My question to you?

Well, thanks for going and reading an anarchist text.

Kropotkin also says literally "we want no government", so it is a point worth discussing, just not worth it with someone who hasn't read or even bothered to web searched any anarchists.

However, it's a fairly trivial detail, the word "government" is clearly used interchangeably with "the state" in such passages from anarchists from this period; and it seems to me, in particular Russian anarchists.

The meaning of "government" as is used today in philosophical discussion has become more abstract to refer to basically any collective decision making process whatsoever.

Bakunin clearly states anarchy is about "social organization from the bottom up" not "no organization whatsoever: might is right" as is using the word.

If you cite passages written 150 years ago, you need to check that they are using the word in the same way.

Moreover, Bakunin is writing in Russian, so there must be pause for thought of the impact of translation.

However, in this case, clearly government is not being used as an abstract term for collective decision making, but as an equivalent of "the state".

The fact the book your citing is literally has "statism" in the title, may also be a clue that he is referring to "government" in the form of a "state".

Kropotkin also uses the phrase in English writing (I believe), but whether this is an error on his part, again, clearly interchangeable with "the state", and goes to some length to explain that anarchism is not about people just doing what they want without rules, but collective decision making between equals (decision on things like rules). Kropotkin talks a lot about people holding congresses all the time to decide on this or that; so, with how the word "government" is used in philosophy today, we would say Kropotkin is describing "a form of government" and we might inquire further about it.

Anarchy = no government. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Which anarchist proposes this formula?

The reason to have government is to create a monopoly on power, in order to be able to enforce the laws. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Anarchist organization would also have just as much tendency towards a de facto monopoly of force as any other. What anarchists want to avoid is a central monopoly of power that can simply ignore the wishes of it's constituent members and communities.

Anarchist communities also enforce their laws. The anarchist contention is that the more people do not effectively participate in making those laws, the worse those laws are and the less reason people have for following them, increasing crime; in other words, the incompetence and inefficiency of the state breeds the problem of rampant crime that the state then claims it's necessary to solve.

You can also observe the effects of an anarchical system in the current world order. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Anarchy doesn't want states, so to claim that interactions of states in absence of even more extreme concentration of power is somehow analogous to interactions between individuals is disingenuous at best and simply foolish at worst.

Fair enough. Does it create any other authority/ imperatives then? — Echarmion

Voting creates no imperatives.

As for authority, voting for anarchists does not create authority in the statist sense of people with essentially all the power.

Being a political equal means there is no authority in the sense we usually understand it.

Genuine democracy for anarchists means that a deliberative body never hands over all the power to some small executive team that then run everything.

Certainly anarchist's also need to elect people for specialized tasks, but they retain the ability to recall them at any moment so the authority did not move away from the members in a practical sense. If such a manager "went rogue" anarchists would be organized in such a way as to immediately take their power away in a practical sense of whatever resources this person was using.

The authority remains in the voting itself, and no new authority is created through voting; the people concerned could at any moment do something else.

Things get implemented because the people who vote for it see to it that it gets implemented, which, yes, may require violence. Anarchists maintain that deliberation and decisions between political equals does not give rise to such divisive differences as to lead to many occasions of violence; however, anarchists propose no system that would "force people to not be violent", things can, in principle, get out of hand at any moment (just as with any social system; other social systems merely claim it is otherwise; such as representing an order created and maintained by god, or simply claiming that a institutions with the most force, for now, collaborating are therefore unassailable, and so cannot be undermined and changed or even turned against each other -- that monopoly is absolute and forever and there is no epistemological alternative to submission).

This is why I mention in a previous comment anarchism is easiest in a rural context.

I am more and more puzzled about what anarchism is supposed to be. — Phil Devine

Which anarchists have you read? Maybe we can help with better understanding them.

I would argue that feminism is intrinsically implied in Anarchist principles-seeing as they seek to dissolve all power structures and return power to the autonomous individuals, this necessarily must include women and the sex class system. Emma Goldman, one of the founding writers and thinkers of modern Anarchism-was also one of the most radical feminist thinkers; highlighting that there can be no equality until women are freed from marriage, family, and the obligation to be reproductive chattel. Also it was Goldman (among others) that highlighted systems theory; she recognized that the sex industry, and subsequently the hated prostitute, were resultant of larger systems of oppression and exploitation. — Grre

Yes, I definitely agree with these statements.

Feminism appears complicated but it operates among the same lines as political ideologies, — Grre

Yes, I did not mean to imply the basic political argument is complicated. If people are equally free and exercising their moral autonomy as equal participants in the political process, so too women, clearly.

Rather, what I was referring to as complicated is the history of feminism understood as identity politics, the episodes of being co-opted and subverted wherever possible by the power structure, as you immediately get to, so I think we're on the same page.

Feminism appears complicated but it operates among the same lines as political ideologies, there is conservative (reactive) feminism that seems womens issues as "secretarian" and lesser to larger male/universal issues like war, the draft, ect. ect. First wave feminism got largely co opted by this line of thought. — Grre

I'm not certain I agree, but it's useful to clarify meanings of "feminism", and for my purposes, what it means for a movement to be "co-opted".

For instance, it is not necessarily the case that anyone who actually starts a social movement that gains momentum is themselves co-opted; indeed, this is rarely the case. Rather, what is being co-opted is the representation of the movement in the press and popular culture; these milieu being controlled by elite power structures anyway, it is not surprising that they can be made to say anything at all. It is the popular conception of the movement, usually a dissident view that effectively overcomes suppression and is suddenly a "issue", that slowly or quickly is transformed into something that is no longer disruptive but in fact supportive of the power structure. This process is with or without whoever started things off; indeed, people who "start" things are often unwavering radicals.

So, what makes analyzing identity based political movement complicated,firstly (precisely because it is so easily co-opted) is that the power structure gets pick and choose who to promote as authentically representing that identity; unsurprisingly, they choose to promote people that are not threatening in anyway to the power structure (are useful idiots or are aware of their part in the con).

Were "first wave feminists" co-opted? or were entirely new people branded "feminist" essentially fabricated by the media to represent first wave feminists and replace them in the general consciousness. We cannot assume anything simply because the word "feminism" pops up at different time and is assigned to different things.

A second important consideration is that people "in the movement" at any given time may not really know what it's about in any argumentative sense. Obviously, these are the marks of those doing the co-opting, but they also can create confusions entirely spontaneously all on their own.

Liberal feminism is what is largely exposed mainstream, it acts the same as other Liberal ideologies, attempting to address one-ticket issues that ultimately end up changing very little and obscure the larger systemic causes...examples of this are the whole Trans+ pronoun debate that the regressive right gets so up and arms about (haha theres 80 genders wow omg these libtards!) but Liberal campaigns frame as individual "Free choice" and not the result of some larger deconstuction of gender ideals more radically (which is where the Trans+ movement began, as a fierce critique of the genre binary). — Grre

So yes, in the context of what I wrote above, what I would maybe change is that "Liberal feminism" is what's allowed to broadcast on mainstream television.

Also lets not forget the ultimate co opting of previous (second and third wave) feminists attempts to critique beauty ideals and how those are used culturally to enslave women...Liberal campaigns have co opted this to be "look good for you" and equated (usually harmful) beauty practices with self care, self love, and independence, when really-as radical writers have shown, there can be no independence from the male gaze, you are not wearing makeup for "You" no matter how much you want to believe it. Hence once again Liberal ideology obscures larger systems-perhaps in more damaging ways than in economic or social policy... — Grre

I like to call this "commercial feminism" and it represents the vast majority of intellectual content about feminism most women actually encounter. Indeed, co-opting a social movement to sell something (cigarettes) started with feminism.

However, not only is the exact mechanism of co-opting complicated, both in abstract description and as they play out historically, but simply the presence of co-opting is not enough to conclude things are "counter-productive". The co-opting can be viewed also from the angle of "comes with the territory and is simply part of the battle", that power structures have so much influence on representation of movements (which then affect those movements, producing even more acceptable representations) and that this is a formidable weapon simply means it must be dealt with as best as possible, just as moving production oversees is a formidable weapon against the union movement. So to get into all the details to try to first define what we mean by "feminism" for the purposes of then arguing "feminism has this or that" is a very long task.

What I think is interesting for this thread is the general anarchist view that identity politics has the uncanny tendency of being always a fight for a place within the state; indeed, often identity groups try to emphasize how obedient they are for supporting their case that the state should grant them more comparable conditions of wage slavery as it grants other groups.

Definitely lot's of things worth discussing.

And that’s exactly what distinguishes it from being identical with democracy. Anarchy may sometimes use democratic methods, and when it does it uses direct democratic methods, but you said “direct democracy” was just a modern euphemism for anarchy, when it’s clear even you understand that that is not true. — Pfhorrest

Anarchism is not distinguishable from democracy in the abstract sense of "people power". In this sense, anarchism is simply standard democratic argument with some additional "decision efficiency arguments" as well as some economic argument representing what people may find works best in using their power.

Anarchism criticizes "representational democracy" as too easily a form of not-democracy: controlled by the rich resulting in what amounts to an aristocracy that merely calls itself a democracy.

However, anarchists do not view the basic principles of democracy, for instance that would be typically advanced to justify the US constitution, as erroneous, but rather the criticism is that those principles are not realized in practice and are not elaborated to a reasonable conclusion.

But if voting does not result in authority, then it's not collective decision making, either. — Echarmion

I used the term "moral authority", because I was talking about moral authority.

The outcome of a voting process does not create new moral imperatives.

If any actual compliance to the outcome of the vote is incidental rather than based on the actual voting process, one might as well dispense with the voting and just have a discussion. — Echarmion

Therefore, this does not follow from what I have wrote.

Again, such an issue of importance (in this case, recognizing the legitimacy, state or otherwise of homosexual relationships and ensuing social acceptance and normalization), is hailed as a "single-ticket" issue-which seems good and progressive, but really collaborates with larger systems of power-hence going unseen and ensuring the status quo (meaning nothing too radical) goes on. That is, bluntly speaking, the MO of most neo-liberal/centerists politics, bureaucratic acquiescence to soft issues. — Grre

Yes, I agree. I mentioned the "what does it look like when this doesn't happen" example of MLK to contrast with examples where these issues are clearly worked to maintain the status quo: create outrage about homosexual issues, abandon worker issues, fleece the workers and trade way protection of the black community franchise to "be tough on crime" to attract republican voters, declare victory. However, it gets messy when trying to disentangle the good-faith actors concerned about a legitimate single issue and the power structure that co-opts them; generally, they do not have the analytical capacity to understand what is going on, so can hardly be blamed for being used, though there are notable exceptions.

I'll try to collect my thoughts on what these identity politics things mean from an anarchist perspective. Feminism is definitely the most complicated.

Ok, we agree this is an ahistorical thought experiment.

If 51% of those people, all of them white, could decide that nonwhites should all be slaves again, then that is not anarchy. — Pfhorrest

I've already dealt with this issue if you read my comments.

But to put it another way, how would you stop 51% of people voting on something, in this case who's going to be slaves, in an anarchist way? What would be an "anarchist structure of power" that prevents this happening, that is not the elite state power anarchists are all about not wanting?

While you think about that, the anarchist view of 51% of people voting for something terrible is that anarchists (presumably on the side of "let's not have slaves") failed to convince enough people, the people failed to be moral, and that terrible thing must be resisted (such as Nazi Germany, even assuming 51% really did vote for Hitler).

Now, if we had a democratic system that is "anarchist approved", if 51% of people voted for something terrible, then the anarchists communities who didn't want that would not participate in it's implementation, they may even feel compelled to go and liberate slaves in the communities implementing such a policy.

People voting for stupid, even evil, things is not a theoretical problem for anarchists, as anarchists do not view voting in itself as the political ideal and feel the need to defend what a majority decides on any given occasion. Doesn't mean there's a better way to avoid violence that doesn't include voting, doesn't mean voting needs to be re-thought in a non-majoritarian way, nor does it mean voting is guaranteed to prevent violence on every occasion.

In other words, "voting" in anarchism is a tool of collective decision making, but not the only tool (one must have some moral system to decide what to vote on in the first place) and neither do votes create moral authority; people who vote maintain as much moral agency before and after voting, and they may or may not feel like continuing to participate in the organization they've been voting in if they disagree with a given decision (a majority being mistaken, in the anarchists view, maybe morally tolerable or intolerable, depends). Anarchists do not view it as a moral duty to carry out the wishes of the majority, depends what those wishes are, but they don't have a better way of collective decision making (such as a politburo or unaccountable supreme court "making sure people don't go out of bounds").

Anarchists believe they have better ways to organize society on many other dimensions, economic and political, but these do not substitute for voting as such; rather, they make voting better and more effective.

Anarchists who decide collaboration with the majority is no longer morally tolerable, would still try to organize to decide what to do about it, and need to vote on, for instance, if assassinating someone is going to help and who to assassinate and how (and depending on when and where we're talking about, people will react to this "keeping things open" with "ahh, dangerous idiots!" or then "yes, yes, would be great if someone killed Hitler"); and, again, if an anarchist finds the majority of anarchists in this meeting's decision to not assassinate someone morally intolerable, they may reject this majority decision as well and go and make their own meeting with people who do agree.

This is why statists equate anarchism with chaos -- at no point do anarchists give up their moral autonomy and accept to serve the will of another person group, no matter how large, without being convinced its a good idea at every step; there is no theoretical clockwork mechanism of social stability and keeping still that statists crave. Statists will say "look, a majority of people have, at the least, acquiesced to state power, and so those anarchists are against democracy!" to which the anarchist's response (which is never allowed to be heard) is "well, first of all, just voting on something doesn't entail I should abandon my world view -- why would I? -- and second, acquiescence is not equal participation so the results are highly suspect.

Yes, we agree we agree on the terminology.

People can definitely call themselves "right wing anarchists", but it simply leads to confusion to talk about people who do not call themselves anarchists, such US libertarians, as if they are a form of anarchism, whether viewed historically or theoretically.

I have nothing against it, we can also discuss right-wing "anarcho-capitalists", but it wasn't clear if you wanted to got that way or refer to US libertarians.

In the end, anarchists and socialists want the same thing, the disappearance of the state, at least it is not unreasonable to make that suggestion. Socialists also want substantive economic equality, not just equality of economic opportunity, and see that as a necessary condition for human freedom, and human freedom is the final goal. So let me start with this question: Do anarchists care about economic equality in that way, or do they see it as a peripheral issue? I'm genuinely curious, by the way, I'm not just looking for a fight — jkg20

I would tend to agree with the broad statement that anarchists and socialists want the same thing.

The major difference, both theoretically and in practice, is in relation to the state. Anarchists want to avoid all collaboration with the state, always be in a position of either resistance, subversion or then indifference but never collaboration. Anarchists do not trust the state, even if it looks ok for the time being under consideration, nor would they ever trust another anarchist to run the state.

I use the term "central managerial process" above as to avoid the term "central authority". If you don't have a central authority, it's no longer clear what property means.

Within this context, most of what we easily ascent to as property cannot exist without state power to back it up. If we are talking about these forms of power and what it defines as belonging to who (large proprietary tracks of land the community is excluded from and the owner can permanently degrade so as to reinvest in the next exploitative venture or then large corporations that run the state with other elites such as their shareholders) then economic equality is in a theoretical sense a peripheral issue to the structure of power issue that then creates its own idea of property.

This is where libertarians usually simply don't get what anarchists are talking about. If we view property as some sort of fundamental physical attribute to objects, or then vaguely understand the social nature of property but only consider the status quo of what property means today, and furthermore view all political points of view as built up through a relations to this concept of property, then different movements on the left can be rendered intelligible from this point of view as wanting some differing degree or type of "economic equality".

So, that is one way to take the question: deconstructing what "economic equality" even means.

However, taken as an issue of difference between "leftists" generally construed, then there is a lot of variation of opinion. For instance, a mainstream social democrat in Europe may simply not think much about the issue, just be concerned about fixing "unfairness" when they see it in a pragmatic way, but also be willing to permit themselves to radically curtail property rights whenever it seems necessary but while somehow denying they hold that theoretical power to redefine what property means even while they are doing it. Anarchists seeing these sorts of things (environmental laws, limitations of money in politics, progressive taxes etc.) they are smiling from the window.

Where there is more well-informed debate, I would say the key dividing issue on the left is not in economic theory but rather the very practical issue of ruralism vs urbanism. The same principles in abstract agreement can lead to very different conception of society if you believe people should primarily live in a rural or urban setting. Anarchists are generally ruralists; sometimes an anarchist will become an urbanist, concluding that ruralism is an impossible dream, but then they usually have trouble squaring that with what anarchists usually want. However, the rural vs urban debate goes well beyond discussions of political organization in the abstract.

51% of people, all of them white, deciding that nonwhites may be enslaved, isn’t anarchic. That’s just tyranny of the majority. — Pfhorrest

Do the nonwhites get to vote in your example? Did African nations where the slaves are captured get to vote?

But, assuming we agree it's a-historical "what if" game, whatever scenario you're trying to construct, the problem is not solved for anarchists by some super-governing structure that can't be voted on at all. Yes, the majority of people can be wrong from the anarchists point of view, indeed so wrong that collaboration is no longer possible even. Anarchists don't have a problem with violent resistance movements to Nazi Germany, even if we assume 51% of German's and 51% of French approved of Hitler.

Lot's can be said from an anarchist point of view on democratic processes, but I know of know anarchist writer or movement that is against democratic ways of people making decisions (other than "right wing anarchists" who insist on calling themselves anarchists -- which, to be clear, they are free to do and I have no problem with that -- but who do not engage with anything that can be remotely called the anarchist school of thought). For most, perhaps all, "left" anarchists, the risk of centralized managerial structures is mitigated by local organization, not an even more centralized and non-democratically accountable power structure such as a supreme court or central bank.

especially "right wing" minimal state anarchists of the kind well represented by Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia, since economic equality is something that has to be ensured. — jkg20

It's best to just call these "right wing" anarchists libertarians, if that's your implication, as that's what they call themselves.

Someone simply writing a book with "Anarchy" in the title, having essentially nothing to do with with previous anarchist literature and no association or commentary on anarchist movements, and core ideas of which was immediately labeled something else, is not a good representation of historical anarchism. Not sure if your intention is to place "Anarchy, State and Utopia" in the anarchist tradition, or whether you would agree with the above.

In any case, it's interesting to point out the difference between "left wing" anarchists and US libertarians, whether you want to call them "right wing anarchists" or just US libertarians (the think tanks that created and keep this movement going generally avoid the term anarchism, or "ancho-capitalists" to avoid needing to bring up the subject of anarchism).

The key difference, is indeed that left anarchists do not view "political freedom" as distinct from "economic freedom". I completely agree.

The reasoning is of course the critical part. Insofar as economic freedom is maintained by institutions, backed by force, then it is simply a political issue. One can make a moral argument that certain social creations of property should be made and certain freedoms allowed within them, but this is not an argument that such a process is somehow apolitical, pre-political or has a sensical moral meaning outside a political process. If one has an argument justifying something is "really" someone's property but no argument that a political process should conclude the same, then for left anarchists it's simply a non-sensical opinion of property and, critically, even more non-sensical that the political process in question should nevertheless agree that such a notion of property is paramount despite not having any reason for doing so (i.e. yes, the majority has no reason to accept billionaires, lobbyist and astro-turf movements billions finance, and indeed society has every reason to dismantle such a power structure based on property deeds maintained by society, and ... therefore, society should never be allowed to deliberate on such an issue precisely because the majority may make the wrong decision, because despite it being a general harm to society it is a fundamental right to be able to collect such property deeds and insist society go to whatever lengths necessary to protect them, even risking its own destruction).

The uniting theme of libertarians is a fear of submitting definitions of property to an equal political process. Therefore, there must be political structures that the majority cannot change that guarantee property rights. For most anarchists, it's simply centralized statist elite aristocratic rule, with extra fuzzy sounding steps.

However, this is a distinct issue from "maintaining economic equality" in absolute terms. Anarchists are against being able to amass so much property as to be able to corrupt the political system and simply found a new aristocratic one (property being used to subvert political processes), but anarchists are not against property, and differences in property, as such (property is a result of political discourse and cooperation, not an a priori to it).

And direct democracy in the usual sense is normally functionally majoritarian. — Pfhorrest

Yes, anarchists usually like this sort of direct democratic participation; which is majoritarian.

If 51% of the electorate directly approve of something then it’s law, fuck the other 49% if they disagree and can’t persuade 2% more to change their minds. Anarchy isn’t “direct democracy” like that. — Pfhorrest

I don't know where you're trying to go.

Anarchists like democracy, votes happen in a democracy.

Anarchists do not end their political analysis with simply "majority decides", but that does not mean they are in disagreement with the principle of majority based decisions.

For instance, anarchists do not equate "voting" with "equal political participation". One definitely would be able to vote on an issue as an equal, and voting means that "the majority wins" the vote; that's simply what voting is and anarchists do not have some totally different way of making decisions in a group. However, anarchists do not view simply the presence of voting as a strong indication of equal political participation (equal agency to form society), as I've explained (they are against pointing to votes and saying "see, democracy, nothing more to discuss" but they are not against votes nor democracy).

As for voting itself, assuming it's a genuine system that empowers people "equally enough" to be preferred by anarchists over less empowering systems, then, yes, sometimes mistakes are made and hopefully society learns and reverses those mistakes through voting the other way. However, essentially no anarchist believes in a "super structure" of government that cannot be voted on or about that guarantees certain undiscussable conditions (such as deed rights to landed property).

Anarchists also don't believe that simply being able to vote (for now) about who manages a powerful centralized state is a stable situation likely to continue for long. Anarchists want to see local political units able to spontaneously organize outside of a central managerial structure (previously agreed about) to simply dismantle and replace such a structure if it went rogue (a variation on "state rights" but not racists nor stupidly appealing to constitutional originalism at the same time).

That’s exactly what I mean by “not majoritarian”: just being the majority vote doesn’t make it right. — Pfhorrest

Agree, but that's not what almost anyone in political theory means by majoritarian. It goes without saying that the majority is not intrinsically morally right (leading the absurdity that they would be unable to know which vote was right before the cast it and saw the results); I know of no prominent philosopher or political theorist that has made such a claim, and certainly no prominent anarchist. The confusion around majoritarian rule is "what kind"; anarchists do not believe in "consent of the governed" but rather "governing by the governed", but both can be described as majoritarian rule, so the issue is not on that point of agreement (which to be clear, no American constitutionalist or whatever brand of status-quo'is is even in this little club of agreeing about majoritarian rule, just disagreeing about what is genuine, as the "losing side" in term of votes "winning" is not majoritarian rule, and yet happens in the US system; "losing the popular vote" just means "not democracy"; not to say you agree with the US system, just pointing out that if one group identified their system as "freedom and democracy" they may not understand the analysis of another group that does not make such an identification, and they can be very confused if they don't bother to understand the alternative point of view).

Socialists/communists largely believe in a collective organization-which is where the misconception that 'slavery under communism' comes from-ie. its totalitarian history-that people have no choice but participate and sacrifice themselves to this 'collective' — Grre

Only some communists were statists; there's an interesting history of anarchists first cooperating and then breaking with communists, but then some parts of the communist movement breaking with revolutionary theory and going towards anarchism.

Communists (mostly historical as there's not really any contemporary) were mostly social-democratic. The reason communist vanguardists who wanted to capture a state and run their experiments needed to do so in Russia, is because their ideas simply didn't get much attention in central Europe: trade unionism and democratization clearly made more sense, attracted more supporters and got results without crazy risks (creating ultimately the welfare states rather than the dystopian Soviet Union failed experiment that killed millions).

The more fundamental disagreement with historical communists is the view of industrialization as a good thing and the idea capitalism creates wealth that then communism can come later and takeover and redirect. Anarchists were deeply skeptical if not diametrically opposed to industrialization. Again forerunners of a hip idea: decentralized production.

However, most of the time in most places, communists and anarchists would be willing to agree to settle these theoretical differences through democratic process, and both were allied against fascists.

but its difference from the rest of what we would consider the Left (although some, like myself, see political theory not as linear so much as multidimensiona — Grre

The main thing that has stayed true in anarchism is a deep mistrust of schemes that seem to carry the clear risk of "being a useful fool".

Obviously, Stalin wasn't a communist in any recognizable sense of the communist theory of the time (and other leaders of the Russian revolution), but communists were useful fools for Stalin. Anarchists (correctly in my view) both at the time and since recognized that coercive state power can not be used for good (for instance to then "force" people to be good collectivist farmers or "force them to learn the truth").

However, anarchists view this fundamental learning required for genuine change as a long process, so at at given point in time things are multidimensional as you say. Anarchists can be all over the place doing what they see is clearly a good thing on a small scale, without bringing much attention to the word "anarchism". Theory is a tool for local actions, rather than a template for a new state. Acting locally requires cooperating with people at their current understanding of politics, but who want to go in a better direction; if an anarchist believes in equality, then an anarchist doesn't believe in insisting people accept they know the truth and should therefore make all the decisions.

All to say, that a nuanced multidimensional view of politics at any given time is not incompatible with:

Anarchists wish to return power to each individual as an autonomous agent. — Grre

Where we completely agree on what the foundation of anarchism is.

The Liberal/NeoLiberal (which is far from Left, more like middling centre) focuses on these one-issue campaigns (ie. abortion rights, gay marriage ect.) which, maybe slightly progressive in comparison to the more centre-rights (Republicans, Conservatives) ect. are pretty much ineffective in addressing the whole system, and in fact, some thinkers have argued that placing emphasis on these identity politic issues obscures the system even more so, a prime example is with regards to environmental movements. Sure, everyone should recycle, but placing the onus on a small minority of individual obscures the much larger systemic issue of an economic system based on consumerism, and the giant corporations that create tonnes more waste than one individual ever could in their lifetime. — Grre

This is definitely a good summary of most anarchists issue with single-issue left movement.

However, one this to add is that these movement are ineffective not because attaining those issues aren't worthwhile things, but if and when they collaborate with the dominant structure of power. As a counter-example to contemporary examples that have clearly contributed to giving us Trump vs Biden, desegregation was a single-issue leftist movement. Obviously it was good to desegregate. However, MLK clearly understood that desegregation simply to be poor didn't accomplish all that much, and also understood that the structure of poverty regardless of race was as important as the blight of slavery and segregation. MLK was assassinated before really getting into this second phase; the system praises his work on desegregation every year (insofar as it's presented in a way that doesn't challenge the power structure), but mentioning his thoughts on poverty makes one a dangerous pariah (an interesting example of long term double think the system can support).

Not so. Anarchism is not majoritarian. — Pfhorrest

Yes it is.

No anarchist writer has a belief that governing decisions could be based on minority votes. It makes no sense on the surface, nor at any other level.

Speaking on behalf of nearly every writer on anarchism that has read other writers discussing anarchism:

Where anarchists disagree with "majorities" is when the process is not equal to begin with; that majority does not equal democracy, other conditions are required to participate in a decision process as an equal.

For instance, an anarchist does not view the US system as genuinely democratic; however, the fact a minority of votes can elect the president is not one good point about the US system among many bad points, it's an even more absurd and terrible thing about it.

Likewise, anarchists do not believe that even when votes are genuinely majoritarian that they are somehow inherently moral; there's nothing upon which to decide if whatever the outcome is is correct. The majority can be wrong, hence the focus on education and knowledge as the primary force of liberation.

Anarchists are also deeply suspect of majority elected managers who are then not practically accountable and can easily corrupt the entire system of voting that is claimed to make them accountable from time to time (gerrymandering to straight vote rigging). Anarchists do not like first-past-the-post representational systems, precisely because they are only majoritarian in a plausible deniability way; anarchists prefer proportional representation where better representation, and more discussion and learning take place; but this too can be improved upon.

Anarchists believe strongly that political participation is best when done most, and this goes well beyond voting. That everyone is "co-creating", to translate an anarchist idea into woke corporate terminology, the political structure, not subservient to it. This is a radical change to what government would mean in practice to most people; almost so different as to be not recognizable as government, but to say this is no government or some sort of magical non-elite and non-majoritarian organization without any sensical way to make decisions as a society, is well off the mark.

Point being, none of these issues give rise to a belief that a good governing structure would be one that the majority of people would or could disagree with and that this good government therefore must have the power to continue to govern anyway (in a text-book definition of elite statist oppression that would lead anarchists directly to an obvious and silly contradiction with their most basic pretensions).

Thanks for self identifying as a high school student, as it's completely excusable to not know much about a philosophy that is essentially censored.

Anarchism is not about getting rid of all governing structures, it is about self governance without a privileged class, by birth, wealthy or aristocracy. "Direct democracy" is a modern euphemism for anarchism.

The word anarchism is simply a literal juxtaposition to hierarchy. Our modern conception of government and most social organization, such as in a business and most religions, is hierarchical, with superiors and inferiors; however, getting rid of this hierarchy does not mean getting rid of government nor the specialized management where needed. The foundation of an anarchist society would be equal political participation in forming decisions, the concept and goals of society, and participating in and choosing managerial specializations when necessary. This is in opposition to modern "market democracies" where democratic participation is mostly through token measures; it's not conceptually excluded that any given individual can participate in democracy as an "equal" by becoming rich and hiring lobbyists, keeping a coop of propagandists, and funding super pacs; so people are equal in this deboched and ludicrous sense in the imagination of said propagandists who create material for super-pacs (lobbyist and super-pac consultants do not generally believe this notion, but are simply sell their skills to the highest bidder out of contempt for the poor, who they generally view as human trash, if they bother to think of them at all), but such a system is not equal in any real sense for the vast majority who are not rich.

Anarchism is mostly associated with chaos due to the propagation of a false dichotomy by the above mentioned propagandists that government simply cannot function without the hierarchy and the subordination of the lazy poor to a system that forces them to work, and therefore, by whatever means are expedient, must be prevented from having any real say in the decisions of society. If the poor can be made to actually want their own subordination and truly love their rich overloads, so much the better; but whether a king is better loved or feared by the people is ageless debate the upper classes have between themselves.

A small, later groups of anarchists started blowing stuff up. In some cases it accelerated the right to vote (women who blew stuff up to vote saw the right to vote for women in their life time) ... in other cases it regressed democratization and ultimately contributed to a communist overthrow of the government and much more oppression than before as well as mass starvation and forced creation of hierarchical forms of farming that didn't even exist before. Anarchist union education and leading helped bring workers rights such as 40 hour work week (which we view as a lot of time today, but is not very close at all to how long someone can work in a week if they don't have a choice), safety laws, child labour laws and the entire concept of the welfare state as practiced in Europe to larger or lesser degrees, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New-Zealand, and Canada (so, most importantly free and equally funded education at all levels, or highly subsidized, and free health-care, which is the foundation for equal participation in democracy). The welfare states are the embodiment of this anarchist transitional idea of "the state fading away" (wealth does not buy much influence, managerial positions are help to account by both transparency and democratic processes), ultimately due to real education (and the welfare state was originally conceived of mostly by social democratic anarchists and communists). The foundational theory of this view of society is that once enough people understand an idea is simply true, they simply don't accept a government in contradiction to that idea very long; exactly how the government catches up to what people believe, or how people go about making their government change, does not really need to be attended to in a mechanical way, it just happens.

Great! I see Grre wrote an informative post with complimentary information to the above as various nuances of anarchist theory and direction and the main authors.

General point being, anarchists to not believe some experiment should be run where there is no rules of government, but believe in getting rid of structures of oppression.

Anarchists disagree with other "leftist" movements in terms of what exactly is oppressive (obviously slavery is oppressive and every kind of "left" world view would agree, but under what conditions and to what extent market forces are oppressive or then would lead to oppressive structures re-emerging would be a point of disagreement) and, assuming agreement on what's oppressive, how best to change those oppressive structures (anarchists generally don't like identity politics where token or ornamental things are fought fiercely over but don't change oppressive structures much, and so end up being mostly a distraction and a sort of trap because such movements are allowed to flourish precisely because they don't threaten the powerful in any meaningful way, indeed the powerful can play at "fighting the oppressor" in these movements; other leftists that agree with identity politics sometimes have a "one-battle-at-a-time" world view, though often don't really have any theoretical idea of politics precisely because such a theory must be excised from the movement to be able to appear in mainstream news and thus "win"). Anarchists disagree with the right (obviously starting on the point of slavery, vis-a-vis the extreme right) not in "how to achieve the goal" ways, but on the fundamental issue of both hierarchy (many "right" movements want submission to authority, be it the church, the boss or a "strong political leader") as well as what would happen without hierarchy ("right" economics is usually based on the idea that poor people are simply lazy and need to be coerced to work one way or another, whereas anarchists view this characteristic of the working class, especially the poor working class, as an expression of the understanding-by-living that they do not really benefit from their work, they do not participate in forming the vision society they are contributing to, precisely due to these coercive structures they're trapped in they have no time for real political discussion, participation and agency; hence, they always seek to be free from these oppressive structure, which logically expresses in a first step of wishing not to work hard and longing for little under an abusive boss and doing so whenever they can -- sometimes constructively, like starting a pottery business, and sometimes destructively, like cooking meth in a trailer; the emotional element to anarchism is not blame the oppressed for self-destructive reactions to oppression, but rather to have a general compassion for these behaviours as chronic psychological oppression injury little different than the black lung, and to blame the oppressors, and the wealthier professional classes that act as a sort of side kick and have the access to information to know better, for maintaining such structures).

I wasn't sure how we are to compute the importance of human life versus making money. Maybe it's just we hate the coronavirus so much we want to kill it regardless of the cost. — Hanover

There are several issues.

The first is that Covonavirus, although doesn't kill enough people to be an existential threat, does kill enough people to overwhelm medical systems. Wealthy countries simply can't function without a medical system; and, keep in mind, medical systems and global medical supplies are stretching resources to limits even in this situation of massive lock-downs all over the world. Without the lock-downs it would rapidly progress to total medical system collapse. The vast majority of people do not view that as acceptable, to just not have a medical system; the people protesting rely on baseless ideas that the disease is made-up, "not so bad" or simply don't understand that "freedom" from the lock-downs would mean rapidly medical system collapse. In medical system collapse, deaths from Coronavirus would be much higher as treatment quality plummets, and deaths would be much higher from people needing any other medical care, as treatment quality plummets.

There's not really any controversy that this unmitigated scenario is somehow acceptable in any analysis.

Second issue is, assuming the virus is brought under control and the medical system can deal acceptably with not only coronavirus cases but other medical issues in society, then is "easing the lockdowns" reasonable. There's not much controversy on this topic either. The central issue is "is it true coronavirus is under control?" and "what easing measures would keep it under control?".

For instance, Sweden considers they have things "under control" and pursued an "eased social distancing" policy from the beginning. Mostly the issue is whether this will work or not. There's little debate about whether it's reasonable assuming it will work.

However, there's is some room to debate. Although few, maybe no one, criticizing Sweden's approach is advocating society be shut down indefinitely to avoid most deaths (even assuming that wasn't counter-productive, which it obviously is), the assumptions that lead to a different conclusion are the possibility a cure is found relatively soon, so in that case people were maybe dead that could have been cured (there's some merit to this argument, but depends heavily on "likelihood of a super cure" soon, which I would bet against, but could easily be proven wrong -- the mobilization of resources to find a cure is pretty high, so difficult to dismiss).

The third issue is more specific the US. Countries like Sweden have few car accident deaths, and people have the choice to not drive and use public transportation that has even lower death rates.

Whereas, in the US there are lot's of policies that increase deaths so that some corporations can make more money (such as having no effective public transportation, no cautionary principle to chemicals, anti union laws, few worker protections etc.), so coronavirus is revealing the hypocrisy of politicians and institutions that normally don't care about people's lives, but are forced to in this situation due to the first point above. Countries that don't have such a hypocritical political and bureaucratic class don't encounter these analytical problems: they've already done a lot of work reducing car accident deaths (I believe Sweden achieved their goal of 0 child car deaths a year recently) and no one's really forced to drive anyways: in other words, these countries don't already have plenty of "money in exchange for some lives" policies so coronavirus does not reveal a inconsistent governing ideology of the ruling class, where "suddenly they care about poor people".

I will give your thoughts more thought as I only see large numbers of vague(in the sense of being unknown this early in the pandemic) and wide ranging thoughts across all the factors involved in this crisis. — Punshhh

The numbers unknown in the sense we don't know exactly what they are, but they aren't unknown or vague from the point of view of my argument.

1. We know there's some new phenomenon that's killing people, clearly above the level of noise in the medical system.

2. The phenomenon has been reproduced all over the world with the same effects of lock-downs once a certain point is reached.

3. We know doctors have not found a good predictor of outcome (and we know they are highly motivated to do so, and such good predictors, if based on health history, become obvious with enough data; if not based on health history, but for instance random otherwise benign genetic variation, then it's not "unhealthiness" that is that good predictor).

4. We know actuary tables of risk-of-death groups are well motivated (actuary and medical science conclude based on statistics and an understanding of "how life works" there is not hidden groups that are not known to be very likely to die within a year, but will actually die within a year due to causes that existed at the start of the year).

You can conclude there is not going be a large amount of overlap with "people who would otherwise die this year" and people who die of the phenomenon, based on these pieces of knowledge; you do not even need to postulate Covid is causing these deaths.

The statistical situation can be the same as a war; sure, "unhealthy soldiers" and "unhealthy civilians" are a bit more likely to die than the faster and stronger ones, but no war has been close to balanced out with an overlap of "those people who otherwise die anyways within one year". No general says "this battle will be deadly, but we need to consider the idea all the dead would have died within one year and therefore we will not need to recruit more to replenish these fallen". It's so incredibly unlikely as not worth consideration. In the case of a disease, it's of course potentially true it only kills the terminally ill, but we know that is not true in the current pandemic.

I'm not sure if this helps, but these are the key concepts.

I would also like to note, that in applied mathematics (where I work) the main job of the applied mathematics person is to carry out these sorts of reasoning to avoid doing long and difficult calculations in the first place. If everything needs to be justified by exhaustive research and nuanced model building using the largest computers available, nothing would ever get done.

We simply don't need a model to tell us Covid deaths are not displacing near-future deaths. We do need a model to inform us what sorts of damage we're talking about in unmitigated spread as well as what policy actions to avoid unmitigated spread are likely to work (and how well). It's these latter question Prof Ferguson built a model to try to answer, not the overlap question (paper available here: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand).

Also I am inclined to return to the political and socio economic developments of the crisis, which is more my area. — Punshhh

Yes, I am too interested in these questions.

Looking at a demographics chart can be really useful to get a sense of what's going on:



Yes, 80-90 year old's have a higher likelihood of dying of Covid (if they get Covid), but they are a small group. They are also not only a small group, but most not "going to die within 1 year" (an even smaller group within the +80 group). They mostly have 10-20% chance of death this year.

Further ordering by risk -- you can visualize as taking very sick people out of younger cohorts and placing them with people in the +80 cohort -- doesn't significantly alter the picture, no where close enough people would be moving around cohorts to turn this sort by age into sort by risk, to arrive at "people who would die of Covid" and "people who would die in 2020" overlapping significantly (more than a numerically small amount), unless Covid was a disease of the terminally ill (which we would know by now; such diseases simply cannot bring medical systems to their knees, they can clear out hospitals of critical patients, which is unfortunate, but the outbreak then ends).

Regarding group 2 your wall of text suggests to me that you disagree with my 60% of those infected? Where would you estimate the figure? Or do you think it can't be estimated for the reasons you give? — Punshhh

Yes, I realized I didn't directly answer your question after posting, but have already fixed that:

The basic pattern is Covid doubles your risk of death this year. Most people who have a risk of death "within 10 years" don't have 30% risk of death this year and therefore 60% risk of death with Covid this year (which is still not 60% chance of death from Covid). If a person of high risk of death with in 10 years has 5% risk of death this year, then their risk of death of Covid seems to be also 5% (therefore 10% within the year). — boethius

(The wall of text has all the critical elements to understand the statistical situation. Statistical reasoning is hard precisely because there are usually no short answers for any real world situation.)

So it looks like you're saying that not many in group 1 die in 2020 because only a small amount of them will become infected? — Punshhh

Well, I'm relating this group to my discussion with Isaac.

If this group was very large and most deaths from Covid came from this group, then Covid deaths displace near-future deaths.

If this this group is small and people are dying of Covid outside this group then this effect is small. If, for our purposes of decision making now, this group has not even gotten Covid much, then the effect so far is even smaller and so even less likely this group is displacing near-future deaths.

However, if your question is simply if we can be 95% sure people who are destined to die in 2020 would die of Covid if they get it, then no we can't make that assumption. It doesn't really matter what we assume, as they are going to burden the health care system either way, but we'd have to know more about these people; maybe they have some terminal disease that doesn't affect their resistance to Covid (they experience Covid as just a cold and go onto die from a heart attack this year anyways).

So you are happy with there being a group (1), which is a small group, who are destined to die in 2020 due to another medical condition, comorbidity. With an overlap of 95% or more, who have contracted Covid, dying due to Covid. — Punshhh

No, because not everyone in this group gets Covid.

It works in reverse, 95% of people in this group who get Covid we might reasonably expect they die of Covid, and certainly all of them within 2020 (as we don't expect Covid to somehow cure them).

But, the whole group doesn't get Covid. So far estimates are 1 - 15% of the population actually has Covid ... or exposure to Covid, even in hotspot areas (exposure, even if real and not a false positive, may or may not provide good immunity). So, even with the upper bound of 15% got Covid, 85% of people in this group don't die of Covid and do die of something else, so their burden on the medical system remains 85% (and they are a small group to begin with).

As more people get Covid, more of this group also get Covid, but more people in other groups get Covid too. The ratio remains more or less the same (for decision making purposes about projecting health care burden) absent an extreme bias for this group to get Covid (for which there is no plausible mechanism, considering geographic constraints alone).

You are happy with a group (2), who have an underlying medical condition, comorbidity, but who are not destined to die in 2020, they may die in 1, 2, or 10 years of these conditions. That this is a large group, and that a large proportion of these patients will die in 2020 if they contract Covid. I estimated that 60% of these who contract Covid will die. — Punshhh

This is not justified by what we know so far.

The basic pattern is Covid doubles your risk of death this year. Most people who have a risk of death "within 10 years" don't have 30% risk of death this year and therefore 60% risk of death with Covid this year (which is still not 60% chance of death from Covid). If a person of high risk of death with in 10 years has 5% risk of death this year, then their risk of death of Covid seems to be also 5% (therefore 10% within the year).

Why we see Covid deaths overwhelming medical system is that large numbers of people have a low risk of sever complication of Covid.

Most individual deaths within a year are not well predicted individually at the start of the year. Being in a risk group of 10% chance of death this year is a very high risk group.

Actuary science and medical science places a large importance on random variation of environmental factors, internal factors, life choices, life events, medical intervention, accidents, family support, etc. in causal determination of who will actually die within a year time span. In short, there are large groups of which a small portion of them will get "unlucky" within a year time-frame (with a fundamental inability to make a better prediction at the start of the year regardless of amount of tests, measurement, modelling, crystal balls or any other predictive device).

Definitely, these groups from which deaths happen "randomly" are heavily weighted towards being old and / or having underlying conditions, but these groups are still very large for our statistical purposes here of estimating overlap between the set of Covid deaths and the set of "otherwise would have died this year".

The reason that the group of people we are pretty certain will die this year is small, is because (for most people in wealthy society not at war) to get to ~90% chance of death this year (such as 90 year old with dementia and failing heart) meant having a ~80% chance of death last year (due to slightly less sever dementia and failing heart), and ~70% chance of death the year before that, and so on (though these numbers will depend on disease, there is not a large group that had 0.1% chance of dying last year but 90% chance of dying this year). So most people "getting old", the group they are a part of was already reduced significantly each year prior to getting to 90% and in a accumulative way: starting at about 5% chance of death this year, these risk-groups thin out very rapidly in a 10 year time span (each year they lose members and the chance of death of remaining members increases); during this time span most deaths are not well predicted individually (of 20 people, one of them dies the first year; maybe in a way that makes sense in hindsight, but there was no way to predict which individual would die at the start of the year).

This is why from 60 to 100 years of age the demographic chart is nearly a straight line to almost 0 population at 100, but it's a fat bar until 60 (variations in birth rates and immigration can dominate death rates below 60).

Also, why I keep coming back to the fact the discussion is about a year time frame.

If we were talking about dying within a 20 year time frame, the overlap can easily start approaching 90% for the exact same reasons (relatively high-risk groups rapidly thin out on decade time scales; just not 1 year time scales). Overlap between dying of Covid or "otherwise would die within 20 years", which is not to say people who will die within 20 years are "very likely to die of Covid".

In a 1 year time frame -- which is relevant for estimating health care resource needs and other policy choices -- overlap is low if a disease affects large risk groups (such as people in their 60s with hypertension). If a random (otherwise benign) genetic difference is also a good predictor of death from Covid, then the overlap is even less strong as Covid doesn't tend to select for "worst heart" within these risk groups but it's random genetics that dominates chance of death from Covid between risk category peers, leaving survivors to be just as likely to die of heart failure as before (perhaps more so due to long term lung injury), and also explains why Covid can kill completely healthy people, as perhaps they just have bad genetic luck (maybe Covid exploits particularly well 3 uncommon gene variation; then it could be if you have all 3 genes you have a 90% chance of death even if healthy, and it's quite rare to have them all, but happens) so is consistent with "gene variations matter hypothesis" and this hypothesis is consistent with the dominant medical theory.

Unless there is a very clear pattern that would be obvious by now (you only die of Covid if you not only have hypertension but have already had a heart-attack, or if you are on immune suppression therapy or otherwise severely immuno-compromised); absent such patterns, "risk-factors and genetics" is the go-to explanation for why some populations survive a selective pressure and some don't, without good individual predictors available at the start: it's how evolution usually works, so no reason to assume it's not happening with Covid; i.e. it obviously doesn't help to be obese or have hyper-tension or smoke or be old and frail, but the virus maybe only particularly lethal with certain particular kinds of proteins on cells; i.e. certain genes or particular epigenetic gene expression or specific immune system history (such as getting or not getting some particular common cold in the past by random chance).

Therefore, it's more reasonable to assume there is large random variation determining individual deaths from Covid from among large risk groups (as this is the pattern we actually see) and subsequently assume that deaths from other causes will continue, perhaps even increase (for the purposes of decision making), than to assume actuary and medical science is wrong (foundationally, not just some specific issue) and there are some hidden variables that dominate the real determination of both individual death each year, for instance not just heart disease but having "the weakest heart" (but in a way we can't measure), and individual death from Covid (and these hidden variables would need to be the same in both cases to boot; the hypothesis is implausible, and even if true, it's still implausible) resulting in Covid deaths tending to lighten the burden on the health system from other causes of death (as those deaths are now dead from Covid, no longer available to die of something else).

Of course, there can be second order effects that actually do reduce deaths (people drive less and therefore there are less accidents) but this has nothing to do with the statistical overlap discussed here but a consequence of our response to Covid (it's entirely reasonable for modelers to estimate less traffic due to lock-downs, and therefore less accidents and therefore position less traffic accident resources; this was an obvious lock-down health-care hypothesis that has already been proven true; but another hypothesis that people who need care for other things don't get care and therefore die at a higher rate also seems to be proven true).

if we look at a group in the population who are ill with one of the comorbidity diseases who would be destined to die in 2020. Some of those will die prematurely due to a Covid infection. I would find it hard to believe that many of these patients would survive Covid, only to die later in the year, so the overlap will be large, say around 95% ( of those who become infected with Covid) — Punshhh

I agree if you are destined to die in 2020 you are "even more" destined to die in 2020 if you get Covid.

This group I have been calling "would otherwise die within 1 year" or "terminally ill" interchangeably.

The first problem is that not all terminally ill people will get Covid. For instance, if only 15% of people have Covid so far, then there's 85% of these terminally ill people out there, absent a selector that makes these terminally ill vastly more likely to get Covid. If we look simply at the fact Covid progresses geographically then we already know the selector to get Covid of a "well mixed" sub-population is weak, because they are not all clustered geographically; yes, they may cluster around hospitals within their individual regions, but the disease still progresses geographically.

Furthermore, we know who the at risk populations are and we take additional measures, so this also weakens the selector.

Therefore, if 85% of terminally ill people are still out there, they will still die in 2020.

And that's an upper-bound of total infected. The lower bounds is as low as 1% infected (confirmed Covid infections) in which case 99% of terminally ill are still out there and will still die in 2020.

So, although we can assume terminally ill people who get Covid will more likely die even sooner than Covid somehow having the opposite effect and curing them of their underlying condition, for this to create a big effect of simply moving deaths around within the year then we need to have reason to believe this entire population gets Covid with extreme bias (and there's solid reason to not assume that's no so).

There is a second group who are ill with the same illnesses, but who are not destined to die in 2020. A proportion of thes patients will die in 2020 after contracting Covid. I would expect the overlap here to remain high, but not as high, say 60%.(of those infected with Covid) — Punshhh

I read this to mean that 60% of total Covid deaths are from ill people, just not ill enough to die in 2020.

Although I agree most people who die of Covid have underlying conditions, the reason to believe most Covid deaths are not from people who "would have otherwise died" within 1 year, is because the vast majority of deaths each year are not from people who doctors are certain will die within the year.

Lot's of people who have 1% chance of dying from a heart attack have just that, a 1% chance. At the start of the year you can test them however you want, but you couldn't have done any test to determine a greater than 1% chance. The reason is that random things (from the perspective of the start of the year) happen: stressful life events, poor response to treatment due to genetic variation or "bad batch" of pharmaceuticals (quality control exists because processes aren't perfect, including quality control), taking up drinking, unlucky torque on an artery, immune system "learning something" by a lucky stochastic result.

If someone with a 1% chance of death has a prognosis of 1% chance of death from Covid if they contract Covid (what the evidence Isaac cited broadly indicates), then this is the "large risk" group situation I have been talking about and overlap with "who would otherwise die within 1 year" is small if Covid proliferates in these risk groups.

If you look at the risk groups people are in, they are these very large risk groups with around 1% dying per year (increasing with age and severity / number of conditions).

Very, very few people are in a risk group of 90% chance of dying this year. So if everyone got Covid, yes, all these people would die, but there are few deaths because it's a small group.

Very, very large amounts of people are in groups with < 1%, 1%, 2% up to about 10% (with decreasing total numbers). Most deaths per year are due to a very large number of people having a small chance to die, resulting in still a large number. Nearly all these people are above 60, but the are still in large groups that are not otherwise expected to die within 1 year.

The prevailing theory of medicine and actuary science is not that there are hidden variables within the body that actually explain who dies and who doesn't, but rather that variations in environment, disease progression, immune response, life choices, doctor actions, timing of intervention and dosage, etc. that determine who lives and who dies without any ability to predict these things much better than we currently do on a 1 year time frame.

Isaac's position relies not only on these hidden variables, but furthermore that these hidden variables are the same between determining "who actually die from Covid" and "who actually dies from underlying condition like heart disease".

It makes sense on the surface that "the weakest" would die in each case, but this is exactly the opposite idea actuary science is premised on; it's not true that the "weakest hearts" die each year (lot's of other factors involved), and even if it was true (which is isn't) it can easily be something else that drives Covid deaths within risk-groups, such as an otherwise benign genetic variation (subtle protein differences that don't have any difference until now, but Covid exploits that difference particularly well) that helps the virus proliferate faster (epidemic resistance is a classic reason to explain why genetic variation is a good thing). A genetic sub-group particularly susceptibility to Covid explains very well why we still see deaths even in seemingly healthy people.

There is a third group who were destined to die of a disease in 2020, but who presented as quite well, but who will die unexpectedly in 2020. Of this group there may, or may not be an overlap, if there is I expect it is quite low, say 10, or 20%.( of those infected with Covid) — Punshhh

This is statistically impossible to reach 10 - 20%; that would be a huge overlap for a group of people who's "otherwise death in 2020" shares no causal mechanism at all to their Covid death (as they were simply not expected to die).

For instance, I think we could agree that dying of Covid won't somehow preferentially select for people who would otherwise die in a car crash.

This is simply the "base case": let's say a person has 0.5% chance of dying from Covid and 0.5% chance of dying from something else had they lived (so the people that do die from this group represent "unexpected" deaths), so it's a simple "choose 1 out of 200, choose another out of 200, what are the chances the choice is the same item?" which is simply 1 out of 200, a small effect of Covid deaths overlapping "would have otherwise died deaths" in this case (and an effect easily compensated for by increase in death probabilities due to lung damage from Covid, interruption of quality care for many risk groups while the medical system deals with Covid, or other things that can have a small forcing on large groups; decrease in pollution and changes to stress patterns may push things the other way).

Of course, the probabilities don't need to be the same (but they remarkably line up pretty well with chance-of-death by year by age group), but if they are small then overlap is very small. If they are probabilities that apply to large groups, "like all 60 year old's that seem healthy and not expected to die this year" then you still have large numbers because these are large groups.

Furthermore, if Covid deaths would be happening in a short period of time, instead of over a year, then even groups that have low probabilities of dying from Covid, they would still overload the health system as they arrive in a short period of time (why the idea of trying to protect over-70s and letting everyone else live normally made no numerical sense).

No! Who the hell thinks people over 60 are at the end of their lives. I bloody hope not. — Isaac

The point is, you don't know.

It's completely reasonable to say people at 60 are closer to the end of their lives than people at 20, more so people above 70 or 80.

It's entirely possible to talk about people "at the end of their lives" without meaning "people that will be dead within 1 year", just meaning that old people, by definition, are usually closer to the end of their lives than anyone else.

For a technical expert, it's entirely accurate to talk about old people as "close to the end of their lives".

Yes. In the context (and supported by David Spiegelhalter, who specifically referred to 2020). I'm quite confident "end of their lives" meant they they were close enough to death to fit mostly in the year's mortality. — Isaac

Quite confident based on nothing.

Read his papers, if he had statistical evidence for this, he would have included it in his model, as his model papers are all about health care capacity based on his best use of the statistics available to him.

For instance, he discusses the possibility that there's a very large amount of asymptomatic infected, and explains why (despite a large potential variation in this factor) it can't possibly be high enough to change the main conclusions of his paper and the requirement of social distancing to keep within health care capacity for a significant amount of time.

If he thought a large portion of people who were dying would have otherwise been dead within the year, that's very significant, and he would have included a model or at least some discussion of what that would mean.

The statement you're referring to is also clearly in the context of social distancing working to keep deaths below 20 000 for the whole UK; so, we can understand it to be a feature of that specific scenario, not a feature of Covid if left to proliferate uncontrollably (which his model of a unmitigated spread cannot possibly be interpreted to kill everyone who otherwise would have died within 1 year anyway, not even close). He also just says "maybe" in the sense that it hasn't been completely excluded yet, an upper bound without any reason to assume things will be anywhere close to that upper bound in reality.

So, he is not lending support to your position, just didn't completely exclude it yet within the context of a social distancing scenario that the UK has already passed.

You can't take one statement (not even in a paper but an interview) of an expert, out of the context of where they said it, interpret it wrong (confuse pre-modelling guesses of upper bounds and "likelihood"), not consider their published papers on the same subject, and call it evidence supporting your position (well you can say it is, as you've been doing, it just isn't actual evidence).

What? If I can't cite evidence he meant within exactly one year then that somehow counts as evidence supporting your position? — Isaac

The evidence you cited is that 90% of cases have comorbidities, that is not evidence that 90% (or anywhere close to that) "would have died within 1 year". You've cited risk factors for large groups.

The larger the risk-group Covid is affecting (where both the preexisting condition risk and Covid risk of death is low), the smaller the overlap between people who die from Covid and those that would have died anyway. You are citing evidence that supports my position.

You do not have the technical ability to understand your mistake. You don't want to be taught by me; fine, but your unwillingness to learn doesn't impact my willingness to defend my position.

You make sense (most of the time, and even when I do not agree, you've provided something meaty to disagree with - but I wish most of your posts were shorter). — tim wood

Thanks you for appreciating my arguments; unfortunately, it takes a lot more work to make an argument shorter. I too appreciate people who disagree with me but are being honest with their views at any given time; not just how we learn, but also how we learn what humanity is really like.

My own view is that Joe Biden might just be the second worst possible candidate, but he's running against the worst, and between them there's no comparison. — tim wood

The problem with the lesser of two evils argument (why Hillary didn't easily win) is that it is the nature of evil to be deceptive, so it's not logically possible to "know for sure" how evil compares to evil. So, you can always imagine the "second worst option" has hidden things making them actually worse.

So, as soon as you admit to using a lessor of two evils approach, there's no solid argument to make that it's true. It's entirely consistent to suspect being just better deceived by what appears as the 2nd option.

What happens is that people with a bias one way can just go with that bias, and people with a bias another way go with their bias. A Democrat saying to a Republican "look, I've got the lessor of two evils here", it's completely reasonable for the Republicans to worry it's a trick.

To be clear, most Americans agreed Hillary was the best of two bad options, but for US elections we need to contextualize things in the fact minority popular vote can win the office.

Republicans have been playing the "win with a minority" game really well. For Democrats to win they need to overcompensate this disadvantage, and this is a difficult game to play; to succeed when the odds are stacked against you, requires accumulating every advantage possible: using the primaries to get to the strongest candidate available; even if that means a brokered convention where progressives have some power.

This is why I am so harsh on the DNC here; there was no need to orchestrate all the candidates dropping out to rally around Biden, use Warren to split the vote, in a panicked backroom horsetrading coup, there were other strong candidates relative Biden; and if a brokered convention would select Bernie, maybe he's just the strongest candidate and Bernie in the white house is not the end of the world. Furthermore, Bernie has serious problems too, mainly being super old now, so may have been willing to support a younger compromise candidate. In otherwords, the DNC could have chosen to engage with politics.

Indeed, had the DNC not orchestrated a premature end to the race (there's only a "clear winner" from everyone else dropping out), then there would have been younger candidates in this time of Covid. Both Bernie and Biden are in the high risk group for Covid of nearly 80. How do you campaign in isolation? How do you campaign without isolation if it may kill you?

Younger candidates wouldn't have had to worry so much, giving rise to the possibility that both Joe and Biden agree on a compromise candidate and "pass the torch". A moving moment that brings the Democrats together. Instead, the DNC orchestrated a strategic catastrophe.

Not that I'm saying the election is already decided, but it's really depressing to see a genuinely vibrant primary with lot's of good points of view and candidates, narrowed to just Biden for no reason ... then Covid happen (which was already inevitable for anyone paying attention) and Biden in even worse position (the weakest on healthcare, easiest to attack, old and very vulnerable to Covid itself).

hat is striking, i.e., worthy of notice, is how the attacks coincide with events. Biden a viable candidate for president of the USA? Time to run ads accusing him of being venal, corrupt, a serial rapist/sexual harasser/abuser/pedophile. The irony is that's almost Trump's exact curriculum vitae. — tim wood

Definitely, the irony can't be more palpable.

Yes, but your premise is not true. Having a comorbidity of sufficient severity to class as a cause of death is not a "large risk-group" it is, as the country's leading expert in the field has said "people at the end of their lives". — Isaac

"End of their lives" as in over 60?

Or, "end of their lives" as in will die within 1 year?

You can't just substitute meanings all over the place to pretend your position has been my position all along.

All my arguments have been about this 1 year time frame.

So, please show where this expert clarified their meaning of "end of their lives" as to mean "would have died within 1 year". Otherwise, again, you are citing evidence that supports my position, not yours.

That's how I understand it.

Also note, neither @ssu nor I characterize all Americans as extreme partisans, but rather that extreme partisanship (where small extreme groups hold disproportionate power) is a feature of the US electoral system.

The relevant issue vis-a-vis Joe Biden is that Trump has more extreme partisans than Joe Biden, and the reality is that criticism of Joe Biden will more likely land simply because less people on the left are an extreme Joe Biden partisan. In otherwords, Joe Biden is a terrible candidate for the current electoral mood and for the fact the internet is very much a thing now (people can watch Joe Biden with children; the mainstream media ignoring the issue doesn't magically make the issue not matter).

And more generally, the extreme partisan game is simply less powerful on the left. Lot's of people on the left had legitimate corruption concerns about Hillary, because there's simply important evidence about her foundation, purpose for even having a private mail server in her basement, and "private and public position" ideology (private position ... benefiting who?). There were extreme Hillary partisans that engaged in the same reality denying games as Trump supporters do now, but they were a minority; so, for a significant part of the US left the argument for Hillary is "a lesser of two evils", and maybe analytically correct (who know's; certainly Hillary would have been better for US empire than Trump, but US empire may not be ultimately a good thing and Trump is doing the Lord's work by dismantling it through inept management and extracting value from it for personal gain wherever possible), but, in terms of winning elections, "lesser of two evils" is not a motivating reasoning, so even if it's correct it may not help you actually win.

The right doesn't have this problem. A larger proportion of Trump supporters believe he's great, and there's lot's of positive reasons to vote for him on top of the democrats being crazy socialists, more swampy, or pure evil.

It's a big advantage, and the best way to compensate Trump's advantage is with a good candidate that genuinely can deal with criticism due to clearly not being corrupt, womanizer (touching lots of women uncomfortably as the Times reported and then deleted), bizarre child "doter" (why Trump was most afraid of running against Bernie; these criticism don't land on Bernie, they do land on Biden because there's lot's of smoke and thus reason to suspect fire).

Apologists for Biden already arguing "yeah, maybe he sucks, but he's better than Trump"; maybe they're right, maybe wrong (maybe Biden is king of some pedophilia cult and Trump is, despite incredible moral failings not also a pedophilia king, and is, incredibly, the lesser of two evils), but what I think we all agree on is that running a weak candidate is not a good strategy to win.

If I criticize Trump I have TDS? Criticism is manifestation of craziness? That's some generalization. — tim wood

I think @ssu is saying that polarization and "post-truth" politics leads Trump supporters to dismiss all criticism of Trump with the euphemism of TDS.

Yes, I agree.

The DNC leadership is old and simply hasn't got the feel to the pulse of the nation. It genuinely lacks vision and understanding of it's voters and the situation. (Neither did the GOP either actually: Trump was just a train wreck that suddenly caught the party by total surprise with even a bigger surprise that he won.) It lacks ability to get people excited. — ssu

Both parties (pre-Trump) continued to function on the idea the "internet just doesn't exist", and they simply ignored it.

Fox News has fallen in line now, and internet Trump groups now drive Fox news rather than the other way around, but there were multiple times Fox tried to bury Trump and just not talk about him anymore.

Conservative media have accepted their place on the totem poll Trump > Trump online networks > Them.

Why they accept it is that, though they don't like Trumpian politics (they prefer a polite and "respectable" mascot), there is no actual alternative governing ideology on the right; so it's not really a threat to have Trump and online Trumpians drive the discussion. The slogan for this group has become "I don't like Trump, but I love his policies! Tax breaks, woohooo!"

The problem with the progressives is that they do have a coherent alternate governing ideology ready to go. This governing ideology has been proven to be workable in dozens of countries (still lot's to debate, lot's of policy variations, but it clearly can work).

The "job" of democrat centrist is to keep this ideology out of government.

With Hillary, progressives were split on the subject of whether the DNC is ready to lose power to fulfill their donor mandate to keep progressive ideas out of real power.

Yes, Hillary had a lot of flaws and legitimate examples of (highly likely) corruption such as her foundation shenanigans. But she did have a lot going for her, such as she won a majority of women voters and won the popular vote.

But already, nearly all the progressive American voices I listen to are unanimous that the DNC would rather lose with Biden than let progressives share power in any meaningful way.

A key point of course is that they orchestrated a "rally around Biden" right before super Tuesday (but keep in Warren just long enough to split votes with Bernie), not to mention Ohio had clear admitted to vote rigging (DNC lawyers just claimed it was fair vote rigging to make simple math errors in summing votes, as it's in broad daylight).

Not to say Bernie had no chance of winning despite these odds, but DNC preference is clear they don't want a situation where progressives have any power (they'll change votes, and do whatever necessary to avoid a contested convention with progressives).

The writing's on the wall of course, younger generations use the internet, but it's clear they will hold on tooth and nail to power, even if it means playing second fiddle to Trump.

I guess the only way for Joe Biden to win is to pick a progressive vice-president nominee, perhaps Elizabeth Warren or even another geriatric, Bernie. Otherwise they really can loose. — ssu

I'm not sure.

A good running mate (the left actually likes) helps, but the general wisdom is that it mostly comes down to the candidate. A good running mate adds more momentum to a good candidate, but doesn't really help a bad candidate.

Of course anything can happen (even replacing Joe somehow), but as it stands, Joe seems like a long shot candidate. It's repeating Hillary 2016 but somehow worse.

300,000 people die each year (from disease). These deaths are drawn, in the overwhelming majority, from the exact group of people who would have the comorbidities listed in the ONS figures as having a 90% overlap with Covid-19 fatality. I've supported that assertion for heart disease and cancer by providing studies of risk factors and prognosis. — Isaac

This is the error in your analysis I've pointed out like 5 times already.

We're talking about deaths within 1 year, so talking about overlap with comorbidity in larger groups than "likely to die within 1 year" supports my position.

The "heart disease" risk group is larger than "people going to die of heart disease within one year from heart disease".

For your claim to be true, there would have to be little overlap with this group. — Isaac

No, my claim is completely compatible with these facts.

Lot's of deaths (most deaths) each year are not predictable at the individual level.

At the start of the year, we cannot predict with any degree of certainly in the sense of individual identification who will be dead by the end of the year.

Most deaths within 1 year do not come from groups with 90% chance of death this year. There are such groups, but they are small and so even 90% of such people dying within the year is not a big number.

Lot's of effort has gone into this, as doctors and life insurers would like to know, but they don't know. What we know is that everyone has a chance of dying, that chance varies and can be statistically investigated, our understanding always improved, but the pure element of chance (relative our knowledge at the start of year as well as just the nature of reality) is also at work.

If statisticians put someone in a group of 1% risk of death due to heart disease this year, they are not saying that they were just too lazy to analyse further and see which of these people with heart disease have actually quite strong hearts (and so many 0.1% of dying) and which have "the weakest heart" (and so 90% of dying); they are saying "of 100 people in this group we expect 1 to be dead by the end of the year, but we don't know which one". Further analysis can make some progress, but does not fundamentally change the fact that most deaths are from groups with small chance of death within the year, but they are large groups and so result in lot's of deaths.

Statisticians of these sorts of things are constantly doing analysis to see if there are other predictors, and sometimes new predictors are found and new risk-groups created, but things are no where close to predicting "who's going to die within 1 year".

That's why your argument depends (depended) on some hidden variable we do not know, such as assuming the people who would die from heart disease this year have "the weakest heart" and the people with heart disease who die from Covid too have "the weakest heart". This is not what statisticians believe. Certainly, such a hidden variable is there that might be uncovered by better medical tools or perhaps is fundamentally hidden for ever, but there is also a large amount of random chance that goes into who dies or doesn't within a year of heart disease.

No. "Complicate the figures" is not anywhere near "replenish the entire cohort". Again, there is no evidence that lung damage will cause future deaths in these numbers. This is just your speculation and needs evidence to support it. — Isaac

You have not bothered to understand my argument.

It's you that has been claiming that the overlap is big, so big that Covid maybe just a problem of reallocating resources and does not require new net-resources.

I have been arguing that the overlap is small with "people who would die this year anyways"; small in the sense that Covid is not just a resource allocation problem even if you could reallocate without friction from other health resources that having nothing to do with respiratory disease (which you can't), and even if you could reallocate from the future to the present (which you can't, even with loans).

I have also mentioned, that even if you are right about overlap, the risk group might be replenished due to long term lung injury.

No where have I said it's guaranteed or I know it to be true. It is, however, a risk, a big risk, and therefore no reason to change policy even if your overlap hypothesis was true (which it isn't).

Furthermore, the effect of replenishing the risk group can be very small but still result in replenishing the risk group (a small thing that affects a large amount of people). If a risk group is 1% risk of death of heart disease and 1% risk of death of Covid (if infected with Covid), and they all get Covid and 1 person dies of Covid, then there's a decrease in expected deaths in absolute terms within the year based only this, due to that 1 person no longer in the group, so now there's 1% risk of death for 99 people, so 0.9 expected deaths from this group within the year.

Long term lung injury only has to increase the risk of death in this group by ~0.1% to replenish the risk group back to resulting in 1 expected death within the year; so 2 deaths within the year (1 from Covid and one from the other risk, such as heart disease) instead of 1.9 deaths due to the slight culling effect Covid had on this group.

This is why overlap has to be with small groups that have super high chance of death to not only see a culling effect but also for the long-term injury effect to also need to be very large. 0.1% increase of death in a group that has 90% chance of death within the year changes little in absolute terms.

If everyone, or most people, gets Covid, and most deaths arise within large risk-groups, then a very slight increase in chances of death due to surviving Covid can easily replenish all the risk groups to result in the same amount of deaths in absolute terms within the year.

You've been basically wrong at every level of your argument, and now that you're beginning to realize this, you are trying re-interpret things to arrive at my position.

Welcome to my position.

I agree with the major points.

However, the Trump camp really is made up of people with beliefs that seem caricatural. Granted, they have conditions and concerns motivating these beliefs that we can empathize with, but there simply isn't any significant amount of Trump supporters that can't be described as "the most craziest most eccentric view" around.

Trump is simply crazy and eccentric, from a governing point of view -- not necessarily from enriching himself and cultivating a cult following point of view. For instance, tweeting out support for insurrection against the government that he is the highest official of. For his cult though, it's just bad ass and a great move.

But I only wanted to mention this to point out Joe Biden doesn't have a cult following and so the mudslinging is not symmetric.

Joe Biden and his supporters simply don't have the ability to neutralize genuine criticism. Republicans respond well to "well, their corrupt too!" without realizing that if they don't do anything to remove corruption on their side they are de facto supporting it. People on the left simply don't respond well to the argument that "corruption on the other side excuses corruption on our side", they don't want to see corruption on either side and they can do something about the corruption on their side.

Furthermore, the ideologies that led to simply legalizing most of what corruption means originated with the Republicans; it's Republican judges that ruled money is speech, that gerrymandering is a "political issue" that judiciary can't remedy, and that bribery cannot be implied with a wink and nod, or giving money while having a public campaign making it clear what you want, but requires explicit recorded quid pro quo. So, when Republican politicians take advantage of legal corruption it doesn't create a sense of frustration for Republicans, these were all "Republican victories"; it does, however, create frustration on the left regardless of who is doing it.

So yes, the right is also frustrated with corruption, but they no longer really have an idea of what corruption is and why it's bad. Corruption on their side is easily viewed as "winning". An example outside of politics is the multi-millionaire pastors who raise money to buy private jets; all of these pastors are on the right, essentially campaign for Trump, point out Trump's just winning like their winning, as they both have God's blessing.

Whereas on the left, not only are there no multi-millionaire pastors herding leftists around -- though it would be a mistake to say there are no Christians on the left -- but there's pressure on politicians to "not take corporate money"; this was a big part of Bernie's identity and argument. Corruption in a reasonably defined way, legal or not, is a big issue on the left.

So, why did the establishment choose Joe? Why can't the DNC find a candidate that is centrist but not easily accused of corruption, perhaps legal corruption, but still corruption?

This is the heart of the DNC problem, they are the party of "can't we have bit of the corruption" and so they, basically by definition, can't easilly find politicians who want to defend the corrupt setup of the status quo but who aren't themselves corrupt. The Republicans realized that, corruption long term is only sustainable if you build ideologies where the corruption is seen as a good thing, whereas the Democrat establishment have not done so, they are just an elite aristocracy detached from their constituents; but they can't just step aside, that's just not how corruption works, so they are content to just lose thousands of seats in State level legislatures, lose to Trump, lose the supreme court, let the republicans play hardball in every inning and just whimper around in response, and content to lose to Trump again.

3 days ago, I made my position very clear:

I'm not sure you're even arguing / implying something against what I emphasize above, or are just compiling all the statistical minutia of relations to consider.

In terms of adding to the list, a big one that can not only nullify the affect of high-risk groups decreasing in absolute size (due to dying), but actually reverse that tendency, is that the virus may cause long term lung damage.

So, if every 70 year old got the disease, all else being equal, we may expect that demographic cohort to have less deaths post-pandemic, simply due to their numbers being smaller or perhaps particularly weak breathers being culled from the heard. However, if long term injury increases the risk-of-death factor for survivors of Covid, then you may end up with more deaths in absolute terms next year due to lung injuries or other long term Covid treatment complications. (likewise for every other demographic cohort)

Long story short, some Covid deaths would have died anyways, but expected overlap is small (extreme bias towards this group getting Covid would be needed for a significant overlap), and long-term injury may compensate, even significantly over-compensate, this overlap by increasing the risk-of-death factor for these risk groups (indeed all risk groups). — boethius

I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were saying the same thing.

If you're saying the same thing now, you've wasted your time and made yourself look like a fool. Though you haven't wasted my time fortunately, for it is true, as @Punshhh suggests, that I enjoy debating on a debate forum, which is why I come to a debate forum to debate.

For instance if you mean by:

What we know is that the vast majority of fatalities (over 90%) had other comorbidities which were "mostly likely to be the underlying cause of death for a person of that age and sex had they not died from COVID-19". so this is referring to cause of death at the time of death. — Isaac

That 90 percent of Covid deaths had comobidities, but that does not mean 90 percent will die within 1 year. Then you agree with my original position!

If by:

I agree that the complicating factors of system overloading and long-term lung damage make the figures difficult to say with certainty, — Isaac

You mean that regardless of overlap, long term lung damage may simply replenished those "at risk of dying within 1 year" then you agree with my original position!

Maybe you aren't here to debate, which sometimes means recognizing a change in position and simply saying so. Maybe you just want to have pat you on the back all day. That can be done in private, why bother us about it?

Please do stick around to discuss this, your contributions are valued. I think you unfortunately chose to dig a little deeper with the wrong interlocutor. Boethius is quite argumentative, he seems to enjoy it. But this might result in a failure to reach consensus. — Punshhh

Poor, poor @Isaac, comes to a debate forum, engages in a debate, get's served with a debate.

None of the points I have made is motivated simply to disagree with Isaac.

I genuinely believe the effect of overlap of deaths of Covid this year with "otherwise would have actually died" group this year is small and can be defended with reasoning. By small I mean the effect is there, but not big enough to change policy response.

If you agree with my position, which you seem to, then why would it be unreasonable to defend a position you view as correct? If you disagree, then join the debate -- maybe I'm wrong and you can explain where and why -- instead of complaining about others debating on a debate forum.

Professor Ferguson and Professor Spiegelhalter are referring to the yearly mortality in their comments, as have I been. — Isaac

Ok, so we're talking about a year.

What evidence is there that the effect of overlap with people "who would otherwise die this year" is a big effect as opposed to a small effect?

I.e. big enough to support the idea that:

1. High overlap undermines certain arguments against social distancing measures because there should be little net excess in treatment requirement, focusing the main problem even more in the height of the spike of cases. Without overlap there is an argument that flattening the curve will not help because it pulls staff from other vulnerable cases in the long term so providing no net gain. In other words, with overlap we only need to re-assign resources (which everyone agrees is doable), without overlap we need to produce a net increase in resources (which many think is not doable, so why bother >> herd immunity bullshit). — Isaac

My argument with boethius is mainly about his ridiculous assertion that the overlap will definitely be small because there's no significant overlap in factors. This despite the fact the the only recorded factors affecting prognosis thus far are exactly the same as the factors affecting prognosis in other conditions, as the four articles I cited demonstrate. — Isaac

By small, I have been clear that the effect is there, the effect is measurable, but the effect is not so large as to essentially balance out deaths over the year, or come anywhere close to that.

Yes, people have problems that will likely kill them with time. We've been talking about a 1 year time frame. No where have you presented any evidence that most people dying of Covid would die within 1 year.

Him saying the overlap 'is not the point' of the graph has somehow become him saying that there is no substantial overlap (oh, sorry I forgot 'substantial' now means 'very small' - I will have to get the hang of this newspeak) — Isaac

Substantial for a statistician can easily mean "a small but statistically significant effect".

I have said the overlap is small in the context of your initial assertion that Covid deaths and "otherwise deaths" may completely balance out to have no, or hardly, and net increase in deaths. That's a big effect.

I've been arguing that the effect is small, because we have enough information to know it's killing people in large risk groups. And furthermore, I've been arguing that the overlap maybe not only small but not as big as long term injury replenishing those risk groups.

I agree that the complicating factors of system overloading and long-term lung damage make the figures difficult to say with certainty, but there is not any evidential support for the position that the overlap with those who would have died anyway will be statistically very small. As Professor Ferguson says, this is primarily a condition which causes death in those who are already very ill. — Isaac

You complain about me being a dishonest debater, and yet you don't mention that this has been one of my major points, that I said from the beginning.

And now you say "very small" is what you've been disagreeing with, to give room for you to have the small v very small part of the debate. I never used there term very small.

Yes, we know people that die of Covid are usually ill, maybe very ill, we've been discussing the overlap with people "who would otherwise die this year", not the overlap with "ill people".

If you want to discuss 10 year, 20 year time frame, then I would agreeing with you. But we've been talking about a year.

You've basically changed your position to my position, but you're so cranky about being wrong and citing evidence that supports my position, that you want to pretend my position was your position all along based on substituting meaning of words. But that ambiguity isn't there.

1) A spike in the death rate is only a snapshot at a particular moment. The 6000 extra people who died last week are not now available to form the pool of people who will die next week. This would be irrelevant if Covid-19 did not preferentially target those with underlying problems, but it does. — Isaac

This is your initial position in your disagreement with @I like sushi. I like sushi and I have been saying such an effect, is there, but is not big.

You've been arguing that Covid targets "the weakest" hearts and so on, to support your position that the effect is large, or at least likely large. So large as to change policy response or create narrative risks on the left of some sort.

You're right, and of course, the timescale matters. Thinking about overlap with deaths this year is a fairly arbitrary cut off point (why not the next two years or five). — Isaac

If you think we've been talking about some vague timeline and therefore, your position is correct given more time, you are wrong.

3) 2000 cases from respiratory conditions is not far off normal. It's the amount of cases with underlying health problems being pushed over the edge that is the real problem here. The key thing there being that we don't know how many of them would have died anyway, nor will we until the year's figures are out. — Isaac

Yes, the reasoning is based on the empirical data that the virus seems to simply double your chances of death this year, whatever your risk group; that this is the best predictor for most people. — boethius

However, if long term injury increases the risk-of-death factor for survivors of Covid, then you may end up with more deaths in absolute terms next year due to lung injuries or other long term Covid treatment complications. (likewise for every other demographic cohort) — boethius

We know with great precision how many of those people were going to die this year anyway, its about 300,000 (the death rate minus deaths from accidents). So until the death rate from Covid-19 exceeds 300,000 you can't possibly say that the victims were not going to die anyway, simply on the basis of the numbers, you additionally need data on the overlap - or you need to wait for deaths occurring over a longer timescale - say a year, or you need a plausible mechanism of fatality which does no coincide with underlying health conditions. — Isaac

My argument is a counter-argument to the idea that Covid is shaving off a population from these risk groups that can be in some sense said to "about to die anyways"; I've been using a year as a baseline time frame for the meaning of "about to die".

Covid doesn't kill enough people to have an obvious and noticeable statistical effect of this kind, such as non-respiratory disease going forward making up for, or nearly making up for, Covid deaths and arriving at some equilibrium. — boethius

We've been talking about a year.

Obviously, if you make "die anyways" to mean any length of time then the overlap is 100 percent as @Benkei mentions. Since that's obvious it's necessary to discuss some specific time frame.

We've been discussing the time frame of a year.