It’s not a difference.

They can decline to serve pregnant women alcohol alone because alcohol is what has been shown to be dangerous for the fetus.

In this scenario, it isn’t anything on the menu that is dangerous to the health of old people, but simply being there with other people. The thing the business can deny them is still the thing that is well known to pose a risk.


Look, at the end of the day, I don’t care if old people want to get Covid and die. But individuals and businesses should not face these blanket restrictions without even an attempt at restrictions aimed at those actually at risk. It’s ludicrous.

No spontaneity (can’t walk in anywhere), no social interaction with other people, no dancing or energy, etc. And a fucking 10pm curfew.

^ Getting bored of your $10,000 couch, I take it? ;)

^^

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10023 and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but he's 100% right about "fun". There isn't much of it going on at all right now. Most circumstances seem depressing and dour. People everywhere just seem to be existing as opposed to living.

Most places are not Ibiza 24-7 at the best of times but right now there is almost none of the occasional exuberance or exaltation you once saw.

I am not depressed (yet), but there are definitely the most depressing times I've seen in my lifetime. Certainly over such a long period.

With all due respect I have to wonder if the people who see no difference were experiencing any fun at all pre-COVID!

It's a little creepy to me how we are quietly shifting from the notion that the lockdown was a temporary drastic measure justified by huge risks to a rationalization of why it's no big deal. It might or might not be justified but the fact is we're living in a world that would have been hard to explain to somebody living in a non-authoritarian country in 2019.

We have also seen a ~10x reduction in the estimated fatality rate of covid (3% -> 0.3%) and as far as I can tell it had little to no effect on the idea of what we should be willing to give up to avoid covid risk, if people are even thinking about things that way. Most people have spent much more time in lockdown at this point than they could expect to lose if they were infected by covid. The median North American has something like a 1 in 3,000 chance of dying of covid, if infected (US CDC estimate for the 20-49 age bracket).

One of the key points that (the somewhat controversial) Anders Tegnell repeats is that normalcy has a value. What he means is that there is a danger involved with "you can't put a price on safety"-type thinking insofar as it implies that all measures taken to boost safety are justifiable on that basis alone.

COVID-19 is an new contagious disease with some strange aspects to it. But it is a respiratory illness with an IFR similar to the 1967-8 Hong Kong flu, somewhat above conventional influenza and somewhat below, say, measles.

I notice a sense that this disease is impermissible, or that we must wage total war against it until we are granted victory in the form of an effective vaccine. But what if we just have to live with it? We cannot be assured that Blitz-style self-sacrifice and deferral to authorities with properly furrowed brows will lead us to victory over disease in all its forms, so how do we live in the mean time?

Masked, herded, threatened and corralled by loudspeaker at Heathrow, in my experience, and with mild caution and a touch of voluntary social hesitancy at Arlanda. I know what I prefer.

Recently my wife and I were discussing the post-COVID era, when all of this blows over. (I assume it will eventually.)

And how people will react if something with truly scary visible symptoms like ebola had even the tiniest outbreak in western countries.

After COVID-19 I think a lot of people would lose their minds and it might make 2020 look like a picnic.

Right now I am dealing with family members who are going a bit crazy bitching about the fact that schools are still open and how this is contributing to the second wave.

These are people who are normally very pro-school so it's as if COVID has clouded their judgement.

I am quite strongly in favour of schools being open when you consider the pros vs. the cons.

Here in Quebec since school started in late August we have 15-20% of the schools that have reported at least one case. Very very few schools have closed due to a serious outbreak. As in you count them on one hand.

The number of cases that can be traced to schools number in the hundreds whereas we have a school population (students, teachers and staff) of 2 million or more.

In neighbouring Ontario yesterday they said they have about 775 cases in schools since late August. Their school population is in the 3-4 million range.

I think when you consider the risk to kids' educations that this is a worthwhile calculated risk to take.

Quebec and Ontario did mostly online schooling for almost the last half of last year (from March to June) and it was a washout for many - probably most - kids.

Just judging from our entourage the dropout rate when the stats finally come out is going to soar. And we are in an upper middle class milieu where school is highly valued.

I just hired a tutor for one of my kids because virtual school is not a good fit for them. They need to be in a classroom. This is a high-performance motivated kid who averaged around 95 in one of the best private high schools in Quebec. They are now in junior college where the teaching is mostly online and I can't say the marks are that bad (85s instead of 95s across the board) but there is some slippage and I don't want COVID to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

i see you haven’t had any deaths or illness in your family, friends or co-workers. lucky bubble!

but yr right, time has marched on. since too many people have no intention of holding off the disease because they are slightly inconvenienced, as a fallback requiring masking and sensible sanitary procedures and the like along with adjusting openings and access based on the infection and hospital rates by area is the next best thing and will continue to open the economy. given we arent getting a vaccine anytime soon, we just have to live very carefully with it longer.

investment tip —> my spouse has been going back into her mostly empty office occasionally lately and they now have this all over the place:

https://www.nanoseptic.com/

I take it you’ve had deaths in your family or friends from Covid? If so, I’m very sorry to hear that.

That said, can we not agree that public policy cannot be set by emotional anecdotes? If the mortality rate of Covid is exceedingly low, we have to respond accordingly.

Also, joblessness for millions, as well as torpedoed municipal budgets, is not a “slight inconvenience”. Why are you willingly ignoring that?

We are being told that a vaccine might not be all that effective, at least not as much as wearing a mask. So this could drag on indefinitely and have lingering implications on the economy and mental health. I agree we should be smart about this but at some point, we really need to think about trying to get back to normal as much as possible if this is going to drag out for another year or so which is a distinct possibility.

Acajack is absolutely correct, we are more or less just existing and sooner or later, people will hit a breaking point.

I don't know if "getting back to normal" actually means that. We will be pretty lonely in the world if we don't get this under control.

You really think so? I am not a conspiracy theorist at all nor an anti-masker. I wear a mask everywhere it's required and comply with all of the social distancing and contact rules.

But I don't think that if this got out of control that we'd get "pretty lonely" in the world at all.

In much of the world it's already decently under control, and learning to live with it and getting back to normal at worst would probably lead yes, to a small spike in death rates and maybe even a small decrease in life expectancy.

But humanity still existed, forged ahead, grew and yes, even had fun, when life expectancy was much lower than it is today.

Dangerous diseases that killed or could kill lots of people were always around.

Now, I am not saying that I wish for us to see higher death rates and lower life expectancies.

All I am saying is that life can and will go on even if that happens. We're not talking about the Black Death where in some cases entire villages were wiped out.

Yes. Irresponsible politicians and media have blown this way out of proportion and it may be disastrous later. Either in the way you predict, or the opposite (the boy who cried wolf problem).

Oh, absolutely. Your country has done closer to a good job of controlling it, so maybe it's not as pressing to your case... but why would all of these countries that sacrificed so much to limit the spread, especially those that did a pretty good job of it, throw open their doors to irresponsible Americans that were not able to do the same?

If you remove India, Asia has fewer new cases per day than the United States, despite there being 10x as many people there. Why would those countries be eager to re-engage with places that are not able to control their own outbreaks?

Not sure if this is directed at my post or not, but I think most of us can agree that there's a level of reasonable restriction that should exist should to mitigate the pandemic. Where that line is of course, is up for debate.

Things like mask requirements, capacity limits, and restrictions on large events are reasonably unobtrusive and require a minimal level of personal sacrifice to achieve - and most importantly have solid evidence behind them as being effective measures to reduce the spread of the virus. On the other hand, a 10 PM restaurant curfew seems entirely arbitrary - it's not as if it's more virulent at 11 PM than it was at 9 PM.

There are some weird rules that places have done and are continuing to test out, but I'd also disagree that a lockdown is widely considered to be "no big deal". Hence why even in the face of rising cases most governments are hesitant to return to anything resembling the full-fledged lockdowns that were in effect back in March & April. Regardless, some level of restriction to ordinary non-pandemic life is clearly required - the fact that it would be hard to explain to somebody from 2019 isn't really an argument against it.

You say this with little perspective of the fact that these Asian countries exist with authoritarian Government regimes that we don’t have, and whose liberties you enjoy. There is a price to pay for limited Government and more personal freedom, and that price is “not handling pandemics so well”. Why is that hard for so many “why can’t we be more like Asia” complainers to comprehend?

Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are "authoritarian Government regimes"? Okay, bro, whatever you say.