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A comment on Tribalism comes for pandemic science. Parent comment

Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science by dekhn on Monday June 08, 2020 @04:34PM (#23460463)
The main problem youi'll have with that is that many people assume that the value of a human life is infinite and we must expend all resources possible to save individuals. Neither of those makes for good economics, so folks who include economics and balanced risk into their equations often conflict with folks who want to take the "safest possible action with respect to human life".
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Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science by atomi on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:43PM (#23461139)
The safest possible solution would be for the super wealthy pay to keep the population fed and housed while we wait for a vaccine or improved treatments. Otherwise, the virus will continue to propagate, the poor will have to risk their lives and the virus will inevitably reach the rich and their families in a later wave anyway as was the case with the 1918 flu.

Addendum: I posted this fully understanding how unpopular it would be with this crowd. If we ever get hit with a a more fatal and contagious virus this may be our only way of preserving life. And as things stand with our industrial meat processes I suspect we will have more viruses to contend with.

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Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science by salmon30salmon on Monday June 08, 2020 @06:13PM (#23461405)
I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but I will assume it is not.

It is not this simple. You can't, in our current system, shift wealth that readily and quickly. Even if you could, how would you approach possibly selling this in a democracy? And assuming it was feasible, and we could get popular support for it, how would it be implemented? Rationing cards? Government ran food stores?

This is NOT the Spanish Flu. It is very different in its behavior. There is currently no evidence to expect a more deadly, virulent second wave. Please remember that the Spanish Flu was anomalous because it had a more deadly second wave. Almost all viruses, as a function of evolution, become less deadly over time.

And this ignores all of the vast improvements in our understanding of sickness and hygiene, our availability of clean, sanitary conditions etc. Hell, even the change in density between 1918 and 2021 is massively changed.

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Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science by pbourke on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @03:01AM (#23464398)
> You can't, in our current system, shift wealth that readily and quickly.

The Fed seems to be doing just that

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Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science by atomi on Monday June 08, 2020 @06:46PM (#23461633)
One way would be to have a monthly payment similar to Trump's $1200 [stimulus check] every month. The government can later recoup that through more equitable tax policies on the ultra wealthy and massive corporations.

This has been proposed by legitimate legislators. https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1270000771132731397

As for your claim to a lack of a second wave, I'll have to defer to the experts on that. I'm looking at a historical case for a worse case scenario which I think is prudent to consider.

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Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science by NotSammyHagar on Monday June 08, 2020 @07:31PM (#23461961)
I don't know what Trump's $1200 monthly payment refers to, the welfare payments came from the us federal govt and state govts. A better reference is Andrew Yang's proposed $1000/month payment.
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