That feature screws me all the time. I'll load windows to play a game and try to reboot back into linux, and the update kicks off. I always have to force shutdown and just let it update the next time I start it to play a game.
This is very prescient as right now the radical leftists are busy destroying the icons of anti-slavery and black success. Marxist's always destroy the good history when they take control. If you don't know where you are from you can be led anywhere. We'll see slavery again in this country if we forget our past.
I predict a lot of comments that ignore the fact that the United States military provides free-as-in-beer global free trade to the entire planet, all while maintaining a readiness to fight a two-front war on any two fronts. (Yes, there's plenty of reasonable debate about the US's readiness.) Other militaries don't include that in their remit, so budget comparisons are largely fruitless for anything other than political purposes (one way or the other).
I'm as opposed to wasteful spending as anyone–and I think that we have plenty of it–but this idea that the US military budget is strictly and solely about shooting wars completely misses the point. It has held together the world's first peaceful, global free trade in exchange for cooperation in security policy since 1946. That isn't cheap.
Nor is it easy or even viable for anyone else. It's not that anyone else could do it if only they had the budget, there just isn't another piece of land on the planet that could do it, short of assuming some impossible alliances.
When comparing military budgets you need to compare what it is they're buying: no other country is providing global free trade with their budgets, so of course they're comparatively small. And of course running an insurgency against occupying forces is relatively inexpensive. Of course regional security is less expensive than global security. This isn't comparing player stats on Street Fighter to see how they'd match up in some kind of March Madness bracket.
Like it or not, most modern wars (at least the non-pointless ones that aren't mostly about pork and politics) aren't about winning or losing in classical terms, but about how they fit into the broader security and trade context.
There are multiple shipping corridors through areas with less than stable/friendly governments. Sure, there are the pirates off of Somalia, but there's also governments that could threaten blockades or charge steep fares to pass by. Check out this map and consider how many ships are passing by China, the Middle East, and Africa.
"there's also governments that could threaten blockades or charge steep fares to pass by. Check out this map and consider how many ships are passing by China, the Middle East, and Africa"
That's ironic considering that it's the US who has been harassing Chinese and Iranian ships [0], [1].
In fact, the US Navy is a major threat to China that heavily relies on the sea routes for its import and export.
"threaten blockades"
If you meant Iran threatening retaliation with blockade of Saudi's oil shipments, the US is the part of problem, not of the solution. Any other cases?
"or charge steep fares to pass by"
Any precedents? Especially considering that almost the whole world has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea[2]. The whole world except the US, I mean[3].
Think of it, the whole world lives by the law, which the US refuses to be a subject to, and you are talking with a straight face about the US deterring other countries from breaking it. The world is doing fine without American policing.
"The carrier fleet is more about"
And the carrier groups are responsible for the bulk of the US naval military expenditures.
Consider the annexation of Crimea. That's what happens in a power vacuum or a reduction in the belief that the US and the global community will retaliate against land grabs.
What happens when the US's eleven supercarriers are not in the Strait of Hormuz or floating around the Pacific. The threat is enough to guarantee countries think twice about annexing their neighbors provinces.
"Consider the annexation of Crimea. That's what happens in a power vacuum"
Yeah, let's consider it.
It's a direct response to the US-sponsored coup in the Ukraine and the threat of NATO expansion into Ukraine.
The Crimea was (arguably) illegally taken from Russia and assigned to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954 when they both were a part of the USSR, the Ukraine refused to give it back when it declared its independence and yet Russia did nothing about it for a quarter of century and paid huge rent for Russian naval base located in Crimea.
The prospect of American military bases appearing in the Ukraine was unacceptable for Russia and what happened next you've read in the news.
That's what happens when the US meddles around the world.
"The threat is enough to guarantee countries think twice about annexing their neighbors provinces"
But who would protect countries from the American threat?
The US with the support of its navy invaded Iraq in 2003, bombed Libya, protects its allies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia) when they sponsor terrorists in Syria. The Turkey has de-facto annexed part of Syria, the US are controlling oil fields in another part of Syria, over a million are dead in Iraq, Libya is in a state of civil war ever since American bombing.
Well, yeah. There's a good reason why those became uncommon. But it's hard to tell how each state actor would behave if they treated their nearby international waters as their own.
Oh, right, now I know the purpose of 11 supercarrier groups. Pirates.
"But it's hard to tell how each state actor would behave if they treated their nearby international waters as their own."
Why would they do that? They all voluntarily have got bound by The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [0], the US being one of the few countries that refuses to ratify it [1].
I understand that sentiment - certainly there is quite a bit of waste in your system. But you should consider that in nearly all plausible cases where you would have a "war" with Russia, it will either occur near Russia (granting them advantage of operating near their base, and minimizing cost of projecting force), and/or in a situation/context specifically designed to minimize American advantages.
Russia gets to operate on the cheap since they have a much simpler and tractable goal - they don't need to be a global hyperpower, they just need regional dominance. They don't need to sustainable project conventional power to the other side of the globe - they only need to project power in their region, while having sufficient unconventional power projection (read nukes).
Russia also gets to operate on the cheap since they have just less commitments.
Finally, Russia also gets much looser constraints to operate in. Consider one of the more "realistic" fantasy war scenarios - Russia moves on the Baltic States. Russia is more likely to be able to absorb causalities politically than American forces. This plays into American force and war planning. There is an understanding that American forces require significant overmatch to create conditions where the current American way of war can be sustained long enough to achieve American goals without too much political/public backlash.
Unless we're going to say the war with Russia is fought with the same objectives (in this case have a US friendly government in power) I don't think we can compare against past wars.
That’s probably grossly inaccurate. Vietnam despite having a much smaller economy at time were still a major regional economic power even after consideration for internal conflict. Vietnam spent tremendous resources on the war. You also have to consider that the US participation in Vietnam was seen by the Vietnamese as foreign participants in a larger civil war. That conflict didn’t end just because Americans left, but rather when the communists took Saigon.
Twenty years ago, a bearded man in a cave ("Ali Baba") and his 19 "thieves" have managed to attack the superpower with a combined security budget (military and all intelligence agencies) of around 1.000 billions (1) on its soil, (2) using only box cutters!
The explanation offered to the world by the superpower was: Everyone failed. Yet, no one of those in high positions in the security aparatus of the superpower who has failed at doing his highly responsible job has resigned and no one was prosecuted.
What sounds like a (bad) fairytale really happened. Over 3.000 people died that day and many more thousands have died and are still dying as a consequence of what happened that day.
Attackers budget was probably 0.00...1% of the budget of the superpower.
I think this belies something that isn't really true: that tech rules all in war. If Russia (or China, with ~25% of our military budget) can beat us in a war this is more a statement on the design and execution of the military institution itself. What are we preparing for that Russia/China is not? What are we not preparing for that Russia/China is? Are they structuring themselves in a way that we are not? How? Why?
It goes without saying (as it has been said 1000 times over) that the Taliban was able to befuddle the largest and most technologically advanced military in history for 20 years. Tech and the MIC isn't the problem.
We could have won that one if politicians had listened to their military advisors. In James Mattis's recent book, he talks about how the Obama administration didn't listen to recommendations for a larger military presence because they were scoring too many political points by constantly "bringing the troops home".
The military always says they would have won if they had more. I dont think that is the case at all in Afghanistan or Iraq, in Iraq we essentially invented an enemy and lost to them.
What would a winning scenario look like to you? There is no winning when it comes to conflicts like that - just mission objectives, most of which were completed.
Us not babysitting two countries with our annual budget and servicemen and women because we are afraid to leave. If you dont have an exit strategy you probably shouldnt go start a fight you cant finish (Im obviously generalizing a complex situation but 20 years at war is beyond ridiculous), Colossal waste of money after killing bin Laden, Iraq was a made up war. No idea what the exit strategy was there beyond Bush wanting to kill Saddam.
Like many other things, there's probably a power law distribution in terms of the cost of reaching certain levels of military capability.
It might cost 10% as much as our budget to get to 75% of the capability, and 80% of our budget to get to 90% of the capability.
The military question is: is that high-end stuff war decisive or not? Or can you win a war with a better strategy or just more of the cheap stuff?
Bringing up terrorism is a red herring. Terrorism gets lots of attention but it doesn't win true wars. You'd need hundreds of 9/11 events to even dent the US's war capability. A war with a nation state is very different from "asymmetric warfare" against a diffuse enemy motivated by an ideology or a set of resentments rather than a true chain of command.
Well, the US military budget can only be understood as an aesthetic statement, there is basically no scenario were the US defense budget is not vastly oversized.
The obvious counter of getting stuck in Iraq or Afghanistan, there the problem is a political, not a military one. The US forces were easily able to archive military targets, the problem is that nobody bothered to formulate clear political goals that could be archived, and consequently the western forces are stuck in limbo.
You have to remember the US military is projecting power across the globe. What the paper is likely referring to is regional scenarios. Regions take time to reinforce, and other theatres may be active at the same time, while having their own requirements in terms of force projection/deterrent.
To say that military Y has a mere x% of our budget and therefore we should win is a gross oversimplification of the complexity.
I think it would be jumping to conclusions to say because the military has vulnerabilities that the entire military industrial complex is a fraud. Pieces of it certainly are sub-optimal and arguably fraudulent though such as DCGS (the "opportunity to improve" terminology used for it in DOD speak means failure)
Russia would be dominated in a conventional war with the United States. The problem is Russia isn't spending it's 10% on conventional assets so a conventional war is extremely unlikely.
I'm highly skeptical Russia would even seek a conventional war at all with the United States, but rather local reinforcement of their borders, national or ethnic, if a broader conflict broke out.
Jeeva wireless has been on my radar for years now. Wifi at 1/1000th of the normal power. They were supposed to be at market by now with $0.50 transceiver chips. Last I heard they made a cell phone that didn't require batteries. https://www.jeevawireless.com/
Back in the 90's if you wanted an ohms law calculator you had to go download a poorly written program from some random website. Network admins started locking down what you could download, run, and install due to security problems. Flash became a hit and they started piling on features in the browser so you could run things dynamically without having to download something.
Fast forward almost 30 years and the browser has become so full featured it is practically a weak OS sandbox that allows you to run just about anything. It was originally being extended to avoid that in the first place, and here we are almost back to square one.
The browser is basically the reinvention of the operating system. Its huge advantage is that it's built on the assumption that the user is trusted and the code isn't. In contrast most operating systems are designed on the assumption that code is absolutely trusted, but the user isn't. That's why rights management in Windows is concerned with who's allowed to access which file, while rights management in Firefox is concerned which which website is allowed to access the Webcam.
The big disadvantage of the browser is of course that there's huge competitive pressure, and most users prefer usability over security. Keeping things secure without asking the user about their intentions every step is a huge challenge (see also Windows UAC, which struggles with the same problem).
> Its huge advantage is that it's built on the assumption that the user is trusted and the code isn't. In contrast most operating systems are designed on the assumption that code is absolutely trusted, but the user isn't.
It's not necessarily an advantage, it's just a different threat model. An OS is protecting against an attacker already having access to the system (whether physically or over network.) The assumption is that the system is working properly and it's the operator that is malicious.
For the browser, the assumption is that the operator is working properly, but the systems they will be accessing are malicious.
The browser security measures are like a guard at the castle gate, allowing or preventing people from entering. The OS security is like locks on the doors inside the castle so that only people with the right keys can get into various protected rooms.
Both are necessary because they're preventing different things (access to the system vs. access once you're already inside the system.)
yes, because for most user choosing between security and functionality is not a choice they are prepared to reason about.
I'm no expert, but I am computer savvy. My experience is that more security ALWAYS limits functionality that I want. I get around it all with VMs and snapshots. I have totally wide open VMs that have no host access and just reset to the snapshot when I shut them down. the irony is that it is not only harder to choose functionality today, when you want it, but also harder to choose security. The choices are made for you. it is infuriating.
According to the New York data, the fatality rate is about 0.5% for tested persons without underlying conditions. Considering the gross selection bias it likely means actual death rates in the healthy population close to that of the flu. It is this data that shows the lockdowns were a complete illegal overreaction. Locking down nursing homes would have fixed most of it.
I don't understand what calculation you're doing here.
The worst flu season we saw in a decade killed (~80k / 300M) = .02% of the US population. NYC has seen ~14000 deaths, or .18% (~14k / ~8M) death rate for the entire population, and while the absolute worst may be over, people are still dying at a high rate in NYC.
The only way I can make sense of this is that you're somehow mixing figures relating to deaths in healthy populations (COVID) vs. overall death rates in flu (including older/unhealthy populations).
What exactly do you mean by worst-case here? The actual worst case would be if nobody took any precautions, which almost certainly would result in more than 0.18% of the total US population dying.
Let's see. NY has 965 death per million. Next state is New Jersey (which is basically "New York by another name" in this situation) with 493. Next is Connecticut (see above) with 372. Next is Louisiana - which had a grand idea of proceeding with Mardi Gras - with 285. Do you think things will get three times as bad in Louisiana than they are now, while not getting any worse in New York? Or which state would you say would be the next worst case, not today but in the future? I'd certainly bet NY (with adjacent NJ and CT) will keep this sad championship.
Depends on what you're comparing. I agree we can't assume that the rest of the country will see similar infection rates. However, it's less clear to me that fatality rates would be incorrect.
On the other hand, there's one very specific way that considering NYC gives us data we can't (yet) get elsewhere. While it's possible that we're underestimating disease prevalence by 50x elsewhere, it's basically impossible in NYC (almost 2% of people already have tested positive, with less than 10% of the population being tested).
Note that the test NYC is using only tells you whether the person has Covid-19 at that point in time, so it's entirely possible to test even 100% of the population and still substantially underestimate disease prevalence if you tested most of them at the wrong time (which you probably would!)
> However, it's less clear to me that fatality rates would be incorrect.
Depends on whether mortality rates can be variant on environmental conditions, such as viral load, population density, access to healthcare/ICUs, population socio-demographic profile, etc.
These are good points, and I think I ended up claiming a much stronger claim than I should've. There's plenty of reasons NYC could have a higher death rate than elsewhere. I don't know how precisely you could estimate the potential death rate from just NYC's data.
What I would still say is that it's reasonable to say "NYC has .18% of its population dead. It's extremely implausible that this disease is no more lethal than the flu is, when that's 10x the overall death rate from the flu. If you present me evidence suggesting that from elsewhere, it's going to have to be quite strong to overcome the evidence from NYC."
the flu would be way more deadly than it is if there wasn't a seasonal flu shot that gives herd immunity.
edit: it shouldn't be controversial to say that a thing that kills 30-80k per year with active measures of mitigation already something that would be more deadly without a vaccine. seriously reflect on that. the corona virus is something we need to take 100% seriously but also acknowledge that the flu is also very deadly... even more so without any mitigation (thankfully we have for the common flu)
The flu probably wouldn't be dramatically worse if we didn't have a vaccine. The vaccine isn't particularly effective all things considered, ranging from 10% to 60% depending on the year and how well scientists were able to guess which strain would be predominant.
The flu as-is causes 45,000,000 sicknesses every year in the US alone.
Nah, my calculus is basically as follows. The disease is not bad for people who aren't old, and who do not have pre-existing conditions. The data is pretty unequivocal there. The number of deaths under 20 worldwide rounds to zero. It's incredibly contagious (and contagious while no symptoms are shown), and a vaccine is 12-18 months away at a minimum. There's no way we're going to be able to contain everyone indoors, with no jobs, for 18 months while we await a vaccine that may not arrive. And that's just here in the US -- the weakest link dominates.
If we don't develop herd immunity ASAP, and instead pursue a course of lockdowns, as soon as we lift the lockdowns (either voluntarily or because people just walk out -- see the midwest), we'll immediately start playing rolling lockdown whack-a-mole as China is. The first contagious person who flies in from a foreign country (or domestically) without perfect lockdowns will re-ignite the wildfire.
We should do exactly what Sweden is doing and what the UK proposed: isolate and provide support services to those who are at risk, and let out those who aren't. I think it speaks volumes that Sweden's new infection rate stabilized at the same time as the rest of the world but without lockdowns.
It's really the only path forward. Is it perfect? Of course not. People will die. However, there's no world in which about 70% of the population won't get the disease before the vaccine arrives, so we need to control who gets it, when, and in what order, to minimize harm.
While I agree mostly with your assessment, it's worth mentioning that the lack of official lockdown in Sweden doesn't mean there isn't a lockdown. According to Google's mobility data for Sweden, their lockdown activity looks pretty similar to what we see in the US. People are voluntarily staying home.
Since Sweden doesn't have a lockdown, this statement is meaningless. A major objection to lockdowns is their involuntary nature. In general, there is a big difference between choosing to stay home, and being coerced (with the threat of force) to do so. One is "choosing to do what you believe is best", the other is "prison".
And there are big differences in social cohesion between countries. Voluntary efforts appear to be sufficient in Sweden precisely because there is a high level of compliance.
In the meantime, the coastal town that I live in is getting swarmed with out of town visitors every weekend. This is in violation of the shelter-in-place orders. Other towns have stepped up enforcement to combat this type of behavior, but our police department is small and does not have the resources. We shut down the parking lots, but now they just park in the neighborhoods. And to add insult to injury, we have a large senior housing complex at the entrance point to my neighborhood.
I have little faith that the US could achieve the type of distancing and isolation necessary on a voluntary basis. There is a sharp vein of individualism that runs through our society that works strongly against us in these types of situations.
For what it's worth, Sweden's goal is to get 70% of the country infected to achieve herd immunity. They likely quite rightly believe that's the only way to stop the disease once and for all. While it's absolutely not okay to be anywhere near a seniors residence, the rest is likely tolerated because it's kind of the unstated goal to the extent healthcare facilities remain un-saturated.
It's by no means a "hope and pray it goes away" or a "lets wait it out until a vaccine" -- it's a "let's get everyone not in a risk category infected as fast as possible so long as the healthcare system retains some excess capacity."
I think almost everyone you are debating in this thread would support opening things up provided a few conditions were met. The primary condition for most of us is we need adequate testing and contract tracing capacity. And the reason that this is necessary:
> healthcare facilities remain un-saturated
You can't simply look at the current burden on the health care system to guide the process. The virus has a 2-3 week lag time between when an infection cluster breaks out, and when the health care system starts to feel the impact. Without wide scale testing, we are just going to end up back in a lock down once the infection numbers start climbing again. And I can't think of a worse scenario for our economy than having to shut things down every other month because our government is to incompetent to implement a tracing program that multiple countries already have up and running.
The serological surveys are showing 50-100x infection rates of those tested. If tested healthy persons are dying at 0.5% that gets you to 0.01%-0.005% death rate in healthy persons. That number is lower than the all cause death rates of 25-34 year olds...
I see. You're correct that while the overall death rates in NYC are vastly higher than any season flu, it's mathematically possible that those are all deaths of unhealthy people.
It's a creative interpretation of the facts.
One important note: it's impossible that NYC is overestimating cases by 100x. Close to 2% of NYC has confirmed cases.
New York is at 1.3 percent positive with new cases flatlining. That fits very squarely with what you'd expect to see based on the surveys. Healthy people aren't dying by any significant number based on New York's own published data. The only other one I've seen is MA that has 97.5% deaths with comorbidity. This is a huge overreaction.
The other thing to keep in mind with death counts, especially in NY and NJ, is that all deaths of likely-infected people are being counted as COVID deaths regardless of cause of death.
This has included a couple lf suicides of folks who had respiratory illness prior to death, and one person who got in an auto accident and died of head trauma -- but he had tested COVID-positive.
Yes, most people right now who get a respiratory illness and then die probably did have COVID -- and it is possible that some folks are dying of COVID and being uncounted to offset some of the overcounting -- but with death numbers counted so loosely, it is hard to know the real story, and impossible to do simple maths using rates from one place at one time to compute rates at other times or other places.
I tend to think that NYC must be approaching saturation, and that the true new-case numbers must be falling there, but it's impossible to answer with certainty using only the numbers we have here on the internets.
> is that all deaths of likely-infected people are being counted as COVID deaths regardless of cause of death.
No, this isn't what's happening.
Doctors who are sure to the best of their knowledge and experience that the deceased had covid-19 will put covid-19 on the death certificate, and they will also say if they think it contributed to death.
That's not the same as "anyone who dies with covid-19 is being described as killed by covid-19".
I actually followed up with you on this one recently. This is in fact what's happening, and it varies by country/region/city to what extent.
In some countries they absolutely do count anyone who dies while in the possession of COVID as a COVID death, for instance Italy. " Italy’s death rate might also be higher because of how fatalities are recorded. In Italy, all those who die in hospitals with Coronavirus are included in the death counts."
“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three.” [1]
In New York they're counting speculative COVID deaths of anyone with respiratory illness even if they've never tested positive [2].
"A subtler issue is what to do when the patient has other serious medical conditions. If the person suffered from chronic lung disease, then became infected with the virus and died of pneumonia, the immediate or primary cause would be pneumonia as a result of COVID-19. The lung disease would be listed as a contributing condition, said Sally S. Aiken, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners." [3]
The CDC has guidance on this but it's fair to say its interpretation will vary from place to place. "COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death" -- that's pretty broad. [4]
Sorry, Dan, this is looking like it's not the Ebola infection you're making it out to be.
You write this long post, but then finish with the CDC guidance which agree with what I said -- that doctors have to use be able to say to the best of their knowledge and experience that the deceased had covid-19 and that it caused death, or that it contributed to death.
The problem here is that you don't know what "COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death" means.
Illegal, no, but a massive overreaction. This is why the Swedish model (of telling people to take reasonable steps like not getting too close, and staying home when sick, and away from old people) is proving so successful. They've even started to see a flattening of the curve alongside the rest of the world without lockdowns. [1, 2]
Let's not lose sight of the reason why lockdowns were advised in the first place.
Absent the data from widespread testing, the spread of the disease was consistent with two epidemiological models -- low-contagion/high-mortality and high-contagion/low-mortality. In the latter model, there's not much to be done to stop the disease from infecting the population at large, and not that much that needs to be done, since the vast majority of people will emerge unscathed. But in the former model, it matters tremendously -- doing nothing will slowly but surely result in vast loss of life but quarantines can stop the disease dead in its tracks.
Therefore the most cautious course of action, from a public health perspective, was to assume the former and proceed with a regime of extreme social distancing. Unfortunately doing so had dire economic consequences.
What if the swedes are trying to find out how to live with this virus? Like..what if there were no cure and no immunity? Unlike other governments who are betting that there will be a resolution in the near future?
What explains the difference between NY and CA if it isn't lockdowns? The difference in death per capita between the two is staggering (nearly 30x more people per capita have died in NY than CA).
The stay-at-home order can't itself have made a 30x difference, because New York only imposed it 3 days later than California. California started social distancing in general earlier and better, but I don't think anyone would dispute that social distancing in general matters. (In fact I think that's the obvious explanation, that due to the nature of NYC many people can't social distance to a useful degree.)
To be fair, the US engaged in lockdowns well after the situation had run its course in China so we had the data. It feels much more like a panic reaction than a question of which epidemiological model it best fit.
No way. China did an even more intense lockdown. If anything, the data from China indicated we should have done more, sooner. And that’s assuming you can even trust the data from China. Which you can’t.
The answer to "what is the correct action to take in the face of uncertainty" is not "whatever people say we should've done after we gain full information." That's nonsense, it assumes that next time you should just know the future.
Something that you might consider looking at when comparing countries or areas is the ratio of active cases to recovered. A higher ratio suggests that the epidemic is in an earlier stage.
Sweden has about 23 active cases for each one recovered. The US is about 10:1, Europe overall is about 2:1, so is Italy, and Spain is close to 1:1. Asia as a whole is about 1:1.
That likely has to do with availability of tests, who's getting tested, where and when. With Sweden not attempting to stop the spread, I doubt they've done wide-spread population testing. They're likely limiting it to hospitals, so the fact it's flat its really what matters until they kick off their wide-spread serological study in the works.
[edit] I misread, disregard, but preserving for posterity.
There is random sampling being done. 2,5% had an ongoing infection in Stockholm in late Mars.[1]
Now, 11/100 blood givers in Stockholm who has not been sick in the last two weeks have antibodies according to researchers.
That gives you a naive mortality rate of 0,4% per infection, assuming the spread among bloodgivers is the same as the population in general and just dividing the death count by 11% of the population. It is a high eastimate as I guess many wont get traceable antobodies and mostly asymptotic people give blood.
Active vs. recovered is a metric related to the people who are tested and confirmed. It cannot be changed by testing fewer people, only by rapidly ramping the number of tests up or down.
Part of the reason why lockdowns were resorted to in the first place is that Americans are, for various reasons, not likely to listen to official guidance about staying apart. See: all those panic articles about various people who knew they were at high risk and continued to go about their daily lives, or take flights or other forms of transporting masses of people, etc.
In fact, the general take is that Americans have been pretty good at following distancing rules with or without hard rules but some were slow to do so (and most government was in retrospect slow to strongly recommend doing so) but, to a first approximation, few will do so over an extended period.
This isn't even close to true. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Spring Break. Florida beaches. Evangelical churches.
Just because a majority of people do sensible things doesn't matter. The actions of the irresponsible and sociopathic minority still create the epidemic.
Quarantining the sick is legal but otherwise the freedom of assembly clause in the 1st amendment does not say "except when there is a pandemic or other fear". If you don't believe that should be the law fine, but since it is law and is incorporated to the states via the 14th amendment it qualifies as illegal.
Freedom of assembly, like the other 1st amendment freedoms, can be regulated by government so long, per prior SCOTUS decisions. They key is that restrictions must be content-neutral and can only pertain to "time, place, and manner," additionally surviving strict scrutiny (which, in plain English, means "there's no other way to do it"). This is bread-and-butter First Amendment court case stuff; any US government class that's at least halfway competent ought to have covered this.
The coronavirus bans on public gathering are fairly clearly permissible under SCOTUS precedent.
I would argue the second amendment doesn't explicitly say you can't own a nuclear warhead for personal amusement, but I would argue nobody's going to challenge the validity of such impositions.
"Arms" in the context used by the second amendment is AFAIK generally understood to mean "small arms" and by implication would exclude such weapons by matter of definition.
> "Arms" in the context used by the second amendment is AFAIK generally understood to mean "small arms"
No, it isn't. In the time period in which the Second Amendment was passed, privately owned warships of similar capability to the ones in national navies were common enough to play a pivotal role in two wars (the American Revolution and the War of 1812).
I'm aware of privately owned warships by privateers. It is true and a good counterargument.
However, the colloquial use at the time of the phrase "arms" almost certainly referred to small arms, but would have included knives and swords (State v. Kessler 1980[1]) which are paradoxically much more heavily regulated than firearms in most states. See also "To Bear Arms"[2], by which the modifier "to bear" suggests arms that could be carried.
Perhaps one counter argument to this point was the desire by the framers to include a conscientious objector clause obviating military service for people who had specific objections, which may support the view that "arms" was anything in use by the military of the day, but the clause was stricken from the constitution for fear that the second amendment may be interpreted by later generations as a right that could not be enjoyed by the people and was intended to encompass military service.
There is also the argument that the framers opposed the idea of a standing army, which would support your viewpoint, and there is an excellent essay[3] that makes a fair and reasonable argument to this end.
My personal opinion is that this isn't clear, but it is obvious that--at a minimum--the interpretation of "to bear arms" would suggest that the 1986 ban is unconstitutional, as is the 1934 NFA tax act that required registration. I'm not convinced "to bear arms" includes other weapons that could not be "beared," such as warships, but perhaps this will clarify my thought process for you.
> the colloquial use at the time of the phrase "arms" almost certainly referred to small arms
Perhaps it did, but whether it did or not, I don't think its use in the Constitution can be reasonably described as "colloquial". Since no specific restrictions were set out by the framers, I think they intended a broad right, not one restricted to small arms. Of course my opinion is an extreme outlier given current jurisprudence on this topic, to say the least. :-)
> it is obvious that--at a minimum--the interpretation of "to bear arms" would suggest that the 1986 ban is unconstitutional, as is the 1934 NFA tax act that required registration.
I agree.
> I'm not convinced "to bear arms" includes other weapons that could not be "beared," such as warships
Currently that question is moot in a practical sense, since nobody appears to be in the market for privately owned warships. And I will cheerfully admit that if we could get to a point where it was generally accepted that people had a right to bear small arms, and the arguments were over other categories, I think that in itself would be huge progress from where we are today. If that happened, I wouldn't spend a lot of time complaining that everyone recognized my right to keep and bear an AR-15 but I was being given grief about wanting to buy an aircraft carrier or a nuclear submarine. :-)
> I don't think its use in the Constitution can be reasonably described as "colloquial"
"Arms" was used in colloquial speech and legal use at the time which converged on approximately the same definition. It's late, but there are some resources on guncite that support this argument. They're all worth reading beyond this reason, mind you, and there are plenty of arguments there that disagree with mine.
Either way, it makes for good reading should you find a topic there you're not already familiar with, and even if you are, there are some interesting twists. I don't necessarily agree with all of them.
> Of course my opinion is an extreme outlier given current jurisprudence on this topic, to say the least.
Suffice it to say that I understand where you're coming from, but in my definition a broad application of "military small arms" is probably more accurate according to my understanding of what was intended. The problem is that I don't know, nor will we ever know for certain, since the militia (rather, the people) were to act as the nascent US' standing army. I rather wish this point were discussed in civics classes, but it's not. So, the younger generations are woefully unaware of history, much to no one's surprise...
Anyway, while I also wish we could undo some of the impingement on our rights by legal challenges made in the 20th century, I'm afraid that would be an uphill battle (as you also allude) given how panicked the general public is on loosening firearms restrictions thanks in large part to the unnecessarily excessive coverage of mass shootings that seem focused primarily on stoking fear.
But, if you allowed me, I'd probably rant all night about this subject which wouldn't do either of us much good by the sounds of it, other than reaching continued agreement and probably upsetting other readers.
> since nobody appears to be in the market for privately owned warships
...admittedly a shame!
> I think that in itself would be huge progress from where we are today.
Agreed. Somewhat surprised to have this conversation on HN of all places, TBH.
> ...that everyone recognized my right to keep and bear an AR-15
I live in an open carry state and sometimes exercise that right, particularly since I live in an area sometimes subject to wild animals. But while I would love to do the same with an AR, I suspect that would probably get me called in to the local sheriff's office. Not that they would care, but I would be disappointed if someone thought it apropos to waste their time.
It almost certainly shouldn't be covered. It states "being necessary to the security of a free State". What part of a nuclear warhead wielded by a militia contributes to the security of a free State? Nuclear weapons are rather unique in that they're essentially useless in a civil war. What are you going to do? Nuke the very land that you're fighting over?
Biological and nuclear weapons should not fall in the scope of the 2nd amendment. They're useless for guaranteeing your liberties against a tyrannical government, and the consequences for storing them improperly are severe.
> What part of a nuclear warhead wielded by a militia contributes to the security of a free State?
Depends on who's attacking and what might deter them.
> They're useless for guaranteeing your liberties against a tyrannical government
Which is only part of "the security of a free State", not all of it. The militia was also for repelling foreign invasions.
Given our current modern world, I would agree that weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical) shouldn't be available to anyone who wants them; but the correct legal way to make that happen in the U.S. would be to amend the Constitution to explicitly add that exception to the Second Amendment. As the Second Amendment is currently written, it does not admit of any exceptions. As I noted in another comment upthread, privately owned warships were significant at the time the Second Amendment was passed, and the framers of the Amendment did not exempt them from the category of "arms".
The fact that legal realism--which says that the law is whatever judges say it is, even when what the judges say is patently ridiculous when compared to the actual words of the Constitution or statute--is the mainstream viewpoint in today's legal environment does not make it right.
If you read the federalist papers you'll note that the intention was literal, not to be reinterpreted for the times. That also makes the thousands of gun laws illegal. If you start reinterpreting the constitution that is how you go full banana republic, and everyone knows you never go full banana republic. You are supposed to change the law not reinterpret.
It's pretty funny to watch people try to justify "literal" readings of the text, since they often focus on interpreting just one piece of text and ignore the effects of the analysis on the rest of the text.
The First Amendment veryclearly binds only Congress in its literal reading: it begins "Congress shall make no law..." And there is no literal text in any subsequent amendment that might cause incorporation to the states--the Fourteenth Amendment only literally incorporates the Fifth Amendment, and that by literal repetition of the text.
> Underlying illnesses include Diabetes, Lung Disease, Cancer, Immunodeficiency, Heart Disease, Hypertension, Asthma, Kidney Disease, and GI/Liver Disease
That's a whole lot of people left out of your number. A quick google suggests that 1/3 of Americans have hypertension and 9% have diabetes. It seems like probably the majority of the US has at least one of these underlying illnesses.
Probably the same number of young and healthy people that die of COVID. For instance COVIDs fatality rate is lower than that of the flu for all demographics of people under the age of 35 per CDC data. It's about the same for 35-44 and really only diverges over 45. Worldwide the fatality rate under 20 rounds to zero. To date, pneumonia far outstrips COVID. [1]
This is completely inaccurate, and nowhere in the linked document is there supporting evidence to your claim that the flu has a higher fatality rate for under 35, nor the same for 35-44.
And this report relies on figures that diverge dramatically from the COVID death tolls. It lists the current total report as around 15k, when we're close to 3x.
> This is completely inaccurate, and nowhere in the linked document is there supporting evidence to your claim that the flu has a higher fatality rate for under 35, nor the same for 35-44.
Here's some more data. What I'm saying (that it's approximately the same as the flu for the young, with some early evidence pointing to it being better) isn't particularly controversial and well supported by evidence [1] (also older, April 14th). CDC as of late March "... no ICU admissions or deaths were reported among persons aged ≤19 years. Similar to reports from other countries, this finding suggests that the risk for serious disease and death from COVID-19 is higher in older age groups." [2] In Italy nobody under 30 died, and only 5 people between 30 and 39, as of April 19th -- yes in spite of a CFR of what, 13.22%? [3, 4]
More data as of April 20th from Oxford [4]. Scroll through all the data the world has to offer, I'm not wrong on this. I repeat, the facts you're arguing with me over, without citing data to support your case are not controversial. Surprising maybe, but not controvercial.
Especially when you consider (an albeit bad flu): the overall case fatality rate as of 16 July 2009 (10 weeks after the first international alert) with pandemic H1N1 influenza varied from 0.1% to 5.1% depending on the country. [4] The flu can absolutely be very bad is the take away there. And yeah this is worse than the flu, by around 3X on both ends of that range. Not bad, not great.
> It lists the current total report as around 15k, when we're close to 3x.
They actually address that critique, that it takes a few weeks for case data to be finalized and reported upwards, so the CDC data can be up to a few weeks behind. It's not divergent, it's delayed. This is a live list updated and maintained by the CDC. Make of that what you will.
> What I'm saying (that it's approximately the same as the flu for the young, with some early evidence pointing to it being better) isn't particularly controversial and well supported by evidence
There are 400 covid-19 deaths reported so far in the 18-44 age group in NYC. There are 3.5 mn people in that age group in NYC. That's over 11 per 100'000.
The mortality per 100'000 for the 18-49 group in the US estimated by the CDC was in the last nine flu seasons: 1.8, 2, 1, 1.2, 0.7, 2.5, 1.5, 0.5, 3.9.
It's a stretch to say they are approximately the same and definitely 11 is not better than 0.5-3.9.
I would call 4 vs 11 "approximately the same" for all intents and purposes when the denominator is so huge especially when COVID deaths are much more generously assigned than flu deaths, per my sources, especially [4].
Not to mention, flu deaths are attenuated by flu shots, and pre-existing immunity. It's totally plausible that there are many more COVID cases than flu cases in that age group -- and of course those flu deaths will happen year after year while COVID is a very stable virus, and if you get it once, you probably won't get it again.
Certainly not enough data to conclude it's way out of line with the flu for this age group, in this season let alone if you factor in a few seasons end on end.
Lastly, with H1N1, the numbers are quite different, too.
The COVID-19 infection fatality rate in the 18-45 group is at least 0.11% in NYC. And that's assuming that everyone single person has been infected, that no-one else is going to die from now on and that the estimates are not going to be revised upwards because of under-reporting.
The infection fatality rate for seasonal flu [edit: in the slightly older 18-49 group] is around 0.2% considering symptomatic cases, and probably there are as many asymptomatic cases which give 0.1%.
So yes, it's not impossible for the infection fatality rate to be similar. With some strong assumptions including that it's five times as contagious. So yes, it's not impossible for the acumulated lethality over five years to be similar. And if you extend the period the common flu will be much more dangerous, specially as this young people became older.
My data was older, and that difference is utterly irrelevant with a denominator so large, and there are many potential explanations. Especially since Italy, per my sources [4] in the parent post, assigns anyone who died while in possession of COVID as a COVID death. In fact they later announced up to 88% of their COVID deaths likely weren't actually COVID deaths but deaths of someone who happened to have COVID. So if we lop off 88%, well, it's hardly out of line.
88% of CFR potentially not being COVID was from [1] referencing [2]. Specifically:
"The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.
"On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three," he says.
"Other experts have also expressed scepticism about the available data."
"Report from the Italian National Institute of Health: analysed 355 fatalities and found only three patients (0.8%) had no prior medical conditions. See Table 1 in the paper; (99% who died had one pre-existing health condition): 49% had three or more health conditions; 26% had two other ‘pathologies’, and 25% had one." [2]
(For what it's worth in my reply I called it out as "[4] from the parent post" which is [1] here -- sorry for the confusion -- all I meant was that the Italian data skews very high, both because it's the oldest region [Lombardy] in the oldest country in Europe [Italy] -- and because they were very generous in how they ascribed cause of death).
That's from one month ago and it doesn't mean that those people would be dead equally if they had not been infected.
Actually the official number is grossly under-reporting COVID-19 deaths:
"We estimate that the number of COVID-19 deaths in Italy is 52,000 ± 2000 as of April 18 2020, more than a factor of 2 higher than the official number."
In the weeks from March 1 to April 4 there were 19824 people death in a subset of municipalities in Lombardia where data is already available, while in the last five years the number of deaths in the comparable period was in the 6767 - 7248 range. This subset normally accounts for 73% of the deaths in the region so we can estimate that there were 17000 excess deaths (27200 vs 9200-9900).
Less than 9000 COVID-19 deaths were reported in Lombardia by that time. If you think they are too generous classifying deaths as being caused by the infection, what would you say that caused the death of more than twice the usual number of people during the period?
About 1500 people in the US died yesterday of covid; year-to-date, about 1300 people died each day of the flu.
So it seems like there should be no possible way to frame it as less severe than the flu, even only comparing to when the flu is at its worst and even assuming 100% of the population has covid or whatever other extreme things you want.
This can’t possibly be true about the flu. There’s been over 100 days this year and nowhere near 130000 people in the US have died of the flu in any year in recent memory
Note that for the flu, most of the community does literally nothing. I mean, some people get vaccinated, but most literally ignore the flu as if it didn't exist - except if they get sick of course, and even then some people go to work if they can (they shouldn't, really, but they do).
If we compare this with complete shutdown of all public activity on the other end of the spectrum, we can see there are things we could be doing that are on neither ends. Maybe distancing but not shutdown, or avoiding some mass gathering but still being ok with individual meetings, or having places like restaurants operating at reduced capacity to ensure people aren't too close to each other, or ask people to wear masks when they enter stores, etc. And strict lockdown for places like nursing homes, but more relaxed for places like college, or having people of high-risk groups to work from home, but people with lower risk be allowed to work in the office. I'm not saying it's the right way to do right now, but it's a possibility, there are options.
So if this is e.g. 50 times worse than the flu, then trying any of the above may be too risky. But if it's kinda sorta like the flu, maybe somewhat worse but not 50x worse - then it may be prudent to consider measured response, given that for the flu we basically have no response at all and we're ok with that.
So, given that I was quoting global figures for the flu, on an apples-to-apples basis it seems like covid is about 10x the flu at the moment, in the US, ignoring the fact that it could be much worse without the lockdowns.
None of us know for sure, but isn't it plausible on the face of it that something 10x worse that could easily become 100x or 1000x worse warrants the lockdowns? I don't know if this is common sense, but in an alternate universe it could be.
> So, given that I was quoting global figures for the flu, on an apples-to-apples basis it seems like covid is about 10x the flu at the moment, in the US, ignoring the fact that it could be much worse without the lockdowns.
At about 10 weeks into the H1N1 influenza pandemic, we had a CFR of between 0.1 and 5.1% depending on the country as compared to 0.07 to 14.93% for COVID. H1N1 ended up with an actual IFR of 0.02% or one fifth of the low end of the CFR range.
Honestly, it's probably a maximum of three times as bad as H1N1, especially when you consider Italy later admitted of its 13.22% CFR, 88% of that number was "people who happened to die while COVID positive" instead of "likely died of COVID". [1] Huge deltas in CFR are likely attributable to mess-ups along the way and how COVID deaths are counted.
10X as bad is likely on the very highest end as Sweden hasn't locked down anyone, suggesting common sense instead, and their new case rate flattened out right alongside the rest of the world. 1000X is totally out of proportion with the data. [2]
I suppose we don't know for sure but we do have two and a half million data points which is enough to make a pretty good guess.
It's kinda starting us in the face that it's kinda like a bad flu except worse for old people, who we should lock down and look after as we build herd immunity.
That's not entirely true. The flu has a vaccine (of varying efficacy -- 10-60% depending on the year). The flu also has a large body of immunity built up across the population from having had it. It's also less contagious.
If we assume that COVID is spreading like wildfire (it is), and that we're front-loading the cases (we probably are), and that immunity will be built up as one-off instead of like having the disease mutate substantially every year like the flu, over a few years, it could easily be better.
I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that there is a path.
This is just getting started. Everything is so interconnected. Each chunk of the economy that falls away will have a cascade effect that takes weeks or months to knock the next piece out. Once everyone finally heads back to work it will take years to regrow everything to the point it was.
They should have data already on this. Basically, is the current rather large population of people already taking HQC under representing in the Covid-19 patient data.
