Government can't make you love your neighbor. Can it make you not kill him with your cough?
Ideas in conflict: Freedom, liberty, and self reliance at a time of a communicable disease.
Today's post is an expansion of a comment Portland Community College Computer Sciences professor Michael Trigoboff posted yesterday. I invited this guest post because I am busy observing the harvest of a legal, permitted, and taxed cannabis grow. Mid and late October is a busy period for this industry in Southern Oregon.
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| Observing up close |
COVID reflects the political attitudes toward social cooperation versus freedom and self reliance. In areas of sexuality and political thought, the political left is laissez-faire, but in areas of cooperation in close spaces, the political left favors more control. The air is shared and therefore "socialized," be it from factory pollution or COVID virus droplets.
Church-attending Christians are more closely aligned with Trump, but COVID scrambles the attitudes of people toward empathy for others. "Love your neighbor" and the Golden Rule direct people to consider the feelings of others and conform one's actions to do as you would want done to yourself. Most people would not want others to infect them with a virus with unknown long term health effects and potential death. In the case of COVID, the alignments are switched, with personal freedom trumping empathy, and the Golden Rule considered here an expression of tyranny.
On COVID, as with guns, the political right is the self-defense Party. They are also the tough love Party, and if you get sick don't expect sympathy. The death of Herman Cain two weeks after the Trump rally in Tulsa occasioned little mention and no sympathy from the Trump campaign or Fox News, where Cain had been a frequent guest.
Trump motivates Republican voters with images of frightful invasions: scary MS-13, scary caravans including secret terrorists, scary BLM protesters, scary Muslims, and in the campaign scary socialists--no, communists!!--running for President and Vice President. Democrats have downplayed each of these threats. Yet on COVID, the polarity is reversed, with Democrats talking about death counts and Republicans doing partisan signaling by going mask-free and unafraid of remote threats.
Republicans are thinking like Utilitarians, not like Christians.
Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff
Peter Sage’s post about responses to COVID described two possible approaches to the pandemic:
Golden Rule: attempt to save every life by shutting down all activities that could spread the virus without regard to economic or social costs.
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| Trigoboff |
Utilitarian: Allow younger people, who are less likely to die from COVID, to resume activities. Older and more vulnerable people should socially isolate while the rest of society avoids the harm of widespread closures. Herd immunity should eventually shut down the spread of the virus.
Jonathan Haidt’s research on Moral Foundations tells us that there are fundamental differences between how liberals and conservatives evaluate issues like this. Liberals concentrate on avoiding harm; they would favor the Golden Rule approach. Conservatives pay attention to avoiding harm, but factor in a number of other considerations as well; they would favor the Utilitarian approach.
Liberals and conservatives are basically two different kinds of people, and no amount of discussion will turn one kind into the other kind.
We are currently polarized along this axis, and the polarization is intractable because neither side seems to realize that the folks on the other side are fundamentally different from them and their viewpoints are just as valid. The way out would be to stop demonizing each other, to recognize the differences, and to compromise. We are a long way from that, unfortunately.
I am 74 years old and currently recovering a month after coronary bypass surgery. If I were infected with COVID, there’s a really good chance that it would kill me. Since March, all of my socializing and teaching activities have been via Zoom. I only leave the house for doctors’ appointments.
Nevertheless, being of a somewhat conservative orientation, I tend to sympathize with the Utilitarian approach advocated by the Great Barrington Declaration. It does not make sense to me to shut down the social and economic lives of younger, healthier people and make them all live the way I need to. I will need to live this way regardless which policy is chosen, and the younger, healthier people deserve to have a chance to live something like more normal lives.
There is, however, a counter-argument to the Utilitarian approach: a significant number of younger people do suffer serious long-term consequences and even death from COVID. The death toll among all age groups resulting from the Utilitarian approach might prove to be unacceptably high.
Finally, many young people live in multi-generational households. Easing the restrictions on the those young people could put the older people who live with them at extreme risk.
And we do not yet know whether herd immunity is even possible. No one knows how long the immunity resulting from the infection lasts, or how strong it is. If herd immunity is not possible, the Utilitarian approach would result in many more deaths than its supporters assume.
I do not know what the right answer is. I am keeping an open mind.
Jonathan Haidt’s research on Moral Foundations tells us that there are fundamental differences between how liberals and conservatives evaluate issues like this. Liberals concentrate on avoiding harm; they would favor the Golden Rule approach. Conservatives pay attention to avoiding harm, but factor in a number of other considerations as well; they would favor the Utilitarian approach.
Liberals and conservatives are basically two different kinds of people, and no amount of discussion will turn one kind into the other kind.
We are currently polarized along this axis, and the polarization is intractable because neither side seems to realize that the folks on the other side are fundamentally different from them and their viewpoints are just as valid. The way out would be to stop demonizing each other, to recognize the differences, and to compromise. We are a long way from that, unfortunately.
I am 74 years old and currently recovering a month after coronary bypass surgery. If I were infected with COVID, there’s a really good chance that it would kill me. Since March, all of my socializing and teaching activities have been via Zoom. I only leave the house for doctors’ appointments.
Nevertheless, being of a somewhat conservative orientation, I tend to sympathize with the Utilitarian approach advocated by the Great Barrington Declaration. It does not make sense to me to shut down the social and economic lives of younger, healthier people and make them all live the way I need to. I will need to live this way regardless which policy is chosen, and the younger, healthier people deserve to have a chance to live something like more normal lives.
There is, however, a counter-argument to the Utilitarian approach: a significant number of younger people do suffer serious long-term consequences and even death from COVID. The death toll among all age groups resulting from the Utilitarian approach might prove to be unacceptably high.
Finally, many young people live in multi-generational households. Easing the restrictions on the those young people could put the older people who live with them at extreme risk.
And we do not yet know whether herd immunity is even possible. No one knows how long the immunity resulting from the infection lasts, or how strong it is. If herd immunity is not possible, the Utilitarian approach would result in many more deaths than its supporters assume.
I do not know what the right answer is. I am keeping an open mind.
7 comments:
As of today, there have been 654 deaths in Oregon attributed to Covid-19 (and that's an inflated number), and that's out of a state population of about 4.3 million people. That's a minuscule percentage of the state population, and not worthy of shutting down the world.
How many people have died in Oregon in 2020 from cancer, or heart disease, or obesity, or automobile accidents? Probably much more than 654, and we don't close society for those ailments.
If you're an old, sickly person, and you get pneumonia, then you might die. It's no different than Covid-19. Do we close down society for pneumonia? No!
Covid-19 is like the flu on steroids. If you're living on the cliff, then it might push you over. Otherwise, it's just a temporary inconvenience.
Democrats are like the boy who cried "wolf". They want to control your life, and they don't want to leave any catastrophe unmanipulated. If democrats can use a disaster to control your life, then they will, and they do.
While Covid-19 is dangerous to some, it's not dangerous to all, and the healthy should be exempt from any government control. The bottom line is that Covid-19 is not as bad as the democrats have painted it to be, and we don't need to shut-down society for it. It's time to open-up the schools.
After all Betsy DeVos said we would only lose 2% of school aged people 4% tops.
654/4,300,000 = 0.00015209302.
That means that 15 out of every 100,000 people would die from Covid-19 in Oregon, and that's based on past history, and that number is inflated, so the damage would probably be less. That's much less than 2%.
If you keep society locked-down, then how many people will die from suicide, or face alcohol or drug addiction, or will go bankrupt, or will lose their families or their careers? Want to bet that it's more than 15 out of 100,000?
Hey...Covid-19 is BAD. So was the Swine Flu. Blame China for it. China is Joe Biden's best friend. It may have been introduced intentionally by China in order to hurt Trump. Before Covid-19 hit, the economy was kicking-ass.
There have been about 250,000 "excess deaths" during this COVID period, of which about 225,000 are attributed to COVID, which probably therefore slightly Underestimates the COVID deaths. As long as you don't catch COVID, the chance of dying is very, very small.
Let me repeat that for Mrs. Anonymous: AS LONG AS YOU DONT CATCH IT. Most people have not caught it, not yet anyway.
However, of the people who catch it (currently about 80,000 a day) about 1,000 die. Anonymous can do the math and so can other readers: a little over 1% of the people who get COVID die from it, with those concentrated among the old and people with something else going on. Since young people get COVID and probably do quite well (though we don't know for sure about long term affects, but let's assume no big problem) then the hospitalizations and deaths must be concentrated on people in a subset of the whole. Old people in their 70s have maybe a 4% chance of dying and people in their 80s a 6 or 7% chance. SOMEONE has to compensate for the non-lethality among the young, and we know the answer: the old.
Today's guest post was written by a guy who just had heart bypass surgery in his mid 70s. By the time a person is 70 some kind of co-morbidity is common. Not universal, not inevitable, but common. happen to be without a co-morbidity, knock on wood. That can change and eventually will. I will die of something, sooner or later, probably something that makes me weak and vulnerable to something, maybe COVID.
The fact that Anonymous tries to lump together people who did not catch COVID and people who do shows the weakness of his argument.
Hardly anyone dies of a motorcycle accident in Oregon. Hardly anyone dies in a hang gliding accident. Hardly anyone dies of an overdose of eating paint thinner. That does not make motorcycles, hang gliding, and drinking paint thinner safe. Those deaths are concentrated in the small number of people who ride motorcycles, hang glide, and drink paint thinner. For them the activities are risky and sometimes fatal. Same thing with COVID.
If the national policy is to put everyone into a motorcycle, a hang glider, and drinking paint thinner, then the death rates will go way, way up. The reason "only" 1,000 people die every day is that "only 60,000 to 80,000 people a day get the disease. The less COVID, motorcycle riding, hang gliding, and paint thinner drinking, the lower the death rates.
Peter Sage
The current administration, enabled by a significant minority of citizens, has not...emphasize...NOT addressed the pandemic by following the scientifically accepted methodology. The fact that there is even a debate about this reveals some pretty nasty stuff about them.
This epidemic, like all epidemics, disproportionally affects minorities, the working poor and older people. One might wonder if it only affected caucasians what the response might have been. This suggests one horrific possibility; doing nothing is effectively genocide, a response that is perfectly ok with Regressives, a final solution to their immigrant problem.
Regressives value material wealth over human life and though it is likely short sighted, will choose actions that will in the short term keep profits flowing. Moreover, a Darwinian worldview makes it perfectly acceptable for a leader to expose followers at a rally; it's their "choice" because they are "free", incidentally not a policy that extends to women regarding their own bodies.
Finally, this is not a rhetorical debate. The analogy with Churchill's decision to sacrifice casualties in WWII was an extreme example that only points out the failure of this government to perform its most basic duty. Their inaction in the name of commerce has made things worse. It has prolonged the epidemic, the economy is sliding into a depression, and as a result we face a long recovery and more suffering.
The Great Barrington Declaration has a noble sounding title. Don't be fooled. It's nothing more than a rationalization of the cruel incompetence of a government that's been hijacked by a self-serving, cynical and hypocritical political cabal.
This all reminds me of a great George Carlin routine, in which he complains that the world is filled with way too many assholes. Millions of them. And that the world should have, at most, maybe about 10,000 people, tops. And he then says, "I know what you're gonna say: 'Who'll decide?'Don't worry. I'LL decide...."
It seems that there are at least two conversations in today's comments: (1) the statistical probability of untimely death from COVID19, and (2) the ethical tension between allowing unfettered commerce with the potential of accelerating untimely deaths for more people.
Peter's response to Anonymous does a good job of the statistics of untimely deaths part, but what of the morality of economic tradeoffs to prevent those deaths? I suppose it depends on the extent to which you think human life is inherently sacred. This is where different camps of Conservatives make odd bedfellows. Many purely secular conservatives tend to want little or no civil oversight and are often under the illusion that they are self-sufficient. "Just don't tell me what I can or can't do. I take responsibility for me" they say. For them it's a matter of individual freedom. A pure financial and health trade-off.
Evangelicals, Catholics and other Christian Conservatives have a bit more of a moral conundrum. They see human life as inherently sacred because we are made in the image of God - no matter how old one is - including the unborn. So supporting a leader who promises to end Roe is THE litmus test, regardless of other lives that are impacted through his policies and sometimes toxic rhetoric. Their champion denies COVID19's lethal consequences. In their mind, several hundred thousand COVID deaths pale in comparison to the tens of millions of abortions that have been performed since Roe. Many of these folks do in fact- feel uneasy about financial vs human lives discussion, or the commodification of human life in order to restore the economy. But they are stuck with a champion - who regardless of his admittedly substantial character flaws - is what they see as offering the "lesser" of two evils. Their news sources, clergy and social media bubbles help them shape this narrative and rationalize their moral compromises.
In my observations, these are deeply embedded worldviews and value systems that are not easily changed by persuasive arguments.
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