• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

News Coronavirus Pandemic Information and Support Group

Kai "the spy" said:
And if it was about the lives of many being saved by sacrificing a few, there might be something to argue, but that is not what this is about. This is the comfort of the many against the lives of the few. And sorry, lives matter more than comfort.
Click to expand...

Except the economy isn't only about comfort. It's about people feeding their children, new medicines being developed, people keeping their houses and paying the rent. People die when there is a major recession. Between poverty, crime, addiction and suicides, on top of the sacrifice of the basic freedom our entire society is founded on.

The question isn't "Deaths vs comfort". It's "Amount of deaths that happen quickly due to illness" vs "Amount of deaths that happen over a longer period due to poverty + the sacrifice of everyone's freedom".

It's only reasonable to keep people in lockdown as long as it takes for hospitals not to be overwhelmed.

Yes, I can empathize with the 90 year old who dies of CV-19, just like I can empathize with the guy who overdoses on painkillers 2 years later because he lost his job, his house and his wife. Or the guy who gets stabbed in a mugging 3 years later because his mugger couldn't pay the rent. Or the abuse victims trapped in the house with their abusers.
 
crookeddy said:
We need to stay locked down until the peak is reached, and then continue until the number of new cases is totally manageable.
Click to expand...

This. It will take time, especially for a vaccine to ermerge, but I believe we'll eventually get there. In the meantime, people should isolate and practice social distancing to flatten the curve which will help the medical community from being overwhelmed.

I have an Uncle in California who runs a medical clinic and his wife is a nurse at a hospital and he's worried about coming into contact with it and both of them getting compromised.
 
JirinPanthosa said:
Except the economy isn't only about comfort. It's about people feeding their children, new medicines being developed, people keeping their houses and paying the rent. People die when there is a major recession. Between poverty, crime, addiction and suicides, on top of the sacrifice of the basic freedom our entire society is founded on.

The question isn't "Deaths vs comfort". It's "Amount of deaths that happen quickly due to illness" vs "Amount of deaths that happen over a longer period due to poverty + the sacrifice of everyone's freedom".

It's only reasonable to keep people in lockdown as long as it takes for hospitals not to be overwhelmed.

Yes, I can empathize with the 90 year old who dies of CV-19, just like I can empathize with the guy who overdoses on painkillers 2 years later because he lost his job, his house and his wife. Or the guy who gets stabbed in a mugging 3 years later because his mugger couldn't pay the rent. Or the abuse victims trapped in the house with their abusers.
Click to expand...
Of course, we need economic policies now, but just opening stores again while the pandemic is still going strong, which is what is being proposed here, is not even remotely what is needed. In fact, it will serve to prolong the pandemic. What would be needed is what some politicians have already called for, an emergency UBI for the duration of the pandemic, a moratoriam on all evictions and foreclosures, bail-out of industries dependent on job security guarantees for the workers in these industries, option of temporarily nationalizing certain industries, etc.. This is how you protect both the economy and, yes, way more importantly, lives.
 
Kai "the spy" said:
Of course, we need economic policies now, but just opening stores again while the pandemic is still going strong, which is what is being proposed here, is not even remotely what is needed. In fact, it will serve to prolong the pandemic. What would be needed is what some politicians have already called for, an emergency UBI for the duration of the pandemic, a moratoriam on all evictions and foreclosures, bail-out of industries dependent on job security guarantees for the workers in these industries, option of temporarily nationalizing certain industries, etc.. This is how you protect both the economy and, yes, way more importantly, lives.
Click to expand...

Just so I can clarify, I hope they don't rush opening things back up when we are not ready. I also hope like you do, that we find solutions as alternatives while we are in the lockdown and hopefully something will come sooner rather than later that it will be safe to lift the lockdowns and lives can go on.

If I wasn't clear on that point before, I apologize. I think for the most part (Except for the spring break idiots and apparently a lot of people resisted California's order over the weekend, which makes them idiots too) people have obeyed the order. I know when I go on walks or go to the grocery store, things seemed to have calmed. I just hope we can have very good news in less time than a year or even sooner.

And yes, an economic stimulus that benefits everyone works too.
 
Kai "the spy" said:
Of course, we need economic policies now, but just opening stores again while the pandemic is still going strong, which is what is being proposed here, is not even remotely what is needed. In fact, it will serve to prolong the pandemic. What would be needed is what some politicians have already called for, an emergency UBI for the duration of the pandemic, a moratoriam on all evictions and foreclosures, bail-out of industries dependent on job security guarantees for the workers in these industries, option of temporarily nationalizing certain industries, etc.. This is how you protect both the economy and, yes, way more importantly, lives.
Click to expand...

I absolutely agree with that.

But I think the point where we start opening stores again is after we get past the peak of the curve of the initial wave of infection, and can be reasonably certain we have the hospital capacity for the ongoing rate of infection, and not 12-18 months from now when new infections completely stop.

Also, I want to make a philosophical point. The US is a country that's been chanting "Give me liberty or give me death" for nearly a quarter millennia. Maybe it should be "Give me a reasonable well researched balance between liberty and death". There is a point where you have to start asking the question, how much do we really value our personal freedoms? What is our identity as a people?
 
tomalak301 said:
Not to mention civil unrest and the possibility of suicide because there is nothing to live for. I just checked the map and there are 600 deaths recorded because of this thing, and it sucks even harder that it's going to go up. That absolutely sucks and it's a bad bad situation. There are millions of Americans (And much much more than that of people living all around the world) who just became unemployed last week though, and if they were living paycheck to paycheck, they no longer have a way to make ends meat, but hey, if they are living in house arrest for years on in at least they are alive right?

And I'm being called a sociopath?
Click to expand...

It's 600 deaths today, it was only 100 a week ago, and it will be 2,500+ a week from now, and ~12,000 a week after that. If you think I'm bullshitting, look at my previous estimates and see how they've turned out. This thing is growing at a very predictable rate, and the US has *not* bent the curve yet.

Arguing over the philosophy of a quarantine isn't sociopathic so much as ignoring exponential growth. Yes, sitting inside without a job is not healthy, but this thing will kill a lot more people, a lot more quickly, than depression will.

Ten million dead (in the US alone) is not an improbable outcome here if we just let this thing run its course "for the sake of the economy". That's 3% of the 330 million American population. The kicker is that the economy isn't any better set up to handle that than stay-at -home orders.
 
tomalak301 said:
And yes, an economic stimulus that benefits everyone works too.
Click to expand...

Direct payments is not stimulus, per se, since we're not trying to encourage people to go out and spend (stimulate the economy). The policy objective is, frankly, the opposite of that. We want everyone at home, and the payments are there to basically keep the financial system from imploding.

JirinPanthosa said:
What is our identity as a people?
Click to expand...

Prior to the world wars, America was an isolationist geopolitical backwater. Then it was an empire, with influence eclipsing all of Europe (at times) and spanning the globe, with its ideology baked into the world's institutions. It's now walking back from all of that.

Identities change. The Roman Empire, at one point, forgot the Caesars (and their pagan ways), how to speak Latin, and even abandoned Rome itself. They turned to Christian Constantine as founder and paragon of virtue, his new captial, and the Greek language.
 
Last edited:
STR said:
Arguing over the philosophy of a quarantine isn't sociopathic so much as ignoring exponential growth. Yes, sitting inside without a job is not healthy, but this thing will kill a lot more people, a lot more quickly, than depression will.
Click to expand...

I'm not ignoring that point. I'm dreading it. :(

It's also all the more reason to figure out what this is and how we can fight it as quickly as possible so maybe that and the physical distancing will prevent the death toll from getting as high as people fear.
 
STR said:
It's 600 deaths today, it was only 100 a week ago, and it will be 2,500+ a week from now, and ~12,000 a week after that. If you think I'm bullshitting, look at my previous estimates and see how they've turned out. This thing is growing at a very predictable rate, and the US has *not* bent the curve yet.

Arguing over the philosophy of a quarantine isn't sociopathic so much as ignoring exponential growth. Yes, sitting inside without a job is not healthy, but this thing will kill a lot more people, a lot more quickly, than depression will.

Ten million dead (in the US alone) is not an improbable outcome here if we just let this thing run its course "for the sake of the economy". That's 3% of the 330 million American population. The kicker is that the economy isn't any better set up to handle that than stay-at -home orders.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't think even Trump has suggested getting rid of all rules... I think he wants to defer to governors. At least I hope that he has THAT much sense.
 
crookeddy said:
Well, I don't think even Trump has suggested getting rid of all rules... I think he wants to defer to governors. At least I hope that he has THAT much sense.
Click to expand...

It's a national problem that ignores borders. You can't delegate it to the states. This is the definition of a national, indeed global, problem. Even now, without nationalization of medical resources, companies are bidding states against each other over limited supplies. There needs to be a central C&C to tell everyone where these things are needed now.

Also, the main reason we're doing this here (as opposed to Korea where life was never disrupted to this extent) is because DJT pretended it didn't exist for 2 whole months (aside from closing the border to China, which he wanted to do anyway for political reasons). Apparently he was more interested in lifting the ban on flavored vapes.
 
We had a reasonable belief that we had it contained, but unfortunately we learned that it was spreading undetected in Seattle for 6 weeks, and after that was revealed we were completely unprepared.
 
Possible solution to ending the pandemic.

I was reading how UVD robots are being used to kill viruses in hospitals in the UK.

If this system can be put into ventilation duct where the air flow is drawn across the UVD lights and the viruses are killed then a ventilation system can be built in NYC and other places.

The ventilation system would vacuum in the surrounding air on a 24/7 basis, draw the air across the UVD lights, killing the virus and then returning clean air out the other end. Cardboard lining the tin ventilation shaft would need to be used in order to help kill the virus a lot faster.

This system would take far less time then building new hospitals that will simply overflow like the hospitals are now.

http://www.uvd-robots.com/
 
Dryson said:
Possible solution to ending the pandemic.

I was reading how UVD robots are being used to kill viruses in hospitals in the UK.

If this system can be put into ventilation duct where the air flow is drawn across the UVD lights and the viruses are killed then a ventilation system can be built in NYC and other places.

The ventilation system would vacuum in the surrounding air on a 24/7 basis, draw the air across the UVD lights, killing the virus and then returning clean air out the other end. Cardboard lining the tin ventilation shaft would need to be used in order to help kill the virus a lot faster.

This system would take far less time then building new hospitals that will simply overflow like the hospitals are now.

http://www.uvd-robots.com/
Click to expand...
Dryson, what did I just tell you?

You're reply banned for this thread. I'm sorry to be so harsh, but people are dying from this and it's no time for wild "solutions."

Comments to PM.
 
That's the fucking problem in the UK
More fucking worried about businesses failing than the possible death toll rising into the thousands
 
crookeddy said:
We had a reasonable belief that we had it contained, but unfortunately we learned that it was spreading undetected in Seattle for 6 weeks, and after that was revealed we were completely unprepared.
Click to expand...

Was that belief ever reasonable? I never saw any actual scientist say it was. The only reason our numbers looked like the virus was contained was that we didn't have adequate testing, but everybody serious knew that we didn't have adequate testing.
 
AlanC9 said:
Was that belief ever reasonable? I never saw any actual scientist say it was. The only reason our numbers looked like the virus was contained was that we didn't have adequate testing, but everybody serious knew that we didn't have adequate testing.
Click to expand...
I think we knew it would get out, but nobody suspected it was spreading COMPLETELY unchecked for 6 weeks...
 
How is life like under lockdown across the world.


To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
crookeddy said:
We had a reasonable belief that we had it contained, but unfortunately we learned that it was spreading undetected in Seattle for 6 weeks, and after that was revealed we were completely unprepared.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna have to exclude myself from your "we". At the time, I was taking bets on which west coast city would get the first positive and how long it would take to reach NYC. I was betting LA, but Seattle was the first port of entry to find cases. LA, SF, Denver and Chicago had their patient zeroes by then, it just hadn't turned up in the numbers yet, because there weren't enough test kits to fill a backpack.

If you saw Seattle and thought "well, we got this handled!" I'm afraid you were grossly misinformed. We were already on our current course by that point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top