the Thing About Team Sane

every little thing is so 

I’m pleased for you that you assign so little value to your human rights. Now please be so kind as to step into this gas chamber. Thank you for understanding.

Not really. Team Sane are more concerned about deaths caused by lockdown surpassing deaths caused by Covid, more than we are about the human rights aspects. 

By locking down in the way it has, the state is murdering people. 

it's not though is it OD

that's just a sort of invented concern. Nobody was on here a year ago demanding action about people committing suicide from anything let alone loneliness and depression

and you can't really oppose a lockdown that kills off sick people who would have gone to the doctors on the basis that you're happy for covid to wipe out those same immunocompromised people in the first place

so what the fook do you loonies actually want? other than to swan about being dicks about everything because heaven forfend that rules should apply to you spoiled little brats

I love the way TeamSane talk of the state “Murdering people“ but scream blue murder at phrases like “granny killer” .  I think we can take as red that nobody is trying to kill anyone, there is just a disagreement over priorities and cost benefit analysis

austerity was the state killing people, and in a far far more direct way

telling people to wear a mask and not mix with more than X number of people to protect the most vulnerable in our society is not the same thing

Same article / story from UNICEF has been going on all summer, it's everywhere on Google. Lockdowns destroy economies which lead to lower aid money going to starving 3rd world children which directly causes them to starve to death or die from treatable illness.

We've stopped covid deaths of the very old so that the very poorest and weakest on earth can die instead.

Great job.

 

Dr Peterson said these figures were in part a reflection of stringent restrictions in much of the world that prevent people leaving their homes without documentation, preventing them from accessing essential health care services. 
 

we have never done this in the uk

Canadian you could equally well say you kill babies by spending the sum in a restaurant that would feed a child for a year - be careful before bandying about this sort of direct moral equivalence

UNICEF said it not me Guy. Stop attributing what other said to my analysis. I posted a BBC article alone and you seem to think that's me saying this is why we are imposing measures.

Get a grip, dude.

 

Canadian22 Sep 20 16:15

We've stopped covid deaths of the very old so that the very poorest and weakest on earth can die instead.

Great job.

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I think electing a Tory government that wants to scrap international aid or at least link it to buying UK arms is a bit more of a contributor to this than a lockdown triggering someone to cancel their Oxfam direct debit

as above, where were the Team Sane threads about Yemen and Haiti and West China before Corona, where are they now? There are 5 threads about how bad it is to wear a mask in a restaurant and throwing a tantrum 

But why are 3rd world children deaths or cancer deaths or any other deaths less important than covid deaths?

I guess my point is I don't understand the hypocrisy and why these covid deaths must be stopped at all costs.

And people that support this mantra that we should continue to lockdown harder and restrict freedoms because the vuvu no longer have my tolerance.

 

You are posting stuff you know to be irrelevant to make a point Canadian, you are no longer posting on basis of evidence based analysis but just shouting like Team Sane

 

 

shame

I guess because these are unusual deaths and immediate and liable to spiral out of control

where as the other deaths are a normal Tuesday 

as far as lockdown goes, I support lockdown to dampen covid. I do not support the government mismangement that has rushed people back into public spaces (as per the demands of Team Sane) and caused the spike (though there seems some dispute over numbers) that necessitates more lockdown. 

If the country/economy etc is wrecked by out of control covid then all the people you want to help will not get helped either

They are not liable to spiral out of control. Look at Spain and France. They are well down the line and perfectly in control. Look at the US. Its second wave has come and gone.
 

Whitty and Vallance are throwing around the word “exponential” to scare people. If you put money in a current account your investment will increase exponentially too, but you’ll still not beat inflation. Modest exponential growth is not scary.

 

What this government is doing is looking at Spain, realising that this second wave is going to blow over on its own, and bringing unnecessary new restrictions in so it can claim credit for when it inevitably does blow over, so it can later say that they controlled it. It’s purely political. These aren’t policies that can just be reversed by the next government. You may say that requiring a person to wear a mask in a restaurant is not killing anybody, but ask restaurant owners and workers that. It is killing their business, and it might kill them.

There's a corollary point to this in that most people didn't care (to the point of doing anything about it) about preventable deaths as long as those deaths were happening far, far away or to other people. 

Now preventable deaths are much closer to home there's suddenly some massive overriding responsibility on us all. 

I wonder how many old, fat, red faced fooks were baying for the reduction in UK state aid who now see demand we take extraordinary measures to protect their sorry hides. I wonder how many people enjoyed buying shit made in factories by people working in dangerous conditions on pittance wages. I wonder how many still do. I wonder what reaction you'd have gotten - still would get - to the suggestion that we take a couple of million Syrian refugees.

Two wrongs don't make a right, obvs. But arguing moral relativism on this specific issue is pointless. Nobody comes out of it well. 

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=566008065099001102030105007118067119016034095040033060065011099092074118120006114064050114125015098048051026102110115108107080009035093092078090069117022073064127065046000086087081029010020081006004071005125079121103003069088073030102023093075065094066&EXT=pdfThe analysis is pretty flaky.

For example it assumes that if manpower is down by 10% and Supplies are down by 10% then availability is down by 19%.

They’d be more convincing if they just stuck to the claim that during Ebola the indirect child mortality rate increased by 45%.

 

’Team Sane is a concept which serves no purpose other than to take the piss out of Clergs, and to straw man any anti-vuvuzealotry expressed in measured terms.‘

No. The non-loony posters regularly tell people who profess to be Team Sane that they are not, precisely because they are expressing balanced views even if those views are different to their own.

The number of true Team Saners is quite limited, and is spearheaded by Clergham and Hotblack.

of course, I accept that the vuvuzealots are just as bad.

hth

Another weakness with the report behind that UNICEF claim of 1.2m indirect child deaths is that the reference to support the estimate in its second sentence (As of April 9th, 2020, over 90,000 people have died from COVID-19 and estimates of future deaths number in the millions2) is none other than:

2. Ferguson N. Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand. 2020. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global- infectious-disease-analysis/news--wuhan-coronavirus/.

Of course, there may well indeed be 1.2m indirect child deaths due to lockdown.  However, the analysis in that paper does not convince me.  

 

Anyone expecting policies to be put in place that result in no deaths, during a global pandemic, is moronic.

I'd rather people in the UK live tbh. Life is hard, those with the most resources survive. Get over it.

nobody has at any point said that “lockdown hasn’t killed people” and i would ask you to point me to where they have so we can both laugh at them

the debate of the day is whether a bunch of fairly wealthy middle class professionals on an internet message board should comply with relatively light restrictions on their liberty to protect the chronically ill, the elderly, care workers and BAME people from contracting a serious disease

or whether they should throw their toys out of the pray and start fomenting some kind of unspecified revolution because they now have to wear a mask when going to the toilet in a restaurant 

 

(fwiw the uk has never had a proper “lockdown” in the European or Chinese sense, and I doubt at this stage we ever will, so team sane appear even more rabid when they rail against it. today’s further restrictions were on the whole have impinged on people’s individual liberty about as much as sunday opening hours for shops)

 

Risky it is hard to distinguish non Covid deaths from lockdown from the counterfactual of letting Covid blow.  Had there been no lockdown in March it is not at all clear to me that would not have been even more non CoVid deaths due to fear of using and lack of resources in health care - we saw that start to happen in Lombardy and other areas before lockdowns swung into effect

Because corona kills economically whether you let it rip, or control it. 

Control is preferable as a vaccine is possible. 

Also. Knowingly killing Europeans to, possibly maybe, reduce the economic fallout and save 3rd world people, is a doubtful win for humanity. 

well sure risky - those groups are (historically and today and in the future) going to get fvcked no matter what we do

i think i disagree with you on the consequences of lockdown tho, particularly if the alternative is “no lockdown” (as #teamsane often suggest)

i think if you are going to let covid rip through society unchecked you will either have to:

a) provide massive massive government support to those vulnerable groups listed above to prevent them getting infected through no fault of their own (to an extent much more than eg furlough payments, I’m talking free social housing, full UBI for those unable to work from home for the period of the virus, free childcare etc) or

b) accept that those vulnerable groups listed above will contract the virus and die in disproportionate numbers to protect mostly young, healthy, white middle class people - this is to an extent what is happening in the US. 
 

most on #teamsane are I think arguing for b) - or at least don’t want to contemplate or discuss the economic cost of a) and the social restructuring necessary to implement it

i believe, outside of the constant misinformed cost/benefit analyses of lockdown that everyone throws around on this board, we have a moral duty to ourselves, our community and our country not to even contemplate b) and to object strongly to those who propose it  

or alternatively #teamsane should argue for a), which would at least be consistent (but ironically i think the societal upheaval of a) would be disproportionate to the inconvenience of the restrictive measures)

(and to the inevitable #teamsane rebuttals - Covid is about 20x more deadly than flu for those in vulnerable categories. we have annual vaccines for flu, freely available on the NHS. we spend lots of money, free at the point of use, on cancer treatments and mental health (though not enough on the latter). this is an unprecedented novel global pandemic. there are no reasonable comparators)

So just to be clear your argument is solely based on the number of people that you feel would die from Covid as opposed to dying from lockdown; but  you accept that the groups you call the vulnerable are just as likely to be disproportionately harmed from lockdown as they are from covid?

you accept that the groups you call the vulnerable are just as likely to be disproportionately harmed from lockdown as they are from covid?

no no I think if everyone does their part and takes measures to reduce the spread of infection then the elderly, the chronically ill, minorities and care workers will have a better quality of life and be able to participate more in society than the alternative 

 

of course lockdown will impact on the poor and the vulnerable (and the duty of the govt should be to protect and support them to the fullest extent it can) but to a much much lesser extent than if everyone spreads the virus throughout society indiscriminately 

 

tbh as a middle class professional myself I couldn’t countenance the alternative - just cram into offices every day and pubs every night, bossing meetings and ordering cocktails, knowing that you are contributing to the spread of a disease that will kill the weakest in our society? that receptionist, his gran will die in two months because of you. that waitress, her uncle will die in two months because of you. 
 

makes me shudder a bit

Tbh I’m quite amazed you managed to function in a pre covid society if this is your approach to things.
 

Didn’t you worry that every time you got into a car as driver or passenger or taxi or bus you might be in an accident yourself and/or hurt others?

I dont think covid is 20x more deadly than the flu.

seasonal flu ifr is 0.13%

Covid IFR in West seems to have started at about 0.5-0.8 and is trending down. Probably just 0.4 now.

So a bit more than 3x.

Still not “just the flu” for lots of reasons I wont explain for the zillionth time. But far closer to it than 20x. Which is why we now need to be holding or possibly even reducing restrictions not ramping them up.

This is just a political panic now. But it will be a disaster as I think it will be a tipping point for many businesses and jobs. The Tories are going to destroy the economy as they think the “controlling the virus” narrative is more important politically than the economy. I suspect they will be proven wrong in due course.

 

Not trolling. These are obvious facts. No leader of a country is going to sacrifice their own people, to save a foreign country with no direct links. Such altruism does not exist. 

There are many MANY things the west could do to reduce deaths in the third world. 

We don't.  We don't because it's expensive and of no direct benefit. 

Don't expect western policy to change now. 

If covid-19 was spreading and killing your friends and family, and the government stated it was ok, we are saving lives in asia. You would all be up in arms in a crusade against that policy. 

America has taken a more hands-off approach. Do you think their approach is saving lives in Africa? I don't. 

Are dead Brazilians saving lives in Peru? Doubtful.

Save the lives you can, with the resources you have. Lockdowns are short term events that reduce GDP momentarily. 

Teams of economists, biologists, etc etc with more tools and knowledge than us, are all over this. I have faith in them. 

And if you are really that concerned. Quit law and join a charity. 

"Not trolling. These are obvious facts. No leader of a country is going to sacrifice their own people, to save a foreign country with no direct links. Such altruism does not exist." That is an argument you may wish to make, but that's not actually what you said, is it?  You said that the survival of third world people at the expense of Europeans would be "... a doubtful win for humanity".  Because, presumably, third world lives are intrinsically useless, while Europeans' lives are intrinsically more valuable?  Which is an awful, despicable, fvcked up thing to say.

Wow. That's where your mind goes, cru?

What I said was, definitely killing Europeans by allowing Corona out of the box, on the off chance the economic collapse would be less when compared with controlling the virus, would be a doubtful win for humanity. 

Take from that what you will. No country took that decision. None will.

Europeans do produce more GDP than third worlders though. 

So by the value system of our capitalist world. Your statement is also true. 

Are you surprised to find this out?

The '3rd world' isn't a race denominator. It's a socio economic state.

'Europeans' are not a racial group. Europe houses people from many ethnic groups.

Cru's just doing the Cru. Good to keep an eye on these things though. 

The "middle class people..." jibe is ridiculous. This isn't about what I have to do. This is about what it is doing to the entire country economically. 

"Save the lives you can, with the resources you have. Lockdowns are short term events that reduce GDP momentarily." - you have absolutely no basis for the claim in the second sentence. Your first sentence is the entire point. We are investing hundreds of billions in this, whereas we let e.g. 170k die of heart disease.  I assume you regularly protest outside NICE for not funding experimental life-saving treatments? At least have the courage to admit, as Pinkus points out, that you are scared of this disease and that is what is driving your arguments. Your life is only worth so much. If I had to choose between an 80 year old on their last legs and 5 children having safe childhoods and productive working lives instead of living in poverty I'd happily flick the switch, if both need £4m from the taxpayer. 

"Teams of economists, biologists, etc etc with more tools and knowledge than us, are all over this. I have faith in them." Again, the point is we don't have an economist biologist that has overseen a COVID pandemic. We have economists that know exactly what this is going to do to the economy, but they are hoping govt borrowing can plug the gap. I am not sure any economist can point to a single event similar to an intentional killing of whole sectors of an economy on purpose. Assuming you think the OBR are qualified enough, they were estimating:

4.1% unemployment for this fiscal year before COVID (central projection now 11.9%)

77% Public sector net debt (104%)

Public sector net borrowing of 54.8bn (now 322bn) 

So around half of all tax receipts of new unexpected debt. A 1% increase in income tax raises circa 5bn, so we are talking about 10% on tax to fund this, being taken from a shrunken tax base, so actually probably more like 15%. Or instead we can add 322bn to Britain's 2trn debt pile as it gets ready to crash out of Europe and the borrowing rates head north.  

So it's only right that, instead of a graph showing a potential exponential rise in cases (how many cases were there in March when the 6000 dying in hospital were the only ones counting as positive?), we ask what their actual plan for mitigating the above other than kissing goodbye to the prospects of everyone under 60 in the name of saving largely ill people over 60 (who already used up close to 50% of the NHS budget, the only ring fenced budget in 10 years of austerity).

You speak about deaths. 

We have little data on the long term effect on the living. That's the larger risk, economically speaking. 

Until we have more data, it's prudent to control. 

Worth noting that the UK has done a poor job of control, and nobody is claiming it's a sucess. Other countries have faired better. I take a broader view. 

You speak about 'letting 170k die of heart disease'

We don't,  people choose to live unhealthy lives, in the main.

People are heavily educated to avoid heart disease.

Heart disease is not a contagious virus.

We spend plenty on heart disease.

"Your We estimated annual CVD‐related healthcare costs to the NHS to total £15.7 billion, representing 21% of overall NHS expenditure. Including private sector care, the CVD‐related healthcare costs totalled £17.4 billion, representing 18% of overall UK healthcare expenditure"

I didn't see you posting that we should fook heart disease and send 15.7billion to Africa. 

Link me up though, and I will take your virtue signalling more seriously. 

The Corona Virus22 Sep 20 20:19

The '3rd world' isn't a race denominator. It's a socio economic state.

__________________________________________________________________

point of Order, "3rd World" actually refers to states not aligned to the USSR (2nd Wrold) or Nato (1st World)

Radio four giving some absolute throbber airtime, professor John edmunds/Edmonds, London school of tropical medicine, gleeful in his call for us all to be boarded uP in our homes forever and ever (almost)

Sumo. Point taken. However, I ran a thread 3 months ago regarding roffers 1st and 3rd world definition,  and for the majority,  the definition was socio-economic. 

COVID-related expenses aren’t really that different in utilitarian terms from other health-related expenses. They go to benefit, in the main, old people in the developed world. Doubtless in a pure cost-benefit sense this is not optimal but it’s not like it is a new situation.

No Chimp. 

We are all killing African children. 

Ganniccus has sold his house, car and watches. Donated the lot to charity, and is, this very moment, on the ferry to Mozambique. 

We wish him well. 

I think 3 other people made the same point I did about your post, but you seem quite happy to ignore them, but are getting particularly jumpy up and downy incensed at me. 

Reckon you need to unwind your knickers before you do yourself an injury.

Cru darling, I accept your apology.  Please take my 'return fire' as a sign I respect your opinion.

I quite enjoyed defending myself to be honest. It's been some time since I've been under attack.