Comment by doctorpangloss
10 hours ago
Does the IFR matter? The public thinks lives are infinitely valuable. Lives that the public pays attention to. 0.1% or 1%, it doesn’t really matter, right, it gets multiplied by infinity in an ROI calculation. Or whatever so called “objective” criteria people try to concoct for policymaking. I like Ioannidis’s work, and his results about serotypes (or whatever) were good, but it was being co-opted to make a mostly political policy (some Republicans: compulsory public interaction during a pandemic and uncharitably, compulsory transmission of a disease) look “objective.”
I don’t think the general idea of co-opting is hard to understand, it’s quite easy to understand. But there is a certain personality type, common among people who earn a living by telling Claude what to do, out there with a defect to have to “prove” people on the Internet “wrong,” and these people are constantly, blithely mobilized to further someone’s political cause who truly doesn’t give a fuck about them. Ioannidis is such a personality type, and as you can see, a victim.
> The public thinks lives are infinitely valuable.
In rhetoric, yes. (At least, except when people are given the opportunity to appear virtuous by claiming that they would sacrifice themselves for others.)
In actions and revealed preferences, not so much.
It would be rather difficult to be a functional human being if one took that principle completely seriously, to its logical conclusion.
I can't recall ever hearing any calls for compulsory public interaction, only calls to stop forbidding various forms of public interaction.
The SHOW UP act was congressional republicans forcing the end of telework for federal workers, not for any rational basis. Teachers in Texas and Florida, where Republicans run things, staff were faced with show up in person (no remote learning) or quit.