Why is it obviously preposterous?

The goal should not be to prevent the spread of the virus to anyone, but to the vulnerable specifically. Restaurants are being forced to deal with debilitating restrictions (that both make them financially unviable, and make the experience much less enjoyable for customers, which further harms restaurants). This is because they are considered to be a “high risk” environment for the spread of the virus.

So, keep the vulnerable out of restaurants.

I’m not going to deal with another year of this, and we shouldn’t allow restaurateurs and others to lose their livelihoods, because old people will feel discriminated against. It is simply a pragmatic approach to a different risk profile.

I don't even know how NYS could enforce a travel ban from PA given the huge border between the two which straddles a largely sparse area.

NYS can't even enforce a travel ban from the states it doesn't border, lol.

I tend to think that working class and poor seniors should be supported so they can isolate if they want, and then we should let everybody make their own decisions. This should be the baseline norm with deviations being well-supported by data and logic.

There are seem to be two main arguments against this:

1) Health care systems will fall over if we let people do what they want, so we have to order them around
2) Young people will give covid to old, so we have to treat everybody the same way

Both of those arguments are pretty weak. Right now we're months into a downward shift in median age of covid infection toward lower risk demographics, which is the outcome you'd expect from rational people responding to the real risks. I don't think that multigenerational households are the norm and these people can make their own decisions about what they want to do.

The first argument is an argument for infringing on individual rights. It's not clear why blanket infringement is more acceptable than targeted infringement (e.g. you can order bars to close but you can't say that 70+ year olds should stay out, not that many go to bars anyway).

I posted this data for BC in the Canada section:

https://i.imgur.com/8zVZmGk.png
http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site...2020_final.pdf

These percentages wildly overestimate the odds of death or hospitalization because only a fraction of the true case count is detected. BC had around 0.5% covid antibody seroprevalence back in a June survey.

We still sometimes have people ranting about how young folks are likely die or get very sick or will fill up the hospital beds after engaging in foolish activities. During the pandemic so far BC has had 0 deaths under age 40 and on average people under age 40 have used approximately 1 ICU bed at any given time (23 total during a 7 month period, median stay approximately 10 days).

I figured as much. I was half-tempted to drive up and see family regardless of ban on Texas but didn't want to take risks with my father.

no, actually instead of downplaying it all away and because croaking is not the only covid outcome and not only 70 yr olds get it bad, everyone should just continue to mask and limit indoors activities.

the tragedy is irresponsible and likely murderous people like your fool no mask self who have allowed covid to go on this long and to keep popping back up. :rolleyes:

The small chance of some rare complication for a younger person does not justify what is being done to our lives and economy. And you’ve accepted it completely. Live in a protective bubble if you want - I refuse to.

^ I for one fully support masking as well as banning large "superspreader" type gatherings. What I don't support is mandated lockdowns on businesses. It causes damage way out of proportion to the damage the disease causes to the general population.

We aren't having this debate in April any more, man. We've got data that CLEARLY shows that Covid is just NOT statistically deadlier than other extant viruses (like Flu) for most of the healthy, younger population.

We need a more targeted approach than to just have one elected leader, under the guise of "emergency powers", telling thousands of businesses that they must shut down or else.

Because it's age discrimination.

We cannot ban somebody from a business based on age, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. It's not enforceable.

I drove to Detroit last month and didn't see any checkpoints on my drive back into NYC. I even noticed a few cars with Texas license plates driving towards the city in NJ. I thought it was odd that there were so many.

So much to unpack here. You're like a chess player that thinks one move ahead instead of five. And who willfully denies the knowledge and logic of the people who know things.

There's no way to sequester one group from the other. The "outside" group will infect the "inside" group, and the "outside" group's infection rate is a huge factor in that.

Also it's not just over-70s. You'd have to set it more like 60 even before getting into younger unhealthy people.

And so on, with points you've ignored ad nauseum.

As for those 20-year-olds, maybe some of them are just ethical?

This is why good leaders use information and experts to help set rules, vs. having the nearest petulant child set them.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume most young people would come out unscathed from covid even if they display mild symptoms at the onset. The obesity rate among Millenials and Zoomers is staggering which is in of itself, a comorbidity.

^ I would

So far there is no evidence that the vast, vast, vast majority of younger people who've contracted COVID are coming out anything but unscathed.

Other viruses that we've lived with for years (and haven't been duped into irrationally fearing) can rarely cause long term effects as well.

Did you know that the bacteria that causes Strep throat can cause heart valve problems decades later?

Should we all "shut down" the planet due to strep throat now?

The virus that causes Mono can rarely case aplastic anemia.

This fear-mongering has zero chance of ending until sane people take control of the dialogue. The media does not count as "sane people", IMO

Should we wait until we get evidence before doing altering our behavior? How many lives should we experiment with?

Thing is that we know about Strep and Mono, we still know relatively little about Covid. I am not for shutting things down; quite the opposite actually but 10023's assertion that over 70's should be isolated indefinitely so he can go back to the gym and that anyone under 40 has nothing to worry about. Again, there's a lot of fat/ out of shape under 40's who are inching toward all kinds of health problems later in life and what if the virus rears its ugly head in 15-20 years with some unknown issue(s)?

Are you serious?

How exactly do you set public policy that way?

"We don't know what this infection that gave you no symptoms or a few sniffles for 3 days does, but just to 'be sure' lets make 30 million people jobless, put 50 million people into bankruptcy, and shut down the livelihoods of people everywhere"

Yes, I agree with your concerns about 10023's comments.

But we have to set public policy based on what we know.

I have little patience for people who say "we need to follow the science" but then go and do the opposite. Over 6 months into the pandemic there is no evidence that 99.9% of healthy people under 60 are having anything more than a syndrome that varies between nothing and sniffles, aches and pains, fevers, and a few days of cough when they get COVID. That's what the data shows.

We are either a data driven society in earnest or we are simply playing lip service to it.

Yes, I'm serious. Where do you draw the line? How long would have been sufficient for us to wait to see the ramifications of SARS before we reacted?

I think it's been proven time and again here that factoring in obesity/age when trying to justify whatever precautions were taken during the shut down only helps the prevailing thought among some (most?) forumers that obese people deserve whatever they get.

I don't personally agree with that (at least, not to the same extent as some of the others here [caveat: I'm overweight]), but it only encourages the monstrosity of thought toward people with health/weight issues.

I'm talking about now, not March or April.

Millions of people are doing just fine having had Covid now, and we have real data to look at to see who tends to get seriously ill and who tends not to. The CDC has this data. That wasn't available in March.

This is how science works. People who claim to be "informed" by science are either informed by science, or they are just talking nonsense.

Public policy is set based on data, when done correctly.