RichardGibbons

Socialism doesn't reduce individuals to numbers unless taken to an extreme like communism. And generally I agree that reducing individuals to numbers is a very bad thing. The appropriateness of socialism depends on the problem you're trying to solve. For justice and national defence, it seems clear that socialism is the way to go. Socialism--or socialism + capitalism--clearly works better for things like healthcare and basic research. And capitalism--or capitalism with only a touch of socialism--clearly works better for things like food and widget production and distribution. Also, capitalism breaks when one can make money by killing other people. That's why there's value in actually looking at the problem and different solutions rather than assuming that because your hammer is great at pounding in a nail, it will be equally good at cutting a board into two equal-sized pieces.

For me, socialism is insurance against catastrophic outcomes as a result of bad luck--unemployment insurance, medical insurance, insurance against being born in a dysfunctional family.... In socialism, you give up some extreme rewards to eliminate a some extreme catastrophes. In equity, you're taking socialism from 10% to 100%, and eliminating any and all differential outcomes. You're giving up 100% of your rewards to eliminate 100% of catastrophes. That's why I think it's reasonable to believe in socialism but not equity. If I'm shivering in the cold, it's reasonable to want to stand near a fire, but also reasonable to not want to be lit on fire.

I don't think that this is a given. The value people provide is the upper limit on their compensation, not the theoretical optimal amount they should be paid. It's also unclear to me how you factor in risk and ideas. Like, suppose you're the dude who had the idea, started the company, mortgaged your house for capital to get it started, and lost your marriage as a result of your focus on the company. And now today, 5 years later, you're responsible for 5% of the value of the company generates that year while your 5 employees are responsible for 95%, do your 5 employees deserve 19% of the profits? Plus, I find it an odd metric regardless, because the "value you provide" could change dramatically based on the business. e.g. a generic manual laborer might have a different value in Amazon's warehouse than McDonalds than wielding a sledgehammer doing demolition. So, if you accept the premise that people ought to be paid based on the value they provide, you're saying that with identical skills, the same laborer ought to be paid differently based on the company they work for. (Whereas, I think according to economic theory, as a result of competition, people with the same skills ought to be paid the same regardless of where they work.) That's why I find the whole discussion really confusing once you step away from the communist slogans like "everyone contributes so everyone shares" or "nobody deserves to be a billionaire or gets to be a billionaire as a result of their own work." I believe there ought to some balancing factors that stop the big winners from making the world completely unbalanced, but it's hard to find those balancing factors.

The problem with inequality is that it destroys social cohesion and destabilizes society. An unstable society is bad for the rich, the middle class, and generally the poor as well. It's only good for those who don't really have anything to lose. The problem with equality is that disincentives people. Most growth and innovation is caused by people striving to get ahead. So it seems clear to me that you want to have a reasonable degree of inequality, but not so much stuff becomes unstable. A solution I think might work is: 1. Ensuring the total compensation of the highest paid person of the company cannot exceed some multiple (say, 30) of the lowest-paid person (including contractors). 2. For business owners (e.g. Bezos), implement a massive death tax on extreme wealth (like 95% tax on assets above an inflation-adjusted $50M)

I found this argument interesting--thanks Cherzeca. Though obviously nothing is proven, on the face of it, the hypothesis seems reasonable to me because humans aren't homogeneous objects randomly bouncing around in a closed world. It seems reasonable to me that there are people with varying degrees of susceptibility to the virus (we already know this because there's dramatically different outcomes for people who are infected). Plus, the degree to which people spread it varies as well--super-spreaders are super-spreaders partly because they have a lot of exposure to a lot of people, so you'd expect them to get it early as well. What is the R0 for a population if you assume that 70% of super-spreaders and the 10% of people who are particularly susceptible to infection by that particular disease are immune because they've already had it? I think the R0 (and the level of infection to achieve herd immunity) would be lower than what you'd get from models where humans are assumed to be homogeneous. So, I don't think we should dismiss this theory out of hand.

Yeah, "delighted" would be how I'd describe it. Attached to a country that until the last few years has had strong democratic values, a belief in free speech and "innocent until proven guilty", and an eagerness to trade for everyone's benefit? Sign me up! If I could disconnect Canada from North America and move it anywhere else on the globe, I wouldn't. (Well, maybe in the Pacific Ocean, to the west of America, still attached to the continent, just to get some better weather.... 8))

Yep.

To summarize: March/April Orthopa: "Contact tracing is a waste of time! Everyone's already infected." (There are single digit deaths in America.) New Zealand/Taiwan/S.Korea/British Columbia: Do lots of testing and contact tracing America: Minimal tests Trump: "There's no problem (and if there were, it would be a Blue State problem, so that's actually a good thing!)" August New Zealand/Taiwan/S.Korea/British Columbia: The virus has been mostly contained. A tiny number of people have died. America: Millions infected. 200,000 people die. Trump: "We should do less testing. That's what I diagnose to be the main problem here." Orthopa: "There's too many people infected! Contact tracing is impossible, because while almost every other country has used it successfully, America hasn't! And Canadians are paranoid scared bitches! And asymptomatic people can pass on the virus! So there's no reason to test." RichardGibbons: "Should I say that infectious asymptomatic people might suggest one should do more testing, not less? … … Nah." Orthopa: "Dick."

Maybe, or maybe not. The president is basically saying, "Hey, do less testing" and there is less testing. So, are tests declining because there is less demand for tests because of fewer symptomatic people? Or are tests declining because lives don't matter and it's politically convenient for the number of tests to decline? I'm not sure what the answer is, or if it's even possible to determine the answer. (e.g. I think it would be hard to detect a bunch of "patriotic" Trump-supporting doctors to stop ordering tests.)

Hold on there just a minute. You make accusations of cherry picking the data then you do exactly that. Instead of comparing population density of the U.S., you use NYC. And you do that because the comparison between the two countries doesn’t support your argument. NZ population density: 15 people /sqK US population density: 36 people /sqK NOT 38,424 / sqK Pretty dishonest trying to compare the country to NYC. How about sticking to the facts for a change. Your right, my fault. The US is extremely homogeneous and no way the population density of NYC contributed in a negative fashion to death counts, GDP loss, and the spread of the virus through out the country. Thanks!!! This is a hilarious interaction. Orthopa: "I'll spin some numbers while simultaneously accusing someone else of spinning!" <Gregmal predictably validates the approach by accusing some nebulous left of spin> Orthopa: "Haha! I'm brilliant! Nobody realizes what I did!" cwericb: "Umm, dude, you know you're basically comparing a country to a city? Can you at least pretend to honestly analyse the situation?" Orthopa: "Darn.... Umm, can't admit fault, gotta go on the offence! Well, um, New York City has lots of people which is bad in a pandemic, and that's completely the point that I was trying to make in my other post! And you're just stupid for not seeing it, and deserve lots of abuse!"

The part that I find interesting with this is the comment that the virus was mostly hitting blue states, and that if the federal government didn't act (thereby allowing lots of people to die) they could blame it on the Democratic governors to gain a political advantage. And that's exactly how it shook out here on CoBaF. Propaganda's been around for centuries, and pretty well everyone knows what it is. But even so, control of a propaganda network has transformed otherwise sensible people into amplifiers of fascist spin. It's remarkable.

He says it has an impact, and he's also aware of your zinc claims: Dr Fauci:I think it really relates to the importance of vitamin D in host defense against infection. There’s no doubt that if you are vitamin D deficient, you might have a poor outcome or a greater chance of getting into trouble with an infection. Most people in the developed world are not vitamin D deficient, so adding additional vitamin D may not actually have a substantial clinical effect. That doesn’t lessen the importance of a normal level of vitamin D. In some of the developing countries, there have been studies with tuberculosis and other diseases. Those who are vitamin deficient, including vitamin D and vitamin A, they do worse.

The ironic thing is Trump's pandemic response could have been a huge win for him--a war triumph that would've solidified his presidency. But the problem is that he doesn't actually know how to lead or govern, and doesn't care enough about anyone else to even try to do the right thing.

The odds of a third party being elected in the USA is quite remote. There's basically zero chance of radical regime change.

I'm going to go with this one, rather than finding random permutations of doses of Hydroxychloroquine and other substances. "Oh, what about Hydroxychloroquine and Vitamin C? What about with Vitamin D? And water? And potatoes? And fire ants! Nobody's tried fire ants yet! Why can't you show me a study with fire ants!"

Sure, I can help you with that. The IV drug might provide some benefit, while random trials of the generic drug indicate it provides no benefit.

Well, it's far from a cure, but the numbers I've been seeing say a 35% reduction in deaths in patients who require a breathing machine, and 20% in patients who require supplemental oxygen. So, if you assume that almost everyone who dies from COVID-19 is in one of these two categories, and that, say, 100K people were "slated" to die from the latest explosion in cases in the USA, that might mean 25K lives saved. I agree it's not a breakthrough. It's an incremental improvement, learning which existing drugs help. But I still think it's noteworthy as a significant improvement, even if it isn't a breakthrough. (Like, if we had 4 more incremental improvements of comparable levels--and they didn't overlap on the patients they helped--COVID-19 wouldn't be a life-threatening disease in western countries.) I'm delighted to have incremental improvements because I think it's very unrealistic to hope for a breakthrough "cure-like" treatment from a novel drug in a few months. When I was thinking about flattening the curve to give time for treatment options to improve, I wasn't thinking that based on the hope for a vaccine or a breakthrough drug, but rather for incremental improvements in treatments that lead to large increases in survival rates.

Well, to be fair, it's because certain people on the thread literally never blame Trump. They literally don't acknowledge it when he's the person most responsible for America's mess. Like, he's the dude where the buck is supposed to stop. If you're looking for politicians who have the most leverage to fight the disease, this is the guy who has it, by far. But some people seem to be trying to desperately deflect responsibility from him for some bizarre reason, pretending that he and the outbreak are in two completely different universes, never actually interacting with each other at all. And they also seem to believe that the Governor of the 20th smallest state is actually the most important leader in the entire country. I guess maybe people skipped their civics class to go smoke outside? I dunno. I find it quite peculiar. But to get back on topic, while we wait on the deaths arising from the current surge of infections, it's worth noting that we ought to get fewer deaths per capita infected not simply because of the age of infected people, but because treatment has improved in a very real, significant way. This was one of the key goals of flattening the curve and doing the lockdowns, and it's starting to be achieved. We've delayed infections long enough that some people who would have died if they had been infected three months ago will now live if they get infected today. I speculate that the number of saved lives in the USA alone will be in the tens of thousands. I think that's a marvellous thing.

I'd be surprised if Liberty has it just because it's a chart from a third-party. That said, it's pretty easy to visualize because the EU has about the population of the USA, plus a third. So, keep the same line from the EU, and move the USA line up a third. That said, I agree with your underlying point--the chart is a bit deceptive because, compared to the EU, USA has actually done even worse than you'd think just by looking at the chart.

Ha, ha, ha! Nope. Even if you believe it was an error (it wasn't), in this pandemic that wouldn't be the greatest unforced error. The greatest unforced error was Trump politicizing the use of masks. If he hadn't done that, USA would be able to give everyone masks, open its economy, and not worry about too many COVID-19 deaths. USA could've had it's cake and eat it too, but Trump has eliminated that as a possibility. It's an insanely huge unforced error, costing both lives and the economy.

Curious. We've studied a novel disease for a few months, and during that time understanding has changed. And you take that, and equate it with something that we've studied for 3 or 4 decades, scientists almost entirely agree on, and say that's the same thing? Huh. IMO, the primary value of your comment isn't actually the critique of how we view science, but rather in providing insight into the things you care about. Current economic interests are very important to you, but the long-term future isn't.

This one's been obvious for a while, but it's nice to hear someone state it plainly. https://globalnews.ca/news/7075024/mask-wearing-fewer-coronavirus-deaths/ A two orders of magnitude effect is a lot.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/06/19/national/japan-contact-tracing-app-launched/#.Xu-DNndFwls

I think you need to add contact tracing too. Largely, the places that have done well have done that.

Yeah, let's just ignore the potential for millions of deaths on the other side of the scale.