marduk
quelling chaos since 2352BC
I think that's a fair response.I'm glad you decided to engage on this, because although we seem to have some very different views, we both respect the process by which differing views should be resolved. So it should be interesting to see how this unravels. I hope you're up to it. Also, although I don't agree with much of the way the pandemic has been managed, I personally have not broken any of the rules or restrictions in place.
For anyone who suggests that might be hypocritical of me, I will say that there is a difference between what the better approach might be, and one that works to some degree, but not as well. So if that's the boat we're in, then we still all need to do our part to make sure it is as effective as it can be, regardless of whatever else we might think. At least to a point, but I won't get into that now.
How would you like to frame the debate?Whether or not lockdowns are or aren't more deadly than Covid depends on how we frame that debate, and what sort of data we allow. Are we going to only allow the subset of data that supports our particular frame of reference? Or are we going to consider the bigger picture?
I'm with you.To determine this in a fair minded way, I submit that if the main issue here is the cost in lives, then the considerations need to include the all the consequences of lockdowns and restrictions, and not only the issue of viral transmission.
Sure.To do otherwise would be to insist on being willfully ignorant of factors other than viral transmission that contribute to loss of life. I don't imagine you would want to take the tunnel vision approach, but we might as well be clear on it. Otherwise there is no way to know tell who is right or wrong or somewhere in between.
Can we agree on this point before continuing that issue?
I'd just add vaccinations now. I hope you're in favour of rolling out vaccines quickly and encouraging people to get them?That is split into two different issues: 1. Masks & 2. Lockdowns. So let's look at those two issues:
The data there is fairly clear. Wearing a mask blocks up to 99% of the virus from being exhaled.Masks:
Masks may or may not do anything to prevent a COVID-19 infection. For example, where there is no virus, a mask is pointless, and no scientist can argue that. So the question then becomes: How many people are pointlessly wearing a mask at any given time? On top of that, how many people falsely believe that despite it being pointless, it is actually "protecting" them or anyone else?
It's also not pointless if you're not infected, because it also helps block the virus from being inhaled, or from you touching a source of infection and then your nose or mouth.
Say more? It can be transmitted quite effectively in the air. Especially in closed in places like airplanes, malls, etc where you are sealed in and breathing in everyone else's air.A specific answer to this question is almost impossible to ascertain, but a little extrapolation on what we know from the data suggests that at any given time, the virus simply isn't present in the vast majority of individual situations where people are. It's not ubiquitously floating around in the air that everybody breathes. Therefore the vast majority of the time, it's totally pointless to be wearing a mask.
Where I do disagree quite strongly with the lockdowns is on things like restricting outdoor ice rinks and the like. As long as you're socially distanced outdoors, it shouldn't be a problem. We still go skiing, and only wear masks in the lift lines and getting off the lifts (unless someone else is on the lift with us). Ontario shut down a ski hill, and that just screams nonsense to me.
OK c'mon man. You know better than to think a guarantee of infection or a guarantee of non-infection is anything but binary thinking. This is the domain of probabilities, not certainties.However, we do know that there are certain places where there is a higher risk of exposure, but even in those situations there is no guarantee of exposure, and even if exposed, there's no guarantee of infection, or that a mask will prevent the infection, because there are other routes for infection besides simple breathing.
Have you been to Chinook lately? Holy crap. That place seems like infection city to me.Nevertheless, there are reasonable grounds for people in high-risk situations to wear a mask, because given enough time, the likelihood of becoming infected will approach near certainty. Those places have been identified as medical facilities, long-term care facilities, jails, retirement homes, places where people are self-isolating due to being tested positive, etc.
Wait wait wait... who exactly is being hurt by wearing a mask again? If we would have worn them and restricted social gatherings before, these lockdowns probably wouldn't have needed to occur. They aren't in some other provinces.However for the many millions of the rest of the population, their mask is at this very moment, doing them no good at all. In fact, it's contributing to a lower quality of life, unnecessary fear, and adding to the litter of garbage on the street along with cigarette butts, plastic bags, sanitary wipes, and used condoms.
Bottom Line: Masks are an obvious "Yes" in some places, but not in others, so only high-risk places should be included in any requirement that they be worn. That is sort of the way it is already, and the way it was before the enforcement came into play. So I don't see the justification for enforcement bylaws. Outside the designated high-risk areas, masks should be entirely voluntary.
As I told my brother in law, who likes to yell at people wearing masks when we're out, who exactly is being hurt by them wearing one? Or how are they hurting him, who doesn't want to? He's the one inflicting potential harm, and very real social harm by acting out.
I understand your reasoning.Do Lockdowns Work:
Again, how exactly do we define "work" and by what standard are we measuring that? A leaky paddle boat will "work", but maybe a bridge will work better, and fewer people will drown along the way. I signed the Great Barrington Declaration as a concerned citizen because when we look at the bigger picture, lockdowns have the potential to cost more lives than the virus itself.
I have included in other posts, links to papers that say the same thing, as well as references to statistics on the number of deaths caused by poverty, and a WHO report on the effects of the lockdowns on poverty. These numbers are in the many millions worldwide. There are now over 50,000 medical & public health scientists and practitioners who also agree with this concern.
Therefore I'm sorry to say, that while lockdowns might "work", it's certainly questionable whether or not they're the best option. We can't even be sure that in the places where they have been alleged to have worked, that they had anything to do with the result. At best, those are only unverifiable correlations. It may be the case that other factors played a much more significant role.
Bottom Line: A Lockdown will obviously lower the risk of transmission of a virus that is present in a place that is locked down. However widespread lockdowns that affect low-risk places that we don't know have any virus at all aren't justifiable, especially when there is a very real possibility that widespread lockdowns may cost more lives from the indirect economic and social consequences than the virus itself.
So what would you do instead? We did a fairly close approximation of doing nothing in our province. Now we're fighting our way out of a big infectious cluster-f. So what would you do instead if you were Kenney?
I disagree. One of the primary sources of infections appear to have been through careless social gatherings. Which is exactly what is being targeted. Would you target migrations instead? Should I be unable to drive to Edmonton, or BC? If so, why would that be better than restricting social gatherings?Relatively few situations seem to fit that assumption. The evidence shows that higher numbers of serious cases, are in the high-risk facilities mentioned earlier, where despite taking the precautions, the virus has been transmitted between people living there, or has unintentionally migrated from there to others outside those facilities, due to carriers not being aware that they had been exposed.
Contract tracing worked great when we had low infection rates. It's now gone far beyond our ability to do contract tracing simply because there's too many new infections per day to do it. So I struggle with this rationale.For those who are testing positive outside those high-risk areas, contact tracing has been very difficult. We simply don't know for sure how they were exposed, and therefore we don't know if masks or physical distancing were contributing factors or not. We can make an educated guess based on certain factors that are known, and make some broad assumptions, but when it comes to radically and negatively affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, we need to do better.
The only people being blamed are the people not doing what they're told with masks and social distancing as far as I'm aware. The lockdown was a response to the virus promoted by the global medical and scientific establishment and then accepted (or not) by the government we ourselves created. Kenney's just a guy like you or me. Well, that's being quite complimentary to the dude, but you get what I'm saying.Lockdowns are not caused by the virus, they are caused by the Government, so putting the responsibility for lockdowns on people instead of Government is a bit like blaming the victim, especially when a closer look at the consequences of lockdowns makes it very uncertain that they are the best route to take.
I agree. Again, what would you replace it with? Part of the reason I agree with the lockdowns being harsh now is because then they'll end sooner, and we can all get back to business. Muck around with it like we did, and we're going to be in it for a lot longer.Not necessarily. Concern about whether or not you can feed your kids and put a roof over their heads because you can't work isn't childish at all. There are perfectly healthy families out there now who are losing their homes, people sleeping in their cars, people committing suicide.
Is it, though? Debates about masks that are a minor inconvenience at worst, and debates about social gatherings respecting social distancing didn't work.Calling it childish is just a little too glib.
That sounds a lot like a kid that doesn't want to take his medicine, and who blames the doctor for being sick. We need to buckle down and get through this.
That sounds like an argument from emotion, not reason. Are my reasons invalid because they have an (admitted) air of righteousness? How does that change the facts?That's a completely specious argument, but making it personal like that gives it an air of righteousness. The reality is that none of those people were any threat to your life at all, or for that matter, anyone else's. If they were such a big threat to anyone's life, why weren't they all falling dead on the street from COVID? Why aren't you dead right now?
Actually, they do. It's a superspreader event, man. That's what they are. That's what they look like. And they're geometric.Studies show that if you get COVID, there's a 40-90% chance it would be so mild you don't even know you have it. Not to mention that so far as I know, you personally aren't in a high-risk group. So no. Those protesters were no threat to your "freedom to live" at all. But nice try. It would make a great sound byte for the propaganda machine.
To me, they're akin to someone at a pro-gun rally shooting their firearms into the air, while claiming they "probably" won't hit anyone. It's stupid and pointless and foolish and needless. And they do cost lives, man. So no, I don't accept this criticism at all.
And there I get the logic. However, the virus is here. We are not yet vaccinated. So therefore, all they did was prolong the lockdowns they're protesting against, and therefore working against themselves - harming everyone both economically and by spreading it more.Something else to consider is what the protesters wanted. A significant number of poster boards were expressing a concern over the loss of their livelihoods and collateral loss of life as a consequence of the lockdowns. These are legitimate concerns, that from the point of view of someone who is facing eviction, and is wondering how they are going to provide for their family, is a much more direct threat to their lives than the virus.
Their concern is no less valid than mine. But their rationale certainly isn't. There is no underlying rationale for their actions except 'don't tell me what to do.' That's it. There's nothing more. There were no people carrying signs for something like 'reduce social distancing from 2M down to 1.5' or anything like that.So their concern about their lives are no less valid than yours. The difference is that some bully bylaw officer can take them down and fine them. Which brings up the issue of the right of citizens to protest. The only reason that any of these restrictions are in place is because we're in an AEMA situation, otherwise none of these measures would have any legal validity.
Section 2 of the Charter gives us the right to peaceful assembly. It wasn't peaceful - there was violence committed by the protestors. And they still willfully broke the bylaws.
If they would have protested with masks on and with social distancing (and without the Trump flags and ProudBoys and Sons of Odin), I wouldn't have cared at all. Because they wouldn't have been harming anyone except themselves.
Wow, we must be reading different news.So it's fair to ask if AEMA measures are really necessary. To answer that we need to have a closer look at just how bad the situation is, not how bad we thought it might get when we knew less about it. We now know that this is a disease is so mild that 40-90% of the people who get it don't even know they have it. There simply aren't masses of people dropping dead in the street from the virus.
The vast majority of the rest recover fine within two weeks, the majority of the the rest also recover without hospitalization, and that only a small percentage end-up in a hospital bed. Most of them also survive, and virtually all who don't are already suffering from something that any number of other things besides COVID could be what finishes them off.
The Province has thousands of available beds and we are not near capacity. People aren't dying in the street from COVID, but there are people dying in the street from pandemic management fallout. We're in an economic crisis, not because healthy people couldn't work if they wanted to, but because the government has forced them not to. These factors do not in my mind justifying AEMA measures.
"Doctors says it's 'day-to-day survival mode' as Calgary ICUs stretch surge capacity"
The concerns are real. Everything you're raising almost without exception is a real concern. Economically and socially this is devastating.Not really. Some of us are more well informed than others ( including yours truly ). For many others, a lot of fear based assumptions are being made that could be making things worse, not better. They are not childish offhanded opinions either. Again, read the WHO paper on this and consider that some 50,000 medical & public health scientists and practitioners also have the same concerns. It's not reasonable to think their concerns are baseless. Additional info that supports my present view is included elsewhere on this thread, and in some new posts below.
I'm not debating this. But I am saying that math is math. Viruses spread geometrically. It's what they do. We're roughly one doubling progression away from our healthcare being overswamped. One. Look at our infection rates, man - we're worse than some parts of the US!
What are you offering instead?We've just been through all that and it's far from that cut and dried.
Right.Hey, at least we're having the discussion right here. And at least we're healthy enough to have it. Like I said at the start, I haven't personally broken a single bylaw. I am doing my part, because even if it is a leaky paddle boat, it's the boat we're in, and we have to do our part to get to the other side. I also have a bad habit of sticking up for the oppressed instead of the PTB, which can make me unpopular with the majority.
Totally agree.But for me it's not a popularity contest anyway. It's perfectly fine for people to complain about public policy and offer what they think is a better solution, so long as they do it at the same time as they are doing their part. Dragging the boat down just because they don't like it isn't the answer. Hopefully now that the vaccines are on the way, they'll assist in stomping out the pandemic, and things will get back to normal by next summer.
You too, man.In the meantime, I hope you and your family stay well. Keep-up the conversation if it's not too draining for you.
Maybe? But remember as well that those workers are paid for by our taxes - the same taxes that aren't going to be collected from our paycheques if we don't have any.I'm not sure where exactly it should go from here. My final thought to throw out there is the following:
We've heard that the reasoning for the AEMA measures is to "protect the system from being overloaded". We still have thousands of available beds, and at present, they're making sure we have even more. But then we'd need support staff to work them. Could it be that the Government has invoked AEMA measures to keep the numbers so low as to not need those 11,000 healthcare support workers they want to get rid of?
[automerge]1609031468[/automerge]
Ya, man I really hope the vaccines work against the new strain. You're in the UK right? Any thinking about that?When you have fourth epidemic its hard to stop the mutations . Tougher year coming and keep safe .