Unfortunately I think this really nails why the content of the laptop is so difficult for many people to come to terms with.
We all know corruption happens at all levels in Washington, but if the contents of the laptop are true, it means a serious loss of ground in the culture war (potentially game over). It can’t be true and must not be true. To keep the game going we need to shut our eyes and wait to be rescued by a comfortable escape hatch narrative.
There is a subtle (perhaps unintentional) sleight of hand here.
60% of all new restaurants close on the first year. That is very different than half of *all restaurants, even those that have been open for decades, closing in a single year.
Sure, but the same distinction is missing from the city's report. Which half of the city's restaurants are going to close permanently because of covid? Likely those that were on the edge of failure rather than well-established ones.
It's not about asking "which half". It's that the numbers cannot be compared. If 90% percent of restaurants stay open forever, 60% of new restaurants could close in their 1st year but only 6% of existing restaurants would close. If we say 50% of existing restaurants will close due to covid, comparing that to 60% makes no sense, it needs to be compared to 6%.
observationally, this doesn't seem to be the case. In NYC, the way it looks is that restaurants that were doing a brisk delivery business before the pandemic are still with us and a lot of great restaurants that were packed with in-person diners are gone. There are tons of exceptions. Source: Brooklyn.
So the solution is to lock the kids alone in their dorms? What a nightmare. Forbidding human contact with anyone is the most extreme covid restriction I've ever heard of. A clear violation of human rights.
I'm just not sure what that has to do with it. If they're engaging in specific risky behavior, maybe it's justified to ban that risky behavior, but you can't just tell an entire age bracket they've been naughty and ground them for 2 weeks as punishment.
There is no evidence that the measures slowed the spread as compared to the natural dynamics of an infectious disease as immunity builds. Compare Sweden’s curve to New York’s for example.
> There is no evidence that the measures slowed the spread as compared to the natural dynamics of an infectious disease as immunity builds. Compare Sweden’s curve to New York’s for example.
Compare the US's curve to China's. If the US hadn't tried to half-ass it's measures (at the personal to the national level), we wouldn't still be arguing about them because the virus would be under control and they wouldn't be necessary anymore.
Indeed. And do we trust China’s numbers? I thought it was an unspoken fact that no one cites their data in legitimate media, since it is heavily manipulated.
Do you trust Taiwan’s data? They contained and eradicated the disease even more effectively than the Beijing regime, without thousands of deaths and millions of infections.
So clearly there are ways to check the spread and cut out 99% of deaths. (They are also not wizardry or witchcraft. Mandatory masks in public, temp measurement at schools and public buildings, quarantines at entry and positive diagnosis enforced extremely strictly by law enforcement, and tracing the infection chain. That’s literally it.)
But I think we're getting off track from the original discussion here. I strongly suspect Taiwanese disease control experts would identify a quarantine policy applying only to a specific 4 year age bracket as what a commenter upthread described as "half-ass measures"; a serious attempt to control the virus would have to apply to everyone, since everyone can spread it.
> Indeed. And do we trust China’s numbers? I thought it was an unspoken fact that no one cites their data in legitimate media, since it is heavily manipulated.
Not particularly, but even if China undercounted by 10x, it's still way ahead of places like Sweden and the US on a per capita basis.
I have relatives there, and their lives are basically back to normal and have been for months. The bungling Western (especially American) response has unfortunately been a huge propaganda win for the Communist party. They're thanking every American asshole who loudly refuses to things as simple as wearing a mask for making them look good.
No, that's a straw man. It's like saying that someone who advocates for an effective police force is also advocating for that force to recklessly kill suspects.
What I am advocating for is mandatory pandemic control measures that are strict enough to work and applied consistently until the job is done, and a population that's willing consistently take efforts to protect the common good rather than complain and resist when things aren't maximally convenient to them personally. That applies not just to first-order responses, but to second and third order responses as well.
How will we know when the job is done? Please give specific numbers.
Does violation of fundamental civil rights like freedom of assembly not also harm the common good? We can't focus narrowly on one objective and ignore everything else.
No, it is an exceptionally poor comparison but your failure here is assuming that the person making this comment is acting in good faith. They are not. Downvote, ignore, and move on to discussions with people who are not political tools.
Agree. It's simply not worth engaging with trolls or people who intend to be willfully ignorant. They will just sit there and say "show me the randomized clinical trial for <blah>" even if they aren't qualified to parse the study.
The Corona Cult is going to baselessly discredit your ideas which are valid and accurate because they have no logical response. Please vote in November! Keep the fanatics from committing additional human rights violations!
He is just claiming no evidence and cherry picking data. I can just as easily point to other countries that have limited their Covid cases to single digits.
Do we really need a controlled experiment to prove to you that wearing masks limit the spread of an airborne virus? That is common sense.
You have no scientific evidence that these students not wearing surgical masks or cloth face coverings has anything to do with covid spread. We have decades, nay a century, of science showing that face covering requirements do not slow the spread of a pandemic. There will absolutely be lawsuits over the rash, panicked, capricious, arbitrary actions of authorities during this crisis.
I think you may have misunderstood my post. I was asking how that particular employer handled the topic with its employees.
I'm trying to understand how much negotiating power software developers have with their employers these days; in general and on this topic in particular.
