Corona Virus: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

[Skinypupy]

FIND. A. NEW. JOB.

Ya assuming people are hiring in the area it should be easier for me now that my HC is through my wife's job. That was one thing that made it worth dealing with this kind of crazy...

This was the email I got today.

I spoke to <the dear king> and to be candid he’s not happy that I asked him to revisit this.
You’ve already used up all of your sick days so if you’re sick you have to take vacation days which I know you’re doing for yesterday and today. That also goes for the rest of the year – if you are sick please
take vacation days.
He said if you are well enough to work tomorrow and Friday, he’ll approve work from home, but this is only because you’re waiting for the COVID results.

Awe shucks. Thanks! FYI I had like 9 vacation days left so I couldn't care less about using days. That wasn't the point.

Wow, you certainly do work for assholes.

[Octavious]

FIND. A. NEW. JOB.

Ya assuming people are hiring in the area it should be easier for me now that my HC is through my wife's job. That was one thing that made it worth dealing with this kind of crazy...

This was the email I got today.

I spoke to <the dear king> and to be candid he’s not happy that I asked him to revisit this.
You’ve already used up all of your sick days so if you’re sick you have to take vacation days which I know you’re doing for yesterday and today. That also goes for the rest of the year – if you are sick please
take vacation days.
He said if you are well enough to work tomorrow and Friday, he’ll approve work from home, but this is only because you’re waiting for the COVID results.

Awe shucks. Thanks! FYI I had like 9 vacation days left so I couldn't care less about using days. That wasn't the point.

Wow, you certainly do work for assholes.

Hey I've only been there 18 years. You never know I could just be asking to work from home so I could do nothing. Imagine what they do to newer people.

[Little Raven]

Holy crap, Octavious. That's horrific. I feel obliged to echo Isgrimnur here. Get a new job, man. This one ain't worth it.

[Isgrimnur]

Unless you get some really good 20-year bonus that you haven't told us about.

[Smoove_B]

Sounds like your employer needs a reminder of what's going on in NJ:

Governor Murphy also signed NJ A3848,which bans employers from terminating or penalizing employees who request or take time off based on the recommendation of a medical professional because the employee has or is likely to have an infectious disease “which may infect others at the employee’s workplace.” Additionally, the law requires employers to reinstate employees who take such leave to the same position held “with no reduction in seniority, status, employment benefits, pay or other terms and conditions of employment.”

You're asking for a reasonable accommodation - to work from home. HR professionals *hate* when you use that term, so use it.

[Octavious]

Unless you get some really good 20-year bonus that you haven't told us about.

I legit will be trying to escape, but I'm not going to post any updates on it until I actually accomplish it. And ya no 20 year bonus that I'm aware of.

[malchior]

Unless you get some really good 20-year bonus that you haven't told us about.

I legit will be trying to escape, but I'm not going to post any updates on it until I actually accomplish it. And ya no 20 year bonus that I'm aware of.

The second anyone suggested I get on a boat to ride into the flooded office would have been my last day.

[Skinypupy]

This is fine.

https://twitter.com/Outkick/status/1313882952938463232

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis clears Hard Rock Stadium for 65,000 fans at Dolphins games:

Don't read the comments if you value your sanity. "Coronabros"?

[Little Raven]

Yeah...it's things like that make the Barrington Declaration seem more reasonable.

I believe Smoove when he says that we could , theoretically, "squash this down" in 4-6 weeks. But.....we're clearly not going to do that.

[Little Raven]

My condolences to all of our NJ OOers.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie remains hospitalized at Morristown Medical Center, where he was admitted Saturday after testing positive COVID-19.

Christie’s current condition is not known. Hospital officials declined comment Tuesday.

[Freyland]

I believe his condition is unknown because everyone has largely forgotten about him.

[Isgrimnur]

Do the Dolphins have 65k fans?

[malchior]

Yeah...it's things like that make the Barrington Declaration seem more reasonable.

Throwing open the doors and letting nature take its course -- sorry I mean mostly undefined 'focused protection' -- is many things but it is not reasonable. But reason went way out the window long ago.

[Little Raven]

Throwing open the doors and letting nature take its course is many things but it is not reasonable.

But what is reasonable in this situation?

Americans will not stay put unless you put guns to their heads. Is it reasonable to call out the National Guard and seal people into their apartment buildings for 2 months so we can really get a handle on this? Is it reasonable to keep stumbling along as we have been, at enormous cost to our economy and institutions, with no end in sight? I honestly don't know and am not qualified to say, but nature appears to be leaving us with no good options. If professors of medicine at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford are willing to come out and say that opening things up is reasonable....well, I'm not sure we should just dismiss them. These are (presumably) some of the leading men in the world on this subject. Aren't we supposed to listen to experts?

[Isgrimnur]

The national health policy you get is the national health policy you deserve.

[gilraen]

Throwing open the doors and letting nature take its course is many things but it is not reasonable.

But what is reasonable in this situation?

Everyone wearing a damn mask.

[Isgrimnur]

Throwing open the doors and letting nature take its course is many things but it is not reasonable.

But what is reasonable in this situation?

Everyone wearing a damn mask.

That is unreasonable to a lot of unreasonable people.

[Little Raven]

Everyone wearing a damn mask.

I didn't see anything in the Declaration that says people shouldn't wear masks. It's mostly focused on the costs of keeping stuff closed down vs the benefits.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Got the word last Friday that my job wanted everyone back in the office this Monday. We had repeatedly been told that that would only happen once the governor moved the state to Phase 3, but I guess my boss' boss' boss got tired of waiting for that to happen. Fortunately it's easy enough for me to wear a mask until I can get in my office and shut the door. One thing I had not thought about though: urinal etiquette. We only have two urinals that are side by side and about 8 stalls. Hopefully everyone here intuits that if someone is at a urinal they should use a stall....

On another note, I went inside a restaurant to pick take-out for the first time this weekend. It was weird seeing the restaurant full of maskless people. Fortunately I was able to get in and get out pretty quickly.

[El Guapo]

Do the Dolphins have 65k fans?

Not for much longer.

[malchior]

Throwing open the doors and letting nature take its course is many things but it is not reasonable.

But what is reasonable in this situation?

I'd start by not subscribing to some formless concept of 'focused protection' that ignores all the problems.

Americans will not stay put unless you put guns to their heads. Is it reasonable to call out the National Guard and seal people into their apartment buildings for 2 months so we can really get a handle on this? Is it reasonable to keep stumbling along as we have been, at enormous cost to our economy and institutions, with no end in sight? I honestly don't know and am not qualified to say, but nature appears to be leaving us with no good options. If professors of medicine at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford are willing to come out and say that opening things up is reasonable....well, I'm not sure we should just dismiss them. These are (presumably) some of the leading men in the world on this subject. Aren't we supposed to listen to experts?

This is *almost the exact same thing the right used to kill climate science debate*. It's just nature taking it's course. We can't stop it. It's hopeless. Buy into it if you want but it isn't founded on reason.

[LawBeefaroni]

Everyone wearing a damn mask.

I didn't see anything in the Declaration that says people shouldn't wear masks. It's mostly focused on the costs of keeping stuff closed down vs the benefits.

That should be the message/incentive.

Wear a mask and use common sense and we can open up. Don't, and we'll be subject to rolling shutdowns and more dead people.

[Little Raven]

This is *almost the exact same thing the right used to kill climate science debate*.

Except that time, there were virtually NO men of science on the side of the right. That's why we made fun of them. They were ignoring the people who knew what they were talking about in favor of hearing what they wanted to hear.

We don't want to fall into that trap ourselves. The men who wrote this document are all distinguished professors at the top-rated universities in the world. I'm as leery of argument to authority as the next guy, but honestly....these men ARE the experts, or at least, they're supposed to be. How do we dismiss them as unreasonable?

[hitbyambulance]

FIND. A. NEW. JOB.

Ya assuming people are hiring in the area it should be easier for me now that my HC is through my wife's job. That was one thing that made it worth dealing with this kind of crazy...

This was the email I got today.

I spoke to <the dear king> and to be candid he’s not happy that I asked him to revisit this.
You’ve already used up all of your sick days so if you’re sick you have to take vacation days which I know you’re doing for yesterday and today. That also goes for the rest of the year – if you are sick please
take vacation days.
He said if you are well enough to work tomorrow and Friday, he’ll approve work from home, but this is only because you’re waiting for the COVID results.

Awe shucks. Thanks! FYI I had like 9 vacation days left so I couldn't care less about using days. That wasn't the point.

Wow, you certainly do work for assholes.

Hey I've only been there 18 years. You never know I could just be asking to work from home so I could do nothing. Imagine what they do to newer people.

you have had all your spirit and life bullied out of you. it's sad to see

[Skinypupy]

Everyone wearing a damn mask.

I didn't see anything in the Declaration that says people shouldn't wear masks. It's mostly focused on the costs of keeping stuff closed down vs the benefits.

That should be the message/incentive.

Wear a mask and use common sense and we can open up. Don't, and we'll be subject to rolling shutdowns and more dead people.

This.

If the Declaration said "We still need to be super careful but should probably be more aggressive about finding ways to open things up", then I can see maybe getting on board with it.

But it didn't. To me, this reads more like "We're bored. Fuck it...let's party".

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

[LawBeefaroni]

Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home.

WFH is normal for many (most?) young adults. Certainty for most of those doing it now that aren't teachers.

[Little Raven]

WFH is normal for many (most?) young adults. Certainty for most of those doing it now that aren't teachers.

Well sure. We laid off all the ones that couldn't work from home.

[malchior]

This is *almost the exact same thing the right used to kill climate science debate*.

Except that time, there were virtually NO men of science on the side of the right. That's why we made fun of them. They were ignoring the people who knew what they were talking about in favor of hearing what they wanted to hear.

We don't want to fall into that trap ourselves. The men who wrote this document are all distinguished professors at the top-rated universities in the world. I'm as leery of argument to authority as the next guy, but honestly....these men ARE the experts, or at least, they're supposed to be. How do we dismiss them as unreasonable?

I'd recommend boning up on the evolution of climate change denial before you make sweeping statements like that. The early years of climate change denial were essentially years of the top people at their schools telling people they didn't have enough evidence or that they were wrong.

In any case, this was released days ago and we should just buy into it? Other experts have said that the whole thing is short of the details needed to build comprehensive public policy. What controls do they recommend? They say let's develop or use 'focused protection' regimes. As you could read other experts have concerns because crucial building blocks like well-known, effective treatments are still not available.

So this 'Declaration' would be fine if they were saying we need to take a cautious approach and explore how to maybe learn how to deal with this. Instead, they call for the immediate re-opening of our economies. 'Just do something' isn't any sort of reasonable approach to a public policy debate. I also imagine it it an especially terrible approach when public health is at question.

[Smoove_B]

Apropos (maybe), I've been watching Penn and Teller's Bullshit on Hulu and let's just say their 2004 episode on Climate Change / Global Warming has...not aged well.

[malchior]

Apropos (maybe), I've been watching Penn and Teller's Bullshit on Hulu and let's just say their 2004 episode on Climate Change / Global Warming has...not aged well.

And that was 2004. The late 80s through the 90s were essentially major experts swinging their big reputations around to naysay it despite the big oil companies knowing about it the whole time (there is strong evidence Exxon had internal discussions about it in 1981).

[Little Raven]

The early years of climate change denial were essentially years of the top people at their schools telling people they didn't have enough evidence or that they were wrong.

I don't know what you mean by "the early years," but scientific consensus on global warming was well established by 1991.

A 2013 study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed 11,944 abstracts from papers published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature between 1991 and 2011, identified by searching the ISI Web of Science citation index engine for the text strings "global climate change" or "global warming". The authors found that 3974 of the abstracts expressed a position on anthropogenic global warming, and that 97% of those endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming. The authors found that of the 11,944 abstracts, 3896 endorsed that consensus, 7930 took no position on it, 78 rejected the consensus, and 40 expressed uncertainty about it.

That's what made the right look so silly in that debate. They had only a few scientists on their side, and NONE of those so-called "experts" held positions of prominence at ANY major institutions. They were rightfully seen as either crackpots or as being bought and paid for.

Maybe you know more about Kulldorff, Gupta, and Bhattacharya than I do. I freely admit that I'm trusting Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford to have screened them properly. But last time I checked....those ARE among the premier universities in the West. If they've taken to hiring crackpots, we're in more trouble than we thought.

In any case, this was released days ago and we should just buy into it?

I didn't say we should buy into it. I said we should not dismiss it as unreasonable. Something you have explicitly done several times now. I'm curious why. (and no, I'm not playing gotcha games, I'm genuinely curious) I note that Smoove, our resident authority whom I get the feeling very much disagrees with these doctors, is not dismissing them as unreasonable, even if he personally thinks they're wrong. (apologies, Smoove, if I've misread you)

[Skinypupy]

I said we should not dismiss it as unreasonable. Something you have explicitly done several times now. I'm curious why.

Because simply saying "we don't like the current state, so let's try this other option and cross our fingers that a bazilion people don't die" isn't really something I'm willing to buy into. No matter how much the current state sucks.

[Little Raven]

Because simply saying "we don't like the current state, so let's try this other option and cross our fingers that a bazilion people don't die" isn't really something I'm willing to buy into.

And that's fine. Reasonable people can and do disagree all the time. But are these doctors crazy, or do you just think they're wrong?

[hitbyambulance]

Apropos (maybe), I've been watching Penn and Teller's Bullshit on Hulu and let's just say their 2004 episode on Climate Change / Global Warming has...not aged well.

Penn later kinda recanted on it. at least Trey Parker and Matt Stone released an updated sequel to their climate change skepticism South Park episode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManBearPig

[malchior]

I didn't say we should buy into it. I said we should not dismiss it as unreasonable. Something you have explicitly done several times now. I'm curious why.

I've told you. Several other people made the same point. You aren't listening.

[Octavious]

FIND. A. NEW. JOB.

Ya assuming people are hiring in the area it should be easier for me now that my HC is through my wife's job. That was one thing that made it worth dealing with this kind of crazy...

This was the email I got today.

I spoke to <the dear king> and to be candid he’s not happy that I asked him to revisit this.
You’ve already used up all of your sick days so if you’re sick you have to take vacation days which I know you’re doing for yesterday and today. That also goes for the rest of the year – if you are sick please
take vacation days.
He said if you are well enough to work tomorrow and Friday, he’ll approve work from home, but this is only because you’re waiting for the COVID results.

Awe shucks. Thanks! FYI I had like 9 vacation days left so I couldn't care less about using days. That wasn't the point.

Wow, you certainly do work for assholes.

Hey I've only been there 18 years. You never know I could just be asking to work from home so I could do nothing. Imagine what they do to newer people.

you have had all your spirit and life bullied out of you. it's sad to see

Eh you only here when I complain. Aside from the owner being totally batshit insane it's had a lot of benefits over the years. I've learned a ton about project management that I can easily apply to any job out there. The people I've worked with are generally great minus one or two people . Aside from the crazy work from home BS I generally have a pretty flexible schedule and don't feel like someone is always looking over my shoulder. Also since I've been there so long and work on the biggest project people pretty much do anything I want as a priority. Big fish small pond... Anyway lets get back to talking about disease. Maybe one day I'll shock you all with a new job posting.

[Skinypupy]

Because simply saying "we don't like the current state, so let's try this other option and cross our fingers that a bazilion people don't die" isn't really something I'm willing to buy into.

And that's fine. Reasonable people can and do disagree all the time. But are these doctors crazy, or do you just think they're wrong?

Their argument is that the current state will ultimately be more harmful to society than opening everything up and potentially incurring a significant increase in death and serious illness.

I don't know that their argument can be proven either empirically wrong or right, but I'm certainly not willing to sign up for that particular experiment.

[noxiousdog]

Because simply saying "we don't like the current state, so let's try this other option and cross our fingers that a bazilion people don't die" isn't really something I'm willing to buy into.

And that's fine. Reasonable people can and do disagree all the time. But are these doctors crazy, or do you just think they're wrong?

Their argument is that the current state will ultimately be more harmful to society than opening everything up and potentially incurring a significant increase in death and serious illness.

I don't know that their argument can be proven either empirically wrong or right, but I'm certainly not willing to sign up for that particular experiment.

You already are. You're just gambling on the mental health side.

[Little Raven]

I don't know that their argument can be proven either empirically wrong or right, but I'm certainly not willing to sign up for that particular experiment.

So unless I misread you, you are not challenging the credentials of these men or implying that they are making this suggestion out of self-interest. You acknowledge that they are experts in their field and that you have no way of disproving their argument...you just aren't convinced by it.

Which is fine. I don't think Smoove is convinced either, and he's forgotten more about this stuff than either of us will ever know. But there's a big difference between an argument being unconvincing and being unreasonable. I would argue that there is no reasonable way to deny global warming...and there hasn't been for decades. The data is right there. All the major experts agree, and have for quite some time. But I can't make that same argument about the Barrington Declaration. These men are experts. They are absolutely correct when they say that what we're doing now is massively punishing to large numbers of people, that it's utterly unsustainable, and that worst of all...it isn't working. I don't know if what they're suggesting that we do instead is right....but I'm not sure I can call it unreasonable.

[RunningMn9]

Am I the only one that looks back on my college professors and concludes that in no way, shape or form are they experts in their fields?

I didn’t click through the list of doctors to see what their field of expertise is, but I have a general problem with all of this *waves hands wildly*.

Most people view the world through their lens of expertise. A specialist in mental health looks at what’s happening and can reasonably and rightly conclude that this is all a nightmare for mental health. A specialist in economics can look at all this, and can rightly conclude that this is an economic nightmare.

And so on. And every one of them thinks that the nightmare that they see is the one that should be addressed. The challenge in all of this is selecting which nightmare (there is going to be one or more nightmares no matter what).

I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I look at mental health impacts, or economic impacts, or education impacts - those are all things that can be treated going forward.

You can’t treat dead people going forward. You may not be able to treat people that suffer permanent damage from the infection.