James Spader
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Dome will be rocking!!!
COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US) (3 Viewers)
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James Spader
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I have done more backyard play/garden time with my daughter and have been buying more oranges, even taking Vit C supplement.
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Same here. Although I’m onto grapefruit as my orange trees are done for the season and my grapefruit is just getting good.
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I've always been meh on Vitamin D. Maybe one of the doctors can explain it. I have a hard time unpacking the Vitamin alone compared to the idea that folks who spend a lot of time outside are probably healthier in general. i.e. you'd see a correlation with high Vitamin D and low weight, lower cholesterol, cardio fitness, etc.
Just a guess though, so I'll gladly be proven wrong.
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And, I share that distrust of government and belief in rugged individualism and it makes me uncomfortable to give out information like that when I know that the government will have easy access to it., but I also recognize that there are times when small "sacrifices" need to be made for the benefit of society as a whole. And, in the case of contact tracing, for my own benefit as well. I mean, if we are going to open up the economy, certain "sacrifices" are going to need to be made to do that. Some people will be sacrificing their lives so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to write a name and phone number down when they decide to have a meal with service at a restaurant. In that light, my discomfort with giving private information to a third party that might give it to the government doesn't really seem all that important.
And, it completely complies with the balancing test that SCOTUS has established over hundreds of years of jurisprudence. The fact is that rights will be limited in some ways by almost any government act. The question then becomes how important/fundamental is that right and how narrowly tailored and reasonable is the thing that is being done to violate that right. In this instance, I see the violation as very, very minor and the method to be pretty narrowly tailored for a very important purpose - contact tracing. It's not like they are even checking ID's to get the info. They don't even get it unless their if someone there tests positive. They aren't collecting all of these logs.
We have allowed many other violations of what I think are much more important individual rights to happen for must less compelling reasons.
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I take a vitamin D supplement too. I think it's mostly because I had high cholesterol that caused a blockage when I was 37 and there are studies that show that heart issues are somehow linked to Vitamin D deficiency. I tend to agree that it could just be correlation and not causation, but it doesn't cost much so I figure it's worth not taking the chance.
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We went to Walmart today and it has been a week or two since the last time. About 75% of the people plus all of the employees had masks as well as us. The ones that did not were mostly families (with screaming kids) and there were a few older people in the motorized carts. One family (3 adults & 3 preteen kids) who did not wear masks blocked the entrance to spray down the carts.
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I continue to go to Wal-Mart and Harris Teeter down the road, about twice a week. I'm in eastern NC.
At Harris Teeter, the mask participation rate for customers is about 40%, staff about 80%. At Wal-Mart the mask participation rate for staff is very high and the store is taking a lot of precautions including aisle flow indicators to minimize people passing each other.
But as far as the customers go, the mask participation at Wal-Mart is definitely no more than 1 in 5 (20%) and probably half of that. And very people follow the aisle flow indicators.
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Basically, Vitamin D regulates the immune system as I understand it. It basically keeps it in tune and more responsive to beginning infections. So basically it increases recognition of a pathogen and jumps on it faster if you have a good level of vitamin D in your system. If you don’t, then the immune system is slower to react and doesn’t react as well allowing the pathogen to multiply freely as the immune system slowly gets around to fighting the disease.
So by following this logic, as I understand it, is that I’d say Covid gets into your system, it starts to multiply. As there is no memory on how to fight this disease, the body has to start from scratch. Higher vitamin D will allow the immune system a quicker start to doing this and a quicker response once it figures it out. Someone lower in Vitamin D will allow Covid to continue to multiply and the infection to build up as the immune system trails behind.
Now I’m sure someone with more background can get much more into it, but that’s basically how it works.
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This is basically where I'm at. I think it's reasonable to be worried about government overreach and worrying about slippery slopes and all that. But it's also reasonable to allow the government to coordinate what must be a community response. The simple way to balance this is to set up a Schelling fence ahead of time to prevent things from going down a path that at this moment seems terrible but might be made possible by incremental changes that make this end result more possible at some future point.
I've been itching to drop in a murder Ghandi reference for some time now, and now's my chance. I'm taking it from here (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-fences-on-slippery-slopes). It's from a blog that I think you'd enjoy, it has some strong libertarian influences (one of the main contributors also runs this blog (https://slatestarcodex.com/)).
Anyway, the legend of murder Ghandi goes like this. Let's say Ghandi is the ultimate non-violent pacifist. As such, if you were to offer him a pill that would turn him into a murdering psychopath, he'd obviously refuse. Even if you offered him a million dollars. But let's say that you could offer him a pill that would make him 1% less likely to be a complete non-violent pacifist for a million dollars. 99% Ghandi is still pretty good and really unlikely to kill anyone, and now he'd have a million dollars to do more good. If you're a utilitarian, it makes sense for Ghandi to take the pill and the million dollars. Now lets say you make the offer again -- you're now dealing with 99% good Ghandi, he's slightly less abhorrent to murder than 100% Ghandi was. He's more likely to take the pill and the million dollars -- after all 98% Ghandi is still really good. And you can do this all the way down until you have Ghandi rampaging through the streets. However, if let's say Ghandi was able to think about this ahead of time and decide that 95% of his peak goodness he's pretty comfortable at his moral fiber. He can set up a Schelling fence at that point and not go beyond it.
We can do this with pretty much any policy we're worried about creating a slippery slope.
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Very interesting. And I tend to think that is what SCOTUS has done with the balancing tests it uses for violations of rights. They set up a Scheilling fence in the form of tests that allow violations under a test of compelling state interest, reasonable state interest, and any state interest based on the importance of the right being violated. I don't always agree with how they apply those tests or what they count as a more important right than others, but it is a system to create that Schelling fence, as imperfect as it may be.
On a more broad point, I tend to think humans are totally self-interested by nature and evolution, but I also think that we can at least push them towards acting with rational self-interest. By that, I mean get them to realize that sometimes a small sacrifice for the greater good of society is actually in their own self interest because they will live in a better society. For example, you want to pay taxes for good public education, a good social safety net, etc. because that will make the world around you better with less crime and more educated and less desperate people.
In this instance, you want to give your name and phone number because it stops the virus from spreading again which could either lead to you and/or your family getting the virus, or you being unable to get the food, medical, and other resources necessary for you to live.
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To get to that point of rational behavior, they have to accept the underlying premise(s). Here, a significant percentage thinks the virus is being substantially "over-hyped" and that even getting infected is likely to be little more than an inconvenience. I think a majority are serious about about, but it isn't a big majority.
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