CharonY

Unless, of course it turns out that we actually to develop new ways to deal with resistant bacteria and/or they become resistant against the new weapons, too. Often it is not about having better and newer tools, but how prudent we are in their use. And unfortunately our track record is not that great.

Time to let out the chicken and ducks. And potentially opossums? But seriously though, tick-borne diseases are likely to become an increasing problem with potentially very serious consequences.

A part of the issue is that folks thinking that they are in the right tend to make intellectual shortcuts. In the early 2000s I was somewhat interested in various atheist movements, in part because I was worried about rising anti-intellectualism and creationism. But apparently once enough folks gather things go quickly to a self-congratulating group of folks who cannot stop emphasizing how rational and therefore superior they are (without actually putting in the work). There were plenty of folks, including academics who did a great job in outreach and educating. But some of their followers were sketchy and did not put in the intellectual work before succumbing to insufferable smugness (the result being attitudes that are way closer to religious organizations than folks would admit) .

! Moderator Note Merged similar topics.

It is not that bad (yet). In phase III a lot of folks are treated so it increases the risk that someone has an adverse reaction which might or might not be related to the treatment (e.g. an undiagnosed diseases). However as part of phaseIII it is necessary to make sure that they are indeed unrelated to the vaccine before they can continue.

The issue with a wildly speculative mind is that basically everything will reinforce the assumptions. This is how conspiracy theories thrive, evidence against it are evidence of the conspiracy itself and evidence for it is self-evident. The speculations are untethered from fact and reality which basically makes it impossible to address it.

On the other hand, giving them a platform legitimizes them. Lose-lose.

There are a lot of good articles about that. Essentially it is a social media phenomenon that started on 4chan. An overview without paywall is here, for example. I try very hard not to read the actual content of these conspiracy, I fear for my neurons.

There are also structural differences- there was a prominent case in the US when a police officer tried to talk down an suicidal person who was carrying a gun (but without ammunition). Other officers ultimately shot the man but the office who tried to de-escalate was branded a coward and ultimately terminated.

I think that is an important distinction. From what I have seen armed police in the UK usually engage in situations which go beyond situations where deadly force by police are considered justified in the US. There appears a large gap between what is considered a threat in the UK vs in NA.

I think it is a very good model and evidence suggest that, too. Some of the issues is that the departments and their leadership are too entrenched into their ways and often trying to change it is difficult to impossible. Also trying to change a mindset of folks who are used to an adversarial mindset to do proper community policing is also somewhat unlikely. Studies suggest that one of the impediment is resisting police culture. Sometimes it is necessary to change the whole thing and often the change has to come from the outside.

No, you are reading too much into semantics. You could instead they they were designed as such. Which means that their internal mechanisms reflect their purpose. It is not that the police works in an innocent vacuum and are only doing someones bidding. And I think this is where the our differences in view appear. You seem to think of the police force as something is something reactive, and if things go wrong it is due to failures of a few individuals on either side of the matter. This view does not acknowledge systemic issues within the system were a combination of police, lawmakers and of course big swathes of the populations itself have created a system where deadly force by the police and especially against certain groups (outcasts of society, poor folks, and minorities) are kind of accepted targets. Again, while in other countries the police may not be perfect and have other issues, they lack certain elements that are apparently part of the North American system, which leads to rather dramatic differences in outcome. Or in short, the difference between systemic issues of the system vs individual responsibility. I should probably add that in recent times there are police agencies actively trying to change, including changing accountability rules. The Camden police department was one of the models where the whole department was disbanded, due to corruption, accusations of police planting evidence, and a deluge of complaints. At the same time Camden saw huge crime rates. Crimes went uderreported as the the black residents were afraid of the police. After disbanding the whole police force and building it from the ground up and starting a community-oriented policing, crime rates dropped, they hired more black officers (as Camden was a mostly black community) and so on. So here a radical rebuild was an effective measure to root out the system that has been set up in the former Camden police force.

Here is the thing, you have to wonder why. And the reason as has pointed out is that historically the police has been used to subjugate certain groups. It is small wonder that these groups do not accept them as valid authorities. It is not a problem just now. It is only that now finally white folks are also starting to understand the issue on a broader scale than it used to be. You cannot just look at the point of impact and decide whether the process works. You have to look at the whole mechanism and figure out why the observed impact happened in the first place. Because if you don't all you are going to conclude is that the plane was too fast and the ground too solid.

Perhaps, but not for market. It is special approval track (from what I understand) for emergency military use with a time limitation.

Actually basically all are going through the phases (but accelerated) and at least AFAIK I have not seen anyone beside Russia registering a vaccine before phase 3 data have been published. In fact, even the Phase 1 and 2 data has not been published, which is especially worrying as they did a combined Phase 1 and 2 trial with only 38 volunteers. That is roughly the scope of Phase 1 from virtually all other developers. They now have declared that they want to start Phase 3, but again with much fewer folks than the other trials. As a whole, I would not put a lot of money into this particular vaccine (after all, they manufacturer apparently did not, either).

That is a salient question. Too often it is pointed out that someone did something that prompted to police to a presumably justified shooting. However, especially as someone who grew up with a different type police, I have to wonder what are the steps leading up to the fatal interaction, and why does it not happen that often in most European countries? Why is an interaction with a drunk and belligerent more likely to end in death in the US (or Canada, for that matter). One part could be police training, but is it really all? I found it befuddling when talking to my US colleagues and friends that they think that if you do not immediately follow police orders or if you startle them somehow, you risk being shot. And again, for someone growing up elsewhere this is just mind boggling.

It think the basic issue for the lengthy argument that leads nowhere is that the assumption being made (more police interactions automatically lead to more negative interactions) fails to address the second dimension of the quality of interactions. If you reduce the likelihood of a negative outcome per interaction, you can obviously increase the number of interactions without also increasing the number of negative interactions. A simple example is looking at other countries where police shootings are extraordinary rare events. They reduce their issues not by having a smaller police force (in fact in many cases they are on average larger than the US) but by having a different system of policing. I suspect if that is not being acknowledged, we will go another round of identical arguments for a couple more pages.

This is not exclusively matter of number of police, but type of policing. What you describe is typically known community policing. Unfortunately especially large police forces tend to forego it in favour of hard responses (certain narcotics and anti-gang groups are notorious for that). That being said, it is true that effective community policing often requires more manpower. But again, the important bit is to change the approach. In fact, studies have shown that increase in police force has to be balanced with policies. In areas where e.g. things like stop and frisk events increased due to increased police presence, there was no benefit in terms of crime reduction, but there was an increase in complaints and violent incidents. So having more force on the beat and building community connections is indeed a good way to reduce crime as well as complaints, but it has to be part of a larger package. In other words, it would make sense to defund the areas dedicated to the most aggressive measures (say, military equipment, heavily armed plainsclothes units and so on) in favour of hiring folks that get to know the folks that they are policing.

The reporting system is to me a stronger indicator of organized central responses are going to be. There are countries with similar challenges (though being way smaller) which have been more successful than others. In most cases a strong coordinated response was the reason. Case in point, we got a rich, well-educated country high standard of living and much fewer issues with sanitation. But the response was half-hearted, to say the least.

Most likely. In a country of that size implementing effective containment is difficult. However, surprisingly China had a decent success to keep it contained, (even if they do underreport). But I do not understand the Indian system well enough to comment. The little what I heard is that their reporting system is mostly inadequate, which does not bode well.

Here is an interesting paper examining responses to COVId-19. It focuses on Europe but it highlights how important coordinated efforts are:

Just a guess, but maybe you cannot drive to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and/or Alaska? The latter being loophole that Canada tries to patch as folks do not want diseased folks from the South. Which, btw., is fricken ironic.

Do you mean in direct competition or overall efficiencies when comparing to a large state? What Canada has also done is trying to create a better supply chain for PPEs but also chemicals for required for testing. While Canada tried to help provincial labs and other test labs to get needed stocks (including asking research labs for unused chemicals at the beginning of the pandemic) in the US each state needed to secure their own supply and outbid each other, as well as the feds, which also outbid several states in the process. So even with California's buying power it meant that prices went up and on top, the fact that it is harder to secure a supply chain, it also meant that they needed to stockpile more, and thereby creating more scarcity.

And it should be added that in Canada feds heavily supported provincial responses, e.g. by negotiating and buying PPE in bulk on their behalf. Meanwhile, in the US the feds made the states outbid each other for PPE access and helped private contractors to enrich themselves in the process.

According to an article (in Vanity Fair of all places), the bumbling response in the US was not only sheer incompetence on the top, but also strategic: So far COVID-19 has killed over 155,000 people. In comparison, flu killed an estimated 24-62k throughout the 19/20 season (in addition, of course). And the deaths are trending upwards. Edit: and on top the WH decided not to have the CDC collect and publish COVID-19 data but rather now want to do it themselves. Certainly nothing shady going on here.