Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

1a. Yeah, that was mostly rhetorical. Regardless of who decides and where they put the slider, one side or the other will complain. I mean, we'd just have different protesters on the steps of city hall if we decided to open the flood gates to 400k.

1b. All I've learned from this is that my tolerance for risk, definition of fear, idea of hardship and willingness to put the gun in my mouth is much higher than a lot of my online social circle. (but that's not necessarily true for my "real life" social circles, where I am to them more like you guys often seem to me)

I'm not sure what that says about me. That might be worth examining further.

1c. I think we're at least 18 months away from anything that remotely resembles "before" if you're afraid of risk in any capacity. (or playing defensively)

Unrelated note: Blech. I'm a "government is the problem, not the solution" kind of guy in general. If you take care of yourself, you don't have to be frustrated that someone else doesn't take care of you. (I know this sounds like a foreign language to Bernie Sanders supporters, but trust me, this is a cohesive thought expressed in the English laguage)

2. See 1b.

Lord Gonchar said:

1a. Yeah, that was mostly rhetorical. Regardless of who decides and where they put the slider, one side or the other will complain. I mean, we'd just have different protesters on the steps of city hall if we decided to open the flood gates to 400k.

It would be interesting to see what a protest to resume shelter-in-place would look like. "Hell no, we want to go!...Actually, s#!t, let's all go home right now. What are we doing here?"

Lord Gonchar said:

1c. I think we're at least 18 months away from anything that remotely resembles "before" if you're afraid of risk in any capacity. (or playing defensively)

That's probably right, which sucks. But I think if you're not afraid of any risk you're also not going to get to "before" because some subset of your parents/mailman/crossing guard will be dying.

Lord Gonchar said:

Unrelated note: Blech. I'm a "government is the problem, not the solution" kind of guy in general. If you take care of yourself, you don't have to be frustrated that someone else doesn't take care of you. (I know this sounds like a foreign language to Bernie Sanders supporters, but trust me, this is a cohesive thought expressed in the English laguage)

That would be great in the ideal, but in reality people are constantly trying to f' each other over and using the large existing imbalance of power to do it. I suppose the counter point is, "Don't be so easily f'd."

1b addendum. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that it's not obvious that the trade off is linear or direct. There's a strong case to be made that having 400k-2M people die and millions more sick and in the hospital is worse for the economy than shelter in place...plus they're dead.

An interesting attempt at peer review of "that Stanford study." The tl;dr is that there are many strong reasons to be skeptical of its conclusions.
https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody-seropr...6382258c25

Lord Gonchar said:

I'm a "government is the problem, not the solution" kind of guy in general.

I always take issue with this, because government is very useful in a lot of situations. I'm a product of government education and believe that's a good system, broken as it is with its testing obsession. Government does a pretty good job of building roads and airports to get us around. It does a good job of operating public safety forces, including the military (which is vastly overkill in the US). It used to do a pretty good job of preventing poison to be released into the environment, but for some reason, Trump doesn't think that's good for us. It should also be able to provide a single-payer system to a healthcare system with better outcomes. That it doesn't is the weirdest kind of American exceptionalism.

The idea that taxes are an investment in social and economic outcomes was an eye-opener for me. Some are good investments, others not so much. In 1956, Eisenhower spent the equivalent in today's dollars of $237 billion to allow for the building of a national highway infrastructure. Without it, we wouldn't be here talking about coasters online in 2020. That same year, he also made "In God We Trust" our national motto, unofficially replacing E pluribus unum (Out of Many One). I'm sure you can guess which one I think was the better use of our Government's power. It is interesting given the topic of personal responsibility and government involvement. The idea that they are "generally" the problem seems foreign to me given how much our society has benefitted overall. I also have to acknowledge frivolous waste occurs. Seems like it's more 60/40.

Jeff said:

You know that's generally achieved by vaccination, right?

ApolloAndy said:

Sure. I meant (and thought from context it was clear) herd immunity from transmission in the absence of a vaccine.

Absolutely, however, in the absence of a vaccine herd immunity will eventually be achieved anyways.

ApolloAndy said:

I think we'd be able to get small offices, restaurants at half capacity, some gatherings of 10 or so people, but I don't see how I can, in good conscience, hold public worship at my church which is 3/4 people over 60 until we do have a vaccine and that has nothing to do with government protocols.

Regarding reopening, who decides what can reopen and what can't, and how is this remotely fair to businesses. The church is a business just as much as the convenience store and the strip club. Why should the employees of the church suffer while the strippers get to make money. (Or insert whatever businesses you are happy with).

Right now they claim that only essential business is permitted in our area. I go to work everyday at a hotel with occupancy ranging in the 15-25% area. I can promise you that 90% of the people who area walking through the door are not essential, they are locals looking to hang out by the pool and get out of their houses. I am not essential, however I am much happier going to work then going broke, and don't mind one bit.

What about the restaurants that are still open for take out, are they really essential? I can promise you the ice cream shop and smoothie king aren't, but they are still open. I dropped my car for an oil change at Ford last week, the service team is probably essential, but that sales team isn't, but they were still around. Essential means different things to different people and is highly subjective, thus it is a poor way of going about this.

ApolloAndy said:

There's a strong case to be made that having 400k-2M people die and millions more sick and in the hospital is worse for the economy than shelter in place...plus they're dead.

Let's remove all emotion and feeling from this situation and speak strictly objectively. Would the death of 2 million in this country have an effect? Yes, would it matter in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. The world has almost 8 billion, and yes death from other places, etc etc. However, the death rates are highly skewed toward the people who are very old. If they were to disappear you wouldn't lose highly active participants in the economy.

I know everyone is going to jump on me for that, but remove your personal attachments and feelings and just look at it objectively for a moment. Do you really think losing a few million would make much of a difference in the long term? I think those gaps would be quickly filled by others, and also a likely wave of immigrants or reshuffling of the current citizens because it would very well create new opportunities in the market.

ApolloAndy said:

An interesting attempt at peer review of "that Stanford study." The tl;dr is that there are many strong reasons to be skeptical of its conclusions.

There are always reasons to be skeptical of any study or report. There is almost always some form of bias injected by the authors. I don't take anything I read or hear at face value. It rarely tells the whole story.

Jeff said:

I always take issue with this, because government is very useful in a lot of situations. I'm a product of government education and believe that's a good system, broken as it is with its testing obsession. Government does a pretty good job of building roads and airports to get us around. It does a good job of operating public safety forces, including the military (which is vastly overkill in the US). It used to do a pretty good job of preventing poison to be released into the environment, but for some reason, Trump doesn't think that's good for us. It should also be able to provide a single-payer system to a healthcare system with better outcomes.

Do you believe government is good because you were conditioned to believe that or do you really think it is good? I'll agree they are needed for a few things, transportation, world relations, public safety, defense. I do not believe they should have the regulations in place for many things that they oversee. They quite frankly suck at it.

If they removed all regulations, what happens? Pollution, people taking advantage of others, anarchy, whatever.

Why is that? Because people suck at standing up for themselves. The market and the almighty dollar rule above all. It is why people try to take advantage. If people stood up for their beliefs, then companies would do the right thing. If I was a horrible company who polluted and everyone stopped purchasing from me I would cease to exist or I would clean up my act. The whole reason we have so much government is because people fail to take responsibility and fail to act according to their beliefs.

One example comes to mind here, Portland Maine. I was in downtown Portland and they have a thriving downtown with a bunch of little shop and stores. There are very few chains to be seen, and those that do exist are dead compared to the locals. Speak to any residents and they support a buy and support local mentality. They will openly tell visitors to stay away from chains and support local. Because everyone practices this, the chains simply don't make enough revenue and they move back out. A person is useless to effect change, but large groups can shift policies and procedures however they see fit. If the country as a whole said we want no more pollution then they could act on it and make the change happen, and make it happen really quickly. But the vast majority simply don't care, it goes back to the short vs. long term. Many of us simply won;t be around when the really negative long term effects happen, so why worry about it.

Jeff said:

I always take issue with this, because...

"believe that's a good system, broken as it is..."
"Government does a pretty good job..."
"It used to do a pretty good job..."
"It should also be able to provide..."

Yeah, that's a ringing endorsement.

"Broken," "pretty good," "used to do a pretty good job" and "should be able to provide" are the examples given.

You talked yourself right out of the sale.

Not at all... but the baby/bathwater argument is always a lazy way out. I mean seriously, we elected a game show host to the presidency. We have the government we deserve right now. That doesn't mean the institution is the problem. And I know it's possible to have "good" government, because I've been a part of it at the local and state level.

TheMillenniumRider said:
Let's remove all emotion and feeling from this situation and speak strictly objectively. Would the death of 2 million in this country have an effect? Yes, would it matter in the grand scheme of things? Probably not.

I'm not sure how this comes so easy for you or anyone when a bunch of those people will be people you care about, or you. And frankly, while people are being entitled assholes on the steps of various statehouses, complaining about government making choices for them, I don't want the opposite, "the people" deciding it's OK to expose my family to something that could kill them.

This is literally the worst time to be an ideologue.

Edit: Response to Lord 2 up^^

^It's sadly true though. The only silver lining to Trump's election I thought was. Well, he'll build us some cool sh-t. Trump's infrastructure promises had potential in that "well he's a builder, if there is one part of the job he can excel at."

I think of Eisenhower's interstate project often when moving around this country. Like "how the hell did we used to be able to accomplish stuff at that scope so quickly and large." It would never go through today. The government's hand infrastructure from the New Deal to post war was inspiring and I think ultimately successful by the level of authority.

I know there are many factors that contributed to the erosion of that power over time. Red tape bureaucracy all over. One could debate all day whether private or public sector holds the advantage. 20 years ago Roller coaster seemed to break ground in a single off season too, but now take a year and a half creeping into longer schedules for similar scale projects.

I would lean into the camp to think there's better success with functioning gov project management oversight then deregulation. Unfortunately it never happens anymore in the former category. Where are those infrastructure promises?

TheMillenniumRider said:

Absolutely, however, in the absence of a vaccine herd immunity will eventually be achieved anyways.

I can't tell if you're making a point or just playing semantics. I think we both understand what we're talking about here.

TheMillenniumRider said:

The church is a business just as much as the convenience store and the strip club.

I'll take this in the most generous way possible to mean, "an employer whose employees rely on it for livelihood" rather than "a for-profit enterprise designed to generate revenue out of customers." If you mean the second, I take issue with that.

TheMillenniumRider said:

Essential means different things to different people and is highly subjective, thus it is a poor way of going about this.

What's the alternative? Someone has to decide or you have to let each business decide (which really means, everything is open). Sure, it's not ideal and there's some arbitrariness, but do you have a proposal for a solution?

TheMillenniumRider said:

Let's remove all emotion and feeling from this situation and speak strictly objectively. Would the death of 2 million in this country have an effect? Yes, would it matter in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. The world has almost 8 billion, and yes death from other places, etc etc. However, the death rates are highly skewed toward the people who are very old. If they were to disappear you wouldn't lose highly active participants in the economy.

1) Working people are also dying and getting sick from the virus. It's not like having 1M working people sick (but not dead) at the same time is good for the economy.
2) Do old people not buy stuff? Are they not valuable to the economy? Who do you think is paying for all those cruises and trips to Disneyland?
3) You're basically asking me not to care about the potential death of my parents, in which case, what's the point of anything? Also, human life has value, even if it's humans I don't know or will never interact with. Humans have value beyond their potential economic contribution. That doesn't seem like a radical concept.

There are always reasons to be skeptical of any study or report. There is almost always some form of bias injected by the authors. I don't take anything I read or hear at face value. It rarely tells the whole story.

That is a completely different thing from "this peer review did a statistical analysis and demonstrated why, statistically, the results were open to skepticism." Unless your skepticism involved the words Poisson Distribution, you're not talking about the same thing.

This is one of the most frustrating things about this whole situation. Expertise exists and most of us don't have it. I'd rather trust the people who have literally spent their entire adult lives thinking about this, have studied it, modeled it, researched it, discussed it, presented and published on it, been peer reviewed on it, and refined their positions on it than some radio talk show host or my gut. Even if they have some biases, those biases are quickly revealed and challenged by the peer review process because there is a stated standard against which to measure things. Even if the peer review process is itself imperfect, it's a way better motivator than, "Say whatever gets the most clicks" which is the review process for cable news.

Kentucky Kingdom just posted they plan to open the beginning of June, tentatively, at least.

Cool considering Kentucky just had their largest single day spike in new cases...

ApolloAndy said:

I'll take this in the most generous way possible to mean, "an employer whose employees rely on it for livelihood" rather than "a for-profit enterprise designed to generate revenue out of customers." If you mean the second, I take issue with that.

The church is a non profit, however they still have a revenue stream and expenses. The product they provide is intangible, and people are not required to pay for it, but there is a certainly an income from the congregation and a product is still delivered. They spend most of the income on the people, and the community, but they also have payroll and build costs, construction etc. They operate exactly the same as any other business, their model is just different.

The point I was making earlier was not against the church, but rather if these other businesses are open why does the church have to stay closed?

ApolloAndy said:

What's the alternative? Someone has to decide or you have to let each business decide (which really means, everything is open). Sure, it's not ideal and there's some arbitrariness, but do you have a proposal for a solution?

I was talking to others and I was wondering, why not just resume everything as normal, but isolate and quarantine the most at risk population, mainly the elderly. For a healthy adult the risk of death from this disease really isn't much of a concern.

ApolloAndy said:

1) Working people are also dying and getting sick from the virus. It's not like having 1M working people sick (but not dead) at the same time is good for the economy.
2) Do old people not buy stuff? Are they not valuable to the economy? Who do you think is paying for all those cruises and trips to Disneyland?
3) You're basically asking me not to care about the potential death of my parents, in which case, what's the point of anything?

1. Having people sick isn't helpful no, but neither is shutting down large portions of the economy for months on end.

2. Old people buy stuff, yes, but old people don't produce much as in they don't go to work on a daily basis. Let's be brutally honest, if the old people have all this money holed up somewhere most of them are just going to pass it on to the next generation anyway who will spend it on something. Those who have no one to pass it onto probably aren't doing much of the spending anyway.

3. I'm not asking you to not care, I'm asking to you put it all aside for a moment and look at things without a bias towards subjective thoughts. It's all a hypothetical anyways, not like this is all happening because we came up with it on the rollercoaster site. My point is that we try to say that these deaths would kill the economy or have some major impact but in this day and age there is certainly someone who can replace us in all aspects except for one area. The only gap that isn't easily replaceable is the family life. So rather than say we need to save lives for the grater good of the economy, let's just speak the truth and say we are putting our family members above all else, and so we are shutting down the country. At least we wouldn't be lying about it.

ApolloAndy said:

That is a completely different thing from "this peer review did a statistical analysis and demonstrated why, statistically, the results were open to skepticism." Unless your skepticism involved the words Poisson Distribution, you're not talking about the same thing.

This is one of the most frustrating things about this whole situation. Expertise exists and most of us don't have it. I'd rather trust the people who have literally spent their entire adult lives thinking about this, have studied it, modeled it, researched it, discussed it, presented and published on it, been peer reviewed on it, and refined their positions on it than some radio talk show host or my gut. Even if they have some biases, those biases are quickly revealed and challenged by the peer review process because there is a stated standard against which to measure things. Even if the peer review process is itself imperfect, it's a way better motivator than, "Say whatever gets the most clicks" which is the review process for cable news.

I would love to trust some expert somewhere, but the reality is that experts are not much better at this stuff than you or I. They are experts either due to past experience or having studied their fields, etc. The problem is that no one has past experience on how to handle this situation, nor does anyone have the background necessary to handle this situation. Experts are just making educated guesses. The chairman of IBM once thought no one would want a home computer, the executive producer of 20th century fox thought the TV would never gain traction in the home, Einstein said nuclear power wasn't possible, doctors used to recommend cigarettes.

My point is experts get it wrong quite often, they change their predictions, they learn from the past and they use that information to try and make better decisions going forward. Unless the situation at hand is clear cut and there is past precedent on how to handle it everyone is just guessing.

How many scientists, doctors, and various other experts are on some company's payroll, how many of them obscure the facts and try to sway opinions to get paid a few extra bucks. It happens all of the time, hence why I do not just blindly accept what they say.

TheMillenniumRider said:
My point is experts get it wrong quite often, they change their predictions, they learn from the past and they use that information to try and make better decisions going forward.

But this isn't what you're suggesting at all. Experts give you data and reasoning and conclusions derived from the data and reasoning, and you're content to say, "Sometimes they're wrong, so whatever." You're embracing willful ignorance and rejecting the entire reason for having experts. Do you go to a doctor and say, "Well, sometimes they get it wrong, so I'm not going to take that medication or have that procedure?" Do you have a CPA do your taxes and say, "Well, I'm not gonna pay those taxes, because sometimes they get it wrong?"

The CPA doesn't get it wrong until they deviate from GAAP. They have a plethora of information and knowledge built up for how to do it right. The doctors don't get it wrong when they have knowledge to draw off about similar cases. However when faced with something new and outside of the box, it often takes teams of doctors to hone in on the proper treatments. They are also pretty good at cutting off the wrong limbs during surgery, so there's that too.

For most people they like to believe that the experts are there who know how to handle things. They want to find some person or being that will provide them a security blanket in case their life goes awry. People search and search for a handle on situations. People don't want to accept the fact that we are simply not in control of everything and things will happen and continue to happen that will alter our lives.

Jeff said:
Do you go to a doctor and say, "Well, sometimes they get it wrong, so I'm not going to take that medication or have that procedure?"

For the record, I have absolutely done this. I've also switched doctors because I didn't like what their approach was...so I found a different expert to get another opinion.

I prefer results to credentials.

If the weird homeless guy down the street can prove he's cured cancer repeatedly, his lack of a PhD isn't going to be a problem. 😉

TheMillenniumRider said:

I was talking to others and I was wondering, why not just resume everything as normal, but isolate and quarantine the most at risk population, mainly the elderly. For a healthy adult the risk of death from this disease really isn't much of a concern.

Quarantining the elderly is not a thing, though. The elderly need to interact with people. They need grocery store clerks, they need delivery people, they need plumbers and electricians and cable guys, they need physical therapy nurses and medical nurses, they need their children, etc. etc. etc. If those people are getting it, then the elderly are getting it.

TheMillenniumRider said:

3. I'm not asking you to not care, I'm asking to you put it all aside for a moment and look at things without a bias towards subjective thoughts. It's all a hypothetical anyways, not like this is all happening because we came up with it on the rollercoaster site. My point is that we try to say that these deaths would kill the economy or have some major impact but in this day and age there is certainly someone who can replace us in all aspects except for one area. The only gap that isn't easily replaceable is the family life. So rather than say we need to save lives for the grater good of the economy, let's just speak the truth and say we are putting our family members above all else, and so we are shutting down the country. At least we wouldn't be lying about it.

That's not what I'm saying at all. There is strong evidence that the economy will suffer materially (in dollars), aside from the obvious irreplaceable family aspect, if millions of people are getting sick at the same time. I'd cite some experts, but apparently that doesn't really count because it goes against your position.

I would love to trust some expert somewhere, but the reality is that experts are not much better at this stuff than you or I. They are experts either due to past experience or having studied their fields, etc. The problem is that no one has past experience on how to handle this situation, nor does anyone have the background necessary to handle this situation. Experts are just making educated guesses. The chairman of IBM once thought no one would want a home computer, the executive producer of 20th century fox thought the TV would never gain traction in the home, Einstein said nuclear power wasn't possible, doctors used to recommend cigarettes.

My point is experts get it wrong quite often, they change their predictions, they learn from the past and they use that information to try and make better decisions going forward. Unless the situation at hand is clear cut and there is past precedent on how to handle it everyone is just guessing.

How many scientists, doctors, and various other experts are on some company's payroll, how many of them obscure the facts and try to sway opinions to get paid a few extra bucks. It happens all of the time, hence why I do not just blindly accept what they say.

The IBM and TV examples are not what I'm talking about. Nor even is the Einstein. None of those are peer reviewed, scientific, conclusions. The cigarette thing is probably true, I haven't looked into it. But experts aren't guessing in the way you and I are guessing. We read three articles and maybe sort of give different amounts of weight to one or the other for some completely irrational reason. Maybe we have a tiny bit of understanding from the 8 articles we read last week and some high school math. They are doing huge amounts of math based on huge amounts of experience, study, and research. They're going and looking at all the statistics from the last 20 major outbreaks, trying to analyze statistically the commonalities and differences, sussing out the variables and predicting what matters and what doesn't. Sure, it's completely uncharted territory, but it's going to be a hell of lot more accurate than what you can I can do with none of those tools. Did you even read the rebuttal? I hate to pull this card, but I have a Masters in Engineering from MIT and I barely understood 1/2 of that article (I barely remember learning what a Poisson Distribution was at some point). Like, I don't know how any of us (maybe RideMan, I dunno) can gauge the reliability of anything these people are saying.

It's SO absurd to say, peer reviewed, scientific conclusions are occasionally wrong and therefore my gut is equal to decades of study, training, and experience. I don't remember who said it, but WAY earlier in this thread someone said "the laws of physics are changing" to which I replied, "We haven't exactly figured out how to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity inside a black hole, therefore gravity is wrong." That's basically what you're saying here.