Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[seano732]

Trump to reduce his appearance at daily press briefings.......Gee I wonder why????

https://www.axios.com/trump-daily-co...0ad1d29b0.html

[XXX-er]

well I can say he is a fucking moran but his people can't say it

[grinch]

....

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[Soups]

Me: think epologemiologists are weak on the cost calculation (economic downside).

So...cost of a human life? Yeah agreed, not sure they went to school for that.

[Mofro261]

Consequences dictate our course of action
And it doesn't matter what's right, it's only wrong if you get caught.

If consequences dictate my course of action
I should, I should play God and just shoot you myself

[summit]

I am no doctor but my bullshit meter almost broke listening to these guys. Does Trump U give out MDs?

Can you give the bullet points? I don't have 51 minutes to listen to shit to debunk. But I'd take a short break from all the COVID data I have to work on tonight..

[mall walker]

So...cost of a human life? Yeah agreed, not sure they went to school for that.

just fwiw, we make this “cost of a human life” assessment in some form, as a society, every day. you can drive a car, drink alcohol, own a firearm, eat shit food and not exercise, smoke, a million other things that statistically hurt your life or others lives. there are trade offs, largely related to “liberty”, physical and economic. not saying “the trade offs are always worth it” but it is a bit naive to pretend we do everything we can as a society to prevent every preventable death. we don’t even guarantee that every sick person can go to the doctor - the same people providing care will turn you away in many states if you don’t have health insurance. it’s just a bit strange to act like in this one case, any cost is worth saving any life, but then go back to letting us crash cars into one another drunk, and letting the uninsured or poor die, mental illnesses go untreated, etc etc etc

[goldenboy]

^^^ The government has a $ number of what each life is worth, and they do a cost/benefit analysis on lots of things, like car safety features. There was a really good Planet Money podcast on the subject recently.

[rideit]

The actuaries say it is $9 million. For a white, American life.

[DBdude]

Look who crawled out from under his rock to flap his gums:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was on Laura Ingraham's show on Fox News Thursday night when the subject turned to the coronavirus -- and attempts in New York to develop a contact tracing system to be able to monitor future outbreaks.

That's when this exchange happened:

Ingraham: Michael Bloomberg is gonna handle the tracing, army of tracers in NY we learned today from [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo.
Giuliani: That's totally ridiculous.
Ingraham: The army of tracers.
Giuliani: Then we should trace everybody for cancer.
Ingraham: Yeah, army of tracers.
Giuliani: We should trace everybody for cancer, and heart disease. And obesity. I mean, a lot of things kill you more than Covid-19. So, we should be traced for all those things. I mean life possesses a certain degree of risk.



Edit: Going backward in the thread I see this was already posted. Sorry for the repeat.

giuliani is a sick old man

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019...ody-marys.html

[bennymac]

One other thing (yeah, right, when did I ever stop at one).
I hope the people who advocate selecting the fit and the unfit are mindful of the historical precedent. And no, I am not calling you Nazis, It will come down to how the unfit are treated.

I do appreciate the importance of getting people back to work. Work makes you free.

Work *sets* you free. There’s a subtle distinction in how “sets” was promising both physical and psychological freedom. Like maybe if you work hard then down the road you’ll get your freedom.

[El Chupacabra]

Work *sets* you free. There’s a subtle distinction in how “sets” was promising both physical and psychological freedom. Like maybe if you work hard then down the road you’ll get your freedom.

In other words, "arbeit macht frei"?

[glademaster]

The actuaries say it is $9 million. For a white, American life.

Most days I feel like $100.

[Benny Profane]

Trump to reduce his appearance at daily press briefings.......Gee I wonder why????

https://www.axios.com/trump-daily-co...0ad1d29b0.html

Don't rejoice. He's got nothing else to do right now. He cant travel and rally. So, he might look over at the cool military toys and think, ooh, let's play soldier.

[Rideski]

[XXX-er]

when they pull the shroud over you and call TOD ... thats when you are truly free

right now I feel like 37$

I am trying out a new & inexpensive Pinot Noir from Cali and its not bad

[bennymac]

I prefer "people are free to work"

mixing the order has unintended consequences

Attachment 326362

Visited there a few years ago. Was chilling to put it mildly. They had a room full of hair that had been shaved off. Also visited Birkenau camp which was the nearby “death camp” with the gas chambers and ovens. It was nauseating to see.

/buzz kill thread drift

[old goat]

So...cost of a human life? Yeah agreed, not sure they went to school for that.

There is a cost of a human life. That's different than the value of a human life, which is a totally different concept. The cost of a human life can be measured by the cost of saving one year of a human life. The total cost of a medical intervention divided by the number of years of life saved. In the case of covid you have to take the total economic cost, add it to the cost of caring for the victims, and divide it by the total years of life saved over the course of the epidemic. The figure is useful in comparing medical interventions--if dollars for medical care are limited what interventions should they be spent on. These kinds of calculations are done all the time in medical papers, but never on the scale and complexity of a pandemic AFAIK. The problem with thinking this way about Covid is that if we abandon our preventative measures the dollars saved will not be spent on another health intervention, so in that sense the calculation isn't meaningful. Nonetheless, there are better ways we could spend the dollars we are spending on Covid--maternal and newborn care (the US sucks at this), hypertension, diabetes, etc, etc--we would save far more life years per dollar.

There is no doubt that the economic hardship we are experiencing will cost lives--"deaths of despair" as Deaton and Case call it. The life expectancy of non-college-educated white middle age men was declining before the pandemic; it will certainly fall further. But for the most part we are comparing two noncomparable things--the intangible value of a human life with the economic cost of shutdown. Add to that the uncertainty of whether there will be a cure or prevention for Covid, and if so when, the uncertainty of how much and how fast the economy will recover as restrictions are eased, and how many more people will get sick and die if that is done. I personally think we need to do more, especially when it comes to testing, PPE, and protection on the job for people who are working--our country's performance in those areas is shameful--before we can start to ease restrictions, but I am under no illusion that the decision is clear cut and easy. It is desperately difficult. It would be difficult for Solomon, and Solomon is not in the White House.

[old goat]

Work *sets* you free. There’s a subtle distinction in how “sets” was promising both physical and psychological freedom. Like maybe if you work hard then down the road you’ll get your freedom.

I'll buy that.

I will add that I feel more comfortable weighing the value of a life against the economic hardship of shutdown than I am weighing the value of a life against that of another life.

[Mazderati]

Sweet pompadour on the video scrubs guy.

[bennymac]

I'll buy that.

I will add that I feel more comfortable weighing the value of a life against the economic hardship of shutdown than I am weighing the value of a life against that of another life.

Agreed. If the economic hardship was shared equally we’d likely feel much more comfortable with it. Like if we all had to give up $500 to save 1 life each. But instead it’s like some of us lose many thousands or our businesses now and in the future and some of us hardly lose anything. And a few even gain from it.

[LeeLau]

^^^ The government has a $ number of what each life is worth, and they do a cost/benefit analysis on lots of things, like car safety features. There was a really good Planet Money podcast on the subject recently.

It's a commonly used calculation. Actuaries would cite this

https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/20/how-value-life/

Gunder would say about $5

[skiballs]

Agreed. If the economic hardship was shared equally we’d likely feel much more comfortable with it. Like if we all had to give up $500 to save 1 life each. But instead it’s like some of us lose many thousands or our businesses now and in the future and some of us hardly lose anything. And a few even gain from it.

Very good point, the world has always been that way, crisis just amplifies the reality.

[LeeLau]

Visited there a few years ago. Was chilling to put it mildly. They had a room full of hair that had been shaved off. Also visited Birkenau camp which was the nearby “death camp” with the gas chambers and ovens. It was nauseating to see.

/buzz kill thread drift

Was SkiCougar there at the gate handing out pompoms in his slick Oberstleutnant getup?

[skiballs]

Most days I feel like $100.

I feel like a million $, all green and wrinkly.