BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

jay doesn't understand how viruses work. he comprehends his own illness like a savage comprehends a shooting star across the night sky. it's just something that happened to him and then went away, without etiology.

i told you a few days ago that his next 'phase' of intellectual development would be 'Well i had it, and i was fine, so everyone should get it! what's the big deal?'

herd immunity is an incidental side-effect of so many people getting a disease, not something to be aimed for. we don't have enough historical data or understanding of coronavirus to even know that long-term and meaningful immunity could be a thing. it could ravage us this winter/spring and then come back -- worse -- in winter 20/21, with no meaningful herd immunity whatsoever. the truth is that we dont know and are guessing based off experience with flu-type illnesses. herd immunity does not exist for other simpler coronavirus-type viruses, for example the common cold (which admittedly mutate more often). the idea that we can 'control' the levels of infection in a disease that is literally 2.5x as contagious as flu also seems plainly misguided. it's not a tap you can turn on and off according to how many spare hospital beds you have. it will quickly get out of control.

prepare to see a lot of very bad consequentialist thinking from the right-wing about how the 'hit to the economy' will 'outweigh' the loss of lives in terms of 'loss of life' or 'quality of life'.

the aggregation problem:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs … .tb01167.x

It is plausible to claim that it is morally worse to kill an innocent person than to give any number of people a mild one‐hour headache. Alaistar Norcross has argued that consequentialists, at least, should reject this claim. According to him, any harm that can befall a person can be morally outweighed by a sufficient number of very small harms. He gives a general argument for this view, and tries to show, by means of an argument from analogy, that it is less counter‐intuitive than it appears. I show that his main argument relies on a false assumption, and argue that the purported analogy is dubious.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-03 02:03:33)

uziq wrote:

jay doesn't understand how viruses work. he comprehends his own illness like a savage comprehends a shooting star across the night sky. it's just something that happened to him and then went away, without etiology.

i told you a few days ago that his next 'phase' of intellectual development would be 'Well i had it, and i was fine, so everyone should get it! what's the big deal?'

herd immunity is an incidental side-effect of so many people getting a disease, not something to be aimed for. we don't have enough historical data or understanding of coronavirus to even know that long-term and meaningful immunity could be a thing. it could ravage us this winter/spring and then come back -- worse -- in winter 20/21, with no meaningful herd immunity whatsoever. the truth is that we dont know and are guessing based off experience with flu-type illnesses. herd immunity does not exist for other simpler coronavirus-type viruses, for example the common cold (which admittedly mutate more often). the idea that we can 'control' the levels of infection in a disease that is literally 2.5x as contagious as flu also seems plainly misguided. it's not a tap you can turn on and off according to how many spare hospital beds you have. it will quickly get out of control.

prepare to see a lot of very bad consequentialist thinking from the right-wing about how the 'hit to the economy' will 'outweigh' the loss of lives in terms of 'loss of life' or 'quality of life'.

the aggregation problem:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs … .tb01167.x

It is plausible to claim that it is morally worse to kill an innocent person than to give any number of people a mild one‐hour headache. Alaistar Norcross has argued that consequentialists, at least, should reject this claim. According to him, any harm that can befall a person can be morally outweighed by a sufficient number of very small harms. He gives a general argument for this view, and tries to show, by means of an argument from analogy, that it is less counter‐intuitive than it appears. I show that his main argument relies on a false assumption, and argue that the purported analogy is dubious.

You're just a pussy. You always have been. If YOU want to cower in your home until there is a vaccine, then by all means, do so. You don't have the right to tell others how to live their own lives. Young people should be out and about right now.

It's not about fear, it's about hospitals and the state services' ability to keep up with the crisis...

If corona runs wild, you'll soon notice that the capacity of literally every other medical field will be strained as well. As nurses and doctors are needed they have to come from somewhere. Maternity wards, surgeon's practices, special care, your GP for any non-corona issue etc. etc., their services will become unavailable. In addition to all the corona related deaths, many others will suffer or die from unrelated issues because they simply can't be given necessary care.

In Italy they also had so many dead that corpses were barred into rooms for days because the funeral services were overrun. It's likely this might happen in NY as well with current infection numbers. It's a dystopian image hard to imagine right now, but mass graves would be in your future if people can do whatever they want.

While the virus affects young people to a lesser degree, they are still carriers who will infect parents and grandparents. By letting them out the spread becomes uncontrollable.

I don't know why this needs to be explained, you don't need to read any articles to realise this. The mortality rate and ICU admission rates are simply too high. Extrapolate these to the entire US population, or even a third, and you can easily gauge how many people would be affected. Include the growth rate if the virus could spread naturally (2-3 infected per infected person) and you'd see the amount of people that will fall critically ill / die will reach enormous numbers in timespans too short to deal with. You know math, this isn't hard to figure out.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-03 05:09:41)

Jay wrote:

You're just a pussy. You always have been. If YOU want to cower in your home until there is a vaccine, then by all means, do so. You don't have the right to tell others how to live their own lives. Young people should be out and about right now.

You truly are a moron, aren't you the guy who disobeyed their officer and ran away in the face of enemy fire? What a hero.

Yes most people will survive Wuhan bat flu, its the ones who won't who are the problem, not all of us are selfish 'libertarians' who care nothing about the person next to us.

something incidentally occurring over a long enough timespan is not the same as officially adopted public health policy. not 'going for'. every country is anticipating a vaccine that will help us to control and hopefully minimize coronavirus to flu-levels of containability. if herd immunity helps us along with that in a year or two's time, that's great. but there's no data as yet to suggest it will.

to do nothing except pursue herd immunity in the name of 'getting back to work' is a death-cult.

Dilbert_X wrote:

So tomorrow New York will have more cases than any country in the world, except the US obviously.

Currently the USA has more cases than the next two countries combined, in a day or two more than the next three.
When the death rate catches up its going to be nasty.

Looks like the free market is solving this no problem.

I think most people have misunderstood the policies on herd immunity. Now I don't know exactly about the UK situation but most continental governments have made comments on this point as well.

Namely that herd immunity is not the explicit goal, but an additional factor that will help alongside all implemented restrictive measures. Perhaps there's been miscommunication here but I don't think any national health authority has recommended this as an actual solution, but in multiple countries the mention of it has been interpreted by the public at large as being THE solution. In reality the argument was only that it would help protect vulnerable communities/people down the line.

Herd immunity will also take (much) longer to establish with restrictive measures. It would not make sense to impose a lot or any restrictions if striving for immunity were the goal. In that case you'd just let nature take its course I reckon.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-03 06:18:06)

'Flatten the curve' has been widely talked about, it is a slow herd immunity, whether its realistic I don't know, it can be combined with starving the thing out - probably more likely.


Even if we don't exceed healthcare capacity a proportion of people who get it will die however much care they receive.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-04-03 06:29:55)

I feel like you guys aren't making enough of a of deal about the fact that Jay is going out to food places and interacting with others while knowingly sick. He is now advocating getting everyone else sick too.

I wonder why most western governments have foregone the type of response of for example south korea. Health experts must've been aware of this option in the early stages, but why go for semi-restrictive measures instead? Is it prone to failure in the long-term? Were privacy issues involved?

I'm unsure if western governments would be within legal parameters if they were to track and quarantine all contacts of a coronavirus case as SK did. I know lack of tests was/is an issue, but the policy could still be pursued anyway.

Germany has plenty of testing capacity and still chose a different approach.

In other news it's interesting how cordial relations and layers of politics are stripped away in this crisis:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ … ing-demand

Most of the articles are about the US and US companies trying to buy priority on equipment shipments (even above allies), but this is happening among EU states as well.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-03 07:04:10)

US navy captain relieved of his post for writing a letter of concern about coronavirus.
https://twitter.com/Sotero269/status/12 … 0225430529

wow, these hysterical liberal cowards!

meanwhile, fauci says "I don't understand why every state has not issued stay-home order" and trump is now blaming the state authorities for their lack of equipment.

america is a fucking mess. talk about one of the biggest self-owns and humiliations in modern history. all those 'defective' states with 'rotten' ideology are getting on top of the mess and america is squabbling and bawling like a child with chickenpox.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-03 08:18:26)

good to see you've got an expert on the case.