D&D and the rising pandemic

[Umbran]

It was an unknown disease - trends or not, the alarm should have been raised from the beginning. There are no excuses for this. The Chinese authorities covered it up until late January.

With respect... that's the point. It was an unknown disease. It isn't as if, when someone dies, they instantly identify all new pathogens their body, or something. That's not how the science works.

To start with it wasn't even recognized as a new disease. In the first case... some person with a cold or flu got pneumonia and died. That happens with normal colds of flu. It isn't unusual. You need several cases before anyone has even a chance to notice that they are similar or related, or form a trend. Then you have to find how they are related. Then you look at that trend, and it then takes time to isolate the source. And none of this goes as quickly as on police or medical drama shows on TV.

The idea that, off the first case, they'd suddenly announce to the world that there's a new deadly microbe is, in the phraseology of science, "not even wrong".

 

[Umbran]

Unfortunately we write off dead by pollution every day.

"We write off other people dying, so we should write off these people dying," is not a logically sound position. That we do one thing wrong does not mean we should do all things wrong.

 

[Nagol]

In the long run we are all dead.

Just because money is easily quantifiable doesn't allow someone to say that individual pain can be disregarded.

Perhaps when the individual pain is yours, you might be less sanguine with your observations. I hope that empathetic lessons do not need to be taught in such a manner.

I didn't say individual pain would be disregarded. In fact I said the opposite.

 

[Umbran]

And yes, lots of restaurants and tourist businesses and travel businesses are going to have problems, and we are in for a recession.

You can help with that!

Go to your favorite restaurant. Buy a gift certificate. They have that money to tide them over now. You can go and have a nice celebratory meal when it is all over, and their business is picking back up again.

You are then, in effect, buying culinary bonds

 

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

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[Nagol]

Well, when someone says that "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic," is not the right approach to take, and you argue against it, perhaps you can see where you might be misconstrued.

Regardless, you be you. Don't say what you didn't say- please feel free to make your point.

I didn't agree with your characterization and I'll type anything I darn well please, thank you very much. Feel free to censor yourself.

I did make my point, I think. Human society will continue though and past this calamity. This calamity will cause many small networks pain from individual loss. Society has well-worn methods of dealing with those losses since they are inevitable even if not often seen in such volume. In addition to those losses, there will be other more distributed pain caused by other aspects of the calamity.

 

[seebs]

Which is why we should start turning bodies into fertilizer or find something else productive to do with them.

This is missing the point: People dying from this is still economic harm, and much more severe economic harm than we suffer from quarantines. Even if we assume all of your ideological stances to be reasonable, what you are advocating is worse at obtaining your stated goals than the best practices the epidemiologists are recommending.

You can't have no financial disruption or harm. You can minimize it, and you do that by reducing the spread of the disease.

Look at the death tolls in Philadelphia and St. Louis from the 1918 flu. Note how one of them had twice as many deaths as the other per capita. Why? Because they stuck with "business as usual". But dead people don't work jobs, and don't pay taxes, and it turns out that those costs are a lot higher than the costs of a very temporary interruption of public activities.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

"We write off other people dying, so we should write off these people dying," is not a logically sound position. That we do one thing wrong does not mean we should do all things wrong.

Not exactly.

A argument can only be interpreted with reference to a goal. Often times, that goal is truth. Likewise, an action must also be interpreted to a goal. Rule systems are the same; when evaluating a D&D subsystem, we must evaluate it in terms of what its designed to do.

The process of setting and ranking those goals is called prioritization.

For example, let's set "maximize human life" as a goal. OK Fine. Then let's prioritize it.

The coronavirus is a threat, but so it pollution. However, we are currently taking serious action against the coronavirus, but only minimal action against pollution.

My question then becomes: what priorities are we placing above human life with reference to pollution, but not with regards to the coronavirus?

Right now, I am having a difficult time answering that question, and therefore, am having a difficult time interpreting the actions the governments of our world are taking to prevent it. Instead, I am left confused.

So I'll try looking at things from a different perspective: what are our governments prioritizing?

When I look at that question, two clear answers spring to mind: "maintain the status quo of the pre-coronavirus world" and "look like we're doing something."

In my opinion, neither of those are noble goals, which leaves me firmly at odds with the government reaction.

If I saw that our governments were actually prioritizing human life, I could understand their actions better and perhaps even support them. However, I do not see them prioritizing human life.

Government clarification on this matter would be helpful and put my mind at ease as to their motives. But unfortunately, I am a little man in a 3rd world country typing on a computer from my living room. No government is answerable to me (and they probably shouldn't be).

 

[lowkey13]

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