COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[ON Progressive]

Florida and DeSantis have been raked over the coals on here and in much of the media.

At what point do facts enter the conversation?  We've been hearing for a month now that Florida is about to explode and DeSantis committed mass murder by not closing beaches (lol).  Florida has less deaths than Illinois despite having millions more residents, and at the same time has tested about 20K more and has a similar number of infected.  Somehow JB has been praised on here for his strong response.

Anyone willing to admit they were just making stuff up when the said beaches were going to cause mass murder?

It's very likely still the inebriated undergrads who they allowed to keep partying there went home and seeded outbreaks all over the place. Even if we kept most of America open and running, it's the sort of thing you'd need to ban real fast if you want to get coronavirus under control.

Something that you can't really prove, and aside from that, it wasn't the narrative we were pushed.  I heard many times that DeSantis needs to be impeached for killing his own residents.  Spring Break was very much over when people were still calling the beaches a place of great danger.

Histronics aside, you're going to have a hard time acting in a crisis if you only do things based on what you can absolutely prove. Heck, you couldn't do my engineering job if that was your standard either. You sometimes have to estimate to make calculated risks. This was a risk that should not have been taken.

When the question is whether or not to restrict the rights of Americans, you're going to need a little more evidence that people walking around on empty beaches is a risk.  Miami and most other major cities had already closed their own beaches on their own accord.  I'm talking about the whole state.

Presumably they'd run into the same problems we've had everywhere with this thing. In Oregon for instance, the first weekend after the shutdowns began, seemingly everyone tried to all go to the beach and parks. So after no one followed the social distancing requests, they shut down the beaches and parks too, which really sucks. If people were walking around alone on empty beaches, they probably wouldn't have needed to close them. It's a shame people won't behave so we can't have nice things.

My rights to leave my house (and in Chicago, go in a park) should not revolve around other people's good or bad behavior.  Your thought process seems flawed.

I'm not really sure what to tell you besides that life isn't fair. Clearly what we're allowed to do in a situation like this is going to be dependent on how other people respond. The government can't have two separate sets of laws, one for Green Line and one of the rest of us.

I hope you can keep that attitude when it comes to something else like the Church.  No more communion hosts or Blood of Christ because the Govt. says its unsanitary.  Life isn't fair.

If we all took that attitude, nothing would ever change.

One main difference is that religious practice has an explicit constitutional protection that going to the beach does not.

That being said, for better or worse, the Church chose to comply with authorities who shut her down. My Archbishop has forbidden the laity from receiving communion even privately (presumably to prevent favortism from creeping in with the most pushy parishioners). I do think the government was too quick to shut down Churches when we still (at least here in Oregon) had gyms and tanning salons still open. It will be interesting to watch if the authorities allow Churches to reopen freely after this or if the public health crisis "lasts" longer with churches than it does with businesses. As our government's priorities indicate, they clearly believe churches to be recreational facilities.

As an aside, I'm not sure what the government in Illinois has done, but Oregon is still allowing people to go outside alone without asking questions. So this means I can still go for a run or take a walk. I'm thankful for that, since otherwise this would be much more difficult than it already is.

Beaches is just an example.  You could replace it with any activitiy that requires going outdoors and it would remain the same.  I've heard dozens of people in the past month argue that you don't actually need to go to the Church to practice your faith.  An online stream is sufficient to meet the requirements of the 1st Amendment according to many.  Personally, that's not a "life isn't fair" issue for me.  I will speak out.  The Church is willing to comply with a lot, but some things are not negotiable for more than a short period of a few weeks, such as Holy Communion.

Just ask South Korea what happens when you keep churches open is all I’m going to say.

[ON Progressive]

Shocking how the same people who ignored a plethora of scientific studies suggesting a higher mortality rate when they were available are now taking one outlier regional study, written in a language they can't read, as gospel simply because it conforms with their opinion.

Also ignoring that an IFR of 0.3% can still easily mean hundreds of thousands of Americans dead without any controlled spread (even if nowhere near every American gets it), or that it would be higher than 0.3% death rate anyway with uncontrolled spread because hospitals would be so overwhelmed.

We will not be able to keep the economy shut down and everyone unemployed and locked in their homes until every human being on this planet is vaccinated. That is not realistic and it actually causes the cure to be worse than the disease.

Not a single person is suggesting a lockdown for 12-18 months.