StrangeSox

I'm sorry the world has forced you into a shitty situation, as it has many other people. This is why Steps 1-N is sufficient public policy that would shut down dangerous activities like golf tournaments and make sure people like you don't suffer financially for it. Which is a fantastic example of why going on and on and on about "personal responsibility" is such a counterproductive discussion. You've been forced into a situation where you can't act responsibility to your community. That sucks, a lot, and it's why another 38k people were confirmed positive today, why another 685 died, why over 31,000 are suffering in hospitals and why we'll continue on with this same death toll day after day after day after day. But at the same time, rather than acknowledging being forced into this situation by irresponsible officials, you've chosen to mock the people who point it out and to belittle their concerns. So don't act all defensive now. In a country with sane public policy, we'd also all have health care without having to worry, of course.

You're being irresponsible. The rules you're following are insufficient. You openly mocked someone who wants the stronger rules we need. You're still mocking people who want to do what the actually successful countries have done, calling it "magic policy." Screw the people who think golf tournaments and frequent restaurant dining are acceptable and responsible activities during a pandemic. Childish, selfish adults putting their communities and collectively our whole country at risk indefinitely.

No, don't rewrite history. Your original point was that Balta was being hysterical and you likened his concerns about a deadly pandemic to being afraid of sharks in Lake Michigan.

It's important because we're shooting for 80% efficacy with the vaccines in reducing or preventing someone from developing COVID, the disease you get from a SARS-CoV-2 infection. They're not trying to get a sterilizing vaccine that will actually prevent the infection in the first place at this point; it's a lot harder to do and I don't know if there's scientific consensus/belief that it's achievable with this virus. But it's not the current target. So there's still going to be a whole lot of infection circulating around post-initial vaccine, maybe even more because now everyone is asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and everything is fully reopened. That 20% who come up on the wrong side of the dice role are going to have more severe disease, maybe hospitalization, and they'll need these treatments. I think the limitation with these synthetic antibodies though is that they're kinda like tamiflu and influenza in that they need to be administered early during the infection to have an impact, versus treating a more severe case of COVID after it develops, and that they are expensive and difficult to manufacture. So we'll see supply and pricing bottlenecks. Still better to have it than not, of course.

People in this income range almost always have negative net worth and frequently can't pay all of their bills.

Somehow still not getting. The laws and policies themselves are wrong and bad and need to change. That is the most important part. That is what Balta was saying when you mocked him for being an "extremist" and equating his concerns about the unchecked pandemic killing thousands of Americans every week to being afraid of sharks at Oak Street Beach. You're frequenting restaurants and going to golf tournaments. Those seem to be pretty irresponsible things to do during a pandemic. Your sample county is in bad shape. That's why we need to start with public policy that doesn't let those restaurants and tournaments operate in the first place, so that irresponsible people don't make irresponsible decisions.

Oh for sure. You can point to some pretty drastic and ongoing failures from people like Gov. Cuomo, but ultimately all state and local governments were screwed without a coherent and competent federal response. Don't worry, though. Billionaires have made back $845B since March. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/business/us-billionaire-wealth-increase-pandemic/index.html

Public leaders need to be responsible and order these businesses closed. That is Step 1-999 on "how to handle public health crisis." Take the decision out of the hands of thousands of individual businesses and millions of individual people, because we know, very very clearly, that this doesn't work. Public health crises need public policy responses. When you focus on individuals during systemic failures, you'll never actually solve the problem. You fix the system.

A responsible public leader would shut down in person dining so we don't have to rely on thousands of individual risk assessments of what is or isn't responsible, especially when those individual assessments are informed by what leaders are demonstrating are acceptable activities. Remember, your example county in Texas is actually doing very poorly per capita.

The actions of shutting things down and sending very clear official stances on what is and isn't actually responsible behavior matters very much in a public health crisis. At most you're giving empty platitudes that excuse widespread political failures in this country.

This is why you're getting pushback. You're arguing for irresponsible policies and, through your responses, mocking the people who are actually taking this seriously. How many more dead, Tex? How many more before you stop with glib nonsense like "everyone's gotta eat" as an excuse for why restaurants should be open?

My wife's grandma popped positive today. Not hospitalized, but she's in her mid 80's. Hope Trump's come-down from his steroid induced mania isn't too harsh.

This all started because you mocked balta for advocating for stricter public policies. Just stop it

Trump has called off talks over any additional stimulus. Real bad news for tens of millions of people. If he goes on to lose in November, it's hard to see him signing anything during the lame duck period. That would put the prospects for any additional relief five months out from today. Nearly a full year after the initial relief.

DC set a record of new daily cases, likely due to the incompetence and malice at the White House.

"Who gives a shit about 205,000 dead and counting in less than a year?"

Unless it's him personally he doesn't give a single shit Maybe Ivanka but that's it This will get people killed. Cool.

Hermann Cain already died from one of his summer rallies. His Twitter account lives on, saying covid is nbd

It was to film a commercial

His campaign and White House staff are also out there mocking Sen. Harris and Biden for wearing masks and taking precautions. e: this seems irresponsible to me

If you design a system that keeps failing over and over and over again, you don't get mad at the people using the system and insist they do better. You examine the system and find where you have procedural or technical or education or communication failures, because somewhere along the line, you messed up.

Personal responsibility as the primary mechanism very clearly does not work. A bad plan with people being "responsible," aka doing the things officials say is okay like going to bars and restaurants, is a bad plan that leads to 200,000+ dead. A good plan is one people can't ignore because these sorts of public places aren't open in the first place. We can again look all over the world to find examples of good and bad plans. The good plans don't rely on opening everything up but hoping people are responsible enough to not go do these things. That you're focused on penalties and punishment rather than proactive prevention really shows that you're still missing the key element, imo. You're focused on indivuals rather than institutions, venues, businesses. It all comes down to probabilities and risk assessments. Many people base their risk perception on what leaders and officials say and do. If officials are telling them things like indoor dining are safe, they'll be "responsible" and go do these things. That's why "personal responsibility" can never be step 1 in a public health crisis. People do need to be responsible and follow the rules, but thoes rules need to be responsible. Currently, they are very far from responsible. As a result, we have 40,000 more people every day catching this virus, 500-1000 of which will be killed by it, and 8k or so who will be hospitalized. Every. Single. Day. We've failed. We're still failing. Maybe you're 99% safe every time you go out, 3-4 times a week. Do that enough, though, and your risk of catching or spreading is going to climb to appreciable numbers. Now have everyone else in the community doing the same. Oops, now you've got yet another hotspot raging uncontrolled. The same story in community after community after community throughout the country. It's pretty clear evidence that we cannot rely on atomized risk assessment and instead must have strong top-down policy and coordination to handle this. By the way, those numbers in Gillespie County are actually not great. 10 deaths from a population of 25k would be pretty high up there on the deaths/1M if it were it's own country. Like Top-20-Worst-Countries bad. Cases would be Top 30. At the end of the day, we're all living in a country that's still suffering from an unchecked pandemic. Going to eat outdoors is much safer than going indoors, or to bars, or to family gatherings and other higher risk activities. But it's still a higher risk than simply staying home; you know, the personally responsible thing to do. It's a risk that you or someone else will get infected and the pandemic will continue to spread and we'll all keep suffering the consequences indefinitely. Holding people accountable after the fact doesn't bring 200,000 people and counting back to life. Personal responsibility is necessary but very clearly far from sufficient. The key to this is and always has been and will always be public policy.