I and others here have empathy for you—and our other loved ones who’ve had or currently have COVID. That said, your comment is not appropriate for this forum, which is why I strongly downvoted it.
Why do you think that the federal government shouldn’t override states that absolutely suck at putting any rules in place whatsoever? Why are you anti-mask? Why do you want people to keep getting covid when it increases risk of heart disease and all kinds of other problems?
This first go of questions is unfair. If you’ve read Zvi, you know that he’s pro-mask in all of the situations where he sees they make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. For people who are immunocompromised (or who really really really don’t want covid) he’s been advocating for P100s for a longtime (a position that gets very little mainstream traction, I’ll say). People can debate the relative cost and benefits of mask-wearing in various circumstances, but Zvi isn’t anti-mask by any charitable reading. To me, and I suspect with many other readers, that came across like a slur or an invective rather than a “hey, have you considered this evidence or argument for why you should update your opinions on mask-wearing frequencies?”
The same reasoning applies for long covid. Long covid definitely exists and there’s definitely people who have it. Again, policies come to to cost-benefit compromises, legality, morality, ethics, etc. What percentage of people who get covid also get long covid? How bad is it? How does that compare to the social cost and effectiveness of NPIs? It seems that the risk of long covid is correlated with the severity of covid. So what degree of NPIs are justified now based on the risk of someone getting long covid when we have vaccines (including now the non-mRNA Novavax), Paxlovid, fluvoxamine, etc? The purpose of government is not to stop everything bad from happening. there’s always trade-offs. Of course, with very very very strict well-implemented NPIs (lockdowns, p100 masks, etc) you could prevent some number covid cases and therefore some number of of long covid cases. You also could perhaps reduce traffic accidents by punishing people who speed with floggings. Is that the world we want to live in? Is the juice worth the squeeze?
The bit about who gets the lion share of power (federal vs state vs county vs city) is a reasonable question but also phrased uncharitably here. People who have the means and opportunity can move to a different area where covid policies make them more comfortable. I’ll admit not everyone has this kind of mobility. But, consider a counterfactual—if the federal government had more power (or exercised it more often) but also currently had people from the other team in charge, it easily could have overridden states with mask mandates, federally prohibiting them.
I personally don’t have a hard and fast rule as to federal vs. state vs. county vs. city. I do think a relatively painless way out of the culture war would be for both sides to agree to decrease the authority of the executive branch (e.g. no more ruling by executive order, etc) and give more power back to local governments. Then maybe give a stipend to families who would like to leave locations where they feel alienated by their government to other states/counties/cites where they’re more culturally aligned. Then we could all just live places where whatever group we designate as the out-group is far away.
Our testing sucks—I have covid right now and have gotten 4 negative at-home tests 4 days in a row but have all the symptoms. PCR test results take up to 4 days.
This seems reasonable. Our tests may suck more, especially as new variants emerge and it may be worth discussing. Would have been better if it was your anecdote plus some supporting evidence that it’s wider spread.
This is abysmal. Stand up for disabled people and stop normalizing this as “eh whatever” because your blase attitudes are harmful to REAL PEOPLE.
Zvi is very clearly putting in a massive effort to understand covid and covid policy as comprehensively as possible. So it’s very far from abysmal.
I’m also not sure what the point is. I think we’re all in agreement that preventing people from getting long covid is good, and we have several methods to do this that don’t involve excessive NPIs (again, cost-benefit).
There is maybe an open unaddressed question of for people who do have long covid, what is the best thing we can do to help them recover quickly?
I also want to acknowledge that you have covid right now. I know when people are sick (particularly with covid) that they have less of a filter. I’m sure I’ll be guilty of this the next time I’m sick (or depressed or over-worked, or etc).
So I’m really impressed that you asked and will be more impressed if you read this whole long-winded comment of mine.
To give a good answer, I’d need to know your level of familiarity with LW. How much time have you spent on the site, and what’s your impression of its purpose?
I and others here have empathy for you—and our other loved ones who’ve had or currently have COVID. That said, your comment is not appropriate for this forum, which is why I strongly downvoted it.
Why is it inappropriate?
I’ll take a stab at this. TL;DR—it’s not a very Bayesian comment (how much to change your opinions based on new information or how to encourage other people to update their opinions in this way).
This first go of questions is unfair. If you’ve read Zvi, you know that he’s pro-mask in all of the situations where he sees they make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. For people who are immunocompromised (or who really really really don’t want covid) he’s been advocating for P100s for a longtime (a position that gets very little mainstream traction, I’ll say). People can debate the relative cost and benefits of mask-wearing in various circumstances, but Zvi isn’t anti-mask by any charitable reading. To me, and I suspect with many other readers, that came across like a slur or an invective rather than a “hey, have you considered this evidence or argument for why you should update your opinions on mask-wearing frequencies?”
The same reasoning applies for long covid. Long covid definitely exists and there’s definitely people who have it. Again, policies come to to cost-benefit compromises, legality, morality, ethics, etc. What percentage of people who get covid also get long covid? How bad is it? How does that compare to the social cost and effectiveness of NPIs? It seems that the risk of long covid is correlated with the severity of covid. So what degree of NPIs are justified now based on the risk of someone getting long covid when we have vaccines (including now the non-mRNA Novavax), Paxlovid, fluvoxamine, etc? The purpose of government is not to stop everything bad from happening. there’s always trade-offs. Of course, with very very very strict well-implemented NPIs (lockdowns, p100 masks, etc) you could prevent some number covid cases and therefore some number of of long covid cases. You also could perhaps reduce traffic accidents by punishing people who speed with floggings. Is that the world we want to live in? Is the juice worth the squeeze?
The bit about who gets the lion share of power (federal vs state vs county vs city) is a reasonable question but also phrased uncharitably here. People who have the means and opportunity can move to a different area where covid policies make them more comfortable. I’ll admit not everyone has this kind of mobility. But, consider a counterfactual—if the federal government had more power (or exercised it more often) but also currently had people from the other team in charge, it easily could have overridden states with mask mandates, federally prohibiting them.
I personally don’t have a hard and fast rule as to federal vs. state vs. county vs. city. I do think a relatively painless way out of the culture war would be for both sides to agree to decrease the authority of the executive branch (e.g. no more ruling by executive order, etc) and give more power back to local governments. Then maybe give a stipend to families who would like to leave locations where they feel alienated by their government to other states/counties/cites where they’re more culturally aligned. Then we could all just live places where whatever group we designate as the out-group is far away.
This seems reasonable. Our tests may suck more, especially as new variants emerge and it may be worth discussing. Would have been better if it was your anecdote plus some supporting evidence that it’s wider spread.
Zvi is very clearly putting in a massive effort to understand covid and covid policy as comprehensively as possible. So it’s very far from abysmal.
I’m also not sure what the point is. I think we’re all in agreement that preventing people from getting long covid is good, and we have several methods to do this that don’t involve excessive NPIs (again, cost-benefit).
There is maybe an open unaddressed question of for people who do have long covid, what is the best thing we can do to help them recover quickly?
I also want to acknowledge that you have covid right now. I know when people are sick (particularly with covid) that they have less of a filter. I’m sure I’ll be guilty of this the next time I’m sick (or depressed or over-worked, or etc).
So I’m really impressed that you asked and will be more impressed if you read this whole long-winded comment of mine.
To give a good answer, I’d need to know your level of familiarity with LW. How much time have you spent on the site, and what’s your impression of its purpose?