The Contradictory Feelings Thread

[rotting bones]

There are degrees.

I agree that the level of danger doesn't justify the restriction on liberty.

I don't think the danger antivaxxers pose is that great as yet.

And to the extent that it was, it isn't.

You don't think the strain on medical resources counts as an emergency?

I suppose antivaxxers would be justified if there turned out to be universally fatal side-effects to all these vaccines decades in the future. The only problem is I don't think that's how medicine works. Not all the vaccines even work the same way.

The Chicoms haven't invaded.

... Was that likely at any point?

[Ares Land]

I don't get it. We've been stuck at home for more than a year, and essentially forbidden to do anything... And people are starting to be bothered about civil liberties now?

In any case, most of the discussion seems a bit moot. We have no way out of the current crisis without mass vaccination anyway!

[Travis B.]

I agree that going "but but but civil liberties!" about vaccines makes no sense whatsoever, since the lockdowns and quarantines have been far bigger impositions when it comes to civil liberties, yet people (aside from crazy right-wingers who should not be listened to in the first place) accepted these things to a greater degree.

[Travis B.]

If anything, mass vaccination ought to be seen as a great boon to individual liberty, as it allows people to do things in public freely with little fear of severe illness. The only thing about it is that it only works if people actually get vaccinated, or otherwise "opening up" may turn into a catastrophe, and that may require pressure to be put on people so they will get vaccinated.

[Travis B.]

Like you said before, this is a state of emergency.

There are degrees. The Chicoms haven't invaded. And to the extent that it was, it isn't. Vaccines are widely available. People can be responsible to the degree that they're willing. The remaining concerns are lack of vaccine effectiveness (which, since they seem to work very well in the short term, is a logistics issue) and mutational escape. What else?

Somehow I find it hard to believe that a disease that has killed more Americans than World War I, World War II, and Vietnam combined is not somehow an emergency, especially when compared to 9/11, which definitely was treated as an emergency even though orders of magnitude fewer Americans died on that day.

No authority anywhere in the West has the necessary charisma to eradicate COVID in one country, and I doubt any authority anywhere has the competence and attention span to eradicate it worldwide.

This is because of the antivaxxers and lack of political will. If our leaders had the political will, they could mandate vaccination, along with carrying around proof of vaccination, such that one could not leave one's home if one is unvaccinated.

This is half hypothetical fear-mongering and half "but but but suveillance state bad"...

The surveillance state is, in fact, bad, and the slippery slope is real.

You do realize that there are databases of vaccinations already. "Vaccine passports" are simply opening up these databases so they can be used to distinguish between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, to privilege the former over the latter, to put pressure on the latter to get vaccinated.

One should have to present a vaccine card or provide documentation from one's doctor as to why one cannot be vaccinated to participate in society. After all, if one is not vaccinated, one is a threat to the public simply by interacting with them.

What's the point of vaccines, then, if they provide so little protection to the vaccinated?

The point is to put pressure on people to get vaccinated, so we don't have people taking up healthcare resources and like due to refusing to get vaccinated and then getting severely ill.

[Nortaneous]

I don't get it. We've been stuck at home for more than a year, and essentially forbidden to do anything... And people are starting to be bothered about civil liberties now?

In any case, most of the discussion seems a bit moot. We have no way out of the current crisis without mass vaccination anyway!

Many people have been "bothered about civil liberties" the whole time. Some of them stopped worrying so much about lockdowns once it became clear that they were toothless.

It sucks that there were fewer public events in blue states for a year, but some Democratic Party-aligned political elites believe people should be discouraged from having social lives as a matter of public policy (because genpop will have less political agency if they're totally atomized), and blue state policy typically has that as a side effect anyway. But the conscientious blue-state people I know stopped caring around August, and the cops didn't stop them - and it's unlikely that there would've been many events anyway, or that they would've had their usual attendance. People are capable of taking the precautions they feel are appropriate without the cops telling them to do so - unless they're overruled by their employers.

This is because of the antivaxxers and lack of political will. If our leaders had the political will, they could mandate vaccination, along with carrying around proof of vaccination, such that one could not leave one's home if one is unvaccinated.

Sure, liberal democracy is weak and flabby, and incapable of taking bold action. We must reassert the rights of the state as expressing the real essence of the individual, and so on. The thing where every Responsible Authority has a lower approval rating than used car dealers is surely irrelevant, as is the thing where as far as I can tell they teach the Tuskegee experiment in preschool.

You do realize that there are databases of vaccinations already. "Vaccine passports" are simply opening up these databases so they can be used to distinguish between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, to privilege the former over the latter, to put pressure on the latter to get vaccinated.

Great! So they open up the databases of private medical history, the ghost of Fred Phelps wins in 2024, and everyone on PrEP gets set to a FEMA camp. Or Rowling abracadabras Hobo Johnson, coups 10 Downing Street, and sends everyone with a bica scrip to the infamous gulags of Berwick-upon-Piss. Do we need to dig up the grave of 2014 and bring back the putrid corpse of the word "cisheteropatriarchy"? As cringe as the discourse was, at least no one proposed sending your entire medical history to the local Food Lion.

Maybe we shouldn't worry because CIA can already blow up your car or write-access your devices, but maybe, instead, we should worry about all of that. Surely a righteous emperor would at least consider banning cameras? And surveillance videos don't even have an obvious potential to black-swan the whole species into the ground - the worst that can happen is No Such Agency nude-swapping rings and elite blackmail rings wielding political power from smoke-filled rooms, both of which have already happened.

The point is to put pressure on people to get vaccinated, so we don't have people taking up healthcare resources and like due to refusing to get vaccinated and then getting severely ill.

We pay how much in taxes for the healthcare system to run so lean that a bad flu season among over-50s means death panels? (And for the same government that's tiling the roadside with speed cameras to be logistically unable to secure some desert and close a few airports?)

[Travis B.]

/me rolls eyes.

[Linguoboy]

We pay how much in taxes for the healthcare system to run so lean that a bad flu season among over-50s means death panels?

Oh, I know this! “Substantially less than any other OECD member country both per capita and as a percentage of GDP.”

[MacAnDàil]

I don't get it. We've been stuck at home for more than a year, and essentially forbidden to do anything... And people are starting to be bothered about civil liberties now?

In any case, most of the discussion seems a bit moot. We have no way out of the current crisis without mass vaccination anyway!

Many people have been "bothered about civil liberties" the whole time. Some of them stopped worrying so much about lockdowns once it became clear that they were toothless.

It sucks that there were fewer public events in blue states for a year, but some Democratic Party-aligned political elites believe people should be discouraged from having social lives as a matter of public policy (because genpop will have less political agency if they're totally atomized), and blue state policy typically has that as a side effect anyway. But the conscientious blue-state people I know stopped caring around August, and the cops didn't stop them - and it's unlikely that there would've been many events anyway, or that they would've had their usual attendance. People are capable of taking the precautions they feel are appropriate without the cops telling them to do so - unless they're overruled by their employers.

With an international perspective, we can easily realise that it's not just a case of Blue or Red States: lockdowns were in dozens of countries around the world, whether right or left wing. The politicisation of it was not necessarily the same as in the US.

[Travis B.]

I don't think "blue" and "red" are the right designations. A better way to put it is "sane" versus "insane". And if the above (i.e. right-wing tribalistic nonsense) is representative of the average Republican view, God help us.

[Nortaneous]

With an international perspective, we can easily realise that it's not just a case of Blue or Red States: lockdowns were in dozens of countries around the world, whether right or left wing. The politicisation of it was not necessarily the same as in the US.

The politicization of it differed over time in the US. Here's one of those sane guys from the reality-based community in February 2020:

Turn to the coronavirus in this light. The situation is very fluid, but as of now, most people in North America and Europe do not need to worry much about the risk of contracting the disease. That’s true even for people who are traveling to nations such as Italy that have seen outbreaks of the disease.

Still, the disease is new, and it can be fatal. That’s more than enough to trigger probability neglect.

There are two implications. The first is that unless the disease is contained in the near future, it will induce much more fear, and much more in the way of economic and social dislocation, than is warranted by the actual risk. Many people will take precautionary steps (canceling vacations, refusing to fly, avoiding whole nations) even if there is no adequate reason to do that. Those steps can in turn increase economic dislocations, including plummeting stock prices.

The second implication is that the best response to excessive fear is to put the issue of probability on people’s view screens, and to do so directly and explicitly.

Very sane, very normal! Here's the same guy more recently.

Under current law, there is a lot that can be done to discourage and to punish defamatory statements.

All this provides something like a road map for government regulation of misinformation on social media. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which is now under considerable pressure, gives social media platforms broad immunity for what they allow. If it is repealed (and it should be, at least in part) and if public officials decide to regulate falsehoods, they can start by going after false advertising, fraud and libel.

Can they do more? Absolutely.

In the Alvarez case, the court left open the possibility that if a falsehood created serious harms, regulation might be permissible. While the justices did not want a Ministry of Truth, they did not mean to allow those false cries of fire in a crowded theater, either. The hard part is determining what should count as a real-life equivalent of that famous hypothetical lie.

Facebook’s community standards offer a clue. In their current form, they allow Facebook to take down “misinformation and unverifiable rumors that contribute to the risk of imminent violence or physical harm.” Applying that standard, Facebook has done a great deal to restrict misinformation related to Covid-19 — and also to inform people who see false statements about Covid-19, before they were removed, that what they saw was false.

It’s a nice question what kinds of misinformation contribute to the risk of imminent violence or physical harm. We could easily imagine a serious argument that a lot of falsehoods about health or safety fall into that category. And some political claims — making false and hateful charges about people and events — might also be subject to regulation for that reason.

I wonder where people might have gotten "misinformation related to Covid-19" from. Whose idea was it to launch a propaganda campaign about how there was nothing to worry about and people shouldn't take precautionary steps? Oops!

Being a Harvard Law professor means never having to admit you're wrong. And, as per Sunstein's required financial disclosure upon accepting a senior position in Biden's DHS, getting paid $2700 per column from Bloomberg. (Sunstein is also the guy who argued that government policy should discourage people from having social lives, so it's alarming that he's involved with immigration policy. But you'll never see that in the headlines, for reasons that I'm sure are totally unrelated to tribalism.)

[Travis B.]

Umm, first, you are quoting one guy, and second, we did not have a good picture of the extent of the coming COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020...

[Nortaneous]

Umm, first, you are quoting one guy, and second, we did not have a good picture of the extent of the coming COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020...

The official sources didn't. Whether or not "we" did depends on how many of "us" try to find better ones. I know a startup guy who bought P100s for his entire company in February. Maybe we should replace all the lawyers with a random pool of guys who know C?

[Ares Land]

Umm, first, you are quoting one guy, and second, we did not have a good picture of the extent of the coming COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020...

The official sources didn't. Whether or not "we" did depends on how many of "us" try to find better ones. I know a startup guy who bought P100s for his entire company in February. Maybe we should replace all the lawyers with a random pool of guys who know C?

I know that kind of guy too. In addition to masks they also emptied the stores of toilet paper and stockpiled enough canned beans to survive a ten year nuclear winter.

[Nortaneous]

I know that kind of guy too. In addition to masks they also emptied the stores of toilet paper and stockpiled enough canned beans to survive a ten year nuclear winter.

You're misreading the type of guy. P100s and a company order from a restaurant supply wholesaler seems reasonable. I don't know anyone who clicks InfoWars ads for backyard nuclear bunkers or whatever.

(The people around here tend to have the opposite problem - the only thing that can go wrong is a Republican president, which is an apocalyptic event on the level of Marilyn Manson getting elected Pope. The rivers will run red, the locusts will blot out the sun, and minorities will be publicly executed in the streets. That last part already happens, but gay-bashing isn't a problem because crime is fake news and anyone who brings it up is a fascist. Just buy some ill-fitting plaids and a baseball cap lol.)

[Ares Land]

My point is, people who ordered masks were people who overreacted in general. Overreacting isn't ideal for crisis response, eiter. Ordering masks was a smart move, I'll give you that, but even stockpiling a bit of food turned out to be unnecessary, counter-productive even.

Oh, on the masks: It seems every country has their version of the scandal and it invariably sets blame on the local government - but it was a WHO recommendation. (I'm surprised nobody ever blames the WHO. They got a lot of things wrong in last January though!)

On Republican presidents: Trump was kind of scary, still, wasn't he? I don't think people would have reacted so violently to President McCain. But I may be wrong.

[Hallow XIII]

I don't think nobody blames the WHO, it's just not the sort of thing anyone with the power to mainstream things is politically interested in mainstreaming, for fairly obvious reasons.

[MacAnDàil]

(I'm surprised nobody ever blames the WHO. They got a lot of things wrong in last January though!)

I've seen many people exaggeratedly blaming the WHO for being the slaves of governments (like China) or worse. Maybe it's more prominent in Gilet Jaune Facebook groups though.

[Travis B.]

(I'm surprised nobody ever blames the WHO. They got a lot of things wrong in last January though!)

I've seen many people exaggeratedly blaming the WHO for being the slaves of governments (like China) or worse. Maybe it's more prominent in Gilet Jaune Facebook groups though.

I have seen this too - remember how Trump cut funding for them in such a hissy-fit about China?

[rotting bones]

I don't get it. We've been stuck at home for more than a year, and essentially forbidden to do anything... And people are starting to be bothered about civil liberties now?

In any case, most of the discussion seems a bit moot. We have no way out of the current crisis without mass vaccination anyway!

It's true that we're more likely die in a stray asteriod collision than in Nort's doomsday scenarios. He could be plotting to wreck the economy because he thinks Republicans would stand a better chance if that happened.

On the other hand, the Democrats could lose legitimacy if they end up chasing antivaxxers with dart guns. There are too many of them at this point, and they are everywhere. Look at the comments section under this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grv1RJkdyqI

Conspiracy theories are mainstream, but if you tell the truth, you're an enemy of the people. Humanity might be too far gone at this point. After climate change wipes us out, the descendants of naked mole-rats could have a go. If they can evolve intelligence without losing their resistance to oxygen deprivation (and cancer), they might take to space more easily.

If we give up on humanity, instead of having lockdowns, we could create government jobs for vaccinated people running hospitals to treat antivaxxers and building mausoleum-museums where they will be buried as a lesson to future sapients. Each grave will have the name of an antivaxxer already carved in. We could give antivaxxers government-sponsored tours of these facilities. This would create jobs for tour guides.

(I may have read too many of Nort's rants and gotten infected.)