> Thanks to the export of fundamentalist Islam from certain countries,
Yes Saudi Arabia which we continue to sell weapons to and blindly support. This administration is even more willing to bend to SA, as seen with Trump's visit and subsequent veto the bipartiston resolution to end US military assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.
> while America has been fortunate to be spared from a major terrorist attack since 9/11
That is untrue. The Orlando shooting was absolutely driven by islamic fundamentalism, as was the 2015 Chattanooga and San Bernardino attacks and arguably the Boston Marathon Bombings.
>Remaining local eviction moratoriums will expire in the next few months, although court backlogs will probably provide an additional time buffer.
Only if you're lucky enough to live in one of the progressive states, Louisiana has already started evicting people. In Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has already released documents saying that local governments can't stop or delay evictions.
Tennessee just made it a Class E felony to camp outside the capitol. Protesters have been doing this for months but it would apply to squelch protesters and homeless alike. Up to six years prison, and loss of voting rights, is the penalty.
I'm not sure they want to create more, there is a risk of "rebel's dilemma" if there are too many or things get too awful.
But the Republican party is merely the political wing of a certain aristocratic mind set which includes conservatism: rich people are better people, it is a fact. There should be either no public services or inferior versions compared to the free market, because that's how rich people are rewarded for being inherently superior people - they can afford to buy more and better things. This properly includes education, health care, clean air and water, and justice. These things are not rights. They are products you buy.
It's similar to prosperity theology. The closer to god, the more you are rewarded. The more rewarded you are, the closer to the deity you must be. Monarchies, feudalism, and Mandate of Heaven.
Then don't go to a restaurant or bar. Down here in Texas we opened in May and left it up to the individual to make the health choice. I'm active and going to the gym daily and bars during the weekend, but I have friends who won't go outside and haven't dined in a restaurant since March.
Great, now apply that logic to automobiles in general.
I think more people understand the situation with COVID than some realize, that it's a trainwreck from top to bottom and a lot of the decisions being made are far more political than they should be, as evidenced by the sheer amount of hypocrisy surrounding the supposed safety of protesting for left wing causes vs anything else. Even if you're totally right, the optics of this hypocrisy have created a permanent and un-mendable fracture where a large chunk of the country is never going to believe anything Coumo or De Belasio say about COVID.
> Great, now apply that logic to automobiles in general.
Do automobile accidents experience exponential growth? If so, I guarantee they'd get the exact same treatment.
Or guess what else with your auto example. Drinking and driving. You don't get free reign to do so because society shouldn't have to pay your costs for you.
Exponential growth of the spread isn't the same thing as exponential growth of mortality rates. By now we know that virtually no children are affected by it at all. The most vulnerable are 60+ with preexisting health conditions. The very same kind of people Governor Coumo and a few other governors in the country put at risk by forcing COVID19 positive patients into nursing homes.
They've pushed the disease on the most vulnerable while making the least vulnerable afraid of their own shadow, literally, so they stay home and afraid and unable to work in many cases.
I think you may be missing something fairly fundamental about the math.
If you're seeing exponential spread, and a fixed portion of people die from it (whatever portion you'd prefer to define), that means you also have exponential growth of mortality from it .
A lot of psychological literature shows that one of the most important factors in a long, healthy, happy life is being part of close-knit social fabric, so it may be that "getting drunk in pubs" has the greater utility.
> the sheer amount of hypocrisy surrounding the supposed safety of protesting for left wing causes vs anything else
Even if these protests have been have been relatively safe, I worry about a publication bias with those findings (publishing that the protests spread covid would be politically risky) and, more importantly, the lack of criticism essentially gave people permission to go have their own gatherings.
Not agreeing or disagreeing with Cuomo or De Blasio -- merely addressing the philosophical issue around the framing:
The issue with that framing is that it's really not a personal choice issue because one's choices in this instance are not sufficiently isolated from the rest of the system. Many choices are, but this is not. If one exercises one's personal choice incorrectly, the entire system suffers.
One might say, everything in life is a risk and everything we do affects someone else. Well yes, but not everything in life is has huge downside risk and exponential spread. This is a different class of risk.
(that said, I think there are ways to lower the probability of spread at a bar (spaced outdoor seating) and at a gym (masks + distancing). Excessive alcohol consumption is a risk for noncompliant behavior though.)
New York City is probably way past the point where this kind of exponential spread risk is something to be worrying about, and imposing these kind of measures now seems like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted and run halfway across the country. The antibody testing figures I've seen give an infection rate higher than Stockholm, infection epicenter of no-lockdown open-resturants land. I've heard it said that NYC was already past their peak before lockdown, and given what happened in Sweden I can quite believe it.
> I've heard it said that NYC was already past their peak before lockdown
They weren't passed their actual hospitalization peak, death peak, or (unless something caused a longer delay between infection and either of those outcomes than seen elsewhere) the infection peak when they started locking down.
You know infections occur outside of gyms and restaurants and bars, right? Places like grocery stores, homes, doctors offices, places people HAVE to go. You get infected at a gym, infect someone at the grocery store, and they infect their parent at home, and that parent dies. Good job! You made a great health choice for them.
Oh yeah, sure, Texas opened in May. How's that working out? Spoiler alert: Texas is now an absolute disaster zone. Sometimes leaving health choices that affect other people up to individuals is a really terrible idea, as evidenced by the disgraceful state that your state is currently in.
I've been living my life pretty much as before Covid here in Texas and have not experienced this disaster zone you are referencing. The state of TX has experienced around 6,878 deaths out of 28.9 million Texans. I'll take my chances with those odds.
That's a pretty disingenuous way to frame things. The state of TX has experienced 7,341 deaths out of 454,364 confirmed cases - so far.
Besides a 1.61% death rate being nothing to sneeze at (and it's probably actually higher than that), you have absolutely no idea how many of those 28.9 million Texans will ultimately contract COVID - nor will you always personally know if you're an asymptomatic carrier, responsible for infecting more of your fellow citizens.
To each their own, but I would not want to take my chances with the actual odds you face in TX today. And I wouldn't take those chances with other people's lives. It's not just about you.
Go to a hospital and see for yourself. You don't know when you will need access to a hospital bed; if there are none available for whatever you need it for, will you be happy with the odds then? Also the deaths are likely highly undercounted. Also most of the people who will die in the next month are just getting sick. 145,000 people in the US were alive April 1 who are dead now from Covid; I wonder how many of them thought the odds were fine on April 1.
In 1918 August most of the people who died in 1918 from the Spanish Flu were still alive.
The numbers coming out of texas and other places in the south do not look good, but if you look at the raw data it is true that on a per-population basis, NY/NJ deaths per X are much worse (as of today)
1.6% death rate is not conservative or based in reality. The CDC's best estimate for the IFR, currently, is 0.65% (almost 3x less.) As a population average, even 0.65% doesn't paint an accurate picture. We know deaths are disproportionally in the elderly and those with serious pre-existing conditions.
A better plan would be to do what was possible to protect at-risk populations, but not make the Faustian bargain we did to destroy the economy.
>That kind of death rate would tank the economy far worse than a temporary shutdown.
That's completely false. Most of those deaths would be people who aren't working anyway (retirees). The 1918 flu killed way more people, but the economic impact was far less, because there were no lockdowns. Sweden had almost 6000 deaths, but its economy is still doing way better than most countries in Europe (France, Italy, England..).
No, it's absolutely not false at all. You seriously don't think that retirees contribute to the economy? Beyond that, a large portion of those deaths would be retirees, but a significant portion would be younger people (20s-60s). As more people get sick, more people stop going to work. Stop going out. The downwind effect is massive.
I went though every link and there was not a single interesting or cool thing.
Outside of the real estate company they are all gambling and coin 'investing' companies. I was bullish on ethereum and still have ~$11k from early purchases but I lost interest as it's all people trading alt-coins to trying strike it rich without creating anything.
I think that's wishful thinking, St Louis was declining way before covid. I don't see a stop of migration happening anytime here in the Austin metro or any of the other major Texas cities. We may see it in HCOL places but I wouldn't count on people leaving Denver, Portland, the NC Triangle, and the similar 'B cities'
Counterpoint as someone who group around the trades and whose friends parents where mostly in working class trades, they all stressed going to college so we didn't end up working hard like them.
My parents knew I could make really good money with welding and masonry like other family members but also knew that we were rough to our body, I had a uncle who lost an eye on the job! To someone working 8-10 hrs in the Texas heat all year wearing your body everyday and being physically exhausted by closing time. Sitting in an office and surfing HN is paradise to my old friends.
I agree but seems like sitting in a chair in front of a computer and not working out hard to fight the effects of the sedentary lifestyle is as bad on the human body. Some programmers spend so much time in front of the computer that they don’t have enough time, energy or motivation to hit the gym.
Also the skills learned in this field are inflating fast. Compare that to learning a trade and applying that knowledge for a lifetime of work while build solid experience in time is also a bit different.
Also software jobs quite frequently lead mental wear as much as those trade jobs are rough on the body
Snapchat bought the team that was doing it for them, Strong.codes. But you might have luck searching for things like "LLVM obfuscator" or some of the other techniques discussed in the thread. (Obligatory disclaimer: obfuscation is not a substitute for proper server-side security.)
