Reply With Quote"The governor says the stay at home order will be enforced. People who violate it could face up to six months behind bars and a $1,000 fine."
Maine's state of civil emergency extended to May 15 | WGME
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Originally Posted by Brian Harlin
This will be easiest to address everyone at once for these wonderful replies. Quite simply, it was not as much of a serious question , but rather me simply pointing out a logical fallacy. My point was that there appeared to be "social distancing" from what I have been seeing in everyday life. Mark then tried to point out that he has been to Lowe's which he states was packed full of people, none of which were wearing a mask. Others above are arguing that they are still going to Walmart, gun shops, and weekly BBQs and no social distancing or behavior changing appears to be happening around them. It appears that the argument people are attempting to make here is that no one's behavior is changing therefore social distancing guidelines can't account for the lower number of cases predicted in earlier models. That could be a valid argument to make. I don't agree with that premise, but I can only account for what I have observed around me.
However, and here is the catch, if this is the argument you were attempting to make and none of the guidelines are being followed anyway, what exactly are you complaining about? Isn't life going on as usual for you?
I was clearly talking about the original model regarding if the virus spread throughout the country unchecked without social interventions taking place. Please see above, are we as a nation following the guidelines or not.
Agreed, we have been adding capacity regarding the manufacturing of PPEs and ventilators. There is still a problem with our testing capacity and other issues regarding failures at the federal level that I will address below. But please refer to the recent news article regarding nursing being suspended for refusing to treat covid patients because they were not supplied proper PPE.
Nurses union says workers were suspended for refusing to help coronavirus patients without N95 masks | TheHill
If there was no problem, they would not be placed in this position.
Contract tracing isn't that difficult of a concept. It simply means that if someone tests positive they are able to trace back the people they have been in close contact with so that they too can be tested. If those individuals also come back positive they get quarantined, and so on..... That is something that is infinitely more difficult to do when large portions of the population are positive. This, however, relies on adequate testing. When businesses go back to work, employees need to have been tested.
As for what the government should have done differently, perhaps take this thing seriously from the onset. I remember several weeks going by where trump was calling this a hoax and downplaying it substantially. I would have like to have seen testing brought to the forefront sooner, as we are still behind in capacity. We needed a more centralized, organized response from the federal government regarding PPEs and ventilators, instead of leaving it up to the governors of individual states. Our current approach led to individual states bidding against each other as well as the federal government to procure these supplies, driving up the costs as well as creating some areas that still do not have enough equipment. Please refer to the nursing story above. Also, as a bit of an aside, why was Jared Kushner (the president's son in law) in charge of any of this? Isn't this the type of shit he was accusing Biden's son of?
I also don't like the fact that the federal government allowed basically anyone to come up with an antibody test and put it to market. Currently this is allowing a lot of shitty testing that is not accurate which makes this problem worse, and not better. Also, perhaps we could have vetted medical research regarding approved treatments and medications. Hydroxycholoroquine turns out to be not all that effective.
I watched Trump's press conference today and I generally agree with the approach of "reopening the country". However, without adequate testing I don't think we are there yet and we will end up prolonging not only the health implications, but also the effects on the economy.
We don't face pandemics very often, so this is a bit of a false choice don't you think? Also, my sudden shift is not really a shift. It is more of a frustration regarding the lack of leadership we have. The lack of leadership that is going to make this worse regardless. I agree with the quarantine, which will work if he have a plan in place. I agree this would only work in the short-term. But given the multiple failures that we have given our lack of leadership perhaps allowing this thing to run rampant causing a few million deaths as the original model predicted would be the better approach.
I'm only tossing you in here Robin because I have never seen you post anything close to an actual thought. What is it that you intend to accomplish with your meaningless attempts of being clever?
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"The governor says the stay at home order will be enforced. People who violate it could face up to six months behind bars and a $1,000 fine."
Maine's state of civil emergency extended to May 15 | WGME
TMPHBITEU
Devastating.
Member
What kind of lunacy is this? The governors of the states have made it illegal for businesses to operate.However, and here is the catch, if this is the argument you were attempting to make and none of the guidelines are being followed anyway, what exactly are you complaining about? Isn't life going on as usual for you?
A better question: does social distancing do anything at all? Could it actually exacerbate the problem? Instead of allowing people to go to whatever establishment they wanted, they now can only congregate in grocery stores and big box stores. Seems pretty counter-productive to reducing human contact. It's almost like nobody actually thought through this thing and just hit the panic button.
I think that's what bothers me the most about this while thing. The panic. I still remember going hunting and boating with my dad, and the thing he always drilled into my head is, "If something goes wrong, don't panic. Panicking only makes things worse."
There's almost never any reason to do something without thinking about it first, and yet that is exactly what the state governors have done.
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Is there something in particular you disagree with? Did I misjudge your previous argument where you seemed to be saying that no one was obeying the social distancing guidelines due to your observations at Lowes? I would hate to misinterpret your argument. Are you in disagreement that the federal government mismanaged the situation from the onset or was the government's response "perfect" as claimed by Trump. Do you feel testing is adequate enough to aid in the prevention of future outbreaks when they occur if we open everything back up? What was Jared Kushner's expertise that briefly brought him to the forefront of handling the response? You are becoming as incitement as Robin.
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Isn't life going on as usual for you?
If you don't see why this question would make reasonable people dismiss you, given the history of this thread, you really need to self reflect - a lot.
Message to Bruno: You keep getting hung up on small details and are ignoring the point that a non-trivial number of smart people have tried to make to you. All your calculations are univariate, so all your arguments completely bypass any part of human experience, other than getting sick and having a very small chance of dying. Those smart people are trying to remind you that there is a lot of other experience to be considered and discussed.
Especially those things where the facts are already in - simultaneous mass poverty, human rights violations, totalitarian systems. You can't even recognize that these things could be worse than disease & death - which always happen anyway, pandemic or no.
Last suggestion - try to remember the aphorism: if you run into assholes all day, then you are the asshole.
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The PPE situation isn't good, as I've remarked many times. But, it's been a month. To increase supply, governments have already taken all possible measures, from incentivizing manufacturing to commandeering private stockpiles. Any company seriously intending to make medical-grade PPE has already begun to do so. Waiting another few weeks won't significantly change rates of production. The same is true for hospital capacity.
TMPHBITEU
I'm not making an argument. I'm merely allowing you to make a fool of yourself.
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Social distancing works for sure. Eastern European countries have all imposed much stricter distancing measures sooner than Western European ones. They now have orders of magnitude less CFRs as percentages of population. They primarily did that because they have weaker funding of healthcare systems, so distancing was seen as the best option. Whether it was worth it in the long run is another matter, but you have a lot of data from all over the world that shows distancing is effective in stopping the spread.
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You wake up from a 6 month coma and the first thing the nurse tells you is, "I'm sorry to inform you, but we are in the midst of a pandemic. A highly contagious virus is in virtually every human civilization on earth. The world is on lockdown. Every non-essential worker is quarantined in their home and not allowed out except for groceries."
How many people would you instantly assume are dead around the world? 10 million? 50 million? 500 million?
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