Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

I will never forget Intro to Philosophy my junior year of college. First day, professor is like, "Is Bill Vaughn [speaking in the third person] really here?" I was like, ugh, F' this, and showed up two more times the rest of the semester. Got the D-, so count those three credits. My grades were really terrible.

In a very real sense, Mulfinator, this off-season started back in January when Kings [Dominion|Island] closed...and right now there is really no end in sight.

sirloindude, what you are calling an objective morality you are immediately turning around and identifying as subjective. What's particularly interesting is that you're identifying as objective a morality set forth by a deity which first commands His people not to kill, then sets out a list of those who are to be put to death under His law. So...killing is okay if it is in retribution? If $DEITY says so? If you're part of $DEITY's chosen tribes? And who exactly is that, anyway?

Please note, I'm not saying your morality is wrong, merely that it isn't at all objective!

--Dave Althoff, Jr. (who freely admits to being a relatively mainstream theist, fwiw...)

Jeff said:

I will never forget Intro to Philosophy my junior year of college. First day, professor is like, "Is Bill Vaughn [speaking in the third person] really here?" I was like, ugh, F' this, and showed up two more times the rest of the semester. Got the D-, so count those three credits. My grades were really terrible.

I had the exact opposite experience. Freshman fall, first or second class of the day, Philosophy 101. “What do we know?” (We started in epistomology) and I was instantly hooked.

I seem to be struggling to convey my thoughts as intended, because I’m genuinely trying to do so in a manner that would resonate with an atheist as much as a theist. Let me try it this way.

I believe that there is an objective morality. I also believe that we don’t know every moral truth present in said objective morality. As such, we are all forced to make judgment calls at some point or another because there WILL be times where the answer isn’t clear. When we face those decisions, we risk making a decision that goes against what the objectively moral right answer is, and we may never know we did that. Such situations don’t disprove the theory of objective morality; rather, they simply indicate that we, as humans who lack omniscience, will always live by subjective morality. Also, those very situations, or at least our lack of knowledge, are why I don’t believe any human, human entity, or human construct gets to make the determinations on what is objectively moral any more than we get to make the decisions on what the laws of physics are. Force equals mass times acceleration not because we say it does, but rather because it does whether we like it or not and we’ve simply discovered it to be true through scientific study.

Where this gets tricky, though, is that much like the laws of physics or any other scientific law, we have to be prepared to find answers we may not really like. What if something we’ve long believed to be morally right turned out to be wrong? What if we thought something was good for our well-being and it turned out to be detrimental? Would we adhere to it? Consider Gonch’s proposed scenario, which, though far-fetched, could theoretically happen: what if it turned out that some sort of genocide had to be committed to save the rest of humanity? Are you prepared to accept either extinction or take an active stance in the extermination of a people group? Again, I know that’s a very extreme example, but you can reduce it to a less severe example and still find a rather unpleasant challenge. Such matters are why I believe that objective morality is something that would have to be set outside of human interference, whether by a deity or not.

And Dave, I outright said my morality is subjective. I’m well aware that it is. I’m just saying that it’s subjective nature does not disprove the objective morality that I believe exists.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doing-the-touchy-math-on...ine-first/

Good article on the vaccine including the decision over whether the goal is to prevent spread by prioritizing younger active folks or reduce mortality by prioritizing the older vulnerable population (again, sliders 😊) and some of the numbers behind how many would need to be vaccinated at certain efficacies to contain the virus.

So to conserve vaccine doses do we make anyone who wants it fail an antibody test first? No sense in vaccinating the roughly 10% of the population that has already had the disease...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Are the antibody tests 100% accurate? And we aren't sure how long immunity lasts (for the vaccines either).

First of all, you need 33 million cases to account for 10% of the population, and second, there are no studies about the relative efficacy of the vaccines versus recovered infections since the vaccines have not been widely distributed. So I wouldn't make that statement.

ApolloAndy said:

Jeff said:

I will never forget Intro to Philosophy my junior year of college. First day, professor is like, "Is Bill Vaughn [speaking in the third person] really here?" I was like, ugh, F' this, and showed up two more times the rest of the semester. Got the D-, so count those three credits. My grades were really terrible.

I had the exact opposite experience. Freshman fall, first or second class of the day, Philosophy 101. “What do we know?” (We started in epistomology) and I was instantly hooked.

Just because I have the memory. Freshman year at Ohio State, the philosophy professor started class with the following (paraphrasing)....

"None of you in this room have ever made a decision in your life. Invisible creatures called "googles" (this was fall, 1995) have controlled or influenced your every move and whispered in your ear about every decision you have ever made. Prove me wrong."

It was an introduction to the fallacy of untestable ideas, and I remember digging the weird and abstract discussions we had in that class.

He used to start class with a "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handy (not sure how many of you remember that), and go off on some philosophical tangent.

^^^I think Dave's point above was not to suggest that antibody tests are some type of objective assessment (I mean, it's not like we're talking about morality here!) to determine current immunity, but rather a common-sense measure to help determine who might get asked to go to the back of the line. It seems reasonable that anyone who has been infected and recovered is not in the same category of risk/need of getting the vaccine...all other things being equal.

Just imagine being in the sphere of public health right now. You are making decisions and watching a reality unfold that you may have heard from only your grandparents (or great-grandparents based on your age). The last mass roll-out of new vaccines in this country was for Polio, and most people born after 2000 probably think that's a cologne.

But if you don't have a highly accurate test to determine who has antibodies, you may well be sending someone to the back of the line who actually didn't have antibodies. Doesn't seem like a good result particularly if someone is high risk. And you would effectively be testing everyone in the country (or at least large numbers of people less the 13 million or so who have tested positive -- and some of them may have had a false positive). At the same time you are administering what likely will be 2-dose vaccines to 300+ million people. Doesn't make sense to me but I am not a doctor and don't play one on TV and haven't stayed in a Holiday Inn Express in a long, long time.

I brought it up because it's yet another data point for consideration. I don't really expect this group to have the 'right' answer, but that never stops us from talking about anything. The latest information I have heard (literally heard--public radio) about long-term convalescent (sounds better than "survivor") immunity is extremely promising. If that is indeed the case I wonder how that affects the calculus for vaccinating the spreaders vs. vaccinating the high-risk. Maybe instead of "residents of nursing homes" it becomes "residents of nursing homes who have not been infected by COVID-19".
As for that 10% case number...again, because I live in Ohio, and because I am doing this to inform my own risk management* I have been working with the official Ohio Department of Health numbers. Lately I have been tracking the onset date corrected figures and finding that they tell a very different story from the daily numbers, even though the totals are the same. But the totals each day are the same, so I've massaged that a bit. Based on early prevalence data (which, admittedly, has been largely dismissed) I have applied an estimate of a 70% undercount...that is, for every 3 confirmed cases there are 7 "invisible" cases. I haven't traditionally put much faith into this number, except that the prevalence report issued by the State back in August tracks my estimates for that period surprisingly well. Anyway, based on that data, and a 12-day-from-onset contagion period, using numbers released on 11/28, I estimate that there are about 22,1552 undercounted active cases meaning the odds of any given person in the State of Ohio being contagious right now are about 2.0141%. The total confirmed count in Ohio today is 384,544 total cases in a population of 11,000,000 (about 3.5% of the population); with a 70% undercount that's 1,281,813 total cases, or 11.65% of the State's total population. Granted, the recent exceptional surge in testing is probably catching a lot more of those undercounted cases, so that 70% figure is probably a bit too high now. Or not. But that's where I got the 10% number.

* For the bingo players: (even though I'm sure I suck at it just like everybody else)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The pope says, wear a mask and don't be selfish, as a direct response to the worshippers who made it a federal case.

Pope Francis: The Covid-19 Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts https://nyti.ms/3nYkzwd

As a non-believer that grew up being dragged to Catholic church, I still think there can often be value in the messaging that comes from the Pope. For the cluster**** that is the Catholic church (have we had that conversation here yet?) I have often felt hopeful that the current Pope is the first step in beginning to heal and bring some modern day reasoning to Catholicism. That is of course unless the next Pope essentially comes in to undo the little bit of progress that's been made much like Trump coming in to try and undo the Obama years.

I'm glad he did this. Not that it will change much, if anything. But he is on record with this message and I think it's important for figures like that to not stay silent right now. I know the mask debate will never be settled. And I will never truly understand how a piece of cloth has caused such a divide and such anger. And I still don't understand how the piece of cloth can truly make someone have a panic attack and not be able to breathe. And even if it did, how that would make the argument be "masks should not be mandatory and I should be able to still go do all the things" rather than "this mask induces some crazy reaction out of me so I'm going to steer clear of anywhere that requires me to be in a crowd to keep myself and others safe"

But as I've said before (and been told by others) that I'm just a liberal snowflake millennial and I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Anyone who is viewed as a leader (and I view that as just about anyone with a platform) should be messaging the common sense approach to this. Just imagine where we would be if we had consistent messaging from the United Nations, to the world leaders, to state and local authorities.

I suspect we wouldn't have 4% of the world's population and 19% of the world's deaths because the low hanging fruit would have been addressed over half a year ago. Instead we are still...beyond just about any comprehension...debating the use of masks.

bUt mY fReEdOm.

Message to the Pope: Call the cops.

BrettV said:

And I still don't understand how the piece of cloth can truly make someone have a panic attack and not be able to breathe. And even if it did, how that would make the argument be "masks should not be mandatory and I should be able to still go do all the things" rather than "this mask induces some crazy reaction out of me so I'm going to steer clear of anywhere that requires me to be in a crowd to keep myself and others safe"

Put it this way...panic attacks can be brought on by triggers; triggers that are more or less irrational. But that's what makes panic attacks such a pain in the ass to live with. The sufferer often knows that the triggers are irrational (which is really super helpful for one's self-esteem!). I know a few people who honestly develop panic symptoms when wearing a mask...but I can also attest that that each of these individuals also fully believe they should be mandatory, and have taken personal responsibility.

OhioStater said:

I know a few people who honestly develop panic symptoms when wearing a mask...but I can also attest that that each of these individuals also fully believe they should be mandatory, and have taken personal responsibility.

That's the point I was trying to drive home. I get that it's a thing for a small segment of the population. But I don't think it's an excuse to not think the mask requirements are important and critical right now, and I think some do.

Not only are some doing so, but I'm sure there is a segment of the population feigning "panic" or some other ailment and using it as their trump card (pun intended).

Then what about face shields? Do those just look too silly?