Thanks for the great response!
I think that's a fair response. How would you like to frame the debate? I'm with you. Sure ...
Thankfully, we actually agree on most points, so let's try to take the rest in smaller chunks.
I'd just add vaccinations now. I hope you're in favour of rolling out vaccines quickly and encouraging people to get them?
I advocate voluntary vaccinations limited to specific ages and risk groups. This is pretty much what the situation is now. So I'm fine with it. There are a number of articles on it I posted earlier including the scientific paper from the test studies. Personally, they raise enough of a concern for me to avoid the vaccine, the details of which we can get into later if you want.
The data there is fairly clear. Wearing a mask blocks up to 99% of the virus from being exhaled. It's also not pointless if you're not infected, because it also helps block the virus from being inhaled, or from you touching a source of infection and then your nose or mouth.
Agreed. However the point I was making is that first the virus has to be present. If it's not. It's pointless, and the evidence does not indicate the virus is ubiquitous. There are only places of relatively higher or lower risk. Therefore the presumption that anyone who is not wearing a mask is either getting or spreading the virus is false. Unless they are in a high risk area, the likelihood of them being exposed is also very small, and even if they are exposed the chances of infection are small, and even if they are infected, the chance of any serious health issues is also very small.
Say more? It can be transmitted quite effectively in the air. Especially in closed in places like airplanes, malls, etc where you are sealed in and breathing in everyone else's air.
Given the above, I think that higher risk places should have the option of mandating masks of their own accord, and that people should have the right to voluntarily wear masks if they feel like it. I don't believe in the bylaws or the fines.
Where I do disagree quite strongly with the lockdowns is on things like restricting outdoor ice rinks and the like. As long as you're socially distanced outdoors, it shouldn't be a problem. We still go skiing, and only wear masks in the lift lines and getting off the lifts (unless someone else is on the lift with us). Ontario shut down a ski hill, and that just screams nonsense to me.
It's called Coronaphopbia, and it affects people who are already germaphobes, as well as those who were borderline before all the fear mongering in the news. Now political decisions are being made to appease the coronaphobes, who have become dominant on the political landscape, and backed by tunnel vision science rather than critical thinking on a more holistic level. They accuse others of only being concerned about themselves, when it's actually the other way around.
OK c'mon man. You know better than to think a guarantee of infection or a guarantee of non-infection is anything but binary thinking. This is the domain of probabilities, not certainties.
Exactly, and whenever we have we convicted people of crimes based on probabilities rather than actual crimes, there has been discontent. We put up with very few examples ( seat belts, insurance, impaired driving ). When it comes to an epidemic, or pandemic, there could be sufficient reason to invoke emergency measures ( which is what this is ), but in this case, the data shows the initial danger was far less than was assumed. See some of the other postes where there are actual statistics.
Have you been to Chinook lately? Holy crap. That place seems like infection city to me.
I've been to Chinook. The only thing I got was a sore dry eye from the goddamned mask. I could hardly wait to get out of there. I'm just not as afraid of infection as you seem to be. That being said, I don't want to get it either, and I do my part.
Wait wait wait... who exactly is being hurt by wearing a mask again? If we would have worn them and restricted social gatherings before, these lockdowns probably wouldn't have needed to occur. They aren't in some other provinces.
Whether or not the lockdowns were necessary before or even now is a matter of debate and I have taken on the side of The Great Barrington Declaration. That's where the real debate is. From what I can tell, the lockdowns are livelihood and economy killers that overall contribute to the loss of lives, most probably to the extent that they cause more of an overall problem than they solve.
As I told my brother in law, who likes to yell at people wearing masks when we're out, who exactly is being hurt by them wearing one? Or how are they hurting him, who doesn't want to? He's the one inflicting potential harm, and very real social harm by acting out.
I think that people should not be harassed for wearing masks. If they want to put on a mask it should be entirely their right to do so, and it should not be construed as some sort of political statement or condemnation of other people's belief that they shouldn't be forced under threat of law, to wear one.
I understand your reasoning. So what would you do instead? We did a fairly close approximation of doing nothing in our province. Now we're fighting our way out of a big infectious cluster-f. So what would you do instead if you were Kenney?
Like I've said many times now. I signed the
Great Barrington Declaration.
I disagree. One of the primary sources of infections appear to have been through careless social gatherings. Which is exactly what is being targeted. Would you target migrations instead? Should I be unable to drive to Edmonton, or BC? If so, why would that be better than restricting social gatherings?
I don't think we need to disagree here so much as accept the data, and the data clearly shows that the largest infections and deaths have come from high-risk locations like long-term care facilities etc. This doesn't mean that group gatherings cannot themselves become a high risk. However if they don't consist of high-risk individuals who are going to clog the hospital system, then all they need to do is self-isolate for 14 days, and contribute to the herd immunity.
Revisit the vid I posted on the progress of the Swedish model, and consider how that would look if they'd just protected the vulnerable better at the start. How this plays out in the long run is where all the numbers will matter. Managing the virus alone is only one factor in a much bigger picture.
Contract tracing worked great when we had low infection rates. It's now gone far beyond our ability to do contract tracing simply because there's too many new infections per day to do it. So I struggle with this rationale.
The rationale is that the failure of contact tracing means we we're making assumptions about lockdowns that have certain sweeping negative ramifications, but uncertain positive ramifications, and a possibility of them doing more harm than good in the long run. Therefore before these AEMA lockdowns became a strategy, there should have been far more convincing data to support them.
The only people being blamed are the people not doing what they're told with masks and social distancing as far as I'm aware. The lockdown was a response to the virus promoted by the global medical and scientific establishment and then accepted (or not) by the government we ourselves created.
As you can see from the 50,000 plus signatures of scientists and medical professionals on the Great Barrington Declaration, the authors of which are PhDs, not everyone agrees with the "medical establishment". The "establishment" has been known to be wrong on more than one occasion in history, and I believe it's lockdown strategy has the serious potential to be one of them.
Again, what would you replace it with? Part of the reason I agree with the lockdowns being harsh now is because then they'll end sooner, and we can all get back to business. Muck around with it like we did, and we're going to be in it for a lot longer.
And again, we could have done this all without lockdowns in the first place, and therefore saying because they failed the first time is a good reason to keep using them doesn't make any sense.
That sounds a lot like a kid that doesn't want to take his medicine, and who blames the doctor for being sick. We need to buckle down and get through this.
Perhaps there were some people who fall into the category you suggest. But I wasn't there. I didn't talk to them. I don't know what the specific individuals reasoning was, or even if they had any. I do however think it's entirely safe to assume, given the prevalence of "Put Calgarians Back To Work" signs, that many were concerned about their ability to pay their rent and feed their families. That should not be equated with some kid who doesn't take his medicine.
That sounds like an argument from emotion, not reason. Are my reasons invalid because they have an (admitted) air of righteousness? How does that change the facts?
The fact is that unless you were there, exposed to the virus, and then infected, and then came someplace close to dying from it, blaming protesters for endangering your life is totally unsupportable.
Actually, they do. It's a superspreader event, man. That's what they are. That's what they look like. And they're geometric.
A superspreader event assumes that the virus is in the group. So far as I know, there is no evidence linking any infections to the protest. But even if there were, to endanger your life, it would have to get from there to you and actually make you sick. Honestly, if you were sitting at home watching it on TV, what are the chances?
To me, they're akin to someone at a pro-gun rally shooting their firearms into the air, while claiming they "probably" won't hit anyone. It's stupid and pointless and foolish and needless. And they do cost lives, man. So no, I don't accept this criticism at all.
And if at the pro-gun rally there was no evidence of guns or anyone firing them into the air, then what? Besides that, even if there were guns, they'd be equivalent to nerf guns. Sure, with enough of them going off, and nobody wearing eye protection, someone would probably choke on one and die, or end-up in the hospital, or some oldtimer would have a heart attack. Actually come to think of it, a nerf gun rally would probably be even
more dangerous.
And there I get the logic. However, the virus is here. We are not yet vaccinated. So therefore, all they did was prolong the lockdowns they're protesting against, and therefore working against themselves - harming everyone both economically and by spreading it more.
Again, the "they" you are talking about when you say "they prolonged the lockdowns" should be the government, not the citizens. The Lockdowns are an AEMA restriction. To look at this issue in a balanced way, blaming the citizens for lockdowns they don't want makes no more sense than blaming them for no lockdowns when they do want them.
Their concern is no less valid than mine. But their rationale certainly isn't. There is no underlying rationale for their actions except 'don't tell me what to do.' That's it. There's nothing more. There were no people carrying signs for something like 'reduce social distancing from 2M down to 1.5' or anything like that.
Again, that's being glib. I have no doubt that many of the protesters sincerely believed their livelihoods and lives, including the health of others is being negatively impacted by lockdowns. And that doesn't even touch on their right to peacefully express their concern about it.
Section 2 of the Charter gives us the right to peaceful assembly. It wasn't peaceful - there was violence committed by the protestors. And they still willfully broke the bylaws.
If somebody got violent ( and weren't just defending themselves ) then they should be charged with whatever violence related crime is applicable. You know me well enough that I don't support violence. But that also goes both ways.
I don't agree with the bylaws and fines either, or the violence that the law can get away with. Simply standing a little closer than some bylaw says is allowed isn't violence, and neither is refusing to show ID so a bylaw officer can ticket you. But dragging you downtown and throwing you in jail is. I don't care if the bylaw gives them the right to do it or not.
If they would have protested with masks on and with social distancing (and without the Trump flags and ProudBoys and Sons of Odin), I wouldn't have cared at all. Because they wouldn't have been harming anyone except themselves.
I get what you're saying. But to be fair, you have to separate those out from the others with good intentions. Or at least as an individualist and a peaceful anarchist, that's the way I look at it.
Wow, we must be reading different news.
"Doctors says it's 'day-to-day survival mode' as Calgary ICUs stretch surge capacity"
Yes, it's interesting how the stats are trotted out. The numbers I gave were overall Province wide, and the problem areas were where patients were refusing to be transferred or couldn't be transferred to other facilities where there was more room.
The concerns are real. Everything you're raising almost without exception is a real concern. Economically and socially this is devastating.
I'm not debating this. But I am saying that math is math.
Interestingly, it's the math that first alerted me to the concern. First I looked at the number of poverty related deaths prior to the pandemic. It was over 250,000 a year before the lockdowns. Immediately I could see that the lockdowns were going to have a direct affect on this number, not just during the pandemic, but for years after, and that didn't even include the other factors, such as mortality rates from the loss of other medical and support services.
So if math matters to you, then we need to do all the math and not just what pertains to deaths as a direct cause of the virus. And BTW, even those numbers cannot be relied on because of the way they are counted.
Viruses spread geometrically. It's what they do. We're roughly one doubling progression away from our healthcare being overswamped. One. Look at our infection rates, man - we're worse than some parts of the US!
Infection rates aren't the concern because the vast majority of those infected will be fine. Many won't even know they ever had it in the first place. So forget about infection rates among the general population, and look at the cases that end-up needing medical intervention. Then we see that they are the same segment of the population that is already at high-risk from other factors, mainly old-age, and that if they are given special attention, the rest of the citizens should be able to go on living relatively normal lives.
Shutting down the livelihoods of millions upon millions of perfectly healthy people, who even if they were infected, would be just fine within two weeks, is not the way to protect a relatively few well identified high-risk people. It just doesn't make sense from a humanitarian or economic perspective.
What are you offering instead?
Like I've said many times now. I signed the
Great Barrington Declaration. A lot of that may become moot now that the vaccines are coming. But the damage to healthy peoples lives is going to take a lot longer to recover from. Many will never recover. Hundreds of thousands of businesses across North America have permanently closed, affecting tens of millions of lives. At present, it looks like history will consider these lockdowns as one of the worst decisions ever made.
Then again. I could be wrong. I've changed my views a couple of times as new info has come in. It might also be the case that in some places the cost of lockdowns is something that was tolerable. But generally speaking it's a solution for the affluent. There will be a cost for us for sure, but for poorer nations it will be far worse. You can read the stories I've posted here, or if you really want to investigate it for yourself, just Google:
Google:
lockdowns do more harm than good
PS: And tell your brother in law to settle down
. Maybe try using the leaky paddle boat analogy. I don't agree with all these measures, but if I have to put up with them, I damn well want to make it to the other side. And he should be respectful of other people's right to wear masks if they want to.
