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While I was already a bit aware of it, this whole pandemic thing confirmed several things to me:
- It is so really easy to influence people, especially when using fear and social media.
- I assumed so far that about 50% of people are not smart enough to let them decide by themselves what is good for society. I was wrong, this must be much more, which to me is a terrifying perspective and a big philosophical question about one's liberty vs. society well-being.
- Governing is definitely not easy - I would not have wanted to be in the government's shoes to make decisions in the last four months. In my career and my hometown responsibilities, I had to make decisions that would have consequences on people's life - not whether they would live or die, but whether the company would keep them employed or whether the company must relocate them to other countries, so hard enough to deeply impact their lives. This was hard enough on such a local scale, I cannot imagine how hard it is on the global scale, and for matters or life or death. And it is always a lose/lose situation : I take the example of the lack of masks in France. There were lacking and the government decided to lie about their importance at the beginning of the crisis, so that helpers and priority jobs could get as much as possible. Then media bashed them because they lied, but what other option was possible ? Tell the whole population "Yes, masks are important, but please do not buy them because we need them for medics and nurses" ? That would have cause havoc and a massive rush on any available mask - just remember what happened to toilet paper, which is an item that was not even relevant for anything related to health.
- Relocation in so called low cost countries is not a future-safe option, but this is nothing new. Yet I hope there will be another look about it at my workplace in the future. Of course money talks, and will talk whatever happens or happened, but still..
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One thing that fascinates me is how fast we turn around. When China ("which we call Red China") started closing up the country and express building hospitals, before the pandemic had reached the Western world, we said: "That is possible only in a communist dictatorship where the authorities are in a poisition to control the whole population!" - two to three months later, we did very much of the same thing, and you have to search for extreme cases to point out details that we wouldn't accept: "But in China, they do ...". Yet the main ideas that we a couple months rejected completely were implemented here as well.
How long did it take to go from "By Easter, it wil have died out" to cries about not reacting fast enough to the pandemic?
We have seen a crowd of pandemic apps, intended for tracing the spread of the virus. Some of these (among them the Norwegian variant) trace the location of the users, intending for research on which environments are the most dangerous: Night clubs? Training centers? Shops? ... If this information is used for other purposes, the authorities can trace every one of us, more closely than the horror stories we tell about the East German STASI. Yet, if you in any way question this e.g. in discussion fora, you must be prepared for being a traitor, an enemy of the people, one who wants to kill off the old people by letting the virus spread ... I have seen such responses, and a lot more along the same line, lots of times the last few weeks.
It really is an old thing. The police has played their cards well: More than ten years ago, there was a kidnapping case where the victim's phone was traced by the GSM signals - a lot less precision than GPS, but good enough for the police to follow the kidnappers' car. So in media, they had to "admit" that sure, it takes only a few keystrokes to activate tracing any mobile like this. At this stage, the police were great heros in media, and noone in their right mind would raise any sort of critisism, indicating that they should not have tracked the kidnappers. With a single case, tracking phones as part of a police operation went from STASI-like to full acceptance.
In the next big media case where a young girl had disappeared, the police published their tracking while still searching for her, and requested full access to her entire Facebook profile. FB rejected the request, as the girl might very well show up (unfortunately that was not the case), but the police search for the girl was presented in such a heroic way that lots or people were furious about FB's rejection of the request. So this case opened up for more or less full acceptance for the police's moral right to access anyone's FB profile.
Right now, we have an outcry against the lockdown. To save the nation's economy, the lockdown is being lifted. If that leads to a second wave of spreading - which is a serious fear with pandemic experts - I am curious to see how rapidly, and to which degree, the population will turn around from their outcry of today, to heavy attacks on the authorities for not keeping it under control.
Henrik Ibsen (world famous Norwegian playwright) states in one of his plays that "An average truth lives for about thirty years". I think that is grossly exaggregated. In times like these, the lifetime of "truths" may be down to weeks.
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Member 7989122 wrote: One thing that fascinates me is how fast we turn around
Count me in : I was also in complete disbelief at first. On my defense:
- In the past, most authorities cried wolf[^] and you cannot believe anything coming from China, plenty of examples at my workplace - unbelievable how faking can be a cultural thing.
- I am used to make decisions based on known facts, and starting of March, facts were describing CoViD as a strong flu, and was still rejected by many "authorities" as a real threat.
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Member 7989122 wrote: To save the nation's economy, the lockdown is being lifted. If that leads to a second wave of spreading - which is a serious fear with pandemic experts
Well, of course. The virus isn't going anywhere. If you've been locked up at home, with no exposure to it, the first time you encounter enough virions to cause an infection, you'll have it.
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Rage wrote: one's liberty vs. society well-being
It's that incredible contradiction involved with essentially all freedoms. Ultimately, they have to end where the next person's freedoms begin. A tricky dance.
Freedom of speech - should it allow slander, liable, and incitement to violence?
Freedom of religion - should it allow human sacrifices and child molestation?
Freedom of the press - see 'Freedom of speech' - they're all but identical concepts.
The point, above, is really redundant and the judgement of each action that exercise/limits them clearly depends upon which end of it's exercise you are on: giver or receiver.
And, sadly, people are stupid. You can decide if the percentage is closer to "a few" or "most of them". It ultimately doesn't matter compared to the mischief they can do (or, more timely, be convinced to do). Words similar to ones I posted within the last week: 'people believe the facts so long as they're the ones they want to hear".
In the US, we have what I consider morons (with obvious political leanings based upon their signage) that are protesting the lock-downs or, for that matter, any restrictions at all. Many believe it's all a big fake or not true at all. Totally convinced that if they ignore it it will be no big deal and go away.
I have since, however, seen the same morons throughout the world, each in their language of choice, wanting to do what they want and to hell with their neighbors. Meanwhile, an assortment of hate groups has latched on and are using it to recruit - targeting their particular enemy group as either the cause of the spread or taking advantage of limiting rights to "take over".
So - I agree with your underlying premise - how do you determine what is the best option - which will be criticized, no matter. I'm probably not fit as I would prevent stupid people from getting their way as a matter of principal and hold them accountable. But aren't these stupid people someone else's martyrs?
Solution: dig a hole and hide.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote:
Freedom of speech - should it allow slander, liable, and incitement to violence?
Freedom of religion - should it allow human sacrifices and child molestation?
Freedom of the press - see 'Freedom of speech' - they're all but identical concepts.
In any discussion of "Freedom of", we should consider equally important "Freedom from".
Slander and its relatives has to do with freedom from other people's speech.
Religious opression has to do with with freedom from religion.
Freedom of the press - if you haven't yet read Heinrich Böll: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum[^], it would be a good idea to do so before entering a discussion about freedom of the press.
If you move into the different aspects of freedom of economy, you should definitely ponder freedom from exactly the same aspect.
If you want to take it further: Twist it around the other way! When freedom from oppression is turned aound to freedom of oppression. Freedom from bugging vs. freedom of bugging. And so one.
Always consider who should have the right to exercise their freedom to do something. And who should have the right to freedom from that same something.
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The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Sitting at home isn't the answer, especially not for longer periods of time.
I am appalled at how the Dutch government fines groups of over two people, even in their own homes.
If you were to go to a barber, which was forbidden, you'd get a fine of €400, but the barber gets one of €4000!
To top it off, you get a criminal record.
Is this a free country or what!?
It's beyond all proportions and hurting people in sometimes financially unrecoverable ways.
All we do is "flatten the curve", which may or may not be important (currently, 0.03% of the population died), but what about other factors such as economy and happiness?
A woman who would die soon was locked up in a nursing home because "those are the rules".
She had like a few weeks left to live and she was cut off from her family, WHAT THE F***!?
Her family tried everything and the day after they finally got to see her the woman passed away.
Other people, like mentally ill, are experiencing backlashes that they may not recover from.
This crisis started as one created by a virus, driven by such graphs created by epidemiologists, but I think the crisis is currently driven by fear and rules and the virus is only a small part of it.
Now I'd like to see similar graphs for the economy and the effect of staying at home on businesses and happiness.
In a few months from now we may have beaten the virus, but at what cost?
For many people the cost has already become too big and all they want now is to go back to work and earn some money again.
The problem is that the costs are going to be even higher because we're not there yet.
To quote some movie:
"Did you do it (flatten the curve)?"
"Yes."
"What did it cost?"
"Everything."
That said, I'm still "doing my part" and staying at home to "flatten the curve".
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I think those are really well thought out points, I have been following Chris Martenson on youtube and one of the points he makes is that if we do manage to get the virus under control all the efforts taken to do this will seem extreme.
Meaning that in order to bring a pandemic under control the measures taken, in hindsight, will seem extreme.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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A thought experiment:
I we would simply not care about the covid-19 and just let it roll, and instead took all the trillions of money and invested it in research against cardiovascular disease (approx 1/4 of all deaths) and cancer research (approx 1/6 of all deaths).
How many people would live or die in the long run?
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Interesting, can't say.
I've been told the whole idea isn't to save other's lives though.
It's potentially saving your own.
I don't have cancer and the chance of me getting it is small so we don't need more money for cancer research.
There's a big chance I'll get COVID-19 if we don't do something so something must be done.
If the chances of getting cancer increase there'll be a lot more funding.
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Sander Rossel wrote: If the chances of getting cancer increase there'll be a lot more funding
There are already a lot of more people dying from cancer on a daily basis then there are dying from Covid-19 today, so allow me some doubt.
Sander Rossel wrote: I don't have cancer and the chance of me getting it is small
Is it?
If one out of six dies from it, it might just be a matter of time.
Sander Rossel wrote: I've been told the whole idea isn't to save other's lives though.
It's potentially saving your own
The mortality rate of Covid-19 is somewhere between 0.1 and 1 percent, depending on who you decide to believe.
One out of six people die from cancer, but not everyone gets cancer, do your own math on the mortality rate.
If saving (or rather prolonging) your own life is priority, you should probably place your bet on cancer and cardiovascular disease research.
I seriously don't get the priorities of supposedly logical people.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: There are already a lot of more people dying from cancer on a daily basis then there are dying from Covid-19 today, so allow me some doubt.
Yes, but the chances of me or you getting it right now are very small, whereas the chances of you or me getting COVID-19 are quite high if we did nothing.
Most people who get cancer are old, while everyone gets COVID-19.
Of course the people who actually die from COVID-19 are also old and sickly.
So the perceived threat from COVID-19 is a lot higher.
Jörgen Andersson wrote: If one out of six dies from it, it might just be a matter of time.
But I first have to get it, which will probably take another 40 years.
See my previous point 
Jörgen Andersson wrote: The mortality rate of Covid-19 is somewhere between 0.1 and 1 percent, depending on who you decide to believe.
Almost 13% in the Netherlands (of confirmed cases).
Anyway, again, COVID-19 is an immediate threat while cancer isn't.
See my first point again.
It's the same reason we don't believe in climate change or think it'll be fine.
We have to take immediate action, but we'll only see results in 30 years if we see any result at all (basically we just won't see the devastation from doing nothing, at which point people can say "see, nothing happened!").
The weather gets more extreme every year, the icecaps are melting, animals are getting extinct and we have 75% less insects than 40 years ago, but when you look outside it's just a particularly sunny day and you know that it's still going to be -10C next winter and insects are just bugs and a mosquito is currently bugging you so f*** them.
You can't expect us to consume and pollute without repercussion though, it's crazy.
Jörgen Andersson wrote: I seriously don't get the priorities of supposedly logical people.
Who said we were logical? 
I think personal beliefs and emotions win over logic every time.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Almost 13% in the Netherlands (of confirmed cases).
That's the key.
How many percent of infected people have been tested and confirmed?
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I agree with you on everything you said, I'm just saying things simply don't work like that
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If I came up with a grand new method for transportation of people and goods ...
the only bad thing is that it would kill of a hundred people a day in the USA alone, and severely injury for life at least three times as many ... Do you think I would be met with standing ovation? Well, why not? A hundred Americans a day - that is far below 1% of the total death count in the nation, so let's clap our hands and welcome it. It isn't such a big deal!
40-50 years ago, Norway had approximately the same number of people killed in car traffic per million inhabitants as the USA. Authorities started fighting it - they didn't say "no big deal". So today we have roughly 100 deaths a year. The USA has 60 times as many people; that multiplies up to an expected 6000 traffic deaths a year. The actual count is five times as high, a little over 30,000 a year. Almost a hundred a day.
We managed to save four out of five. We have managed to keep corona deaths at less that one sixth of the US figure, per million inhabitants. Is that just wasted efforts? Should we rather have said: No big deal - let people be killed in car traffic! Let people die from corona! There are other death causes taking more lives; why should we worry at all about any but the top five on the list? If your problem is not on the top five list, we do not care about your life. Stop bothering us, just lay down and die!
I know: I am pulling it to extremes. But that is really what people are doing when they say "So many more people die from (say) cancer, so we should move all our resorce over to cancer research!" That is just a more polite way to tell the corona patients to lay down and die, because we don't care.
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Member 7989122 wrote: But that is really what people are doing when they say "So many more people die from (say) cancer, so we should move all our resorce over to cancer research!" That is just a more polite way to tell the corona patients to lay down and die, because we don't care.
How about putting an equal amount of money per capita on each research?
Who could complain about that?
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To me, that is rule thumping.
With some issues, there may low hanging fruit. An example: Setting up a divider in the middle of the road to prevent front-to-font collisions has had very significant effect on traffic deaths in Norway, and you can get a lot of dividers for a single week of cancer research.
Some research is very expensive, but when it succeeds / is completed, it will have great benefits, while cheaper research may lead to far less benefits. If you can prevent a disease totally, that is much better that something that saves a life, but leaves the patient severely handicapped, requiring full time nursing for the rest of his life.
What is "a research"? Is vaccine development "one research", or is corona vaccine "one research"? Is cancer treatment "one research", or is every project in that area a separate one?
Lots of projects are multi-national: Many countries contribute, many countries benefit from the results, but possibly in very varying degrees. Some results benefit the entire world population, even those countries that did not contribute. How will you calculate how much money a given country, with a given expected benefit, should contribute to the resarch?
If one research project aims to prevent the stop a disease killing 1/million a year, another project to stop a disease killing 1000/million a year, are they entitled to equal amounts of money?
I certainly think resources must be spread out over many different project for many different plagues / dangers. I just don't think that there is a simple, mathematical formula that can be used and which is "fair" to all projects.
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Sweden has more or less handled it the way you are suggesting. Last week there were reports of elderly people waiting for being taken in at nursing homes now was being admitted to fill up the empty beds after those who had died from covid-19. It looks as if they are doing their best to reduce future expenses on senior citizen care.
Some of the reactions I see against the lockdown reminds me of one reader's question that was coined the most clueless question of the year in US media: This was during the cold war, and this one lady had, appearently in dead earnest, asked a question to an article about neutron bombs: "Is there any danger that a neutron bomb will erase all the VCR tapes that I have recorded?"
I am really shocked to see what people seem to be their god given right, come rain or come shine. An example: During Easter, Norwegians flock to their mountain cabins. Today, these are certinly not isolated, small shacks, but rather dense villages, each cabin sitting on a lot maybe twice the size of the cabin itself. And there is a tradition for meeting other cabin dwellers in huge parties with lots of close contact, alcohol and what follows - a perfect spreading ground for the virus (look at the Austrian skiing resorts!).
The problem is that during Easter, the total population grows by a factor of maybe 20-25 times, and the local health services is essnetialy dimensioned for the remaining 51 weeks of the year. If there had been an large outbreak of covid-19, there would have been no realistic way to handle it. Most of the vicitms would have had to manage on their own. So the Norwegian authorities chose to forbid going to your cabin during Easter.
Norwegians simply refused to accept it. Several people (among them one prominent lawyer, well known through media) threatened to report the Norwegian state to the European Court of Human Rights - it is a "Human Right" to go to your mountain cabin for spreading a pandemic virus! Hotels near the cabin villages had their order books filled up by cabin owners who would claim "I am not at my cabin, I am at the hotel". People tried to change their official address of residence to that of their cabin, so that they would not "go to their cabin", but stay at home...
We have a god given right to go to virus sharing events at our mountain cabins. That is not the only case where "human rights" are brought up: A few months ago, I saw someone argue that a fiber connection to the Internet shold be declared a Human Right. Tourists going to see other parts of the world feel personally offended if they arrive at a place where they cannot buy a can of coke. In some countries, you can claim being protected by the constitution if you shoot and kill someone who comes in through your front door - at least you have the constitutional right to carry deadly weapons enable you to do so.
Our "human rights" to go to a mountain cabin at Easter, to buy Coke anyplace in the world and to kill anyone coming in through the front door might seem obvious from or local observation point. In a global perspective, it may appear completely crazy. In a free society you are of course entitled to say "To h*ll with the rest of the world; I demand my rights and will not yield to any concern for others". That is to say "I don't want no society around me. I want to be completely alone, ignoring everything and everybody else". I am sad to hear that.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Sitting at home isn't the answer, especially not for longer periods of time.
Does it strike you that we seriously argue that locking people up, denying them any sort of freedom of movement, is exactly what will cure criminals, make them into better humans?
Why is it so that what is truly beneficial for one group of people (i.e. those who have broken the law) but highly devastating to others (i.e. us)? (If the assumption is correct, of course.)
Could it be that the confinement we experience is not strong enough, it should limit our movement to a single room, maybe without any communication facilities?
Or is it because we haven't committed any crime, that we would indeed benefit from the confinement if we first went out to do some nasty crime?
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I don't think locking people up will cure criminal intents and I also don't believe it's good for them.
It is meant as punishment and hopefully they will feel so severely punished that they won't do it again.
At least it should give them time to think about what they did and why it was wrong.
If anything, locking up criminals should benefit society because at least one criminal can't do any more harm.
On a side note, study showed that getting a girlfriend/wife and kids are far more effective for "curing" criminality than jail.
Also, it's not the same.
A criminal in jail does not have the stress of providing for his family or going to work.
I mean, he may have (for his family at least, his job is surely gone), but he literally and very surely can't.
We still have jobs and houses and families and everything, but we aren't allowed to work and we don't know if our work will still be there in a month.
The consequence could be that we lose all of it, while an inmate has already lost.
Also, criminals aren't necessarily socially isolated while a lot of us currently are.
No, truly eradicating criminality (if such a thing is even possible) could be gained from good education for everyone and eradicating poverty and inequality.
Of course you would keep those criminals who do it for the adrenaline.
Unfortunately, people are inherently unequal in that some are more healthy or beautiful or smarter than others.
We also have varying interests, some could gain you a lot of money (like if your interest was programming) while others only cost you money (like collecting).
Also, crime pays, a street value of a gram of cocaine in the USA was $96 in 2017.
A few grams is a lot of (easy) money!
Also, the chances of getting away with stealing are pretty high if you don't get caught red-handed.
Anyway, my point, your comparison of criminals in jail and "good" people in isolation doesn't seem to hold up.
Neither does your thesis of "locking up people cures them of criminal intent".
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Sander Rossel wrote: Neither does your thesis of "locking up people cures them of criminal intent".
So what did you mean when you wrote:
It is meant as punishment and hopefully they will feel so severely punished that they won't do it again. Are you saying that they still have the criminal intent, yet stopping their criminal acts?
Most statistics show that prison is the best place to learn, in case you want to continue your criminal actions. Especially with young people, throw them in jail for a small crime, and they will come back to jail quite quickly after release, but for a more serious crime. They will climb up the ladder to ever more serious crimes.
Prison essentially serves our demand for retaliaton: We wish to hurt, to injure, to harm the person we throw into the dungeon. Claiming that we do it to keep him away from future crimes is just an excuse to make it look like we are doing a good deed by our hurting, injury and harm.
It seems quite obvious that if we, the population as a whole, had a choice between curing a criminal 100% for his criminal dispositions, with no sort of hurting, injury or harm to serve as retailiation, or to stimulate his criminal inclination but having the joy of retaliation, we would choose the latter. That is in fact what we have been constantly doing in the entire Western world for several centuries. Very few stand up for the other alternative. It is not that we don't want do "cure" him - but you are not seriously suggesting that he shall not be punished, are you?? If he has done something wrong, he must be punished! After we have inflicted pain, injury and harm, he can learn to behave, but we are not going to accept that he is not punished hard first!
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Member 7989122 wrote: Are you saying that they still have the criminal intent, yet stopping their criminal acts?
I do not 
Member 7989122 wrote: Especially with young people, throw them in jail for a small crime, and they will come back to jail quite quickly after release, but for a more serious crime.
Of course, they say you are the average of the five people you hang out with the most.
So as a rebellious youngster you hang out with some bad boys and you still have some good friends or class mates, so you average out as someone who steals a pack of gum.
You get caught and are thrown in jail where pretty much everyone is badder than you and you are forced to hang out with them so now you average out as someone who would steal a car and beat up the owner in the process.
If you're very lucky you get in contact with some dealers and now you can deal drugs with your newly stolen car
I agree with you on every account, but I really don't see how any of this is still COVID-19 related though, unless you're talking about going in simply for being outside during COVID-19 and coming out as a violent gang member
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I guess it helps to understand the origin of imprisonment was as an alternative to corporeal punishment.
In the old times punishment was immediate and corporeal to act as a discouragement and deter people from doing crimes, on the basis that if you got caught you ended up flogged or in the pillory. (or worse)
In those times prisons were only used as storage for rich people that either were in debt or that they tried to get a ransom for.
It was during the enlightenment that the idea of corporeal punishment being inhuman took root. And the idea of an alternative was to give criminals time to consider their crimes in solitude with god would create better citizens.
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That idea has failed to manifest in real life.
Especially today. In the old days of corporal punishment, when you had taken it, you had paid you dues to society, and you were entitled to be treated as a man that had no social debt. I guess there are many cases where is wasn't perfectly so, but in today's society it becomes stronger every year that any sentence will follow you for the rest of your life, no matter how much you have paid for it by years in prison. Your neighbourhood demands to know what you did wrong as a teenager and take their precautions against you. Potential employers demand to know everything about your past. Meetooers want to ruin the rest for your life for 35 years ago having looked at a girl in a way they do not approve of today. An increasing number of criminals receive the maximum sentence that the law allows, but in addition, they are to be kept "in custody" for another number of years "to protect society against them". Formally, it isn't a prison sentence, yet "in custody" means "in a prison cell", and it is unbound: You know when your prison sentence ends, but when the period of custody ends, it may be reconsidered and extended for as long as the court pleases. It isn't a prison sentence, so it isn't limited by the laws. You are just put into a prison cell to protect society against you...
I think this is the ultimate proof that a sentence to prison is no sort of cure whatsoever for criminal inclinations.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Is this a free country or what!?
Of course it is (according to the normal definition of "free"). However, you still have strict rules (as do most countries) that most of us accept as necessary for the benefit of all. For example, there are rules regarding driving on a particular side of the road. They clearly limit the freedom of people who wish to drive on the other side, perhaps simply to get past a long queue that inconveniences them. Not many people would argue that those rules are unreasonable.
My point is that some rules are necessary and acceptable even if they sometimes seem arbitrary and restrictive. There will always be some measure of disagreement about where the line should be drawn between total freedom and necessary restriction. We need to be careful about claiming that some are just wrong because they don't meet our judgement about where the line should be drawn.
Phil
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author, especially if you find them impolite, inaccurate or inflammatory.
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