psuhoffman

Shouldn’t the goal be noble? No one ever achieved great things by starting out like “well we probably can’t do what’s best so let’s just try some half assed shit and see what happens”. WRT mental health...you have a pretty low opinion of us if you think we can’t adapt and cope. Humans are capable of a lot. We’ve dealt with pandemics before. We’ve had to sacrifice in times of war and tragedy. Whatever it takes we can adapt our mental expectations to cope but only if we have effective leadership they rallies people to a cause. When we are fractured like this nothing will work.

1. Yes that person does increase my odds. How much depends who else they come in contact with and how extensive their idiotic behavior is. But your assertion is false. 2. If that gun toting idiot intimidated the legislature and governor into a stupid policy decision it most definitely could effect my health. 3. You said give people choice. But now you are editing that to “give people choice when it doesn’t increase risk to others”. But almost anything increases risk. The question is where is the acceptable line where individual choice and unacceptable risk to society meets. And that is subjective. It necessitates being debated on the merits of each policy not broad talking points like “just let people make choices”.

This is an intellectually hollow libertarian argument. What if I want to use my personal choice to dump toxic chemicals in my yard and it contaminates my neighbors well water? Rights cannot be unlimited because then one person can use their rights to subjugate someone else.

1: I never said we were likely to take the necessary social measures to effectively combat this. I actually am not the least but shocked that we aren’t. Everything about our society is the opposite of what you would want for an effective pandemic mitigation strategy. 2. But I don’t accept the paradigm that I have to create policy based on those limitations. What works works. What doesn’t doesn’t. I’m not going to advocate a strategy that doesn’t work simply because we lack the willingness to do what does. In the end we will probably not take the more effective approach but that’s not on me. Take the economy. We could mitigate the econonic pain better. Just because we are too anti government ideologically to do the necessary command measures to do that does not mean I’m going to advocate a less effective virus policy. One stupid decision won’t dictate another stupid decision from me. Now if that’s how society decides to go so be it. But it won’t be any fault of mine. My advocacy will always be for what I think is the most effective policy given the evidence at hand. If people don’t want to listen that’s on them. 3. If you want to debate with me than debate what I say. I’ve never made any of those accusations. I’m not going to continue a dialogue if you just want to debate with others through me.

This argument contradicts your post about Denmark where they effectively stifled the spread then were able to reopen without much negative consequences. You can run more then one policy stance concurrently but only if they aren’t contradictory. You’re in a double bind here.

On the contrary taking an ineffective action because “we are America” lacks logical consistency. We have the same biology as everyone else. The virus isn’t going to give us some special leniency just because our society is more individualistic than the rest of the world. What works works. What doesn’t doesn’t. The flag in your front yard won’t change that.

We aren’t in a lockdown. I can see route 30 from my house and there is constant traffic. When I take my weekly food trip there are lots of people out. My neighbors job isn’t at all related to national defense but his company has some degree of military contracts at one of their facilities and so they used that to be “essential”. Parks are packed. We didn’t lock down. We took a half ass measure and called it a lockdown and some people are whining and complaining like that was too much. What we did was maybe the worst of both worlds. Enough to hurt the economy but not enough to stop the spread. Of course we can’t say that for sure because if every city ended up like NYC the economy would have collapsed anyways. But either way we have not been willing to implement effective strategies. True lockdowns without 800 exceptions. Universal testing. Contact tracing. There are things that work. And then there is what we’re doing.

Sorry I had my headphones in...could you explain that again.

He isn’t worth replying too anymore.

Earth is mad and we should just accept our punishment. Got it. Thanks for your input. ETA: the world is what we make it. Your attitude is a defeatist self fulfilling prophecy.

Are you new here?

It is what it is might make a decent bumper sticker but it’s a pretty shitty policy stance ON ANYTHING

This isn’t going to end well

Imo we aren’t in near lockdown. Our version makes so many exceptions...we’ve taken a pretty middle ground policy and it’s not shocking that isn’t resulting in a total stifling of spread.

Agree but I’m skeptical we will proceed with compassion towards those in the vulnerable populations. Early indications from some states look more like a “that’s your problem” attitude then a “how do we protect the vulnerable population” one.

lol... all these years you thought I criticized you because you are liberal? Try again

Lastly...I am not in favor of simply "lock us down forever" policies. We need to come up with a solvent plan for society to function and survive. It very well might be time to start some new strategies soon. But I am VERY concerned with using shoddy logic and bad science to inform those strategies. I also have some concerns based on what I know about our society, with implementing some of these best practices in a way fair and equitable to everyone. I brought up my concern regarding "what to do with the at risk population" if we go to a phased opening scenario. And sure enough...we are now seeing this play out where the answer is..."well you can choose to stay home if you are at high risk but don't expect any help, good luck". I guess I would be more open to entertaining some of the arguments for a quicker relaxation of mitigation measures if I had more faith that they would actually implement equitable measures to assist the vulnerable populations that strategy will create. But we are already seeing that isn't likely to happen in many areas. I can't help but feel some of these arguments lack integrity. Its a "throw any point I can think of at the wall to meet my agenda" type thing...because when it comes time to implement a preferred policy it doesn't happen with the care and compassion that it is sold in these types of debates.

We are starting to see a lot of "anecdotal" arguments flying around under the pretense of a qualified medical opinion simply by having a "dr" as the mouthpeace of said opinion. There were the 2 California Doctors who own the clinics the other day...but their "cited" study was a sham and the vast majority of the medical community invalidated their findings. There will always be dissent. Finding the 1% of "experts" who disagree with the vast majority and holding them up as expert proof is dodgy at best. Now that does not mean their contrarian challenges should be dismissed out of hand...but their challenges need to be examined carefully and put through scientific testing not just accepted with equal weight to the vast majority. The "two sided" aspect of our society wrt news and ideology tends to hurt us here...as we sometimes value giving "both sides" of a story more weight than simply finding the best most likely answer to something.

Couldn't agree more. Someone the other day in a covid policy discussion criticized me for "being too empathetic". As if empathy is a bad thing...

Ok I know this is teetering on the edge and could fly off into way over the line if we aren't careful...but I find it somewhat "disingenuous" that most of the people making this argument right now for why we need to get back to work don't seem to care a lick about the negative effects of poverty under normal circumstances. Many of the people using poverty as a reason for their policy advocacy now try to block any attempt at social programs to deal with poverty when they are proposed in every other situation. I am NOT saying that is you...I have no idea what your stance on this stuff is...but in general my twitter feed and fb wall is filled with people ive argued with for years and who never gave a single F about doing a thing about poverty suddenly all upset about it now.

This situation is exposing some things about our society that have been a problem for a really long time...but now are even more glaringly obvious. There are a LOT of people who frankly are stuck in a bad place in general in life without must compassion, empathy and assistance at the societal level for their situation. Even under the best of times they are struggle to just get bye and survive. Add in any crisis, economic or health and they are always on the edge of big trouble. We have a very top down labor policy. Without getting into the weeds we would solve a lot of these chronic issues by having a more bottom up labor policy that valued individuals and their very common needs more.

They are making contingency plans just in case. Right now I’m waiting to hear if they will purchase e text rights or else I will have to redesign the US/World Hist and Gov curriculums by summer.

@mappy I’m the social studies content lead for Balt City summer school and as of right now we are tentatively developing a plan to deliver summer credit recovery online. I don’t know what the counties are thinking but any return to physical school seems unlikely before the fall at the earliest in the city.

Are thousands of people living in a high rise apartment “nature taking its course”. What about people congregating in shopping centers or movie theatres? Or people quickly traveling thousands of miles in planes and cars? What else about our society strikes you as nature taking its course? Do you use electricity? Drive a car? That’s nature? But with this one thing we should let nature take its course? Next time you get strep throat should we let nature take its course?

I don’t disagree with you at all. I think some regions that have not been effected much should start cautious phases openings. Even here I think if the metrics continue to improve the next few days we are close to a start to phased openings keeping some degree of social distancing in place. I’ve neger once made an argument for a lengthy lockdown. I’ve simply argued for a logical science based methodology to the openings and I’ve railed against some silly or manipulative posts. But since a few of those were in favor of a quick opening (or against any collective action at all) I think I was lumped into some extreme long term lockdown club. In some cases I didn’t necessarily disagree with the plan so much as the illogical methodology they were using to justify it.