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The Worldwide C0VlD-19 Coronavirus Pandemic Discussion Thread...

Kak

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A post from March 18th, around a month and a half ago.

"The paradox of the novel coronavirus response is that [...] if they work, will not have seemed necessary. Success will look like we overreacted. This is a unique emergency, but the basics still apply."

View: https://twitter.com/jameshamblin/status/1238269994061959168?lang=en


We've been saying this the entire time. Everything is going exactly like we said they would.

It will look like we overreacted according to one guy.

How does he get past the simple grassroots, foundational numbers I am discussing?

To quote him... “the basics apply.”

If you are going to argue this, I don’t want to be buried in 45 minutes of videos and macro data and graphs that don’t answer the questions.

How do the lockdowns somehow save lives when the numbers flat out say they don’t?

Going exactly like they said it would?

Dude. Fauci first said nothing burger. Then he said 2 million deaths.

We are simultaneously talking about a vaccine while the WHO says antibodies don’t matter.

Somehow the numbers on convalescent plasma show promise despite that.

What scientific consensus are you even quoting?
 
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GPM

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So let me get this straight. 0 of our medical capabilities where I live (city of 1.5 million) have been even remotely taxed. The hardest hit group has been elderly, and elderly care facilities continue to be a major concern.

The governments reaction to all of this? Push out the ban on events (and possible gatherings) until AUGUST 31. That is right. The end of summer at the minimum right now.

What else have they done? They closed all provincial parking lots and actively give tickets to anyone caught breaking these rules, or to those parked on the highway outside of the parking lot. Who uses these parking lots? Lets see, they are parking lots essentially in the foothills and mountain areas, the place where generally younger and fit people go mostly by themselves or in very small groups to exercise and enjoy nature. I don't think elderly or long-term care patients visit these locations. SHUT THEM DOWN!!

I am personally a little miffed about this. My literal favorite activity in life is to go to the mountains and ride my bike. 90% of the time this is me meeting someone at said parking lot, and riding with them up the mountain/hill, and then back down it. Yup, better close that shit down. I come in contact with MAYBE 3 other individuals while I am on the trails, and contact involves riding by them for a fraction of a second. As far as the person I am with? Well we are generally about 20-100m apart, and every now and then we stop for a break and let the other person catch up or catch their breath. Yup, SHUT THAT DOWN!!

Garage sales are also banned. The reason? It 'might' cause gatherings or larger than 15 people. So have people take turns maybe? Oh that is too hard, we are too stupid. As someone who was planning on buying a crap ton of baby gear at garage sales this year, I am super happy that instead of spending $100 for absolutely everything that I could ever need, I instead get the joy of spending like $1000+ on stuff that will be used for less than 2 years. Yay! Government hard at work keeping us all safe once again.
 
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biophase

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For probably the 5th time in this thread. The only people that lockdowns save are people that met all of the following conditions:

1. Needed a ventilator
2. Wouldn’t have died anyway (90% do, so one of the 10%)
3. Couldn’t get access to a ventilator because of overrun hospitals (none in the USA)

Those are the conditions that need to be met before you can say the lockdowns have saved lives.

The notion that lockdowns save lives based on some death ticker count is nonsense.

SCAM

So how do you know who would have needed a ventilator without them having gotten the virus?
 
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James Klymus

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The governments reaction to all of this? Push out the ban on events (and possible gatherings) until AUGUST 31. That is right. The end of summer at the minimum right now.

Of course. Better safe than sorry for them. If they open things back up and allow crowds, then an outbreak occurs, they look incompetent and probably wont be reelected.

This house arrest has less to do with public safety, and more to do with self preservation of elected officials.

Never mind the personal responsibility of the individuals who made up that crowd. They were willing to take the risk of gathering in a group, even though they might get sick. Why do I need someone to tell me I cant go to a concert because I might get sick?

As far as I'm concerned, I and everyone else there have demonstrated that we care less about being sick, and more about the experience of being there. YOU took a risk by leaving your house, just as I did.

It's like saying I'm not allowed to drive, because I might get in an accident and kill some one. Never mind the fact that they also decided to take the risk of driving.

When you leave your house, you're giving up you safety and comfort to be able to live your damn life. And other's that leave the house are agreeing to the same unspoken agreement, You risk death if you leave your house.

That's why I can't stand when people say "well maybe you don't care if you get sick, But what if you spread it to other people?"

The other people that I am in contact with outside of my house have also agreed to this unspoken agreement. Maybe they didn't think about it when they left the house, but it's there no matter what. If you don't want to get sick, STAY HOME.
 

ChrisV

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It will look like we overreacted according to one guy.

How does he get past the simple grassroots, foundational numbers I am discussion?

To quote him... “the basics apply.”

If you are going to argue this, I don’t want to be buried in 45 minutes of videos and macro data and graphs that don’t answer the questions.

How do the lockdowns somehow save lives when the numbers flat out say they don’t?

Your numbers are roughly right (or at least fair estimations)

But there's a fundamental mathmatical error people are making, and keep making. They're citing the number of people who actually died or as evidence that it "wasn't so bad," and it's a textbook case of circular reasoning. Those numbers were influenced by the fact that no one was going out.

Had more people gotten infected, more would have needed ventilators.

To get the correct answer, you ideally need to compare the "with intervention" group to the "without intervention" group. But we don't have any "without intervention" group because everyone went on lockdown.

In any experiment you have to compare the "with intervention" group with the "without intervention" group to see the difference.

We will never know that for sure because everyone went on lockdown. So for that we have to use mathematical models. Again, you compare the "with intervention" group with the "without intervention group" and compute the difference. You need both.

The reasoning people are using here would be the equivilant of if there were a study on a new heart attack surgery. Half of the people got an intervention, half didn't. Then people looked at the group who actually received the intervention like "wtf! those people who got the surgery didn't even die! We totally overreacted in giving them surgery!"

No. No. No.

You need to compare the intervention group to the control group. We don't have a control group here (since everyone received the intervention,) so people are just looking at the intervention group, which is not how you determine how well something worked. We don't have a control group, so we have to compare them to the original models.
 

ChrisV

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It's really bad reasoning. If you want to argue "I want to make my own decisions regarding my safety" that's an argument we can have; and there's validity in that argument. But forming arguments based on fundamentally wrong reasoning is another thing.

This article puts it well:


There’s a strange coronavirus argument pinballing around Australia.
Like most intellectual arguments in Australia’s marketplace of ideas, it’s one that originated in the United States and slowly made its way over, before being reheated, spruced up, and presented as new.

‘This coronavirus isn’t as bad as those egghead Chicken Little doctors predicted,’ the argument goes. ‘Time to open the economy back up.’

This, respected UNSW adjunct professor Bill Bowtell told me this week, is the “paradox of prevention” -- when strategies work to mitigate a disaster, some reckon there was nothing to fear in the first place. Social distancing and business shutdowns were an “overreaction” to the pandemic, came one argument this week, because only 60 people had died at that point.

Granted, it’s hard to look at the effects of a cyclone, or a flood, or a fire -- or a once-in-a-century pandemic -- and imagine what might have been if not for mitigation work.

But it doesn’t make the argument any less bogus or bone-headed.

We don’t look at declining lives lost to drink driving as an argument against breath testing and tough rules. To say prevention measures are unnecessary because numbers are low is to ignore that prevention measures are the reason numbers are low.

As one person put it to me: “If it’s raining and your umbrella keeps you dry, you don’t stop using it because you are dry. You keep using it until you can stay dry without using it.”

Public health experts say Australia’s relatively low coronavirus toll is directly due to our restrictions, and that relaxing rules too early could see cases skyrocket higher than our last peak.

On Thursday, Scott Morrison warned, “If you ease off too quickly… the health response gets out of control, then the economic consequences will be even worse.”
 
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MTF

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You ideally need to compare the "with intervention" group to the "without intervention" group. But we don't have any "without intervention" group because everyone went on lockdown.

We actually do have something similar to it (impossible to have a perfect comparison but IMO it does work here): Sweden.

Yes, you can say that they do have some kind of a lockdown and that people engage in social isolation voluntarily. But it's nothing compared to the draconian measures introduced around the world.

Everyone and their grandma warned that Sweden would collapse. Schools, gyms, cafes, bars and restaurants open—everyone is going to die! It hasn't materialized yet and each day it's more and more unlikely to materialize ever.

Just to be clear, I do think that we should protect the vulnerable and let anyone who doesn't want to take a risk stay at home. The virus is a big deal to certain people and poses a negligible risk for others.

I'd much rather be able to live like a normal person again, get infected and help reach herd immunity instead of sitting at home and responding in this thread lol.

We should be realistic and understand that this virus will most likely stay until we gain herd immunity (which is currently too slow because of all the measures) or until there's a vaccine (and what if it's not coming?).

The focus should be on how we (or those who choose to do so) can live semi-normal lives with it. I understand that flattening the curve gives us time to find new treatments and get better data but this needs to be balanced with other extremely important aspects of the situation (collapsing economies, dictatorial tendencies around the world, unreported deaths caused by lack of diagnosis, fear, suicides, domestic violence, poverty, etc.).

Curing the disease by killing the patient doesn't seem like a particularly smart strategy to me.
 

ChrisV

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Twitter bro, Ever heard of it? It's a cool place to go to talk about how much you hate trump
You mean a 'tweet' by a preventative medicine doctor / Yale lecturer?

The medium someone uses to deliver a message doesn't matter.

But I don't expect you would have learned that when getting your education in pizza delivery or whatever.

Edit: okay that was mean.
 
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ChrisV

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We actually do have something similar to it (impossible to have a perfect comparison but IMO it does work here): Sweden.
Sweden is an interesting one. We shall see what happens.

But they have been doing worse than their neighboring Scandanavian countries:

daily-deaths-covid-19.png

We can't be sure why, but we also can't rule out the lack quarantines hurting them.
 
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MTF

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But they have been doing worse than their neighboring Scandanavian countries:

It was already explained why and why comparing Sweden to neighboring countries makes little sense:

It needs to be emphasized, though, that Sweden's epidemiologist Anders Tegnell explained that they failed to protect the most vulnerable enough as Sweden's higher death rate was mostly caused by outbreaks in care homes for older people.

Also, curiously, according to this article, many countries in Europe and in the United States are mostly recording C0VlD-19 deaths from hospitals, and don't include deaths from nursing homes or other long-term care facilities. In Sweden, however, deaths from the coronavirus at nursing homes are counted toward the official tally of how many have died from the disease.
 

ChrisV

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It was already explained why and why comparing Sweden to neighboring countries makes little sense:
Well some US states are lifting lockdowns, so we'll see what happens after this. If the numbers start skyrocketing after they're lifted that will be a pretty fair experiment. It should take roughly 7 days for 'new cases' to start appearing and ~2-3 weeks for them to show in "new deaths."

If the numbers don't get higher, I'll concede that the lockdowns have little effect.

But if the numbers do go up and people on this forum try to somehow weasel out of it by using "creative math" or some "they altered the numbers" conspiracy theory, I'm literally going to hop through their computer screens and hit them with their cursor.

I'm screenshotting this post right now for posterity.
 
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Thoelt53

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A post from March 18th, around a month and a half ago.

"The paradox of the novel coronavirus response is that [...] if they work, will not have seemed necessary. Success will look like we overreacted. This is a unique emergency, but the basics still apply."

View: https://twitter.com/jameshamblin/status/1238269994061959168?lang=en


We've been saying this the entire time. Everything is going exactly like we said they would.
Pertaining to your twitter quote, there is weak, if any, evidence that social distancing is effective. I do acknowledge that quarantining sick people is effective:


For the record, nothing has gone as anyone has said it would. At first it was said the US had nothing to worry about, then it was millions would die, and then the latest models that show a somewhat accurate figure if you use a completely fudged death count.

We can chalk that up to “models change as data changes,” however the only thing that proves today is that these models were created using shit data. People with decades of modeling experience put shit data into their models?

Why?

I’d like to see how you justify “expertise” against blatant disinformation.

I assume by now, we are all aware that the the death rate is being fudged. Do you not believe it to be so? If you agree, I don’t see how you can stand by initial projections. It’s okay to say you were wrong, it seems at this point you are either ignorant or arrogant; I hope for the former.

In the beginning I thought C0VlD-19 was the real deal. A pandemic not seen since the plague. But I was wrong and I admit it.

I still believe C0VlD-19 is a nasty disease, however it is not nearly as dangerous to the general population as previously thought. No one wants to see people die, but we cannot crush current and future generations to save people who were ultimately dying anyhow.

But it’s not about that. There is a sinister plot unfolding before us. It’s not a “conspiracy theory,” it’s blatant conspiracy against the people. Let’s be real.

What the F*ck makes sense about any of this? There is no alternative to shutdown besides a vaccine? A vaccine that doesn’t exist yet that might not even work? Logically what is happening today DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

I do not know a single person who knows anyone that has died of C0VlD-19. NOT ONE. I have had a 90 year old great aunt, 86 year old grandmother and her 88 year old neighbor all test positive. Only the latter showed symptoms and she recovered at home. Call it survivor bias, but if this was as bad as it was said to be, at least one of the three should have been hospitalized, hell maybe dead.

We’ve all been lied to.

The only question left at this point: When will we stand up and say enough is enough?

It’s time to ignore our government who has failed us (surprise). It’s time to get back to work. It’s time to reopen our businesses. We can’t allow this to crush our livelihood and that of our children.

We cannot allow the government exert more surveillance on us than exists already. The federal government has made it no secret that China will not be allowed to supersede the US in AI technology. And here we are today, a rife and convenient circumstance that almost requires total surveillance by the state to quell. Call it a “conspiracy theory,” the fact of the matter is that it is a conspiracy.

From the Oxford Dictionary:
“Conspiracy: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.”

At this point in time, a conspiracy against the people is the most logical explanation for what is happening. Shutting down the nation, given current models and very recent history, is not LOGICAL. One would have to make more assumptions to support the status quo, than to support conspiracy, I.e. Occam’s razor.

I appreciate so many of your posts, Chris, and I have learned a lot from you. But do not do this forum a disservice by masquerading as a “moderate” libertarian. Libertarians, by their nature, are extreme.

I am with @Kak and @Vigilante on this one. SCAM.
 
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Thoelt53

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I still owe this thread a post on my purported link between TB, the flu, C0VlD-19, and bunk testing. I am still gathering information. If I do not think I can support my claim I will
say so.
 

Andreas Thiel

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In any experiment you have to compare the "with intervention" group with the "without intervention" group to see the difference.

They did that. Their case: the flattening of the curve does not make much of a difference because the fact that more people get access to a ventilator then does not change the outcome (death) in most cases.

So your point that more people would need ventilators in a shorter period of time does not impress them.
Eventually the number of people needing ventilators will be comparable and only if there is a vaccine by then the outcome is different.
 

hellolin

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In other words, today white house staff officially said that the job loss numbers are comparable to great depression now. Not 'rumored' or 'feels like', but it officially is coming from the highest government office of the US:

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/C0VlD-19-...ion-trump-134631727--abc-news-topstories.html

People like Ron Paul has been saying for years that the next recession after the 08 recession is going to be worse than the great depression, he was right, he just didn't think it is going to come this way, in forms of mother nature.
 
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ChrisV

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People with decades of modeling experience put shit data into their models?
No. People on this forum are just completely misunderstanding what happened with these models.
32596
The first projections (red) were from the Imperial college estimating 2.1 millions deaths. The new ones (green) are from the IMHE. They're two completely difference calculations and due to knowledge gaps, people think they were trying to calculate the same things.

I am 100000000% sure of this. I'm a professional statistician. A lot of very smart people pay me a real lot of money to understand this stuff.

I've explained this like 6 times, and it's getting annoying having to type it over and over. The initial projections were "if we do nothing, 2.1m people will likely die" projections. Read that again. They are, and always have been "business as usual" calculations. They were based on the typical R0 (viral transmission) rates of the virus.

The viral transmission rates change as people socially distance, wear masks, and do other things specifically designed to slow the transmission rate.

This changes the rates of transmission you have to plug into the prediction model. The second model accounted for these new rates.

Let's say that teenagers are sticking their dicks into electrical outlets. Then a report comes out that says "Scientists say that if teenagers keep sticking their dicks into electrical outlets, 80% of them won't have dicks no mo." All the teenagers see the reports and say "oh shit bro, we should probably stop sticking our dicks into electrical outlets!".. boom... 6 months later, they all have their dicks!

This is called a self defeating prophecy. The prophecy itself changes people's actions in a way that makes the prophecy no longer true.


A self-defeating prophecy (self-destroying or self-denying in some sources) is the complementary opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy; a prediction that prevents what it predicts from happening. This is also known as the prophet's dilemma.

A self-defeating prophecy can be the result of rebellion to the prediction. If the audience of a prediction has an interest in seeing it falsified, and its fulfillment depends on their actions or inaction, their actions upon hearing it will make the prediction less plausible. If a prediction is made with this outcome specifically in mind, it is commonly referred to as reverse psychology or warning. Also, when working to make a premonition come true, one can inadvertently change the circumstances so much that the prophecy cannot come true.


But people on this forum are like "wait... none of the teenagers lost their dicks! the scientists were wrong!!" and it makes me wish I had some hair to pull.

This is how the transmission rate has changed over time:

32581

The original models that predicted 2.1 million were based off the normal rate of transmission. They are based off the assumption that no one takes action. The new IMHE models that predict ~67K were based off the new rates of transmission, including social distancing measures.

These are the dates (in red) that each country started to go on lockdown.

Screen Shot 2020-04-27 at 2.23.38 AM.png


Screen Shot 2020-04-27 at 2.31.45 AM.png

Screen Shot 2020-04-27 at 2.38.25 AM.png

In every case when countried iposed lockdowns, within 5 days the New Cases went down. is that a coincidence?

I mean saying the models were wrong is complete gobildy gook. He explained it himself:

32595

I mean you don't even need models. It doesn't take a PhD in statistics to understand that a virus that doubles every 2-4 days is going to infect millions and millions if left unchecked.
 
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ChrisV

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Here... I'm getting tired of going back and forth. I'll make anybody on the forum a bet. States are starting to lift their lockdowns. My bet is that within 10 days, the new cases start to dramatically rise in the states that lift them. New deaths rise within 20 days.

The rules: numbers have to rise by at least 20% compared to the baseline (1 week average of the previous week.) New cases by day 10, New deaths by day 20.

No conspiracy theories or unfalsifiable ways to weasel out of it. No crap like "oh that doesn't count!"

If it's in the data, you lose.

I'll let you choose the data source, although it has something that would be considered credible in an academic paper.

The losing party has to take a video of them eating 2 pieces of a toasted hamburger bun pieces with mayonaise and ketchup (colloquially known as a 'nothing burger')

The losing party agrees to eat this "nothing burger" on camera, and post the resulting video to the forum.

Who's taking me up on this?
 

ChrisV

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I do not know a single person who knows anyone that has died of C0VlD-19. NOT ONE.
I know at least two personally.

One was a friends mother, the other was a husband of a friend of the family.
 
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Andreas Thiel

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Here... I'm getting tired of going back and forth. I'll make anybody on the forum a bet. States are starting to lift their lockdowns. My bet is that within 10 days, the new cases start to dramatically rise in the states that lift them. New deaths rise within 20 days.

The rules: numbers have to rise by at least 20% compared to the baseline (1 week average of the previous week.) New cases by day 10, New deaths by day 20.

No conspiracy theories or unfalsifiable ways to weasel out of it. No crap like "oh that doesn't count!"

If it's in the data, you lose.

I'll let you choose the data source, although it has something that would be considered credible in an academic paper.

The losing party has to take a video of them eating 2 pieces of a toasted hamburger bun pieces with mayonaise and ketchup (colloquially known as a 'nothing burger')

The losing party agrees to eat this "nothing burger" on camera, and post the resulting video to the forum.

Who's taking me up on this?
Ignoring my post? They will say all this will prove is that it happened faster ... the same thing would have happened (without lifting the restictions), just dragged out more.
 

ChrisV

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Ignoring my post? They will say all this will prove is that it happened faster ... the same thing would have happened (without lifting the restictions), just dragged out more.
I don't really understand what you said in either.
 

Andreas Thiel

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I don't really understand what you said in either.
Attempt to rephrase: they will say the jump you describe is expected, but only because you speed things up. To get a fair comparison between a) no restrictions and b) restrictions (flat curve) you have to pick a projected point in the future when you look at the flattened curve.

Your business as usual curve is also unfair. It is not a less flat curve ... but unbounded exponential growth. Why is that?
 
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Andreas Thiel

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Btw. there is an interesting book with a misleading title: "The Happiness Equation: The Surprising Economics of Our Most Valuable Asset" by Nick Powdthavee.

It covers the technical and emotional issues that come with assigning numbers to the value of a life.
Slightly different angle - assigning a monetary value to the life of a person in your life for insurace. Many aspects are relevant for the current situation, though.

[EDIT]Interestingly enough the author's name appears in Corona related articles: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/10/coronavirus-uk-could-release-young-adults-from-lockdown-first.html[/EDIT]

However, he said it was important to consider that continuing the shutdown for several more months could lead to fatalities that were not caused by the virus itself.

“The cost the number of potential casualties will be far, far worse than thinking sensibly about what would happen if we tried to minimize the risk, not just the risk from coronavirus deaths but those from other things we might not be thinking about.”
 
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Cyberthal

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> So unnerving it is to believe that JFK could be taken down by a lone, deranged gunman that there has to be a more plausible explanation

I doubt American men find it unnverving that a lone gunman can take someone out if he's willing to give his life for it. That sounds like something people from countries without a gun culture would be surprised and appalled by. The whole point of a gun is to kill from a distance.

Implausible things happen all the time. It would be implausible if they didn't. Without taking a position on LHO's motives, I find the SS accidental discharge theory compelling.


Anyone who thinks humans don't lie and conspire hasn't seen Survivor.
 

GPM

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@ChrisV Maybe you can help me out here with something.

Of course cases are going to rise if they let people go out and about. The same goes for any transmissible illness for that matter. I bet you the common cold and regular flu is going to increase as well. What else transfers among people? All that will go up as well. You lock everyone in and EVERYTHING will go down, will it not?

What I don't understand is what is the big deal if more people get sick? Isn't the point of "flattening the curve" just to give our medical facilities the capability to handle this and not be overwhelmed? Now it may not be the same everwhere, but I have not heard a single first hand account of anything being even remotely overwhelmed anywhere (1st hand contacts). Now this may not be the case in somewhere like NY or Italy or some such, but I don't live there nor do I know anyone in those places, so I have no 1st hand information coming from there. Online will just verify either side depending on which you want to personally believe.

So if we are not even close to being overwhelmed, does that not already mean that the curve is flattened? The point isn't to stop everyone from getting sick, but simply to slow it down, is it not? So if we have all this space to allow for sick people, why do they keep increasing the lock down measures?
 
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GPM

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I will leave this here. A town in Ontario has a church which is holding Sunday worship from their parking lot. People drive up, leave their windows rolled up, and listen to the Pastor on their radio. No collection plate is handed out, no one interacts or ever leaves their vehicle.

Cops decided that they need to video everyone present and threaten to charge and fine the church and people who park in this parking lot. Is this really about social distancing? In what model is it necessary to stop people from being inside their vehicle in a parking lot? Is that keeping people safe? Safe from what?

"I am from the government, I am here to help".

Gathering in cars in a parking lot = bad
 

Sagemoney

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It's a bit hypocritical for y'all to say you wanna help people then turn around and say you don't give a F*ck if a bunch of people die.

I'm not for the governments overreach and comprehend the economic reprecussions, but 2 million deaths in a 6 month time frame with millions more gravely ill would still have major economic impact.

Not to mention obesity is a comorbidity, you really think the US wouldn't exceed 2 million? IDK. maybe I'm too empathetic.
 

Andreas Thiel

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It's a bit hypocritical for y'all to say you wanna help people then turn around and say you don't give a F*ck if a bunch of people die.

I'm not for the governments overreach and comprehend the economic reprecussions, but 2 million deaths in a 6 month time frame with millions more gravely ill would still have major economic impact.

Not to mention obesity is a comorbidity, you really think the US wouldn't exceed 2 million? IDK. maybe I'm too empathetic.
You can't just look at the absolute number. Even with the flat curve many of those 2 million will die, just later.
People against lockdowns expect that there is a very small difference between flat and steep curve. And suppose it is 100,000, that number of people who die because of the restrictions might easily surpass that.
 
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Kak

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Have you guys heard about the “Coronavirus racial inequality task forces”????

What a complete joke. Communists have to make everything about race... Which is ironically racist.

What is such a task force even going to do? Intentionally infect people that are underrepresented? :rofl:

Hey @ChrisV why will these racist task forces save trillions of lives?
 

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