Episode-2646- How Wrong Have Our Choices on CoVid Been
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Stay home and save lives! It is the creed we are all supposed to follow. Apparently if I go out and walk by myself in the woods at a local park, what I am doing is akin to shooting an old person in the face. According to Governor Gretchen “MeMaw” Whitmer I guess all of Texas is killing people because you can buy seeds and a garden hose when you are at Walmart which is already open and full of people anyway?
My problem with the lock down strategy is it is ignoring facts in preference to catch phrases, something I have long said is dangerous to Americans. We have kids with 200K in debt for a degree who are serving up Lattes at Starbucks due to phrases like, “every child should go to college” and a belief that any object to it is inherently evil. Worse if I even ask a question as to its validity it means I want to deny an education to minorities and transgendered Asian or some such shit.
You know what though at least college is voluntary and no one makes you take a loan for a degree in gender studies. Lock downs are mandatory and they are train wrecking the global economy in ways we can’t even imagine yet. For now we can turn everything back on and get back to a reasonable outlook in say a year, yes it will take that long. How much longer though can we behave this way and expect to not create a global depression?
Yea I said depression! Keep this shit up for too long and you will be longing for the good old days of the Great Recession of the 2000s or the stagflation of the 70s. It does not have to be this way and it seems that enough people are willing to get back to work to head it off, but man the objections and screeching that “millions will die” are being set off like warning sirens for a tornadic storm. Is there any evidence supporting this claim though? No, not really. There are plenty of opinions and many by “experts” but asking an expert for evidence supporting an opinion is not a sin. Presenting evidence contrary to said opinions is also not a sin.
Is there evidence though that say, social distancing, facial coverings, no large gatherings and protecting the vulnerable are just as effective or close to it anyway as full lock downs in controlling spread of CoVid? Yes and the evidence for this is increasing consistently. Over 6 weeks ago I said in a Facebook post, “the postmortem on this over reaction will be ugly, how ugly is the only question to ask, not if but how bad will it be”. We are not ready for a full postmortem yet, but we can begin to see the answer to my question is likely to be, very, very ugly. How much damage are we doing and for how little gain?
Join Me Today to Discuss…
- A man has presented math that says lock downs don’t work, he has gotten a lot of hate for it, but no logical rebuttals – link
- How bad is the economic damage and how long before it “overloads the hospitals”
- Why are we closing meat processing facilities instead of handling them like hospitals
- What would an effective social distancing/containment policy look like
- How one Dallas hair salon says they are opening prior to approval and why it is a good model
- How big is the denominator, why the spin is now that is a problem and why the spin is mostly wrong
- Why I really shudder when I hear “muh second deadlier wave this winter, get your flu shot”
- What you should be doing for yourself right now in the middle of all this shit
- What you should do for yourself as your state starts opening back up
Resources for today’s show…
- Follow Life With Jack on Instagram
- TSP Facebook Group
- Join the Members Brigade
- Join Our Forum
- Walking To Freedom
- There is no empirical evidence for these lockdowns
- TspAz.com
- Brass in Pocket – The Pretenders
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The best approach to civil disobedience in my mind is to just go back to life as normal (as best as possible). Showing up on the capitol steps with a sign and an AR slung over your shoulder is going from first step to last without the logical middle parts.
The government can mandate and order all it wants. If everyone just shrugs off the threats and maybe hires a good lawyer, we’re back in business with or without Uncle Sam’s help. Sure, wear gloves and masks, and of course wash your hands and keep safe distance. But these things shouldn’t prohibit natural functions of economics and social movement.
There’s a bug-a-boo of fear over this and millions are now out of work. Food production is shutting down and some large cities are basically under martial law. We can get to a point when the cure is worse than the disease, and we’re approaching that point. Time to kick the fear and oppression to the curb and take a ‘kill or cure’ approach. If we don’t at least try, then any upsides won’t matter.
And now I’m doing my part and am heading off to work.
“The best approach to civil disobedience in my mind is to just go back to life as normal (as best as possible). Showing up on the capitol steps with a sign and an AR slung over your shoulder is going from first step to last without the logical middle parts.”
Yes, yes, and fuckin A yes!
The park closings are not because people are walking in the woods, it is because of stupid people. The parks in NJ were open, they just asked people not to have kids play on the playsets. To remind people they wrapped them with police ribbon. People then just stepped over the ribbon and had their kids play anyway. So they closed the parks. I’d like to rely on personal responsibility but in this case one person’s stupidity doesn’t just hurt them, it hurts others. The NAP doesn’t apply here.
Sounds like the same sad bullshit argument used to support shit like gun control to me.
I want to disagree that what we have been doing is necessary wrong. The argument that mathematics dictate that results would have been the same without social distancing has some issues.
The first issue is that much of what has been done was to slow the contagion rates to the point where they are manageable. Even with drastic measures many hospitals and health care systems like laboratories have been inundated. Mathematics may correctly estimate that eventually the number of people infected would be similar with or without lock downs which may be true, but it does not factor in the success of healthcare professionals to treat patients with the maximum positive outcome.
As with any illness, treatments improve with time. We may not be able to stop this virus, but by slowing the infection rate, we can have time to improve treatment and mitigate the damage and death.
It is also not true that we do not have evidence that quarantines work. There is an entire science about infectious disease and the control of them, and that science is not mathematics, it is epidemiology. We have evidence of the spread of infectious disease going back over 100 years. If you study the history of the Spanish Flu you will see they were dealing with many of the same issues we are dealing with now.
So far as the moral questions of whether it was worth the cost in terms of dollars to save as many lives as possible, we have realize it is not a simple question. Not closing down and allowing the virus to run amok could have had a much worse social and economic impact, but that is like all unknown, speculation.
It is plausible however that had lock downs not been implemented and the virus overwhelmed the healthcare system, it would have created public panic and a breakdown in social order.
The argument is NOT that we would be the same without social distancing. You are arguing a false premise and hence anything after this statement,
” The argument that mathematics dictate that results would have been the same without social distancing has some issues.”
The argument is in fact that SOCIAL DISTANCING IS AS EFFECTIVE AS LOCK DOWNS and hence there is no need at all to lock down the world and destroy the economy to mitigate CoVid as much as you can anyway. We have new data from Cuomo himself that about 20% of NYC residents have had CoVid, likley more.
We now know that CoVid is much more likely to spread indoors then outside in the open air.
CA testing shows the infection rate to be 50-80x the reported numbers.
We fucked this up and hard core bad fucked it up. You want to argue against the numbers, get the data and do it with math. Anything else is just talking and in this case not even talking accurately as to the point.
The problem as I see it is we have very diverse cultures. Some places people are highly responsible and voluntarily act responsibly. Other places the culture is different and people go out of their way to act irresponsibly. What do you do in areas where people refuse to do social distancing or have any concern for the health of the overall community? I have even seen reports of people purposely trying to spread the virus. Where I live, you cannot really tell there is anything going on when you go out. People are shopping, construction is going on, but people respect social distancing and act responsibly. However, I moved here from a city where people act completely different.
That is the same argument always made for government it all situations, every single time. It is as wrong here as it always is, a pandemic doesn’t change that.
OK you want numbers, here you go. According to the article..
“Sweden has opted not to lock down in the wake of Covid-19, and Swedes have instead followed similar social-distancing measures to those adopted in the seven US states I focused on. Sweden ranks slightly ahead of its close neighbors, ”
Slightly? Really?
Sweden: Total cases 17,567 Deaths 2,152 Deaths per 1m population 213
Denmark: Total cases 8,210 Deaths 403 Deaths per 1m population 70
Norway: Total cases 7,444 Deaths 199 Deaths per 1m population 37
Worldometers 4/24/2020
Run all the numbers otherwise your logical fallacy is https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-texas-sharpshooter
The models the man ran account for total population, population density and all other relevant variables. Send him an email, get his data set and refute it.
Both Norway and Finland have similar land area (though a bit smaller) and half yea HALF the population of Sweden.
Sweden – square miles – 173K – population – About 10 milion
Finland – square miles – 130K – population – About 5 million
Norway – square miles – 148K – population – About 5 million
That is what the deaths per 1 mil pop statistic is for. Sweden has 3 times the deaths per 1 million in pop than Denmark and 5 times Norway. If you do not think that is statistically significant then you need to question your own credibility.
Jim you are focusing on one stat, totally ignoring the mathematical model that accounts for many other variables. You are doing this to make a point but you are not making any points by trying this fallacy based approach. Density of population is more important than population.
DFW has done less tight lock downs than NYC, the populations are not that much different in size or even demographics. NYC is fucked to high heaven, DFW is so low that you can’t even find a person who knows a person with CoVid here.
If I said something like, “well we eat a lot more TexMex here, TexMex prevents CoVid” it would be about as valid as your attempt at refutation here.
Get the data, refute the actual data or you are not worth bothering with further in this discussion. You are picking your own argument and not even doing that well.
Well Jim, would ya just looka this!
Does not look like a failure to me and seems like the authority you keep appealing to got it wrong, way wrong.
Here is the latest new case rate out of Sweden, as you can see no surge is coming. Pretty bumpy but flat curve.
They say that it is hard to get a man to see the truth about something if his job depends on not seeing it. I am afraid that is the point we have come to. There are lies damn lies and statistics, or mathematical models if you choose. The bottom line is that epidemiologists know more about epidemics than mathematicians. The Swedish experiment has been a failure. And you are more concerned with maintaining your cult leader status than speaking the truth.
1. My job does not depend on me not understanding this nor not understanding your point, in anyway, shape or form. Your entire opinion is literally pointless to this discussion.
2. The people who said to do the lock downs got almost everything wrong, almost EVERYTHING.
3. The reason you won’t try to refute the numbers is you can’t, you don’t even have the first idea where to start in trying.
4. You have added another fallacy to your list in this discussion, your latest is an appeal to authority.
5. Sweden is about the only nation in the western world that has not totally fucked their economy. In the end it is quite possible that US fatalities per million may exceed Sweden’s, despite lunatic level lock downs.
6. Your entire argument began from a false objection in regard to social distancing you are still ignoring that fact.
7. The people you deify in this use math too, just so happens their models have been immensely flawed, wrong and overly pessimistic.
8. You’ve ignored my point about density of population, ie 7 million people in DFW vs. 8 million in NYC and DFW has about 5,000 cases with less restrictions then NYC which has 263,000 confirmed cases.
9. You’ve ignored that NYC really has according to the NY governor about 1.6 million cases, at least, most of which are asymptotic.
10. You ignored the data from the Boston Homeless Shelter, the US Navy Ship, multiple prisons, the California Data all which indicate we have done almost nothing to actually reduce spread via lock downs, certainly nothing beyond what basic social distancing could do.
11. You are ignoring the fact that most spread is due to close indoor personal contact and very little seems to be possible in out door open air environments.
12. You are ignoring the real question, what is worse, say even 10,000 more deaths or a second great depression and how many lives it will cost if allowed to happen.
Again refute the data if you can or find someone to do so. But nothing you have claimed here even approaches a fact and nothing from your side of the debate even rises to the level of a true counterargument in the hierarchyy of debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg
Jim you hit the nail on the head with cult leader. Jack is and always has been this way. It’s just a damn shame people blindly follow him with such fervor. Right or wrong if you don’t agree with Jack, he will only pick out a few of your points to keep up his side of the argument.
That is fucking humorous. All I provided was data, lot’s of data. Instead of using data to counter data we get opinions based on appeal to authority fallacy and I am the cult leader?
Excuse me but can I get some of the dope you are on because it must be good. The cult here is the cult of obedience to authorities that have never been elected and we are not permitted to challenge. Not with facts, not with opposing expert opinions, not with anything. Any question of the official narrative is wrong, period, end of story. And I am the cult leader? Fuckin really?
Also bluntly why the fuck are people like you here Nathan? Seriously if TSP is nothing but a mindless cult, why are you here?
Amid all the information on here you do some times provide great gems of knowledge. In spite of some of the truly nonsensical BS you spout. When it’s based on farming and practical things I find a lot of useful information, but when it comes to some subjects you have the same mentality as a butt hurt boomer. I have been listening long enough to hear you shine and to hear you be extremely two faced. I’ll keep checking back to get information that will help me improve my life and the quality of my life, but I don’t have to agree with your some times disconnected views. Like you have said in the past Jack, I don’t have to agree with you all the time.
Bluntly you talk like a man with a paper asshole.
You have also brought zero facts to this discussion but used name calling, tell me where that falls on this?
Penalty, off sides. You are picking one point again Jack. I agreed with a person that you have a cult like following and pointed out this exact thing only to have you prove me right. I then answered your question as to why I come here and you then start the name calling insisting I have a paper asshole. Looks like you should take a step back and look at how you argue, not me.
I come here for useful information and have seen you attack other people time and time again because they question your opinion and don’t agree with you. I have not stated if I thought you were right wrong or a sack of shit. None of that came out of my fingers and entered the virtual world. You extrapolated that and it says a lot about how insecure you are about all of it. I will continue to come back and sift through the muck for my gems to keep and that is all.
Flatly you are the type of idiot that I fire as a customer on a routine basis. You inserted yourself in this conversation and now you feel the right to chose the topic of conversation as, “is Jack Spirko a cult leader”? Which you by the way have presented no evidence for at all. I did present at least the case that the real cult is blind allegiance to authority. Which you also did not counter. I also presented first third party data neither you or your online buddy have countered in ANY WAY with evidence.
I also presented not one but 12 relevant points to counter the original argument not a single one of which has been addressed, by either of you. I guess you can’t fuckin count to 12. There is actually ONE debate in this discussion which you want to steer away from because you can’t present a single fact to counter it. Your calling me a cult leader is so off base and backed by nothing and hence not worthy of discussion, certainly not debate.
Either do something to debate the point in question or fuck off. Your third choice is continue being a fucking troll and see what happens.
@JimHardy-
Actually, given the sector Jack is in (survivalism) I think he has a lot of monetary incentive to take the OPPOSITE position that he’s taking. There’s a lot of opportunity for people to shill survival products in this environment of fear. So you’re disproving your own point with your assertion that his ‘job depends on him not seeing it’.
I take this pandemic quite seriously and I’ve done so since January since before we got back to Asia. And while I think some of the recent studies like the Stanford study are terribly flawed (refer to Chris Martenson’s video starting at 5:40 here- https://youtu.be/R8Pv77R3g1E), we cannot ignore the damage from the economic fallout. If handled badly (which I think many places have both from a practical and liberty standpoint), that economic damage can easily translate to more lives lost and misery than the pandemic.
Epidemiologists and business owners need to pool their skills & knowledge to see the bigger picture, because it’s seldom that people from either profession has sufficient background in both to chart the optimal course. Note that I said ‘optimal’… not ‘pain free’ or ‘risk free’. Hanging one’s expectations of the latter two is not realistic, and I fear too many people are carrying this mindset.
“Actually, given the sector Jack is in (survivalism) I think he has a lot of monetary incentive to take the OPPOSITE position that he’s taking.” Nick in MNG.
Thanks for saying it so I didn’t have to. I think that is one hell of an obvious statement. I truly wish it was for other reasons but TSPs revenue has been almost 2X since this thing ramped up.
The George Straight movie you made reference to is “Pure Country.” In addition to that thought- provoking comment, it did produce two good songs.
Almost every song in that movie was good, several were exceptional. The movie had moments, it actually was not as bad as I made it to be. I guess if it were low budget, you’d have to call it decent. But headlining George Strait and made as a major movie, well……
One thing I will add I love that it was a rare love story where the two main characters never once even kissed. I am no prude don’t mind nudity etc. but the reason is the key. George Strait is a married man and refused to kiss another woman even for a movie. #respect
Agreed, great movie, great soundtrack!
Funny how people are committed to justify the lie rather than argue with Facts.
No one knew what they were dealing with at first, the models were crap, I knew it at the time, but no one knew what the actual models would look like either.
Now, we know that it was nowhere near as bad as we thought it was, it’s not killing healthy by the millions, it’s killing sickly people by the thousands. We also know that it’s too similar to other strains of Coronavirus to be a novel Coronavirus and likely is just a strain we never sequenced before.
I’m in Southern California, and there’s a lot of people who go back and forth from China monthly. There was a virus that went around December and January that seemed to be mostly from that community, it didn’t overwhelm the hospitals, it wasn’t the Walking Dead, but it wasn’t fun either. I believe it was Covid19, and yet California is on lockdown still, with almost completely empty hospitals. You know, so that we don’t overwhelm the hospitals… makes a ton of sense, right?
“Funny how people are committed to justify the lie rather than argue with Facts.” USCPrepper
Frankly to not even pretend to care about facts right? Here is this evidence, it looks valid, if you can refute it, go ahead.
bUt tHe eXpErTs oN tHe tV sAId oLd pEopLe wiLL DiE!
Have you seen this? https://banned.video/watch?id=5ea4994ea881fd00808e95ad