own opinions, thanks to you.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

... It is generally accepted and hardly controversial, something you will learn the first week in any of the great schools of public policy, like the Kennedy School, that allocating resources between saving different lives, should consider years of life remaining and simply cannot be done on a life for life basis. This is Policy 101 ...
... Whoever disagrees with you is spreading "misinformation" ...

Policy 101 isn't quite that simple, nor entirely non-controversial.
When you disagree with someone who's right, one of the legitimate labels could be misinformation.

Triage is the process of sorting people, based on their need for immediate medical treatment, as compared to their chance of benefiting from such care, when limited medical resources must be allocated to maximize the number of survivors.
During infectious disease outbreaks, like Covid-19, triage is particularly important to separate patients likely to be infected with the pathogen of concern.
In crisis situations, such as pandemics, the admission and decision making processes can change significantly, if there are insufficient resources for care, as each decision taken for one patient, may affect the decision making for other patients.

Triaging, guided by benefit maximization, would rather favour the group that is severely affected, and needs treatment urgently, but is still well enough to be likely to profit from treatment. In fact, the conventional triaging process (e.g. in mass disaster) explicitly advocates excluding those who are least likely to benefit from treatment, as well as those not in urgent need of care, if resources are constrained.

Benefit can most effectively be maximized, not at the level of triaging those who have fallen seriously ill, but at the population level, where disease prevention in the general and vulnerable populations, and in the healthcare workforce is key.

Maximizing benefit under conditions of scarcity can mean different things: it could refer to
saving as many people as possible,
to saving the greatest possible number of life years,
or to saving the greatest amount of quality adjusted life years (QALYs), with the resources available.
and more.
Depending on which criterion is applied, resource allocation might look quite different.

Saving as many life years as possible would favour young people, whereas maximizing QALYs would favour those with a capacity to lead long, healthy, independent lives.
The question of whether people who are of instrumental value (e.g. healthcare workers), should be prioritized, is an additional consideration compatible with the overall idea of maximizing benefit.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by atoll

The point was that many of the otherwise healthy people died still believing covid was a hoax as their oxygen levels dropped and blamed the doctors and nurses for not being able to save them

Yeah, except no one thinks the virus is a hoax, just that the reaction is 1000x worse than the virus.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Here's the thing: it's not about me. I couldn't give a flying f#@% whether I catch it. I care some about whether my wife catches it (but we suspect she may have had it already). I care lots that my elderly Mom, and her friends, and even your elderly relatives, might catch it

I care that pointless grandstanding is going to cause some severe overload on our health care systems; I care about the health professionals working their asses off over this period, and the utter burnout and grief when they have to go into triage mode, then watching the dropped third suffocate. I care about people who will suffer and die from other treatable things because the hospitals can't spare the time or the beds.

I even have some concern left over for those who will die or have lifelong problems from catching something that some flag-waving nut passed along to them. Including those flag-waving nuts who turn out to not be so invincible.

I kind of suspect that your hypothetical Normandy vet wouldn't be that impressed with what hill you're choosing to make a stand on. A mask, occasionally? Some thoughtful self-control about going out and about? Remember, "ordering" would only come about when people don't have enough good sense to take precautions voluntarily.

So worry about you and your family, do what as a adult you think is best for you and your family, it don’t try to make that choice for mine, I’m not having any of it, no one in my family is ether, we all expect to get the virus anyways, presuming we didn’t already have it.

For the hospitals, that’s BS as the day is long, way more staff have been sent home than hospitals have been overrun. I know I know, just wait 2 weeks.

And that last part
“ Remember, "ordering" would only come about when people don't have enough good sense to take precautions voluntarily.”
Hitler couldn’t have said it better.

My rights are not privileges, not suggestions, they are written very clearly, best if people stay in their own lane, if you’re scared, stay home or wear whatever costume makes you feel better, but don’t try to push that on others.

[Jason Flare]

Deleted because posted twice.

[Jason Flare]

Seems like wherever I go when talk of this pandemic comes up someone mentions that there are too many people in the world.

It’s even been mentioned in this thread.

I haven kept track but from now on I’m going to make a note of whether the people promoting reducing the global population are against vaccinations or promoting vaccinations.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

For the hospitals, that’s BS as the day is long, way more staff have been sent home than hospitals have been overrun. I know I know, just wait 2 weeks.

Sure. If you say so. Are you a betting person?

And that last part
“ Remember, "ordering" would only come about when people don't have enough good sense to take precautions voluntarily.”
Hitler couldn’t have said it better.

"Please wear a mask" -> -> -> -> Third Reich? Really?

Seriously, get a grip. There are way more important things that need your energy and intelligence.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Think of the emotional and physical cost to healthcare workers, if numbers of the ill increase to the breaking point. Hard-hit regions would have lasting damage - like village-wide PTSD, maybe? Sectors like entertainment, hospitality and travel are impacted regardless if lockdowns or other measures are imposed.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Isn't that the entire point of the respondent who posted the CNN clip?


The midwest USA hospitals ARE RIGHT NOW being overwhelmed.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Su...Third Reich? Really?....

Recall that the Third Reich had their own euthanasia program that helped buttress the war effort, not wasting resources on the infirm.

So irony as only the universe can provide, you find the youth of today who recognize the US soldiers' efforts to defeat the fascists and stuff like euthanasia as honorable, who characterize the extraordinary efforts made by Americans back home (back then) as communistic, who decades later, when those people who made the concessions to fight the fascists and stuff like euthanasia...the youth of today bark to not make personal concessions themselves, while being okay with keeping restaurants joints open for sit-down customers, even if it means old war heroes dying early. That there is internally invalid logic, the only true irrationality that exists.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Sure. If you say so. Are you a betting person?
"Please wear a mask" -> -> -> -> Third Reich? Really?

Seriously, get a grip. There are way more important things that need your energy and intelligence.

I don’t gamble, however in my area that is very much the case.

And yes, any government who would force me, at gun point, to strap a mask over my face, that is a government that needs to be put back in its place. You really thing all these countries that went all democide just went 0-60?
These are huge red flags that need to be nipped in the bud.