forums

OT:NBA regular season suspended

For_The_U said:
Very well said post.

"I've stated my position. I tend to prefer some mild "overreaction" (on a macro level, not a personal level) to "inaction"

My only remark to it would be to encourage you to consider that there is an entire spectrum between "overreaction" (you can remove the world "mild" from your sentence there, as there has been nothing even remotely mild about the response) and "inaction". Personally, I advocate for neither of those polar ends. The key is finding the proper actions to take in response, which obviously is not an exact science and, yes, arguments for erroring on the side of caution trump most arguments to the contrary. But there's a cut off level there, and pumping widespread hysteria is not helpful in finding that ideal result.

Not saying YOU are one pumping widespread hysteria, by the way. But, boy, a whole lot of people sure are!
Click to expand...
this is the best response in this entire thread.
 
Advertisement
jhtheking said:
It is not intended to be misleading or distracted. Go look up the word intended. It shows how lack of containment can result in the death of millions. Just because you disagree with how people are using it as an example doesn’t mean it’s a red herring. Red herring implies intention to mislead or distract, which it is not, you retarded human being.
Click to expand...
Hold on, wait, I just want to make sure I'm understanding you... your position is that people are NOT using references to the Spanish Flu of 1918 as an INTENTIONAL means of being misleading re coronavirus? Wow.

The Spanish Flu of 1918 does not show how a lack of containment of coronavirus in 2020 can result in the death of millions anymore than the era of Black Death in the 1300s shows how uncontained bubonic plague could wipe out upwards of 200 million people in modern times. The world today is nothing like the world in 1918. Nothing. As such, the ultimate contagion and mortality rates of that virus over a century ago serves NOTHING BUT the role of being intentionally misleading.

Like you even acknowledged, want to see a more accurate analogy? Look at SARS and MERS and bird flu.
 
Last edited:
Empirical Cane said:
Muppets tend to do that.

It's one of their super powers.
Click to expand...
Well your super power is coming across as a fool trying desperately to seem smarter than every one else in the room. Not engaging is a form of ignoring. For example, when I'm walking into a store and there's a disheveled dude there talking to himself and bothering all the customers.. I just keep walking. I'm not going to waste my time arguing with him about whatever gremlins he has in his head that day. Every once in a while I'll tell him I don't have change for him tho.
 
Advertisement
BoxingRobes said:
Rudy Gobert, man. Dude was playing with coronavirus.

MF'rs playing around like its nothing.
Click to expand...
How is it any different then playing with the flu. The symptoms are actually a lot more mild then the flu. People are acting like this thing is a death sentence. Smh it’s not the bubonic plague folks, snap out of the over reacting panic! It’s like watching the weather channel when there’s a Hurricane that “might” come close to Florida. Smh
 
For_The_U said:
Hold on, wait, I just want to make sure I'm understanding you... your position is that people are NOT using references to the Spanish Flu of 1918 as an INTENTIONAL means of being misleading? re coronavirus? Wow.

The Spanish Flu of 1918 does not show how a lack of containment of coronavirus in 2020 can result in the death of millions anymore than the era of Black Death in the 1300s shows how uncontained bubonic plague could wipe out upwards of 200 million people in modern times. The world today is nothing like the world in 1918. Nothing. As such, the ultimate contagion and mortality rates of that virus over a century ago serves NOTHING BUT the role of being intentionally misleading.

Like you even acknowledged, want to see a more accurate analogy? Look at SARS and MERS and bird flu.
Click to expand...
Except we contained those, and we haven’t contained Coronavirus so what point are you even trying to prove?

This is an example of how containment policies can dramatically improve outcomes, and a reason why the Spanish Flu is used as evidence:
 
For_The_U said:
Again, that sounds great, but that's not what we're facing right now. You completely disregard the factor of economical devastation caused by the (over)reaction in your attempt to package the downside as "we go a few weeks without sports and go a bit stir crazy". IMO, the economical impact to our country will be exponentially more severe than the impact of the virus itself. This is the very basis for why I am against widespread hysteria.
Click to expand...


I don't ignore it. In fact, I have frequently cited it.

I was addressing the SPECIFIC comment that Empirical makes over and over again, about "wanting to get back to football".

But, yes, there is a MUCH larger impact that will be felt. For the moment, on this thread, we SEEMED to be talking only about the athletic events, but in the larger context, this is going to be bad.

I've used this comparison before, but here goes. In "hurricane prep" if the "horrible media" chooses to "overhype" the problem, and people go out and buy "too much" bottled water and toilet paper, no businesses really benefit. The "news stations" lose ad revenue while the storm is happening, and the stores lose revenue from water/TP sales after the storm, because people are stocked up. In that situation, you have times of higher-than-normal revenue followed by lower-than-normal revenue.

But what is happening now will not be "replaced". People are not going to take two vacations next year to make up for this one that they missed. Corporate groups are not going to hold two conventions to make up for the one that had to be cancelled.

The economic impact will be substantial. And while you make a good point, I would simply ask, when are we going to learn the lesson that it is better to spend money ahead of the problem, it is cheaper to PREVENT the problem than it is to try to "manage" the problem or "fix" the problem once it has manifested.

That's all.

You may think that Empirical is just benignly stating facts, you are entitled to your opinion. So I only ask, what is his purpose, what is his intent. He doesn't engage in any thoughtful debate over how we value human life, he just bemoans that we are cancelling sporting events. His citation of other "more deadly" diseases may not, on its own, be the cause of thousands of people failing to take greater precautions, but when you add up all of the similar "perspective-urging/smarter-than-the-rest-of-us/the-media-is-overhyping-this" commenters, then you have a cumulative impact.

I don't have any personal animus towards Empirical. But I will continue to critique this whole "hey, this isn't a big deal" approach. Yes, losing all of these sporting events is terrible. And, yes, the overall economic damage will be massive. But what is the ALTERNATIVE? In that regard, and that regard alone, I do not believe the "this is not as bad as breast cancer" argument is the proper approach to take.

This thing is going to have "hurricane-like" damage to the economy, but for the whole country, not just one city. That's what we need to manage, without "blaming the media" for selling ads during the news broadcasts.
 
Advertisement
For_The_U said:
Because comparing how the Spanish Flu impacted mankind before even the industrial revolution had begun as a means of trying to show how coronavirus may impact humankind in 2020 is literally the definition of a red herring. What would be a lot more accurate is to see how the modern flu pandemics affected mankind; SARS, MERS, H2N2, etc.
Click to expand...


Just for historical accuracy, the Spanish Flu outbreak was 1918-1920. The Industrial Revolution was 1760-1840.
 
MovingZen said:
Well your super power is coming across as a fool trying desperately to seem smarter than every one else in the room. Not engaging is a form of ignoring. For example, when I'm walking into a store and there's a disheveled dude there talking to himself and bothering all the customers.. I just keep walking. I'm not going to waste my time arguing with him about whatever gremlins he has in his head that day. Every once in a while I'll tell him I don't have change for him tho.
Click to expand...

I never have to try to seem smarter than most everyone else in the room.

Just a natural byproduct of what I say.

😀
 
TheOriginalCane said:
Look, there is no "absolutism" there.

First, it is uncontroverted that we have cut the funding for the CDC, and that we were not (previously) using WHO-approved testing kits, etc. There is a difference between some of the diseases you cite (Ebola), which was LARGELY contained on one continent. We were not seeing thousands of cases breaking out across the globe.

Here's just one Ebola stat: "Between 1976 and 2013, the World Health Organization reports 24 outbreaks involving 2,387 cases with 1,590 deaths. "

Compare that to Coronavirus: "As of 12 March 2020, over 129,000 cases have been confirmed in more than 120 countries and territories, with major outbreaks in mainland China, Italy, South Korea, and Iran. More than 4,700 have died from the disease and 68,000 have recovered."

So even though Ebola has a horrific impact, it has not infected and/or killed as many people IN THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS as we are seeing with Coronavirus.

Now, that comparison alone is not the end-all/be-all on which disease is "better" or "worse" or "deserving of hype/overreaction".

Ebola has long been feared because of the horrible way in which infected people die. But not because of its overall statistical impact. ****, shark attacks are rare too, but people are still fearful of sharks and cautious around sharks.

As for the "economic impact" argument, sorry, but we also have a long history of "well, let's not do anything, because it's bad for the economy". Particularly on environmental/pollution problems. But time and time again, it has been shown that the "cleanup" of, say, toxic waste sites, is far more expensive than what it would have cost to have prevented the problem in the first place.

Will the economic impact of Coronavirus suck? Sure. But maybe in the future, politicians of BOTH parties will not be so quick to cut the CDC funding. Maybe this will impact awareness and our standards of what we tolerate and choose not to tolerate.

Remember when someone poisoned Tylenol bottles and a couple of people died? We have since instituted safety-sealed medicine bottles, and we never went back to the old container methods.

What is YOUR alternative? Continue to stage all of the athletic competitions, continue to live life as normal (because, you know, "the economy") and then allow whatever number of people to die as are going to die? Because they are old and/or immunocompromised?

Yeah, this one is going to sting. It could have been handled much better. But it's silly to blame "the media" for (belated) reporting.

If the economy tanks, will it help us to take "precautions" warnings more seriously in the future? Will it cut down on the "breast cancer kills more people than Coronavirus" crowd lulling people into inaction? Because those could be two positive future developments.
Click to expand...
Solid post. I hesitated to include Ebola in that post as I figured someone would take it and run down that road. As you know, Ebola is very different in many many ways from the others I referenced which are in the same family of viruses as coronavirus. I included it simply because it is a great example of when mass hysteria far outweighed the actual threat. SARS hit over 30 countries, had a mortality rate of almost 10% which went above 50% for elderly. MERS also hit over 30 countries with a mortality rate over 30% for all. Swine flu killed literally hundreds of thousands of people a decade ago. It now circulates seasonally just like COVID-19 will. In none of those situations did our world come to a screeching halt like it is with coronavirus.

I'm not advocating for people to do nothing, TOC. There's that absolutism rearing its head again. I believe we all should take it seriously and alter our behaviors. I genuinely don't know a single person in my life who has not already begun doing so to some level. What I am against is the intentional broadcasting of "The Sky is Falling!" apocalyptic scenarios - like the guy on this very thread promoting a quote from an outlier professor in Harvard who says 40-70% of the global population will be infected and 1% of that group will die; a quote that was eagerly broadcast by NBC onto all of its vehicles. I believe the pumping of mass hysteria will lead to additional and massive economic detriment that will prove unnecessary. That's my position. I'm not Baghdad Bob.
 
Last edited:
canecat said:
1/3 of the population is going to have it at some point wish they would stop announcing every single person who tests positive .
Click to expand...
We aren’t talking about the average joe. As more and more athletes get infected, it’s sort of a big deal when we are talking about entire sports leagues shutting down.
 
Last edited:
Advertisement
For_The_U said:
Very well said post.

"I've stated my position. I tend to prefer some mild "overreaction" (on a macro level, not a personal level) to "inaction"

My only remark to it would be to encourage you to consider that there is an entire spectrum between "overreaction" (you can remove the world "mild" from your sentence there, as there has been nothing even remotely mild about the response) and "inaction". Personally, I advocate for neither of those polar ends. The key is finding the proper actions to take in response, which obviously is not an exact science and, yes, arguments for erroring on the side of caution trump most arguments to the contrary. But there's a cut off level there, and pumping widespread hysteria is not helpful in finding that ideal result.

Not saying YOU are one pumping widespread hysteria, by the way. But, boy, a whole lot of people sure are!
Click to expand...


I agree with you.

I would just point out that (to date) nobody has been trampled while standing in line outside of a hospital waiting for the doors to open once the new Coronavirus testing kits some in. So Wal-Mart Black Friday is still more deadly than "Coronavirus hype".

But I think that we both agree that finding that "sweet spot" between overreaction and inaction is tough.
 
HighSeas said:
For all we know this thing is all over North America right now and in 1-2 weeks we're in full-fledged Italy mode where everything is shut down, patients are being treated in the hallways of hospitals, equipment and medical care are scarce, medical personnel are getting sick themselves or collapsing from dehydration and exhaustion, and patients are living and dying based on who gets access to limited oxygen.
Click to expand...
:snoopfacepalm:
 
Advertisement
For_The_U said:
I stand corrected on the time line. The point I was making stands exactly the same though.
Click to expand...


It's all good, I still love ya!

I go back to my earlier point, though. If we have "so much more knowledge" in 2020 than we did in 1918, why is it still so hard to convince some (not all) of the wisdom of shutting down mass events? I could understand the Mayor of Philadelphia being an idiot in 1918 and still having the parade, if we didn't have so many people in 2020 complaining about cancelling sporting events with comparable numerical impact (NCAA Tournament).

That's all.

This whole thing is going to suck. Sporting-wise AND overall-economy-wise.

Coulda/woulda/shoulda planned better. Hopefully we will learn and we will be better in the future.

No guarantees, though.
 
Advertisement
Back
Top