"It's Just the Flu, Bro!"

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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AMA

This is true, and not just limited to the white collar professions. To the largest extent possible, people have been furloughed and/or are working from home (it’s possible to be furloughed part-time). I know pink-, blue-, and white-collar workers that have all been furloughed to some extent.

“Sweden” is an odd-ball, I suppose, to outsiders when it comes to heeding government advice. Even when talking with my European colleagues I have to explain (defend?) that rules, laws, and regulations aren’t a pre-requisite to get the population to adhere. I put “Sweden” in quotes, because it’s not exactly homogeneous across all regions. Culturally, there is a significant difference between the North and the nation’s capital with other connected cities, such as Gothenburg and Malmö being somewhere on the spectrum between the two outliers. I have friends and family spread throughout the country.

I feel somewhat well-positioned to answer questions, I’ve lived in more than one place inside this country, I’ve lived elsewhere in Scandinavia, and travelled a bit (other parts of Europe, Asia) and have worked at multinational corporations but I cannot, unfortunately, find the correct parables to compare Sweden against any part of the US.

I cannot verify the veracity of this claim, I don’t keep up with that kind of census data. I will tell you, as a very sociable person, that this is a very lonely country even under ordinary circumstances which explains the reduced need for a mandatory lockdown.

It’s important to note that as horrifying as our number of deaths are we could have presented with this atrocious number of total confirmed COVID-19 deaths even if we had locked down. A lot of these cases are deaths within care-homes and the workers employed there are sadly among the most exposed with regards to financial stability within the country.

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Ok, I’ll give it one ol’ college try.

It’s been 2 months and counting. And the Los Angeles Mayor does not appear to believe in “temporary”.

Or be like the people in Wisconsin, have the “indefinite extension” deemed unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court.

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The situation is even trickier than that. Forgive if this has been discussed upthread, but the phenomenon of the preparedness paradox is always at play in situations like this. When appropriate steps are taken to prevent disaster, they may be so effective that they lead people to conclude they weren’t needed in the first place. In other words, the better/more effective is the response to a crisis, the more it will seem to some that the response itself was unnecessary. This is especially true when the response came at a considerable cost, such as in this case.

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Prayers for you and other medical guys to stay healthy.

From your perspective, how should the population best be exposed in a somewhat manageable manner? Or do you think that will more or less happen unmanaged during the period it takes to provide a working vaccine?

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Is the pandemic over in LA? I hadn’t seen the headline.

The court struck it down not because emergency acts are invalid on their face because they violate “muh liberties”, but because “she did not follow guidelines in place for emergency rule procedures, which require legislative oversight”. So, a technical foul in the process of executing the order. Happy reading.

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He mentions historical events but doesn’t talk about the social and cultural differences between the West today and the West a thousand or more years ago.

People value life more today. Look at the advances in medical science and technology. How many people who died of the Plague in the 14th century, died in hospitals?

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Thanks for the prayers. With respect to your question: As it requires expertise in 1) public health, 2) macroeconomics, and 3) behavioral economics, a truly informed opinion/answer is way above my pay grade. With that caveat…

The pandemic-related goal is to keep the curve ‘just flat enough’ until a vaccine is developed, while the economic goal is to re-open as much as possible without compromising the pandemic goal. From discussions with folks better-informed than myself, it seems re-opening in most non-high-density areas could be accomplished with what I consider relatively minor inconveniences (universal mask usage, social distancing, no large-crowd events, etc), provided compliance rates are pretty high (I’ve heard 60-70% or so would be needed to be effective).

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Very interesting. Thank you for the input, it’s useful to get the insider baseball for Sweden, given how often it is mentioned as an example. .

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That’s not really an option. They may be reported different ways, with some coloring for sure, but there’s no scenario in which “no stats” is better than “some stats with caveats”

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Feel free to ask if you have any follow-up questions and I’ll attempt to answer if I feel that it’s more an answer than a personally biased guess.

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"For example, for the seven weeks ending April 25 in the United States, about 70,000 more Americans died than is normal for those weeks (death is seasonal and normally declines over the course of spring and summer). That 70,000 figure for excess deaths does not include Connecticut, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which were excluded because of missing or dubious data.

The official number of Covid-19 deaths in that period for the rest of the country was 49,100. That suggests an undercount of more than 20,000 coronavirus-related deaths as of April 25.

Add those 20,000 missed deaths to today’s total of 83,000, and you already get more than 100,000 pandemic-related deaths. But the undercount probably continued after April 25, albeit at a lower rate."

Not fact - an opinion piece, but touches on what I’ve said before, which is that people seem to be fixated on “is the death toll lower than the official count?” when historically death counts during pandemics are WAY lower than the eventual proper count, and excess deaths recorded in the US are far exceeding official coronavirus counts. The death count isn’t necessarily higher, but it’s just as likely to be higher as it is to be lower. Either way, 90K, and the goalposts have moved from “not many people are dying from covid” to “that number is a lie”. Interesting.

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As best as you can say, what is the general consensus on the response to the virus within the country?

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First of all, both men look and sound like caricatures from an anti-Tory satire. Starkey is upset because his personal income dried up and he has to stay in the country. Boo-hoo. But enough with subjective opinions.

He’s incorrectly stating (astonishing for an actual historian) that in previous centuries people were remarkably blase about contagious diseases which is patently untrue. During the 19th century there were more than a dozen great power conferences regarding rules and regulations for the establishment of a quarantine, usually spurred on by successive outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera. It’s these times that are the aberration, not the other way around.

More to the point, there are still ample remains of a massive infrastructure used to enforce quarantine throughout the world (old school name for self isolation) from Venice to Dublin, London and the US.

Also, shutdowns are nothing new. If anything, it shows how much modern societies have become unaccustomed to hardships that they have such a visceral reaction for these low-tech approaches to disease management used in the 21st century. The French countryside is littered with “plague walls” designed to isolate communities and provinces stricken by disease. Not to mention accounts of men-at-arms putting to the sword people who’ve left their houses during a pandemic.

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Next idiocy from Starkey concerns frankly ludicrous statements about the Black Death and it’s supposed economic benefits. Yes, surviving laborers saw their wages in England double or triple, but that’s because of the laws of supply and demand. Everyone else fucking died so there’s was a scarcity of skilled craftsmen and artisans.

He seems to be intentionally distorting historical facts, while he hasn’t got a clue about math (I can attest to that) nor economics, as historically disease outbreaks destroyed economies of affected communities, from Venice to Tunis and Marseille.

“Viruses don’t respect borders”. Exactly, that’s why the system of cordon sanitaires and quarantines was established from the 15th century onwards.

In other words, his objections are primarily ideological - it seems that he finds even the idea of plebs having access to healthcare preposterous. In that manner he’s very Churchillian, but in his wilderness years between the world wars.

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As I imagine would be true for any group larger than a clique of like-minded friends it’s mixed.

But, perhaps more meaningfully, disregarding those that out of hand would have an inherent distrust against any and all decision-making (and there are those that have this knee-jerk… almost ad hom out-of-the-gates disagreement with whatever would be decided or urged) there remains a high degree of trust and faith towards those governing and the supporting agencies. This despite any disagreement one has personally with some decisions that have been made and any would be negative outcomes thereof.

There’s no large-scale erosion in the public’s faith such that it’d reduce the efficacy of the behavioural changes that most have adapted already.

(going to bed now, will swing back tomorrow if there are further questions)

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Thanks, @EyeDentist.

I had never heard of this. When I was listening to one of the “Fake Pandemic” persons weeping, whaling and gnashing her teeth on YouTube; I kept having two conflicting ideas running through my head: 1) Was she right? or 2) Was she wrong?

We simply can’t go back and undue what has been done then see if there are better of worse outcomes.

One thing is for sure; this pandemic will be analyzed and torn apart for years; and much like our Politics, confirmation bias will most likely reign supreme.

Preparedness Paradox/the Paradox of Preparation…I’ll have to remember that one.

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I agree with your critique. I shall leave it at that, and concur with your objection. Very interesting post.

Edit: Just to be clear, I posted the interview because I thought some of what he was saying regarding the political decision making was interesting. It was not a full throated endorsement of the content otherwise.

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I can tell you one thing: she is probably a person who never asks herself those questions.

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Likewise. It is rather succinct.

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He referred to agricultural laborers as property.

He should also read Boccaccio to see how indifferent people were to the plague and how the idea of quarantine was seen as foolish.

He makes it sound as if people back then, had they the option, would have turned down the life saving capabilities of modern medicine because the economic possibilities were so inviting.

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Honestly, in this particular instance the process of decision making can be literally read from Boris’ eyes in his public appearances - from the initial bravado to the “fuuuuuuuck” moment when he himself experienced Covid-10 firsthand.

Also, it seems that his obsession with Pericles was a factor in his decisions.

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