McConnell quashed that attempt to bail out the non Kung Flu looming pension debt by saying "Declare bankruptcy. We will not bail states out of long term fiscal mismanagment." Even other Illinois dems were chagrined by the suggestion from the dem state senate president to get the skids greased for that.
That puts you in the same position as any of us who have read the stories of our ancestors. Learn your family history and you will find vivid accounts of the same murderous tyranny.
Yes. We must be very smart, but not overly careful or fearful.
Ideally these things evolve through experience and reflection on a societal level, and are encoded in norms, laws, etc.
We can use metrics such as the distribution of (physical and mental) health and wealth, the quality of infrastructure, the maturity of political discourse, the prevalence of crime, etc.
Take starting strength, for example. I personally believe that if more people took a rational approach to their physical health, and took strength training seriously, then they, and society by extension, would be doing better, or thriving more.
Surely you're not going full postmodern on me, are you? If you are, we have a lot more work to do before we can reach common ground.
As I've stated, the only way to responsibly attend a large mass gathering is to self isolate for 2 weeks after the event. So sure, you can make the comparison to driving if you're willing to entertain those measures. This is, of course, contingent upon the assumption that large mass gatherings greatly increase the risk for others without self isolation.
It surely depends upon some key variables, such as crowd density, closed vs open spaces, are people singing/yelling/etc.
As for the cut-off, I have no fucking clue. But can we assume that 5 people is probably fine, and 50 thousand people in an indoor mosh pit is not?
I personally don't think so. And I think Sweden proves that. In fact, Sweden could have probably gotten away with even looser restrictions than it did if they had done more on the nursing home front.
And I don't think it's just the economy we're destroying. What we are doing is society destroying.
See my reply to George.
This whole thing is an exercise in controlling people, the dems love it!
Towards the end of January my wife and 3 kids were all sick. My wife was the worst. She had all the symptoms of covid19 before we ever suspected that there were any cases in the states. It came to a point where I thought that we were going to have to go to the emergency room because she couldn’t get enough air. She did recover at home and is fine now. During this I got a sore throat for a day and then it was gone. For reference I am 52 and my wife is 51. I am also the only one in my family that gets regular exercise and the only one with type O blood which may be a factor. My kids symptoms ranged from a 3 day cold for the youngest (10) to flue like symptoms for the oldest (14). At that time schools around here closed for a few days because everyone was sick. There were not enough teachers to man the classes. I work at a college and this sickness was going around there to. Lots of people were sick and the illness would put the students down for a couple of weeks.
Now a few months later and they are pretty sure that it was covid19 that hit our area back then. In fact it probably hit our country sometime late last year. Everything was all well and good when it was thought to be just a severe flue season, but now that we know it is covid we shut down the country. The system was not overwhelmed then but now that we have a name for it…….
The US needs to get back to work, NOW! Trumps gut in the beginning was right, “the cure is worse than the disease”.
You’re assuming that is a goal of mine, which it’s not. I just enjoy reading my admittedly self-amusing and overly clever responses to your similarly psuedo-intellectual musings......we have a lot more work to do before we can reach common ground.
Speaking of Illinois politicians, a congressman is investigating antibody manufacturers, such as Premier Biotech. He is concerned that false positives will "mislead" people into "false hope".
The Premier Biotech test clearly has tremendous utility. Pessimistically assume a specificity of 0.99, COVID-19 prevalence of 0.05, and an IFR of 0.01. Consider an average ($30K/year) worker, who would rejoin the workforce just a month earlier, if they test positive. To (rationally) deprive them of the test, their life would need to be valued at over $24M. This doesn't seem congruous with existing legal and social norms.