Okay okay, we get it. POS = Democratic Party. You’re hilarious. Any other jokes you’d like to share?

Do you people realize that when you start breaking up groups of the population and saying their deaths don't matter, it starts to sound like fascism? Is 75 the point where people are no longer useful to society? Is that the point where we don't care if they die? Why not earlier?

Why not base the age we stop caring if someone dies on something more specific. Let's base it on when you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Think about how many resources are wasted on old pilots trying to learn modern aircraft avionics. Have you ever seen a 60-year old pilot transition from Boeing to Airbus? They are much slower and less productive than younger pilots. Does that mean we should value them less?

If you look at the data, the mortality rate is pretty flat until 45 and up. At that point, it climbs greatly. Only focusing on the upper age bracket implies that people over 75 are the only ones dying. 17% of the deaths are from the age group of 45-65 which represents a large percentage of our fellow pilots.

What about rare cancers and diseases? They only affect a few people. Why should we waste research money on those?

He’s too busy wiping the Cheeto dust off his fingers.

I don't think anyone is saying that deaths at any age don't matter, but rather that we're stamping these broad solutions across all age groups when we should be risk-adjusting our strategies against the virus. It makes sense to at least partially lock down nursing homes, hospitals, etc where a high number of high risk people are. Completely up-ending our grade-school programs where many kids are falling behind due to the yo-yo of online vs in person class, and many kids have fallen off the radar completely all for a virus that has practically no statistical risk to them is crazy.

Forcing everyone to stay home from restaurants, stores, etc is pointless. People who are high risk either need to adjust their habits, or I like the stores that are offering high risk shopping hours which allows a more normal experience for people who are not high risk. And if a high risk individual wants to go out and take that chance then so be it.

My wife's grandmother is in her late 80's lives to go out to eat. For good or bad the highlights of her week is when her family comes and takes her out to restaurants, virus-be-you-know-what. She literally doesn't care, and wants the autonomy to live her life the way she wants to.

We are not discussing the value of life. We are discussing the risk of catching the virus and dying weighed against the risk of trying out a new vaccine. If I were in a high risk group I would be lined up for my dose. As it is I am at virtually no danger from the virus. I have zero comorbidities, am fit, and have been in close contact with three positive people and have not contracted the virus due to precautions taken when in their presence. None of that required my local restaurant to close.

I don’t think it’s people saying anyone’s life does not matter, it’s just people acknowledging that risk is proportional with age like many other illnesses. I think the distinction people are making is people who are most at risk for severe complications of *any* medical condition are the people most at risk from severe cases of COVID and the average age of a COVID fatality is similar to the average life expectancy. And that is a completely different scenario than if fatalities were evenly distributed through age groups or skewed younger like Spanish flu did.

FWIW I’m not saying we should not protect those that are in this group or that their life is not important. But I don’t think the characterization that people don’t GAS about people over a certain ages is correct.

Then stop only mentioning the older end of the age group. Are you saying that if you just ignore their deaths then this isn't that bad? As I said before, the death rate is also bad for those between 45 and 65. Even if we do ignore the upper end of the age spectrum, this is still a relatively serious virus.

That's good for you. Too bad not everyone is in the same situation as you. You can't isolate specific risk groups of our population. Unfortunately, your restaurant did have to close. Even if the virus did only affect people over 75, there would be no way to protect them in a way that wouldn't also affect you. If you were still able to go to your restaurant, you could catch the virus. You would then spread it to others. Even if everyone you know is asymptomatic, eventually, it will reach someone who works at an elder care facility.

But the actual virus is more complicated than that. As you stated, it affects people with common health conditions. How do we ensure an asthmatic 40-year-old remains isolated from society so that you can still eat at a restaurant? Our country was not prepared for this and we don't have the top-down structure to rapidly respond to a health crisis. It is cheaper, in the long run, to optimize our healthcare system for normality rather than prepare it for once in a generation outbreak. Kind of like an airline that decides it's not worth it to staff the airline for that once a year winter storm. It's easier to just cancel a few days worth of flights. In this case, we let a lot of restaurants fail rather than let more people die. Is your local restaurant more important than an asthmatic 50-year-old?

So you let restaurants fail, what about other institutions(like airlines)? And who gets to make these decisions? And what is the cost to society for these failing businesses? Let’s not worry about people committing suicides from all these lockdowns? Why is the life of the asthmatic more important than the small business owner?

no restaurants should not have to shut down. Destroying the livelihoods of of millions if not tens of millions is not a reasonable response to this. If you want to take extra precautions, you take extra precautions. In places like grocery stores, Walmart etc. people should be wearing masks but should not be shut down. Same. With restaurants. No one is forcing you to go to a restaurant, if you don’t like it don’t go or order delivery. Just about everything you need can be delivered. If you are extremely high risk you can isolate from this pretty well.

There are reasonable precautions we should be taking and unreasonable ones that are harmful. Wearing masks is reasonable, grinding the economy to a halt and forcing millions to lose their business, jobs, homes, etc. is not

It is very easy for an asthmatic who knows they are at risk to isolate themselves. That is the only way they will likely make it through this. Closing the restaurant down the street won't help that asthmatic nearly as much as them ordering from it through Door Dash or Uber Eats while the restaurant stays open so his neighbor can afford to pay their mortgage. You paint this as black or white. It isn't.

Restaurants (and airlines) have historically been some of the highest failing businesses. Lots of the restaurants that closed were going to fail anyway (kind of sounds like people talking about the elderly :rolleyes:). Which airlines have actually failed? ExpressJet and Compass were going to close doors anyway.

The government. Ideally, we would have made these decisions before, but we like to kick the can down the road.

Businesses fail all the time. Normally it is just due to economic reasons, but in this case, it was a health crisis. It's part of the normal business cycles, and unlike lots of downturns, this one is pretty isolated to restaurants, live entertainment, and travel. There are lots of parts of the economy that are benefiting from this environment. The sad thing is I actually think the economy will be great for anyone who survives this. Anyone making more than about $80,000 is actually saving way more than normal. And our country has never really cared about those making less than that anyway.

Our society never cared about those people. If we did, we would have universal healthcare that included mental health. We would have a strong social safety net to assist people who lose their job at no fault of their own. Were you also concerned in 2009 about people who were underwater on their mortgages?

The people who are suffering from lockdowns are lower-income earners. Restaurant workers, actors, low-level airline employees, hotel employees, etc. These people always have a hard time in our economy. If you really are concerned for their well being, you should support higher minimum wages, universal healthcare, and better government services.

And now we are back to fascism. I'm sorry if I think human life is more important than a small business owner (and I am one).

Well we aren’t talking about the life of the small business owner, we’re talking about the business. In the interest of intellectual honesty, you should probably make that distinction.


and before you ask, I don’t support the lockdown order I’m subject to

Could be wrong, but I read his comment to be about a hypothetical suicide of small business owner so it would be an apples to apples comparison. If he was in fact only referring to the business itself then I agree with you.

Do you think everyone over the age of 50 can actually order food on their phone? It also costs substantially more. Most people go to the grocery store for their food. That is where the risk is. If the grocery store is full of healthy people who just spent the night at the bar, there is a much higher chance of that asthmatic catching COVID at the grocery store. What about at-risk people at essential businesses? They still have to earn a paycheck. Every time they go to work, they are put at risk. That risk greatly increases if their healthy co-workers are going to restaurants. Should they stay home and not make money? Don't you think the company they work for will also suffer from their absence? I guess it comes down to if there are more people in the restaurant industry or more at-risk people in essential businesses.

You can't fully isolate parts of our population. We all interact with each other.

I would say you are the one who only sees the world as black and white. You are saying COVID is only bad for old people or people with health conditions. You are saying we can isolate them. You are saying a restaurant is more important than an old person. I'm trying to show that none of those assumptions are true. I'm not saying lockdowns are the best thing to do and were our only option, but I am saying there is no way to isolate higher-risk groups of our population without also affecting the economy.

Since when do pilots care about mental health? And sorry, but the suicide rate has not increased at the same rate as COVID deaths. Allowing one asthmatic to die does not prevent a business owner from committing suicide.

Uh...no. You, LIKE MOST OF US, do not know as much about COVID as you think you do.

Which is why getting real dogmatic about this and slinging around mandates is sort of foolish. Majority opinion doesn’t mean squat when it comes to science. The Earth was never flat, no matter how many people believed it to be so...

Literally have no idea what you’re talking about with the bolded statement above.... I’m a pilot and I most certainly do care about it and have for years due to the experiences of several family members. I guess I could be alone on that but I highly highly doubt it.

Most pilots fall into the "pull yourselves up by the bootstraps" crowd. They place a premium on personal responsibility. During 2009, lots of pilots I worked with ranted about how anyone who fell on hard times brought it on themselves. I don't remember hearing much sympathy about the people who suffered during the last economic downturn. And the bulk of mental illness problems are also tied to economic and housing issues. If mental illness is your primary concern, the best thing you can do is support programs for low-income individuals and the homeless.

For the record I never suggested asthmatics were any more or less at risk than anyone else, I was answering 2stg's hypothetical.

You don't close an entire industry employing 15 million people and subject them to loss of income, suicides, child abuses, and poverty due to a small amount of high risk patrons who are perfectly free to stay at home if they are concerned. The cure cannot be worse than the disease.

As do I. I would hope you and everyone else would also place a premium on personal responsibility.

and I bet most of those same people advocate for the government not to be arresting people for running a business. You can be simultaneously pro individual liberty and responsibilities, and admit a government deciding overnight that your life’s work is now illegal and pushing you to financial ruin, depression, and possibly suicide is not ok. In fact I bet most people who agree with the former, agree with the latter. The 2008 recession was not caused by the government putting millions out of work under threat of fines or arrest.

So you don't think there should be any restrictions on our society in response to COVID? There is no way to limit the spread of COVID without affecting the economy. Saying the economy is more important than human life is an essential component of fascism. Do you honestly think there are more people dying of suicide brought on by economic hardship than of COVID?

big difference between nothing and strong arming millions of Americans out of their livelihoods. And stop calling every opinion that disagrees with yours fascism. If the govt was FORCING people to go eat at restaurants despite the pandemic I might agree with you, but allowing people to freely choose where to associate is definitely not fascist. By your logic we should confiscate everyone’s car or motorcycle because people dying can’t possibly be As important as transportation. And ban the sale of candy and soda, even if it saves just one person from diabetes. There is a middle ground between doing absolutely nothing and dropping a nuclear bomb on our small business infrastructure. We need to find it.

Although each state is different, most of these restrictions are not laws being passed by our elected state representatives through the legislative process, but rather edicts emanating from a governor's office and his/her (seemingly) royal court.

A5S

I can completely agree with that. There are lots of posters on here who seem to think any response to COVID is too much. And there are some who think a small business IS more important than an old person. I'm also not saying that if you don't agree with me you are a fascist, I am saying valuing the economy over human life is a component of fascism. The Lt. Governor of Texas actually made that statement.

I actually think the nuclear bomb approach is the result of poor planning and lack of leadership. It's easier to say "no mass gatherings or going out to eat" than it is to identify at-risk individuals and actually provide them with some form of protection. Closing restaurants is the easy way out. It eliminates a lot of vectors and only directly impacts a relatively small amount of people. How many politicians run a campaign based on restaurant workers?

you keep saying the economy like it’s just rich peoples trust funds, yachts, and other superfluous stuff. The economy directly ties to employment, people’s ability to put food on their table, keep a roof over their head, have their kids have some semblance of security in the base level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Pushing an entire country into a depression would lead to higher rates of drug use, addiction, suicide, homelessness etc. honestly I don’t think that is something we should do at this point. (Remember the Great Depression with all the bread lines and tent cities only had about a 20% unemployment rate)

The reason for the pushback is you are saying certain people should be pushed into poverty to make others feel safe.

I agree with this statement, but I don’t think the majority of the country is there yet.

I actually do hope a changing of the figurehead in chief coupled with a MUCH less adversarial press makes a real difference in the national psychology.

You are preaching to the choir here. I have a tremendous amount of empathy for any family earning less than $70,000 a year. But I'm a realist. The economy does not care about those people. Most of the high-income earners are able to work from home. They are spending less and saving more. That is why the stock market is doing great. All the people are taking the money they would be spending on stuff like restaurants and investing. Our economy runs on the working poor. It has never cared about them. When you say you are upset that restaurants are closing, what do you care about more; the 30 low wage employees, or the 3 people who invested in the business?

You have no clue what you are talking about.

Both. The people who work there are probably less income secure but have access to things like unemployment that can help. That only lasts so long and if we are to help these people, those jobs need to come back.

the owners of most restaurants I know of are individuals who stand to lose their life savings if their restaurant fails.

I care about both, and want to see them survive for the sake of both groups. but the long term ramifications of a small business closing are usually harder felt by the owners than the employees. But the short term can definitely hit workers harder

That's good to hear, but what would you do differently?

To me, there was no option that wouldn't harm people.

Assuming I was at the state/local level, probably along the lines of
-no concerts unless outdoors and provide adequate separation between guests (at least 6’ fenced off)
-masks in all indoor businesses except bars, restaurants, and gyms.
-masks when not at a table at bars/ restaurants (I’d get expert advise if this is good or bad given it requires people touching their face more)
- all businesses may operate at no more than 75% fire marshal capacity
-time limit for unemployment filed by anyone Over 60 is waived until they are offered a vaccine. (And no requirement to show looking for work)

This just became incredibly clear to me as well.

How many people are gonna take the vaccine?




The regular flu kills 30-80k every year and look how many people don’t even bother to take the flu shot.

As soon as the election is over Covid 19 will go away. It’s just the Dems trying to push Trump out of office!

"No vacation without vaccination!"

Biden will never sit behind the Resolute desk.

Stop worrying about what he may or may not do. It's OBE.

This won't age well, but it's a good reminder how gullible otherwise intelligent folks can be.

You don't have an argument.

The fact you say HCQ is not a cure? Wow. You are lost in the talking points. Where's your medical degree from again????

Take your vax like a good sheep. Wish you well.

Never should the cure be worse than the disease.