I like stories about how Singaporeans are doing well because unlike with Scandinavian countries the woodwork-crawlers can't use the muddy and dark-implications heavy "homogenous population" argument.
Chloroquine has shown promising results but the number of cases was small and the study was flawed. Lopinavir-ritonavir has shown disappointing results but the number of cases was small and the study was flawed. If you show faith in one you've got to show faith in the other for the sake of methodological consistency.
The antiviral treatments undergoing trial are (for the most part) very inexpensive drugs that have been known for years or even decades so they don't need additional testing once they're proven to work and can be manufactured at scale almost immediately (since the production chains already exist).
If that's any reassurance to you they are observing an inflection in Italy, potentially a sign that the lockdowns have their desired effects. We just need to hold on for a couple weeks before it curves back as in China. And that's discounting the ongoing trials for treatments that could solve this quicker than expected.
That's my point - it took pretty harsh measures before we started getting any signs of the spread slowing down (and we'll need a few more days to verify that those signs are actually reliable).
I think the pandemic is really pulling the mask off in that it neatly sorts out the kind of people who worry about vulnerable people, the elderly and not overwhelming the healthcare system so that more could live on one hand, and the kind of people who worry first and foremost about "the economy", and whatever imaginary deaths a recession could entail based on some abstract sleight-of-hand reasoning.
You're putting words into my mouth. And I really don't appreciate it. In fact, I think that our focus should be directly on the at risk population. I think we should do more to protect them and provide a whole host of interventions and services. I think we can do that without causing a depression; Remember, the effects of economic downturns affect every single aspect of peoples lives including their health. If we do this wrong even more people may die or have significant, long lasting, hardship because of an ill-considered and potentially unnecessary intervention.
Read through my profile to find what I've said to this end, I don't feel like giving you any more of my time after you've not given me the benefit of the doubt and basically called me inhumane.
Why not? The thesis is that non-conformance is a viable evolutionary strategy (if not usually the dominant one). It doesn't matter what particular species you are talking about. Obviously there are degrees of non-conformamce that would also be evolutionary dead ends or otherwise destructive.
I think it would be worthwhile to be more precise in your summary: Some level of non-conformance among a group engaged in highly conformant behavior is a viable evolutionary strategy for the population as a whole, but may require coordination with the population to modulate the level of non-conformance.
Analogies can be useful even with zero common physiology. Please do try to compare human behavior to anything and everything in order to gain perspective on it. It's useful to compare mathematical models to human behavior, let alone another life form that we share genes with.
Actually they can be actively harmful in that they lead people to do spurious reasoning with the unwarranted confidence that came from the false reassurance of it being "biology", "science" or "evolution". People have already done it with enough times (such as e.g. wolves, or lobsters (!)) with detrimental effects that I felt a big fat disclaimer was warranted here.
They can be useful. They can be actively harmful. These are compatible statements. They are true of any tool. The more powerful the tool, the truer they both are.
The problem is when the statement becomes "<tool> should not be used because it can be actively harmful." Better is "<tool> should be used with extra care not to cause harm", which is much different.
I do think that it's useful to compare the biology of crustacean and mammalian dominance hierarchies, even given that many people will confuse the descriptive with the normative.
In a scientific epistemology, taboo subjects are taboo.
Forfeited the role? "Leader of the Free World" was just a rhetorical title and not an actual role. Surely the people in other parts of the Free World didn't think of previous Presidents as their leaders.
In my opinion, all this means is that some media outlets liked previous Presidents and don't like Trump. I'm not convinced anything is actually lost because some people don't call the President "Leader of the Free World."
For the good part of a century, especially after World Wars, the US president has always been considered the _Leader of the Free World_ without having to be an actual ruler of the world.
When US presidents traveled abroad, they were treated as such by great international leaders and their citizens. Even in nations where all concerned were aware of their shortcomings in the _freedom_ area, the US President as the _Leader of the Free World_ was in their vocabulary. With or without envy or admiration.
Up to and including Obama.
I noticed it was over the way they laugh at Trump.
The role really wasn't his to forfeit, partly because it was rhetorical and largely unearned to begin with.
Most previous Presidents didn't rightfully earn the role either, most kind of inherited it by default.
Trump is just the first one to fail bad enough for his underachievement to fall below the default level.
Claiming that it's the media that doesn't like Trump is so wrong. Let's be clear here, a leader should be a clear communicator and if your medium is Twitter and you look at Trump's... Well, should be enough to prove my point.
Coming from Europe, I can only attest the other comment here.
But Trump is most definitely not a worthy president, I doubt the current partnerships would survive another term of Trump.
I wrote that some media doesn't like Trump, and I think that's fairly obviously true. Are you suggesting that all media outlets do like him?
"Leader of the Free World" is just something that American media, and perhaps other media outlets, use. They chose to start using it, to contrast the "Free World" with the enslaved world of the USSR and sundry. Some media outlets have chosen to stop using the term to refer to Trump, but that is purely an expression of their estimation of Trump, it's not an actual role or title lost.
Since you come from Europe, I'm curious to know, did you consider George Bush your leader? Do you consider yourself part of the Free World?
