Objectively intelligent.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Not sick. Old.

We could cover all the compromised younger people who get covid and not stress the ERs. But that generation born between 46 and 55 are the ones who'd bust capacity.

The sick are often productive. Sick and productive aren't mutually exclusive. Old and retired (and bailed out twice already, in 2000 and 2008) is a different story.

I'm not arguing against doing it. I'm not an ogre. But this is all to ensure the safety of the boomers. And they'd better be fucking thankful.

Out of curiosity, have you talked recently to anyone older that 65? A lot of them are shut up in their homes, fearing social contact, and hearing your ideas might be uplifting for them.

[Ty@50]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Out of curiosity, have you talked recently to anyone older that 65? A lot of them are shut up in their homes, fearing social contact, and hearing your ideas might be uplifting for them.

I/you/we am/are nearing that window, how can you be so callous?

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Why have hospitals at all? Wouldn't it be more efficient to just let sick people die?They aren't as productive as everyone else.

And people who choose to use tobacco, drink, overeat, drive at unsafe speeds, and live past their usefulness.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I just realized, you are my "bike lane" expert. In TCOTU, on the avenues, the central lanes are driving of course. Then you have a parking lane, then the bike lane. Then the sidewalk.

My little burb put a main road on a diet- 4 lanes to 2. But it is drive/bike/park which seems really dangerous. To park you have to cross the bike lane? Why isn't one arrangement settled?

More “aficionado” than “expert” but it’s settled. The Dutch don’t mix bikes and cars unless car traffic is calmed to 30kph, I think. Otherwise, bike facilities are grade-separated at sidewalk height.

Having built out our transportation networks to prioritize car throughout and storage, it’s really hard for us to replicate that, especially if we’re not entirely rebuilding the right of way. This leaves us trying to figure out how to put bikes on the existing roadway and making compromise choices. They range from simple buffered bike lanes (in my view fine if wide enough) or “protected” with plastic sticks (“delineators” , meh) or cement curbs (yeah!) or parked cars. The latter is a mixed bag, providing protection mid-block but perhaps increasing conflicts at intersections because it’s harder for drivers to see bikes approaching them.

Locally, I understand that our bike advocacy group (co-founded by our now city council president) was sparked by opposition to a parking-protected bike lane through downtown. Always seemed fine to me, as a slow biker, but it was true that turning cars didn’t always pay attention to people on bikes. It’s gone now.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, people park in bike lanes that are supposed to be parking-protected, which is a pain. Really, we should just all copy the Dutch.

In sum, if the road is being seal-coated or restriped, it should get buffered bike lanes (with or without plastic sticks). If it’s getting rebuilt, the curb should be moved and bike facilities should be at sidewalk levels.

If you live where there aren’t sidewalks, move.

[Ty@50]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

And people who choose to use tobacco, drink, overeat, drive at unsafe speeds, and live past their usefulness.

I’m sorry, people who drink should die?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Ty@50

I’m sorry, people who drink should die?

Off my corner, ho!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Out of curiosity, have you talked recently to anyone older that 65? A lot of them are shut up in their homes, fearing social contact, and hearing your ideas might be uplifting for them.

Yes. Do you think IRL I’m much different? I’m a bit more polite, but in raw times like these, I’m not uncomfortable telling a Woodstock attendee and later Reagan supporter my observations.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Ty@50

I’m sorry, people who drink should die?

I’d hope so. If I see a year starting with 8, I’ll be pissed.

It’s been a good time. If you’ve been lucky, and we all have, don’t be greedy. Be gracious. I could go tomorrow. Judged against almost all of the rest of humanity, you weren’t born on first or second, or even home plate, You were born in the owner’s box.

75 is around where I expect to go... or may hasten the exit.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Total tobacco related US mortality is about 500,000 per year, all in (cancer, heart disease, etc.). But much of that results from past use - if you banned tobacco today the number would decline to zero only over 40-50 years. You'd basically get 10 years of life expectancy for the portion of the population that smokes back.

Max. deaths from this round with the TrumpVirus approaches about 3 million.

Assuming high numbers on both, even if you fully eliminate all tobacco consumption, it would likely take more than a decade to save as many lives as we can with good management of this problem.

It's a big fuckin problem.

There are also all of the people who will die of other things because the healthcare system cannot take care of them. The ICUs are usually full of people who are there for a variety of reasons. CV surgery patients, major trauma patients, some other infectious disease patients, patients in renal failure etc. And there are also the delays of elective surgeries and procedures which won't be as "elective" as time goes on and they're not taken care of.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

If you bend Coltrane's point a bit, however, you highlight a trade-off at the heart of this thing:

We are sacrificing a lot of the young, in many ways, to save the old.

It's true. Younger docs will be in harm's way (bombarded over and over again with the virus, which repetition can cause death in healthy young adults), younger people will lose tons of jobs, younger people will suffer losses of homes and businesses.

There's a daisy chain of horrible things that will be suffered by the young to ensure the old don't perish. Most significantly, immunity, for at least a time, to this virus. For most younger people, its not a big deal. Get it, get over it, and you're protected from it for some period of time. Instead, they're hunkering down and avoiding something that's not much of a risk to them.

So while Coltrane's point about valuing Covid deaths over tobacco deaths might be comparing apples and oranges, the argument that we are prioritizing the lives of the old over the younger cannot be avoided.

If one were an economist, he would say this is valuing the less productive over the more productive. If one looked at it as a business person, he'd said it was protecting cost centers over profit centers.

How much more are we going to demand in sacrifice for the boomers? I understand the humane need to do it. But this is brutally unfair to millennials, who are going to eat the brunt of this if it becomes a U shaped rather than V shaped crisis.

If you read the MMWR, it's not just boomers.

As of March 16, a total of 4,226 COVID-19 cases had been reported in the United States, with reports increasing to 500 or more cases per day beginning March 14 (Figure 1). Among 2,449 patients with known age, 6% were aged ≥85, 25% were aged 65–84 years, 18% each were aged 55–64 years and 45–54 years, and 29% were aged 20–44 years (Figure 2). Only 5% of cases occurred in persons aged 0–19 years.
Among 508 (12%) patients known to have been hospitalized, 9% were aged ≥85 years, 26% were aged 65–84 years, 17% were aged 55–64 years, 18% were 45–54 years, and 20% were aged 20–44 years. Less than 1% of hospitalizations were among persons aged ≤19 years (Figure 2). The percentage of persons hospitalized increased with age, from 2%–3% among persons aged ≤9 years, to ≥31% among adults aged ≥85 years.

Emphasis mine. 20 percent of those in the hospital are in the 20-44 age range.

All of these stats are fucked because we don't have a good sense of who actually has it because the testing has been such a cock up. But the Boomers aren't the only ones taking up those beds.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

If you read the MMWR, it's not just boomers.



Emphasis mine. 20 percent of those in the hospital are in the 20-44 age range.

All of these stats are fucked because we don't have a good sense of who actually has it because the testing has been such a cock up. But the Boomers aren't the only ones taking up those beds.

No, they aren't, but that same study notes that only 12% of ICU admissions are 20-44. And we don't have info on co-morbidities among the younger crowd.

This is a depressing but also fascinating article about how covid has already killed three people within a single family, and hospitalized a few others: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/n...ronavirus.html

Two who died were only 55, the other one 73. Initially, this would cause one to consider if certain people have unique genetic susceptibility to this, or if this was a particularly virulent strain (Wuhan S vs. Wuhan L). But then also you have to consider co-morbidities. The younger dead here did not appear terribly physically fit. There might be diabetes, there might history of weak hearts.

I'm sure the epidemiologists are cross-referencing co-morbidities and we'll have some data sets on that soon enough. That's a wealth of information that may allow us to better segregate the most high risk individuals across all age categories.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

There are also all of the people who will die of other things because the healthcare system cannot take care of them. The ICUs are usually full of people who are there for a variety of reasons. CV surgery patients, major trauma patients, some other infectious disease patients, patients in renal failure etc. And there are also the delays of elective surgeries and procedures which won't be as "elective" as time goes on and they're not taken care of.

There's also the possibility of the already weakened being taken out post-procedure. Imagine being a cardiologist doing a triple bypass only to have your patient die a week or two later from covid he caught in the hospital which ravaged him in a weakened state.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

There are also all of the people who will die of other things because the healthcare system cannot take care of them. The ICUs are usually full of people who are there for a variety of reasons. CV surgery patients, major trauma patients, some other infectious disease patients, patients in renal failure etc. And there are also the delays of elective surgeries and procedures which won't be as "elective" as time goes on and they're not taken care of.

Yes, one of the most dramatic things I've seen was someone comparing the obituary pages in an Italian newspaper recently versus three months ago. The old one was two pages long, and neither page was full, the new one about 7 or 8 pages, packed.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There's also the possibility of the already weakened being taken out post-procedure. Imagine being a cardiologist doing a triple bypass only to have your patient die a week or two later from covid he caught in the hospital which ravaged him in a weakened state.

Hell, we're in peak allergy season right now with the pollen count through the roof because it hasn't rained in awhile. Half of us in this town are quasi asthmatics because of it. I can't imagine that helps in the slightest.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

Hell, we're in peak allergy season right now with the pollen count through the roof because it hasn't rained in awhile. Half of us in this town are quasi asthmatics because of it. I can't imagine that helps in the slightest.

Ya know, I wasn't thinking of myself as particularly vulnerable, despite having had asthma associated with seasonal allergies as a child (haven't had or used drugs for it for decades). Thanks.