Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

@Heavyarms55 The irony of course is that if everyone went in a proper lockdown for 4-6 weeks, we wouldn't even be here in the first place and businesses would be doing fine.

@Zeldafan79 Well, that's down to had policy or bad enforcement. They should just enforce masks at all times in public places when it gets as bad as it does. Or even to prevent a breakout in some areas. But it should be a national thing. I was in Belgium the other day, and masks are mandatory in most places. And I had to wear one for about a week. Guess what, I turned out fine. It's just a piece of cloth, and it helps to save lifes. You're not being asked to shove a bottle of coke sideways up your arse.

@Xyphon22 Being up north, Americans are a problem. They keep sneaking and getting across the border. We had no cases here for a long time, then a couple....traced back to Americans. I've not heard how so many are getting across in some areas.
Out in BC its a large issue. Apparently, there's some 'right of way' for Americans to be able to drive through to get to Alaska, but it's supposed to be a straight drive, no stops, no going off course, etc. It's being severely abused, people claiming that's where they're going to get across and instead vacationing all over the province.
If it weren't so serious, I'd find it ironically funny how many are trying to get north of the border given the stance on the same thing with the Mexican border not so long ago.
Before someone jumps on me, I'm not saying all Americans are this stupid.

And of course, it's not just Americans are doing these things. There was a local girl who went to a high-risk zone, came back, lied about it and went back to work (at a gas station, no less). She subsequently got caught, fired, and I believe fined and forced quarantine. It's these people who absolutely refuse to adjust their lives even slightly who are making it worse for everyone else and dragging this out longer than it needs to be.
Some of them, I swear they do it just because they're told they shouldn't be. If you told these same people we needed to travel, get out and spread it for herd immunity, they would refuse and lock themselves down just because they were told the opposite.

Ya know, an awful lot of folks have this idea that people of all areas can just stay inside their house for 4-6 weeks, without getting additional food, or without obtaining money to pay utilities. Folks also seem to think that if such a thing were done all at one time, the virus would be gone. I'm not sure if some folks just don't understand simple concepts or not, or are just anxious and worried so they channel that energy elsewhere, but saying things that don't make rational sense only helps to keep negativity around the whole thing.

Has anyone heard a good counter-argument to the idea that we should've just segregated everyone over a certain age (65 maybe) and told everyone else to continue as normal?

In terms of balancing the risk to life vs the economic destruction, that sort of policy would probably optimize for both.

I don't want to risk people getting permanent health problems just because they probably won't die.

@Dezzy

I mean...

1) That's going to make more people vectors of the virus and dramatically exacerbate the problem. Carrying on "like normal" is what has put America, in particular, in the place it's in.

2) How exactly are you going to segregate the elderly? Lots of families live together. Do government vans pull up and cart them off to a government facility somewhere? I don't understand that argument.

3) Underlying health issues are huge factors as well, which is probably why the elderly are over-represented in terms of deaths. But a ton of younger people have them as well. Do we also round up all of the people who are, say, obese, or have heart/lung conditions?

4) Even if younger people are far less likely to die, that doesn't necessarily suggest that younger people get off without permament damage done by the virus at the same rate.

I have for the first time a mask 😷 it’s hard to breath with these.

@Dezzy just say that putting all old people together is stupid because then you’d have thousands of vulnerable people in one place to get sick all at the same time. At that point, they might as well just go home per home and ‘cull’ them with a faster, cheaper method... Might look worse in history books though!

Either that or ask them if they know how old is [relevant public figure over the age of 65]...?

@HobbitGamer Why wouldn't it work? Supermarket visits would be allowed, but the number of people would be limited (don't go with your whole family). Masks are mandatory at all times when you're outside.

We had an half-arsed lockdown in The Netherlands that was pretty good at slowing the whole thing down dramatically. I can only imagine what the situation would've been like if we had a proper lockdown for a considerable amount of time and just closed all borders for the time being. It worked for New Zealand, and countries like Taiwan have been doing great as well.

People are taking about having lockdown measures like wearing a mask, minimizing socializing etc (rather than a straight ban on leaving the house at all) in conjunction with a government response like putting temporary bans of having services like electric & water being cut, using the army to distribute food in the worst hit areas, effective coronavirus relief packages (I'm still not sure why Kayne West was given millions but a lot of small business weren't) etc on the basis that a hard pause is better than limping along with a growing death count which seemingly worked for countries like New Zealand.

Of course hindsight is easy but in the build up to the virus the US of A weren't in a great place for this with disbanding their pandemic response council and a growing budget deficit which made it hard for them to be swift and take actions regardless. That doesn't really excuse the contradictory voices of the various levels of government to people though.

this weekend there has been a demonstration in Berlin here in Germany against the measures of the state. they posted photos of other demonstrations and events like the love parade or even photos from events from other cities like the Zurich street parade to be able to say it was over 1 million people protesting. but it was under 20 thousand people.
the same people that cry FAKE NEWS at everything they see in the media, spread obvious lies themselves. incredible

@6ch6ris6 Yeah, its like politically bigoted hubris seems to be a drug for many people. Or contrarian hubris? I'm having a hard time putting my finger on a description. But anger stoking political bigotry seems to be a great business model for bolstering views & viewership. Evidence & medical history don't trigger the dopamine, and don't sell as well. The pursuit of knowledge isnt sexy enough.

@Zeldafan79

If I appouch the counter and the employee is not wearing a mask, I walk out and take my business elsewhere. I saw several restaurants by my local grocery store with no signs regarding facial coverings and social distancing. While I think closing stores for only curbside pick-up and deliveries is too extreme but taking absolutely no safety precautions is reckless.

@Eel

The idea wasn't to put all old people together. The idea was just to segregate them from everyone else. That could be in groups of 2 people at a time, or maybe allow for small bubbles so you have 4 or 5 who can intermingle if they live nearby. You can even try to do that within large care homes. Separate them into bubbles of maybe 10 people who don't interact with anyone outside them.

@Ralizah

America isn't a good example here because they haven't segregate the elderly at all. In fact the state with the highest death count is largely because they put sick people in care homes without thinking about it.

Mask + Avoid the 3 C's to prevent spread.

Exactly. I'm not talking about never leaving the house (although never leaving unless you had to would be good). I have yet to set foot in a restaurant or a grocery store or anything since March. But we have plenty of food and groceries because we do drive-thrus and call-ahead or mobile ordering where the store people bring our groceries out to us and put it in the car and we never have contact with them. People still keep their jobs and earn money, people still have food, it all works. I would even think in this day and age where people love using the internet and phones for everything and avoiding human contact normally that they would appreciate this. But it's the fact that they are told to avoid human contact that they push back against. They are being rebels just for the sake of being rebels, even though they would probably like it better the way we are asking.

@Dezzy Imagine making and maintaining hundreds of little private retirement homes with emergency equipment and medical staff.

Not to mention, even if they somehow managed to keep everyone healthy and alive (which would be impossible), the psychological damage and human rights violations would still be a thing.

It's simply impossible to have that level of control and power without becoming the next Wolfenstein villain by the end.

As they say, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. In this case though, the idea is just transparently terrible from every angle- there not many ways to think about it that would make it a good idea in the long run.

@Eel

Well I'm not talking about creating new retirement homes. I mean the ones that already exist would simply follow a kind of internal segregation policy. That's really not such a big endeavour when you take into account how immobile a lot of their residents are.

I'm not sure what human rights would be violated exactly? Not that any country particularly cares about "human rights" anyway. We care about the rights protected in our own laws, that's all. Some countries add new rights, like the right to bear arms. Plenty of others remove key rights, like the right to free speech. There's not much consensus on those kinds of areas.

@Dezzy unless the plan changed overnight, your original post asked:

Has anyone heard a good counter-argument to the idea that we should've just segregated everyone over a certain age (65 maybe) and told everyone else to continue as normal?

Are you assuming everyone over the age of 65 is already (or is open to the idea of) living in a retirement home, and that there's enough of them in the world to hold everyone over that age, with strict social distancing and isolation measurements?

What your original post implies, is to forcefully remove every person over the age of 65 from their families and homes and keeping them in an imposed "retirement home".

@Dezzy I think you're underestimating how mobile old people are, if the plan is anyone over the age of 65 then that would include for example Trump and Biden, I doubt they would be happy to be segregated like that when they are meant to be running the country. I recently watched Brian Blessed who is in his 80s talk about how he bench presses 300lbs and runs 5 miles.

There's plenty of people over 65 actively working and also a large amount of them are active voters, so any politician would likely get their wrath in the next round of votes for trying to force them to stay at the retirement camps.