Lose your index finger or something? You have two you know.

I’ve already looked.

CV has been ... convenient for a number of state powers. Malaysia, which has deployed the military to the streets, had CV hit just after what was effectively a coup in government which was widely unpopular with the public. Malaysia, which has a rich tradition of protest, has more or less deserted streets right now. Timing couldn't have been better.

Ah, then it's a PLBKAC problem. No surprise.

Could a healthcare system every be universal if they cannot care for their patrons universally? Italy has universal coverage, or at least that’s what they sold the good people of Italy, but it turns out not to be the case.

Worth noting that the failure of the Italian state has largely owed itself to the EU bureaucracy, which, thanks to a decade of imposed neoliberal austerity programs, have gutted the Italian public sector, leaving it one of the most fragile economies on the continent. Once again, capitalism fucks everything.

It seems like a prelude to war metaphors. A good American should be willing to die for their country.

The suggestion that our culture (our values, beliefs, aspirations, etc.) is all about capitalism and nothing besides, if that's the suggestion, is the hight of philistinism.

Could a healthcare system every be universal if they cannot care for their patrons universally? — NOS4A2

This is word games. Having the bandwidth and resources to give needed healthcare access to everyone would have made the collapse of our healthcare systems far less likely. Where are the private healthcare providers in all this? Absent. When it comes down to it, when socieities really need it, universal healthcare access is obviously a necessity.

In Italy utilitarian principles are applied to the triage,
and the elderly are given low priority because they are less likely to survive. That’s an unfair hand to be dealt, especially since the elderly have spent much of their lives paying into the system that has promised to care for them. So though you can speciously blame others for theoretical and future deaths of hundreds of thousands, you have said nothing of actual deaths and the decisions that have led to their demise. — NOS4A2

Can you point me to reliable reporting on how the elderly are being given low priority in Italy?

As for the global economy, if it collapses, the pandemic was just the trigger. This is kind of a test for whether there is underlying instability. We can throw money at the economy to stabilize it. That's worked in the past. If it doesn't work this time, IOW if we find we're 'pushing on a string', then it's the underlying problem that's leading to collapse, not the pandemic.

So we wouldn't decide to let an elderly person die because the global economy is unstable. We let elderly people die because we aren't in a science fiction novel where we can transplant memories into clones. People die. This virus has a history of doing unrecoverable damage to lungs. For a young person we could possibly do a lung transplant. We wouldn't do that for an 80 year old, again, not because of the economy, but because it wouldn't make sense.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/18/facebook-posts/italys-overwhelmed-hospitals-are-treating-elderly-/

I understand the utilitarian arguments for giving lower priority to the elderly. But it is unjust.

Could a healthcare system every be universal if they cannot care for their patrons universally? Italy has universal coverage, or at least that’s what they sold the good people of Italy, but it turns out not to be the case. — NOS4A2

Worth noting that the failure of the Italian state has largely owed itself to the EU bureaucracy, which, thanks to a decade of imposed neoliberal austerity programs, have gutted the Italian public sector. Once again, capitalism fucks everything. — StreetlightX

Ah. The bliss of looking at everything from a distinct political view. :snicker:

Fair enough.

It will be interesting to see, when this is all over, how well the various systems grappled with this situation.

Stimulus deal bars Trump's businesses from Treasury Department loans

@Nobeernolife

Damn, I was all geared up to get deranged about this.

We’re talking about governance, which is inherently political.

Cool, thanks. That reporting didn't give me enough information to understand what they mean by "low priority."

I understand the utilitarian arguments for giving lower priority to the elderly. But it is unjust. — NOS4A2

Again, what do you mean by "lower priority"?

Ah. The bliss of looking at everything from a distinct political view. :snicker: — ssu

The bliss of knowing the basics about the state of the Italian economy? And your alternative is... ignorance?

Quoting the doctor:

“No one is getting kicked out, but we’re offering criteria of priority. These choices are made in normal times, but what’s not normal is when you have to assist 600 people all at once."

I’m a layman, so when he says “criteria of priority” I assumed he meant different patients are given different priorities, higher and lower. I thought this was how triage worked but I could be wrong.

Right. It's how triage has always worked. I had to do an exercise for some mandatory training once where I triaged 100 patients after a chemical factory disaster. They do those exercises so that a person won't be facing a complete unknown if they're in that kind of environment.

How would you figure justice into it? I'm asking, not being a jerk.

I do want to point out that the most rational conversation available to me on this forum is with the forum troll. The most irrational parties are the moderators. Why is that?

I’m more of a “let justice reign even though the heavens fall” kind of guy.

I think it’s unfair to give a lower priority to those who have arguably payed more into a system that has promised to heal them. But this situation may, in the end, change my mind in this regard.

Worth noting that the failure of the Italian state has largely owed itself to the EU bureaucracy, which, thanks to a decade of imposed neoliberal austerity programs, have gutted the Italian public sector, leaving it one of the most fragile economies on the continent. Once again, capitalism fucks everything. — StreetlightX

You blast the policy makers for imposing austerity and then you blame capitalism as the culprit. It sounds like unsound government policy got the Italians where they are. As I recall, and I didn't follow it too closely, was that the EU imposed austerity because the richer nations (like Germany) were tired of propping it up. The Italians inability to control their currency because they were stuck to the Euro made their problems worse.

The most irrational parties are the moderators. — frank

Present company excluded.

But, to your question, if your most rational conversation is with a troll, you're being really well trolled.

I think it’s unfair to give a lower priority to those who have arguably payed more into a system that has promised to heal them. But this situation may, in the end, change my mind in this regard. — NOS4A2

No hospital has promised to heal anyone. In the case of COVID-19, if your immune system doesn't heal you, you will die. All the hospital can do is support you until your immune system does its thing.

Let the trolling troll on.

We’re talking about governance, which is inherently political. — NOS4A2

Yes, and at least you admit it.

The bliss of knowing the basics about the state of the Italian economy? And your alternative is... ignorance? — StreetlightX

I'd tone it down a notch with the argument everything is happening because the evils of the neoliberal capitalist death cult. I would say that the dire situation in Italy has more to due with the fact that it was among the first places hit after China.

You're currently not even assessed in Northern Italy if you are older than 65 or have comorbidity.

Not necessarily a reply to you but to the general discussion going on. Triage is about comparing the likelihood of saving lives. So the lives are valued equally but outcomes aren't. When certain politicians are talking about the reaction being worse than letting CV run its course, they are most definitely comparing human lives to dollars. It is not the same as it's not a question that many more people will die if you do not flatten the curve.

When certain politicians are talking about the reaction being worse than letting CV run its course, they are most definitely comparing human lives to dollars. — Benkei

:point:

@Hanover

Yes, now that Trump has defeated the economy, it's time to open up corona again! Corporations are dying, people?! What's wrong with you?

Seriously though, ideological differences aside, steer clear of the sociopathic capitalism brigade. 'Sacrificing' hundreds of thousands of the weak and old for the economy is horribly wrong from just about every angle, moral and otherwise. Do the hammer. Your economy will recover.

So you think that in no circumstance when deciding policy, human live can be measured against other values? There was a point to the example. If it can be done in other cases, what's different here? I'm not arguing against lock-down right now, to be clear, I agree that there shouldn't be any doubt. I'm just saying that at some point the question will come... and that could be a question where philosophy could actually be informative. If you don't want to go there, that's fine. — ChatteringMonkey

Many comments previous, I get into this subject when it was clear that containment was being half-asked to protect the stock market, and then containment just abandoned; going to "mitigation". UK was quite explicit about this. Of course, they just didn't really understand what they were doing and they'd just end up like everyone else but with a worse problem.

There are two opposing views about the purpose of the economy that have a an overlapping logic in some sense, but are not the same and give rise to different decisions.

The first view of the purpose of the economy is that its fundamental roll is to keep people alive; it is that which allows us to live. It might have other purposes, but only as a compliment to and not in conflict with this first purpose.

The second view of the purpose of the economy is to give value to owners; it is that which provides dividends to the investor class.

In the first view of the economy, lifting the quarantine is justified because at some point more people really will die than from the virus. Even if we ignore "jobs", which warrants another discussion as could be completely meaningless in this view of the economy in the event those jobs just undermine nature or other social structures we depend on, but self-isolation has mental, physical and educational consequences that in themselves at some point easily compete with a "mild epidemic" -- i.e. one that is not overwhelming the health system. So, if the epidemic is under control, then indeed the argument that further sheltering in place is doing more harm than good can be made, it's what government will say, and everyone will more or less agree. The principle is not really controversial. This is why we don't self-isolate to defeat the flu every year, and we're self-isolating now because this is not the seasonal flu.

However, in the second view of the economy, lifting quarantine measures is not because it will start to save lives, but rather it will get the stock market moving up again. From this point of view, the purpose of self-isolating to slow the spread of the virus was not really sensical to begin with. The virus simply doesn't kill enough people. For instance, if we were all robots working in a factory and a software-virus came through and disabled permanently 1 percent of us, it's really not reason to stop the factor, especially if a cure isn't even guaranteed to work. It would be even more absurd to stop the factory if the virus only permanently disabled obsolete robots in the back. So, viewing people as workers and consumers and something of value insofar as they contribute to the stock market going up -- for the investor class that's on the whole simply diversified into the stock market -- then there would only be alarm if we're talking "real numbers" like 10 - 20 percent, of which the coronavirus is simply an order of magnitude less lethal, and therefore irrelevant, in itself, as a menace to the stock market. So not pursuing the optimum strategy, to just keep factories and everything running as normal and tolerate a few units going offline, is extremely frustrating from this point of view.

As I mention in those previous comments, this second maximize-dividends view of the economy sacrifices peoples lives for increasing stocks all the time. For instance, allowing plenty of toxins in everything, the destruction of the environment, psychologically intolerable work conditions, the debt-to-homeless machine, are all examples of sacrificing people for stock value -- the pushback from trying to reduce pollution or make working conditions compatible with actually enjoying life even at the bottom will create the pushback that it's "bad for X,Y, Z corporations" which really means bad for dividends as that's the purpose of corporations.

The difference with this crisis is that it's on such short a timescale that it's impossible to muddy the water of cause-and-effect with propaganda for enough people to be begging to be abused and exploited and any future for their children corrupted; as per the usual "non-toxic, environmental friendly, psychologically friendly regulations would be bad for the economy, cost jobs, just not work, even if there was evidence of a problem which we flatly deny, and even if there was nothing can be done about it". The logic is exactly the same for the pandemic, and a lot of people swallow it whole, but not enough: there's still too many people that genuinely love their parents, grandparents, in-laws and vulnerable people. The atomization of society is not as complete as necessary for the optimum response in this particular situation.

You're currently not even assessed in Northern Italy if you are older than 65 or have comorbidity. — Benkei

Holy shit, that's horrendous. I assume they're just stacking them up in tents. Could NATO help?

You genuinely think Trump's (and others) rhetoric will have an effect other than just keeping all commentators talking about their remarks?

Or you think that Trump will order the lifting the 'lock downs' or what? Perhaps the pandemic situation will have an effect on that in just a few weeks, as this macabre show has just only started...


...even if in the end it won't be so apocalyptic as during the time when Bernt Notke painted the painting above.