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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   19147 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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Pray tell what are dangerous things? Please articulate what you mean as opposed to hint at what you mean.

Like, going to large superspreader events before vaccines are available? What's the confusion, are you just pretending not to know how covid spreads?

Getting covid means having a bad cold for a very, very large fraction of the public, it also grants some immunity to that strain and perhaps others.

To most people, that isn’t dangerous. I think your concept of risk is off quite a bit.

Pre-vaccine, for someone around 55, which is probably the age of many GOP voters, getting COVID gives 50% higher risk of death than your yearly average risk. By 65 it appears to be several times your yearly risk, and for comparison, about 10 times the per-jump death risk of BASE jumping. Certainly something you can decide to do, but doesn't sound like something that you want to encourage your voting base to do if your race is close.

That makes it sound high. But what is the average risk of death? Also what is the increased risk of death of sitting around doing nothing?

Finally what superspreader events were rural Coloradans doing?

  • But what is the average risk of death? Also what is the increased risk of death of sitting around doing nothing?

Are these rhetorical questions, or did you assert that covid "isn't dangerous" without knowing any relevant data?

  1. You are being an ass. One can know the risk of death for an average 55 year old for getting covid (pretty damn low). An interlocutor can bring up some stat (out of thin air with no cite) claiming it increases risk of death in a given year by 50%. Asking what the baseline of death is for a given year at 55 is different from understanding conditional on getting covid what the lethality risk was (ie very low). Through trying to frame the discussion in a particular way, you are now trying to crow “you are making statements without knowing the facts.” No — I’m making that claim based on different criteria.

  2. Also, your concept is you can heavily mitigate the risk. The question is by mitigating that risk do you increase other risks. So I guess based on your “logic” if you are unable to answer that question your entire post shouldn’t have been stated.

  3. You still haven’t discussed the superspreader events rural Coloradans engaged in.

If you wanted citations, it would have been easy to ask for them instead of vaguely gesturing at your point without making an argument.

Here's my source for covid death rate by age range: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02867-1/fulltext#seccestitle140

And here's baseline death rate by age: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age-and-sex-in-the-us/

For base jumping, I just googled "base jumping fatality rate" and got about 0.04% per jump.

Upon re-doing my math, I did in fact make an error! At 65, the IFR for covid is about equal to your annual risk of death, 1.7-1.8%. I still think this is pretty high (it is still about 40 times higher than 1 BASE jump, which I think most people consider risky). But also, this is the kind of thing I wanted to get answers on, rather than vague statements about what most people consider "risky" without reference to data.

The question is by mitigating that risk do you increase other risks. So I guess based on your “logic” if you are unable to answer that question your entire post shouldn’t have been stated.

My post was a question, it was far from a comprehensive analysis. Which COVID prevention measures increase mortality? If you have an argument that they do, that's also exactly the kind of thing I would like to know, as it directly affects the question originally posed! (Of course, then you should incorporate all of the effects--for example, driving is dangerous too).

You still haven’t discussed the superspreader events rural Coloradans engaged in.

For example, https://www.denverpost.com/2021/10/21/colorado-festivals-covid/ mentions several, including a rodeo, the state fair, and a "western celebration."

  1. You were the one who initially described it as risky behavior. You weren’t “just asking questions.”

  2. What constitutes risky isn’t an empirical question but an evaluation based on empirical data. I still don’t see covid as a major risk for a 55 year old, even as you try to reframe risk.

  3. Once more, risk can’t be viewed unidirectionally. World is risk-risk. It is incumbent on the person suggesting action X is risky to explain why not X is relatively less risky.

  4. Finally there is question of benefit. Even if we assume X is risky relatively to not X, the question becomes whether reward is greater than risk.

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