The odd thing about reporting on the coronavirus is that the nonexperts are supremely confident in their predictions, while epidemiologists keep telling me that they don’t really know much at all.
“This is a novel virus, new to humanity, and nobody knows what will happen,” said Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at U.C.L.A. . . .
Some conservatives scoffed that the coronavirus was like the flu, which was utterly wrong. Some liberals foresaw a disastrous outbreak when Jerry Falwell Jr. kept Liberty University open this spring, and that never happened. . . .
One study reported in Health Affairs found that government restrictions collectively averted some 35 million infections in the United States by the end of April; if that’s true, those restrictions also saved an enormous number of lives.
Yet the same study found that school closures didn’t much help, and we still haven’t figured out the optimal level of restrictions to smother the virus’s spread without stifling citizens’ daily routines.
That’s not surprising, notes Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, because we still haven’t figured out the 1918 pandemic. “In 1918, why did the spring wave go away, and then why did it come back in the fall?” Osterholm asked. “We don’t know.”
Epidemiology is full of puzzles. In 2003, the World Health Organization feared that SARS would return in a devastating wave that fall, but instead it was extinguished. In 2009, experts worried that the H1N1 flu would be a lion, but it turned out to be a kitten. Random luck shapes outcomes along with biology; some officials took reckless risks this year and got away with them, but that doesn’t make the actions prudent
“You’ve got to have a lot of humility with these viruses,” Professor Osterholm said. “I know less about viruses than I did 10 years ago.”
Thursday, May 21, 2020
We Don't Know
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
Quite so; but on the basis that "nobody knows", how can authorities act? They should be mainly preventive - prepare for the worse - while people in general should not panic - hope for the best. But the two positions fight each other, and one is for 'some' liberal, the other is for 'some' conservative. I do appreciate the fact that people react, criticize and even resist , though they are not epidemologist experts. They are living humans who value freedom, they arise freedom above health concerns; is that a crime ?
@Mário M. Gonçalves
"They are living humans who value freedom, they arise freedom above health concerns; is that a crime?"
When they value their own freedom over the health concerns of others, yes, it absolutely is a crime.
It's one thing to gamble with your own life. It's quite another to gamble with the lives of others. You wouldn't let sailors on a plague ship break quarantine and enter port just because they haven't been infected yet. Doing so would put innocent lives at risk.
And if uninfected sailors on a plague ship tried to defy quarantine orders and jump overboard and swim for shore, saying they won't allow the government to impinge upon their freedoms, you'd have the moral obligation to shoot them dead in the water to protect the lives of the people in port.
Personal liberties end where they threaten the health, safety, and lives of others.
You have to wear a seatbelt, because even if you personally don't care about dying in a car crash, without a seatbelt your corpse can be hurled through the windshield as a human missile, landing in the road and becoming a hazard for others, or even crashing through another vehicle's windshield and directly injuring someone.
You also have to follow the speed limit, and obey stop lights, and signal turns and lane changes, et cetera, not just for your own safety, but for the safety of everyone else on the road around you. You can't gamble with their lives.
You want to gamble with your own life by smoking? Fine, take that chance - but you can't do it in public where it can hurt other people. No smoking in restaurants, no smoking in airport terminals, no smoking in classrooms full of students, no smoking in movie theatres, no smoking publically anywhere indoors that doesn't specifically set an area aside purely for smokers, because non-smokers must be protected.
You want to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights to shoot a gun for your own simple amusement? You can only do it in certain places where doing so isn't a risk to innocent people nearby. You can't set up a shooting range in your backyard unless you own enough private land to establish a minimum distance from other people. You can't do it right next door to another home, or a business, or a public park, etc.
The value of your personal freedoms can never match the value of another person's life. Full stop.
Almost if is other people life what is at risk. Everybody think that they know how to drive, And feel free to do it... Should there be no limits? Its a disease, we know how easy it
can spread and kill people... There should be limits
You are right. You were faster than me
G. Verloren
I must be brief. You misunderstood:
"They value freedom, they arise freedom above health concerns; is that a crime?"
I mean freedom in general, freedom as a value, a free society, not their own individual freedom. So I disagree with you: if I had to kill anyone in defence of Freedom I would, I surely would.
On the other hand, I would NOT have the moral obligation of shooting the disobeying sailors at all, on the contrary, I should PROTECT THEM with my life if, on landing, they were shot by people on port. Because those people on port who shoot ill infected sailors in distress are, I mean it, FASCISTS, who put their own lives above other people's lives to the point of killing. I AM afraid of you, Verloren if you would shoot those defying sailors; you probably would shoot any suffering minority who does not comply with established rules, and rules should never come first of LIFE. You talk of smoking? Well, that's quite a good example of proto-fascist banishments of our society.
Yes, I can value my personal freedom above other people's values. Not above their lives, as you would with your massacatred sailors, victims of blind sanitary-dictatorship.
@Mário M. Gonçalves
Quarantines must not be broken. If you are on a ship with the plague, you cannot enter port until the quarantine is lifted. End of story.
That doesn't mean you're going to be shot outright out of fear. It doesn't even mean you're left to die. Plague ships get sent food, supplies, doctors who volunteer to risk their lives to treat the sick, et cetera. The effort is made to save everyone on board such a ship, because that's the just and right and humane thing to do.
But if a sailor irrationally tries to break quarantine, senselessly risking spreading the plague to innocent people, they are attempting to murder people.
You would shoot someone who started firing a gun randomly into an apartment building, if they didn't stop when you ordered them to. You're not going to risk the lives of innocent people by sitting back and allowing them to continue. It doesn't matter if there's a chance every random bullet they fire will manage to avoiding hitting anyone through sheer luck. You can't take that chance. You can't allow some madman to gamble with the lives of others just because he wants to.
You would also shoot someone who was speeding drunkenly down the street in a truck, swerving randomly all over the road and sidewalks, if you couldn't get them to stop before they plowed into a crowd of people and shooting them was necessary to protect the lives of crowds of innocent bystanders.
That doesn't make you a Fascist - it makes you a defender of the innocent who are being threatened by the selfish and senseless actions of a lunatic.
So why would you allow a sailor who might carry plague into an entire city of innocent people? His desire to get off the boat is selfish and irrational, and senselessly endangers innocent people at random, the same as the others.
You do what you can to get them to stop, but if they refuse to comply, they are guilty of risking the lives of others and therefor their own life must be forfeit. It's entirely justified and proportional, and it's far preferable to the alternative.
G Verloren,
IMHO, the Covid fear paranoia has got you, and as I said, I should be afraid of you if I got the virus. You are dangerous. You have a fixed idea of majority rule. I am happy to live in Europe, I think the right to disagree and disobey are more respected and cultivated here (under rationality, of course).
I just wondered why and how there seems to be an obsession for order and obedience in the world, I'm beginning to understand; the Chinese way of life is conquering many of us. It's a disgrace.
"That doesn't make you a Fascist - it makes you a defender of the innocent who are being threatened by the selfish and senseless actions of a lunatic.
So why would you allow a sailor who might carry plague into an entire city of innocent people? His desire to get off the boat is selfish and irrational, and senselessly endangers innocent people at random, the same as the others.
You do what you can to get them to stop, but if they refuse to comply, they are guilty of risking the lives of others and therefor their own life must be forfeit. It's entirely justified and proportional, and it's far preferable to the alternative."
BINGO!!
As Mr/Ms Verloren said, the person attempting to cause harm-- to cause *death* perhaps!-- to others is attempting to commit homicide, and if the effort is deliberate, it qualifies as attempted murder.
YOUR freedom stops where MY person begins. You are not free to do many things you might like to do, if your doing those things endangers me. Smoking bans and traffic requirements are not "Fascist"; they are humane, and in Constitutional terms, they are "promot[ing] the general welfare" of the people in this nation.
pootrsox,
your understanding of freedom is different from mine; you don't value it as I do. And it's not a question of yours VS: mine freedom; it's a question of concept, of freedom in the society itself, of living factually in freedom. Of course I can not attempt against any other person's life; but if I'm ill of a contagious disease, I'm not automatically a killer. I don't have the moral duty of isolating myself; on the contrary, the others have the moral duty of caring and treating me.
You dont look mainstream european, and less portuguese...
of course I'm not mainstream, I left that clear
I see...
I'm ambivalent about the proper way to mix freedom and common obligation in a quarantine, but I do think that saying the American anti-quarantine movement is simply people who value freedom above health concerns is being over-charitable.
There's a lot of hate in an American anti-quarantine protest. Their symbology--swastikas, Confederate flags, assault rifles, camo--their conspiracy theories, their talk of a new Tea Party, their obvious desire to provoke and, as 1960s leftists would say, "heighten the contradictions"--all these indicate to me something more hostile and ambitious than a simple desire for freedom.
Some of these people believe that any required sacrifice for the common good is an act of oppression. Others believe this if their common good isn't restricted to other Christian white folks.
I don't know what to do about them. But I think the first thing *not* to do is mischaracterize them as simple, good folks with a slightly different opinion.
@David
Excellent points, well said and needed.
The term "death cultists" has been going around in some circles lately to refer to these people, and I find it both amusing and fitting.
They're not just absurdly libertarian and selfish - they actually have a much more insidious agenda than that, and zealously adhere to a dogma which quite literally seeks to destroy other people. If not literal modern day Fascists (which many of them actually are), then they are at least just as bad.
And if that's a truth we cannot deny, then we already know what we have to do about them - the same thing we had to do about the Nazis. We can only ignore them for so long - eventually we will have to confront them and put a stop to their evil.
Yes, evil. It's absolutely not a word to be used lightly, but if it doesn't apply when talking about people like Nazis and other violent delusional racist psychopaths out to kill innocent people, then where the hell does it apply?
As someone else once did, modern day Fascism moves in mysterious ways. Maybe it can be absurdly libertarian, in the U.S. things like that are possible; as I see it from Europe, it looks more active and insidious in Russia, China, and some 'return to Nature' anti-liberal movements (some ecologists, Black Block) who want an imposed new Order.
@Verloren
"And if that's a truth we cannot deny, then we already know what we have to do about them - the same thing we had to do about the Nazis."
I think we're a long, long way from that, and it's in part to avoid having to go to a place where such stances truly need to be considered that I'm advocating an honest assessment of this movement's potential danger.
Post a Comment