COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[ltomo]

This is hysterical, truly. AM radio bloviating. It's good to criticize government action, but can we do it without all the pathos?

The simple explanation for why people are willing to comply because they don't want to hurt their friends, family, and neighbors while the pandemic lasts. So they don't come into close contact. That's it. It's not mind control; it's an informed tradeoff.

Now whether or not the harm is real is a whole other debate, one playing out in this very thread, but that has mostly been about interpreting the data. If instead you believe there's a conspiracy among a large group of private scientists to lie to the public in order to hoist more government control, then I'd like to see the evidence of that conspiracy.

Throughout history, millions of people have been killed in the name of protecting family, friends, and neighbors. That's why a lot of us are so nervous about stuff like this. People don't want to hurt their friends and family, but in some places people are hearing that going outside without a mask is equivalent to manslaughter.

YouTube

I don't believe that there's a secret group of people meeting together to pull the levers and control people, but the mass media is certainly used by various actors to influence their own interests.

[Rob Waskis]

The simple explanation for why people are willing to comply because they don't want to hurt their friends, family, and neighbors while the pandemic lasts. So they don't come into close contact. That's it. It's not mind control; it's an informed tradeoff.

Now whether or not the harm is real is a whole other debate, one playing out in this very thread, but that has mostly been about interpreting the data.

Willing compliance and the perception that the harm is real are inextricably linked. As such, I don't believe the average person is making an informed trade-off.

Take the concept of "flattening the curve" as an example. Do you think the average person understands that the areas under the two curves (steep and flat) are the same except for the deaths caused by overwhelmed hospitals? The ones we haven't really seen yet? The ones that will run out of ventilators that appear to not help prevent death some 90% of the time.

What if everyone was told that the people we're saving from COVID-19 in April are likely to succumb to it later this fall or winter? Papers are out there showing that the effectiveness of early suppression using nonpharmaceutical interventions is inversely correlated with how soon and how steep the second wave is. Even Fauci is "confident" that it's coming back later this year. What if people were told that the possibility exists that we destroyed the economy to buy those folks 6 months? Would they still make the same decision?

What if people were told that we're going to shut down the economy and we have no idea for how long and we have absolutely no idea how to start it again? Would they still make the same decision?

It is impossible to make an informed decision with no information. It is possible to make an uninformed decision based on fear.

[Yngvi]

The fire burns on and grows. CDC director Rob Red has been warning about the second wave in the fall. We are nowhere near done with this.

A vocal 10% - 15% of the population is historically enough to seize control or herd the sheep.

[Theseahawk]

Just a thought about the media:

I work in aviation. More specifically, I fix airplanes for a living. Usually, when a plane crashes (or goes missing) the media goes absolutely nuts interviewing “aviation experts” for details on what might have gone wrong. Moreover, they usually interview pilots and never engineers or mechanics. I have no beef with pilots, but generally speaking, they have very little knowledge of the mechanics of how the thing operates. This is especially true on large airplanes. They don’t have to, for the same reason you don’t have to know how your car operates to drive it. Asking a pilot about a mechanical problem on the airplane, though, is like asking a random driver on the road, why the car crashed in the ditch had a missing wheel. Some might be able to point to telltale signs of misuse or abuse, poor mechanical operability, etc... Most wouldn’t know.

I can say this with certainty: The amount of misinformation, incorrect or incomplete information, and downright stupid and non-relevant questions that come out of reporters’ mouths in those situations is abysmal. It’s actually somewhat of a joke in the industry as to how bad it is.

The MH370 disappearance was probably the worst. I cannot even begin to explain in laymen’s terms how awful that coverage was. Yet, the gasping fear generated by the media coverage is, in part, what propagates the industry to be a bureaucrats wet dream and an industry’s worst nightmare.

We are effectively doing as a country what the government did to Boeing after two crashes that, while preventable, were also heavily influenced by failures of specific airlines to adequately train their pilots. We quarantined the airplanes for upwards of a year (they still are quarantined) and keep finding petty reasons why they are unsafe. All because a few “aviation experts” made it sound like they were going to start falling from the sky.

There were design flaws, yes. Fairly dumb ones. It was a bad situation, but didn’t warrant the outrageous actions that were taken. Just remember that when the news is interviewing a doctor, an epidemiologist, or some other “expert,” that they rarely are experts and, if aviation is a guide, you’re getting info at the first grade level - not the PhD level.

In 2004, one of the helicopters I fixed at the time crashed. There ended up about half a dozen reasons circulating as to what caused the crash.

The real reason was the wrong torque setting supplied in the manuals from the manufacturers for the bolts that fit the tail rotors. But for example, there were people saying it was the tail rotor producing too much torque and others saying it was the the fact the bolt holes were square and cracking.

Both those wrong examples were about the tail rotor and one contained the word torque but not about the torque to tighten the bolts and the other was talking about the bolts but not the correct error with them.

Could have been the Chinese whispers effect, or people filling in their own reasons with insufficient knowledge of the tail rotor assembly. But once those reasons were circulating, they spread quickly and no-one actually bothers to go and check the crash investigation report- they just assume who they heard it from knew what they were talking about.

[Mainstream]

States are really pushing these protocols for EVERYONE to be tested and contact tracing of all positives whether you are sick or not....so you're fine but apparently had the virus a couple months ago...now they want a complete recounting of everyone you have been in contact with...think of the privacy concerns there

[Mainstream]

Good example, because real thinking skills get thrown out the window. It like the time I got stopped for not using my turn signal and I told the cop that no one was behind me as far as the eye could see. He didn't want to hear it.

[Jovan Dragisic]

Throughout history, millions of people have been killed in the name of protecting family, friends, and neighbors. That's why a lot of us are so nervous about stuff like this. People don't want to hurt their friends and family
.

Billions!

[neilc1]

OK, this is the how bad the fear is getting. I live about two hundred yards from the post office in the ruins of a very small rural town. As I walked to the PO, I saw a lady alone in the parking lot, no other cars or people, but still she was there holding a cloth over her face.

the one I saw was still in her pajamas,
and looked like her bathrobe held to her face,
us 2 and the postmaster.

[Frank_B]

In 2004, one of the helicopters I fixed at the time crashed. There ended up about half a dozen reasons circulating as to what caused the crash.

The real reason was the wrong torque setting supplied in the manuals from the manufacturers for the bolts that fit the tail rotors. But for example, there were people saying it was the tail rotor producing too much torque and others saying it was the the fact the bolt holes were square and cracking.

Both those wrong examples were about the tail rotor and one contained the word torque but not about the torque to tighten the bolts and the other was talking about the bolts but not the correct error with them.

Could have been the Chinese whispers effect, or people filling in their own reasons with insufficient knowledge of the tail rotor assembly. But once those reasons were circulating, they spread quickly and no-one actually bothers to go and check the crash investigation report- they just assume who they heard it from knew what they were talking about.

I absolutely know what you mean. Aviation is one of those funny industries where it’s easy to make the general public panic because it’s something they don’t understand well. Legislation, laws, barriers, you name it... I don’t think there’s a profession with more legal rigamarole than aviation.The worst thing you can do in my profession is be bad at paperwork.

The greater point is that if you asked the majority of people, “Should those planes be grounded?” Every asshole who saw a self-professed aviation expert on TV would say, “Yep, I saw on the news...” And that’s the fatal flaw. The truth is often far more complicated than portrayed and when legislators and the public are demanding drastic action, it’s usually with only the topical portrayal in mind.

My opinion that no one asked for: This six weeks or so has been a complete waste. The damn virus is infectious, and yes, deadly, in some cases. However, I think it’s like Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, “Opening up parts of the country is like having a ‘peeing’ section of the pool.” The problem is that we made the peeing section of the pool smaller, funneled more people into those small peeing sections with this “non-essential” bullshit, but stopped short of a China-style shutdown.

China’s solution worked because it’s an absolute dictatorship. If you want shutdowns to work, you have to sacrifice ALL of your freedoms. Otherwise, we’re just fucking around, slowing things down and helping people commit suicide so that the people who were going to die from COVID-19 will die from it 6 months from now rather than today.

[k_kws]

the one I saw was still in her pajamas,
and looked like her bathrobe held to her face,
us 2 and the postmaster.

This is a good poem.