I think you're like NOS, sections of your soul are starting to rot. Do some art.

Why would you say such a thing? Perhaps your own soul is rotting.

This is incredibly unlikely.

We’ll see about that. The EU's chief scientist just resigned from his position at the head of the European Research Council. So, unless Brussels has no accountability, there will be an audit of its efforts during this time.

It really goes to show that when some institutions are actually put to the test they reveal how effete and powerless they really are. It makes you wonder why people put so much faith in them.

I don’t think the union will survive this. I suspect some more exits.

The EU has bungled its response to coronavirus and it might never fully recover

You'll get the answer at the earliest in the summer and at the latest next year or so. You see, the lock-down option works instantly, but the effectiveness of the herd immunity strategy can be seen only later.

And the media and politicians, don't have any patience.

I’m not sure if that’s the case. Italy has been on lockdown for a month now. We do not yet know what will occur when and if it can relax their lockdown. It doesn’t work instantly, plus the economic and social effects of such draconian actions can not yet be ascertained.

Nice to hear that Sweden is close to your heart on this issue!

It’s more so the approach than the country that interests me.

Or maybe it reacts differently to covid, Dr. Nos4a2.

Maybe it does, Dr. Praxis.

Must be giving wrong dosages. Hydroxychloroquine has been used for years to treat malaria and lupus.

Despite claims to the opposite, the “Swedish model” survives another week, with Swedish doctors and scientists staying course. This week will be crucial.

We could say it's because of the strict social distancing that has occurred in the US

I think they came up with those high numbers with strict social distancing policies already factored in. We’ll just have to say they were wildly inaccurate. The credulity about those numbers and the dogma around their infallibility led to making decisions that should take years to deliberate.

It looks like the head of the European Research Council, the EU’s main science body, has resigned over the coronavirus response. Trouble in the ivory tower.

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/08/world/europe/08reuters-health-coronavirus-eu-scientist.html

But really, with so many deaths in the region, I feel like the EU will see many resignations.

People will see the opposite. Many have suffered the most difficult of suffering and have no less had children, families, grand children, as they have since time immemorial. Life entails risk, certainly, but when I weigh the scales of life vs. no life I see no contest. It’s something or nothing. It’s being or nothing. The world is a scary place, I’ll give you that, but maybe it isn’t the world that has become too hard; maybe it is you who has become too soft.

Of course it’s true that not going outside will reduce the “paths of transmission”. I would argue that you’re not so much reducing a path of transmission as you are storing it for later, but the point is taken.

I’ve been following the case of Sweden intently due to its different approach. The chief epidemiologist, Anders Wallensten said people will eventually ignore stay-at-home orders if they are too stringent, so it's better to adopt measures that can be sustained over a long period of time. Another epidemiologist who earlier criticized the UK’s lockdown approach, Anders Tegnell, said that they are only pushing the problem ahead of them, merely kicking the can down the road so to speak. He also said that mass unemployment and a ruined economy brings with it its own public health problems.

Do you disagree with them?

I’ve volunteered to become a contact tracer and I start training tomorrow. It is something I can do from the home office. I’ll let you guys know what it involves.

Well, right now it's the argument between @NOS4A2 and @NOS4A2 on whether he wants more or less infections. Go figure it out, and then come back and argue for whichever you decide on.

Why won’t you make an argument? I’ve made mine.

I know what I think and I’ve explicitly stated it.

Since you accept we all agree on it, it's irrelevant re the argument at hand. Hence, red herring.

What argument? You asked a question I answered. This is nonsensical.

Red herring. No-one wants any of those things.

I didn’t say anyone did. WTF is this?

I can see these tedious little gotcha games a mile away. I said I don’t know enough to give a reasonable answer, which you suspiciously left out of the quote.

Obviously I don’t want anyone to get infected with Covid-19, a deadly virus. But maybe more infections equals more immunities. Again I do not know enough to give a reasonable answer,

That's a somewhat different point. But leaving it aside. Do you want more or less people to be infected than there are now?

Obviously less, though I think a herd immunity approach has some merit. I simply do not know enough to give a reasonable answer.

But before you try to trap me in a contradiction, realize that I also do not want a global depression and the subsequent poverty and famine. I also do not want my friends and family to be homeless within the year, our social security gone, while passing massive debt onto my children.

I can empathize with that.

I think it’s an important point. The conflation of physical distancing and self-isolation has reached an absurd level. One can easily maintain the advised distance without self-isolation. Isolation may also have significant adverse effects on health.

No, both are true. The statistical likelihood of me coming into contact with someone when I go outside is greater. Does this mean I necessarily come into contact with people when I go outside? No. In fact I maintain the proper distance as prescribed by the experts.

What about you? Do you think one must remain isolated in his house to practice physical distancing?

You just agreed that by going outside, you are statistically more likely to transmit the virus.

No, I agreed that one is more likely to transmit the virus if he comes into contact with people. What I disagree with is the implication that going outside means I’m going to come into contact with people, that I would not maintain an adequate distance.

This is a red herring.

It was a question.

No. Do you think one must remain isolated in his house to practice physical distancing?

Or is there something in the above you can show to be false?

Yes, I can show that I never agreed that hiding in one’s house is helping others. I can show that you made that part up. One can avoid contact with others even outside. It’s called “physical distancing”, meaning you keep a certain amount of distance between you and others. This can be done outside.

You just agreed that it does.

Umm, no I did not. You pretended I did.

Hmm, how do those people get sick in the first place? How do you contain the spread of a virus? Oh yeah, not being in contact with people!

Right, we’ll live apart from others for the rest of our lives. What if it only prolongs the inevitable?

Nope, but apparently others do. Que the guy who goes to a crowded spring break beach, with all the other people going there...

Measures for three but not for me.

It takes stretch of the imagination to say hiding in one’s house is helping others, especially when others are actually out there doing so.

What does this have to do with the argument? That is such a red herring! The argument was civil liberties vs. federal government intervention. Oddly you are making my case by saying how little it as asking people to do.. Most people it means stay at home as much as possible. This is the best and minimal thing you can do as a citizen. Then there is federal aid to hospitals, etc. done in a fair, quick, and smart way. That part requires federal action and money, and the orange clown in office isn't going to get us there.

Asking people to give up their livelihood and the means with which they support themselves and their family isn’t asking a little. It is asking a lot, and with dire consequences.

So first you say quarantining isn't eve a big deal, and now its police-state. Which is it? But anyways, the major point is yes..clearly people do need to be told about this, as can be shown when many people were at bars and restaurants despite the order and some employers circumvented the intent of the law by mandating people come to work, even if they were non-essential and can work from home. It's that simple. You have watched too many reruns of Red Dawn, dude.

I think it’s reasonable to quarantine the sick. I don’t think it is reasonable to quarantine healthy.

So you do need to be forced or otherwise coerced into taking proactive measures to protect yourselves and others?

I don’t think either are false.

If Jefferson had the order right: Life comes before liberty because without a life, there is no liberty to be had. Without civil liberties, there is no pursuit of happiness. But you still need that life there first. How bad does it have to be then, for any intervention? Let's say Ebola was highly contagious and airborne, would it be acceptable then? Also, global economies ultimately depend on a more-or-less healthy population. Without the healthy population, you have an economic collapse anyways as everyone is sick in hospitals- organizations that would have no measure of help in your scenario.

It is a weird utilitarian calculus to try to boost a future economy but not help those who are dying now. Apparently the golden rule idea doesn't apply to government, only crass utilitarian ones that calculate current death with economic depressions. Depressions do indeed hurt people, but usually they don't lead to outright death. Poverty does suck as a close second though, that I'll admit, but it is second.

Again I don’t think it’s that black and white. You are literally not helping others, protecting others, or soothing any suffering by hiding in your house. You are hiding. You have retreated. You have cowered. Those who are helping people are the first line in this pandemic: doctors, nurses, “essential workers”. So let’s stop pretending we are in some way morally better because we hide in our bedrooms.

In my mind the utilitarian calculus is the one that claims to save lives by denying basic civil liberties and human rights while ruining the very means with which we provide for our families. It does not follow that such measures need to be enforced in order to practice them. Do you yourself require a police-state and a ruined economy to physically distance yourself from others, to practice hygiene and to follow common-sense steps to avoid infection?

I completely agree with your sentiment. It is a very fluid and dynamic situation and the lack of data makes predictions difficult.

But I do think we can (and should) criticize approaches that deny citizens their basic civil liberties and throw the global economy to the wind. Sure, that approach may work to stave off a pandemic or to prop up our inadequate healthcare systems, but the unintended consequences of such actions may end up being far worse.

Are you Swedish?

That’s a shame. I think that was the last hope for a less authoritarian, herd immunity approach.

It doesn't seem enough actually, and he's only sparingly done this. I've heard that he is distributing supplies to states based on how much they are sucking up to him. That is practically criminal to say the least. Too much in your opinion, doesn't mean shit when people are dying. If you think liberty is waiting by while people die, than liberty isn't worth it.

And I suppose zero criticism for those who are in charge of, and have jurisdiction over, their own emergency responses.

If you think liberty has anything to do with "waiting by while people die" then you deserve your chains.

However, the federal government officials are elected democratically by the citizens of each state, and thus reflect the direct vote of the interests of the elected. With the federal government able to provide more money by pooling more resources from the various states, and with a crisis that is NATIONWIDE, why would you not invoke the full powers of the federal government? Who cares at what level the money is raised?

Ask the EU how difficult a task that is. They are now balkanizing in contradiction to their open border agreements.

The US is invoking the full powers of the federal government—deploying FEMA, the military, the CDC, the FDA and signing the biggest bailout in history. They are pulling out all the stops, and far too much in my opinion.

Communities are better able to serve their members than some distant authority by sheer proximity alone. The American revolution was founded on such a premise.

Always. And have done. Clearly in many technical aspects the US has done very well, although lots of developed countries are not so far behind. And your observation about the US as a "Federalist" system is astute, but half-baked. Trump inherited a system that was a work-in-progress, but that's all it ever can be, and it was a pretty good one, as the survey attests. But it is blind to the effects of a Trump. Bottom line, Trump has run true to form in that what he touches he corrupts and ruins. The hurricanes that struck Puerto Rico and his responses there precursor and warning.

I’m of the opposite opinion. Because of the federalist system, any blaming of the federal response is misguided at best, political at worst. Since each state and local government are responsible for their emergency response, each local and state government have at least a large share of the blame in how they react to this crisis.

This is why when Trump mentioned that they were considering quarantining New York, Cuomo said it would be a federal declaration of war, and he’s right. New York is out of the jurisdiction of the federal government, and as such, so is its response to the crisis. So if you want to look for people to blame, look no further than state and municipal governments.

Perhaps you should read a little more.

https://www.ghsindex.org/country/united-states/