California no longer under lockdown - people freak out

[Silvanus]

I was just going with the odds of dying in the US from a car crash, which is basically 1%. We are not at a greater risk from covid, you have a 0.2% chance of dying from covid IF you get infected (so that's not even factoring in the odds of not getting infected). You have a 1% chance in your lifetime from dying in a car crash in the US.

Let's look at the maths used to reach that 1% figure;

In the US, 12.4 per 100,000 people die to road traffic accidents annually. So that's 0.012 per 100 annually. You cannot really extrapolate that into a single person's risk as a percentage, because a single person's risk factors will differ greatly depending on personal circumstances: one person could be 10 times as likely to die to road traffic accidents as another. But if we were to try to extrapolate it, you could multiply 0.012 by 78.5 (which is the average life expectancy in the US) to come to 0.94.

So, let's do the same mathematics for Covid. 134.89 deaths per 100,000 as of yesterday (so, over ten times as many as die from traffic accidents in a year). So that's 0.13 per 100. Multiply by 78.5 for life expectancy, and you get 10.5.

You know what your mistake is? You're taking a lifetime's risk of road traffic death and comparing it with the risk of dying to Covid in a year + a month. You cannot do that. You have to make a like-for-like comparison if you want to actually evaluate the risk factors.

Going to the store and grabbing some groceries, you're not really interacting much at all with people in the store. You're not going to get it just walking through an aisle an infected person just walked by. Wearing masks and not being next to people for several minutes at time is all you really need to do in that kind of environment.

The experts disagree. Why should I listen to you instead of them?

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It's interesting how people keep comparing COVID to car accidents, as if car accidents can also mutate and become more inherently deadly and bypass safety measures.

 

[tstorm823]

Yes. One diminishes the need for PPE, the other produces more because some amount is necessary. Everything else in the sentence you misquoted was logical too.

In case you actually did miss the point I was directing you to, paying people to stay home and producing more things at the same time is self-contradicting nonsense.

 

[Houseman]

Yep, wearing masks, social distancing, lockdowns etc. All these precautions also help mitigate other airborne diseases.

Which is why i hoped for masking to be normalized here like it is in Far East Asia. It won't cause "muh freedum", but it would be nice.

I thought people weren't wearing masks and social distancing, doing lockdowns, etc, which is why the virus is still spreading at the rate that it is.

 

[Silvanus]

In case you actually did miss the point I was directing you to, paying people to stay home and producing more things at the same time is self-contradicting nonsense.

Producing more of one specific thing that we need right now, that is. You can pay most people enough to stay home/ work from home, and still operate expanded PPE production, thus satisfying both criteria to a reasonable degree.

It only becomes self-contradicting if you imagine him to be advocating sending 100% of the workforce home, including all PPE manufacturers, which... is an unreasonable interpretation.

 

[Generals]

I thought people weren't wearing masks and social distancing, doing lockdowns, etc, which is why the virus is still spreading at the rate that it is.

No the issue is that people don't do it enough to prevent the spread of Covid. Luckily the flu is less contagious and has been pretty well contained thanks to what has been done. A combo of heavy flu + Covid may have been quite problematic.

 

[tstorm823]

Producing more of one specific thing that we need right now, that is. You can pay most people enough to stay home/ work from home, and still operate expanded PPE production, thus satisfying both criteria to a reasonable degree.

It only becomes self-contradicting if you imagine him to be advocating sending 100% of the workforce home, including all PPE manufacturers, which... is an unreasonable interpretation.

The communist I was responding to does not intend to deny payment to that select group of people for that purpose. He does not have an answer for the contradictions he operates under.

 

[Silvanus]

The communist I was responding to does not intend to deny payment to that select group of people for that purpose. He does not have an answer for the contradictions he operates under.

Why would they be denied payment?

 

[tstorm823]

Why would they be denied payment?

Because if you pay people enough to stay home, they will.

 

[Silvanus]

Because if you pay people enough to stay home, they will.

So what? Add some little stipulation, such as that people working in imperative sectors like PPE production should still go to work. This is hardly an insurmountable obstacle.

I mean, such stipulations have already been added to the existing furlough schemes, so obviously they can be implemented.

 

[Revnak]

So what? Add some little stipulation, such as that people working in imperative sectors like PPE production should still go to work. This is hardly an insurmountable obstacle.

I mean, such stipulations have already been added to the existing furlough schemes, so obviously they can be implemented.

You can also, y’know, pay everyone period and then allow the people in essential sectors to keep working and thereby make more. We can operate in a world where we reward “good” actions rather than just punish everyone until they do the thing that arbitrarily games the system into making you a billionaire.

Edit: also, and I apologize for knowing a bit of Adam Smith here, I know that’s not allowed, we could subsidize or increase the pay of PPE producers, artificially inflating their demand and thereby the supply (more people decide to work in PPE production). Y’know, that thing we didn’t do and instead we just bought massive foreign stocks of PPE.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Except we didn't and won't. Doing something slightly inconvenient for the benefit of other people isn't something Americans *do*, if you haven't noticed.
Because people get complacent
View attachment 2893
Yeah. We didn't do it the most. Worked out great.

I'm just saying there's simple solutions out there and no reason to be paying people to stay home when you don't need to. If people don't comply, it's on them pretty much. I can't just say I don't want to participate in the economy and just get money to live a cushy life.

UK had more lockdowns than the US and did worse. Both the US and UK infection rates are going down right now and UK locked down during the holidays and the US didn't.

You assume only the amount of infected is underestimated while we all know the amount of related deaths are too.

Please stop spreading bullshit. You can get Covid multiple times and the virus has already mutated to variants which behave differently and could (will?) further mutate. You have no clue whatsoever how many times someone could get infected over a lifetime and what the chances of dying from all those infections would be so stop comparing it to lifetime risk of driving a car. Compare it to the chances you'll die from a car crash over the course of 1 year.

You can check against excess deaths if you think the deaths are significantly off.

You can't get covid more than once, you can get reinfected an infinite amount of times but infection doesn't mean much in actuality. Almost all the reinfections are just people that got tested and they found the RNA, which you'll find in someone that's immune whether naturally or from the vaccine when they get exposed. Your body doesn't instantly kill it as it enters your body, it takes some time and if you get tested during that small window, you'll test positive. If people actually get the disease again, then that means you can get again not just people testing positive again. Sure, there's a small handful of people that will get it again for various reasons, nothing is 100%. So, no you don't have a 0.2% chance of dying every time you get infected again unless your immune system doesn't work properly.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Yours might be. *I* know how to drive.
Your chance of dying from the flu (and related secondary infections) over 75 years is *much* higher than dying of covid. Why don't you argue that instead of car crashes? Is it because making the comparison between apples and apples shows how bullshit it is? Do you need that extra layer of obfuscation to stop the cognitive dissonance? Is it because the flu (and related secondary infections) mainly kill olds and you don't care about that?

But I thought we weren't playing special groups. The covid group I'm in is way lower than 0.2%. I know how to drive too, that doesn't mean something out of your control can't happen. I got t-boned by a guy running from the cops that blew a stop sign. Somebody can just not be paying attention and ram you in the back when you're stopped at a stoplight for example. Stuff like that is why I'd never ride a motorcycle. The Spanish Flu was way worse than covid. I bring up the risk of driving because it's part of normal life and an accepted risk while covid is far less dangerous and people were/are acting like it's some death sentence. I'm pointing out that it doesn't make sense to be fearful of covid if you've accepted the risk of driving. Parents used to have their kids do "pox" parties and chicken pox killed more kids than covid does. But now, covid is way too dangerous for my kid to go to school.

Yep, wearing masks, social distancing, lockdowns etc. All these precautions also help mitigate other airborne diseases.

Which is why i hoped for masking to be normalized here like it is in Far East Asia. It won't cause "muh freedum", but it would be nice.

The disappearance of the flu is most likely due to viral interference. Just watched this last night.

Sure, it will only take a few generations (or more likely a few centuries) for a country to change its basic views on things like co-operation, respect for authority, social distancing and obedience to public decrees. Any country that isn't an island is also utterly boned.

Japan is a terrible example because it is a country that has fostered a bunch of social virtues for generations that now work well to stop the spread of one disease. Their respect and submission to authority is not something you simply "adopt", neither is their generally introverted and inobtrusive approach to social contacts. For a country like the USA where personal freedom, defiance of authority and don't-care-got-mine attitude are prevailing social norms you simply can't copy what Japan does.

We used to work together to accomplish things before. And isn't your first sentence like the definition of society? We can't even do the bare minimum of what a society is? I would think the "greatest country in the world" could accomplish something as simple as what it takes to beat covid. The problem was also on the messaging side, which was horseshit. For example, I can't take Fauci's word on anything because he lost my trust. All you got to do is tell us the truth (even if it's "I don't know"). Instead of just telling us "what's up", they tell us stuff that they think will get us to do what they want (even if the intentions are good) and that doesn't fucking work.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Let's look at the maths used to reach that 1% figure;

In the US, 12.4 per 100,000 people die to road traffic accidents annually. So that's 0.012 per 100 annually. You cannot really extrapolate that into a single person's risk as a percentage, because a single person's risk factors will differ greatly depending on personal circumstances: one person could be 10 times as likely to die to road traffic accidents as another. But if we were to try to extrapolate it, you could multiply 0.012 by 78.5 (which is the average life expectancy in the US) to come to 0.94.

So, let's do the same mathematics for Covid. 134.89 deaths per 100,000 as of yesterday (so, over ten times as many as die from traffic accidents in a year). So that's 0.13 per 100. Multiply by 78.5 for life expectancy, and you get 10.5.

You know what your mistake is? You're taking a lifetime's risk of road traffic death and comparing it with the risk of dying to Covid in a year + a month. You cannot do that. You have to make a like-for-like comparison if you want to actually evaluate the risk factors.



The experts disagree. Why should I listen to you instead of them?

I just googled "odds of dying in a car crash" and it's 1 in 103. Why are you multiplying by 78.5? That doesn't make any sense. You have a 0.2% chance of dying from covid and you can only get it once, why are you multiplying it by anything? That 0.2% chance of dying from covid assumes you actually get infected, the odds of getting it isn't 100% so that 0.2% is higher than your actual odds and it's still lower than a car crash. How is the chance of dying in your lifetime (to 2 things) not a like-to-like comparison? Sure, THIS YEAR, you have a higher chance of dying from covid than a car crash.

What experts have said grocery shopping is dangerous and a potential super spreader event?

It's interesting how people keep comparing COVID to car accidents, as if car accidents can also mutate and become more inherently deadly and bypass safety measures.

Do we still have measles because it can mutate and become more deadly? If viruses mutated so fast and so dangerously, how do we even have vaccines for other viruses? We'd never have a vaccine for anything because all viruses mutate faster than we take to develop a vaccine. You don't need a vaccine for every specific strain, that's not how viruses and immunity work. And when viruses mutate, they become less dangerous because killing the host faster lowers their survivability, which is completely against the goal of any organism. If we had a vaccine for SARS-COV-1 from 2003, it would've worked on SARS-COV-2 and those are different viruses, worrying about mutations doesn't make much sense. Not that a mutation couldn't end up potentially fucking everything up, but the chances of that are real slim.

Let me know when they're gonna rollout the vaccine for car crashes.

A combo of heavy flu + Covid may have been quite problematic.

They interfere with each other so it ended up being another theory of doom that ended up not being true.

 

[tstorm823]

So what? Add some little stipulation, such as that people working in imperative sectors like PPE production should still go to work. This is hardly an insurmountable obstacle.

I mean, such stipulations have already been added to the existing furlough schemes, so obviously they can be implemented.

But again, you're talking to me, and not the person I responded to who isn't seemingly capable acknowledging downsides of ideas.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Sure, THIS YEAR, you have a higher chance of dying from covid than a car crash.

ABOUT TEN TIMES AS DEADLY SO FAR, SOUNDS LIKE A FANTASTIC REASON FOR *TEMPORARY* MEASURES THEN.

I'm pointing out that it doesn't make sense to be fearful of covid if you've accepted the risk of driving.

FUCKING PICK ONE

And why the insistence of using a tortured comparison to car crashes when the flu is RIGHT THERE and kills as many people a year?

 

[Silvanus]

I just googled "odds of dying in a car crash" and it's 1 in 103. Why are you multiplying by 78.5? That doesn't make any sense.

Maybe you shouldn't "just google" it to come to the number; think about how they reached that number. Because if you want to make a like-for-like comparison, then you're going to have to apply the same methodology.

78.5 years old is the average life expectancy in the US. So, if you have the annual chance of dying in a car crash (which is 0.012), then you'll need to extrapolate that over somebody's entire life. You'll need to multiply it by the number of years they're alive to arrive at a figure for the risk of dying in a car crash over their entire life. Do you follow?

0.94 is the chance of dying to Covid in 78 and a half years. Roughly. That's how they reach the "1 in 103" figure.

You have a 0.2% chance of dying from covid and you can only get it once, why are you multiplying it by anything? That 0.2% chance of dying from covid assumes you actually get infected, the odds of getting it isn't 100% so that 0.2% is higher than your actual odds and it's still lower than a car crash. How is the chance of dying in your lifetime (to 2 things) not a like-to-like comparison? Sure, THIS YEAR, you have a higher chance of dying from covid than a car crash.

I already explained the reasoning in detail.

0.13 per 100 people in the US have died from Covid. But that figure covers just one year and one month, which is the period the virus has been at large in the US. So you could say that's the annual chance, not the lifetime risk. Still following? You have to increase it for every year the virus is around. If it's around for another 1 year, then 0.26. If it's around for 78.5 years (and the mortality rate were to remain consistent), then 10.5.

What experts have said grocery shopping is dangerous and a potential super spreader event?

Dude, the article you provided earlier in this thread said it's a risk.

And something doesn't have to be a "super spreader event" to be dangerous. The vast majority of transmission occurs in many smaller spots, not huge one-off events.

But again, you're talking to me, and not the person I responded to who isn't seemingly capable acknowledging downsides of ideas.

Well, yeah, because you're the one who believes that these small practical considerations-- easily overcome with a tiny bit of lateral thinking or flexibility-- are unsolvable contradictions that sink the whole idea.

 

[Silvanus]

Do we still have measles because it can mutate and become more deadly? If viruses mutated so fast and so dangerously, how do we even have vaccines for other viruses? We'd never have a vaccine for anything because all viruses mutate faster than we take to develop a vaccine. You don't need a vaccine for every specific strain, that's not how viruses and immunity work.

OK, it's becoming quite clear that you really don't know very much about viruses.

Viruses mutate at different rates, first of all. Take as an example a family of viruses that mutate at a relatively high rate: influenza. Every year, numerous new strains of influenza evolve and spread, and the medical community attempts to predict which strains will be the greatest threat in the year ahead. So the vaccination changes, often yearly, to address different strains and mutations.

You don't need a vaccination for every strain. Each vaccination will work on 4 or so strains. But they don't work on them all, and usually every year a new vaccine variant is developed to counter different strains which the researchers have identified as greater threats in the following year.

And when viruses mutate, they become less dangerous because killing the host faster lowers their survivability, which is completely against the goal of any organism.

This is bollocks. Countless new strains of viruses have been more dangerous than the ones that came before.

Viruses replicate, endlessly, within an organism. That is their only "goal". They offset the lowered survivability of their current host by becoming more and more infectious to others; it doesn't matter if a host dies when they're spreading it to more than one other person, causing the replication rate to be above 1.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[stroopwafel]

This is bollocks. Countless new strains of viruses have been more dangerous than the ones that came before.

Viruses replicate, endlessly, within an organism. That is their only "goal". They offset the lowered survivability of their current host by becoming more and more infectious to others; it doesn't matter if a host dies when they're spreading it to more than one other person, causing the replication rate to be above 1.

The laws of nature are that every living thing wants to propagate itself. You can argue if viruses are techinically 'alive' since it needs a host to reproduce but it contains rna so it counts. A virus that kills it's host quickly isn't very advantageuous so natural selection will always favor less deadly variants of the same virus. It's how they speculate the common cold most likely also originated as a similar coronavirus as covid. Eventually covid will become more infectious but relatively harmless. Ofcourse the question is how long that takes. Probably like half a century. Like with everything nature takes it's time lmao.