Doug Morris

If the organization is a nonprofit, it might be different. Long-term considerations can also affect current stock price, as I explained above.

The long-term investment may also be of value to organizations that have longer life expectancies than individual people.

I've heard a distinction drawn between infinite and unlimited. Is this in Aristotle?

There are evil people and misguided people on both sides of every issue. They all tend to push us into some form of mysticism, altruism, collectivism, and statism. In order to decide issues rationally we must get past them. Again you ignore my key point, which I have repeatedly stated. Two wrongs do not make a right. The existence of 'group rights' thinking (and the subsequent controls) does not justify violating people's rights to freedom of movement, production, and trade. However, it might be appropriate to require that people pay taxes in this country for a certain period of time and/or up to a certain amount before they can benefit from such things as welfare and affirmative action.

None of what your latest video says is relevant to my key point, although it might be relevant to exactly how we implement it. Yet again, my key point is that refusal to mask or to vaccinate increases the risk of spreading disease, and that this may rise to physical force. To clarify my position on some of the points raised in the video: I disapprove of demonizing people for not getting vaccinated. I disapprove of anyone on any side of any issue letting their emotions do their thinking for them. I am well aware that our society has many problems that trace back to bad philosophy leading people astray. I am well aware that government does a lot of things it shouldn't do. One example of egregious bad government action is the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, which contributed greatly to mistrust of both government and healthcare, especially among blacks. Another example of egregious bad government action is restricting immigration, which is a violation of rights with many destructive consequences. One of these consequences is forcing some people into a legal limbo which makes many things wrongfully difficult. Perhaps not quite as egregious, but definitely a wrongful government action which makes possible many kinds of abuse, is setting up social security numbers and effectively forcing people to use them as a universal identifier.

The article headline focuses on "Kilian estimated that 80 percent of the patients she saw in the ER during the past month who had inexplicable symptoms were 'double vaxxed.'" But there's no way to know what to make of this without knowing what percent of all the patients she had seen in the ER during the past month were 'double vaxxed.'

This would be true of Objectivists but probably not of everybody.

Our disagreement about this incident comes from the disagreement we have been having throughout this thread. Must I say it yet again?

The side that thinks that vaccines should be required to at least some extent in at least some cases and the side that thinks they should never be required. Some people might want to draw the line differently; perhaps it would be better to say that there are more than two sides.

This man is greatly exaggerating. We need to be rational about exactly what restrictions to impose. It doesn't help any that there is a lot of irrationality on both sides.

Again, you completely ignore my key point, that unnecessarily increasing the risk of spreading disease can rise to physical force. Punishing a person for murder, rape, arson, or robbery is not in any way collectivism. It is recognizing that person as an individual who has committed a crime. Likewise, punishing a person for reckless driving or reckless use of a gun is not in any way collectivism. It is recognizing that person as an individual who has recklessly placed others in physical danger. I am saying that refusal to mask or to vaccinate may, at least in some cases, be analogous to reckless driving or reckless use of a gun. You are saying that it is always more analogous to refusal to take vitamins, which of course would be within a person's rights. This is what we are disagreeing about. When you write as though we were disagreeing about something else, and when you make wildly false accusations about what I am saying, you are throwing up a smokescreen that makes rational discussion more difficult.

They have almost certainly greatly reduced the number of hospitalizations, deaths, and long term effects. They would have been even more effective if it were really true that they had been "put up by most everyone". Identifying increases in risk does not require identifying particular instances of transmission. We need to be rational about where to draw the line.

Anyone who chooses to deliberately infect themselves with COVID-19, ebola, typhoid, or any other disease should be permitted to do so, but should be required to quarantine themselves. Anyone who messes themselves up with heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, LSD, or any other drug should be permitted to do so, but should be held responsible for any crimes they commit under the influence or to finance their drug use. Anyone who spends their money recklessly should be permitted to do so, but the government should not bail them out. You completely ignore my key point, that unnecessarily increasing the risk of spreading disease can rise to physical force.

I do not seriously consider your suggestion. Nor do I consider your suggestion to be serious. All I said was Note not as. In other words, it is still excessive. Although that is a true point, I was satirizing you when I made it. Both those ideas are evil, and I do not accept or condone either one, nor do I encourage or condone anyone else doing so. Apartheid imposed by government is utterly vile. Apartheid achieved by any means is an example of collectivism, which is evil. Being black, or being of any particular race, color, ancestry. ethnicity, or physiology, is utterly different from a voluntarily chosen action or inaction. Before anyone smears me, there are also great differences among voluntary choices. I don't want anyone to feel rancor or to hate anyone.

At least it's not as excessive as some of Craig24's suggestions. What if a few of the bullets are armor-piercing? What if some of them hit people in the brain? We need to distinguish between evaluating measures or policies and evaluating some of the people who are for or against them.

I'm not 100% certain that COVID-19 is serious enough to warrant a legal penalty for not vaccinating. Your last two examples are ridiculously excessive. Some of the others are, or should be, matters for the private owners of organizations and facilities, not for the government.

No, I am saying that it is initiation of force to unnecessarily increase the risk of spread of disease.

Testing is not infallible and does not tell you what happened since the test. Masking and distancing help, but still leave some danger of infection. Some people refuse to mask.

Someone who recklessly fires a gun without knowing whether it is loaded with blanks or live rounds is endangering people in way that constitutes physical force.

But we must refrain from unnecessarily endangering others. Not entirely true. The spread can be limited. Part of the problem was that there was politically motivated resistance to even reasonable control measures. People misguidedly thought they were fighting for freedom by refusing to take any control measures at all, a very destructive confusion.

If the projections used by the Economist study overestimated deaths without COVID-19, then they underestimated the number of deaths caused by COVID-19. The effect of COVID-19 would then be even worse than they said. This distinction ignores how individual choices can increase the risk of spreading the disease.

What are your grounds for this? Did you even read the article? Were you fooled because the link said "45" for 4.5? This actually describes the same Economist article I talked about.

Welcome.

It is possible to estimate excess deaths by simply counting deaths regardless of cause and comparing actual deaths with a projection based on past data. This avoids the problems you described. It estimates total deaths caused one way or another by COVID-19, including COVID-19 deaths not recognized as such and side-effect deaths such as deaths due to overloading the healthcare system. The Economist published an article today using this method. It found a 95% confidence interval of between 9.7 million and 18.4 million deaths caused one way or another by COVID-19, with a best estimate of 15.7 million.

Where did you get this?