Puerto Rico is closing businesses and imposing curfew because of a "rise in cases"
What they don't mention: testing is up 40x
But hospitalizations are up!
Yes. All the way to 5% of hospital capacity.
On the entire island of three million, there is a single child in ICU with COVID-19
Keep in mind this is an island whose local pastime is driving blind drunk along vertiginous mountain passes to get from one chinchorreo stand to the next
I'm really getting mixed messages about risk tolerance
What nobody can say publicly is that the Testing Blitz was a reaction to astonishing acts of violence and lewdness by tourists
The locals got angry, it was a public scandal, and since cracking down on tourists would be "unwoke", they ran the Covid Crackdown play to appear strong
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@rocket_jenross@Benshooter@wolfejosh 1\ Even if you deny the existence of objective morality or a creator, pragmatism still demands a delineation of rights that leads to the best outcomes in the world we inhabit
A libertarian, "negative rights" approach argues that sovereignty of one's body and property is best...
@rocket_jenross@Benshooter@wolfejosh 2\ Locke got there a bit mystically, Rothbard a bit speciously, Hayek and Friedman (Jr.) with arguments about how benefits and costs must be vested in the individual to allow economically efficient outcomes
@rocket_jenross@Benshooter@wolfejosh 3\ For me it comes down to the practical consideration that positive rights are incompatible with negative rights, so if you want to avoid the coercion that so often leads to tyranny, you have to pare rights down to a minimal set
1\ Ok, I have to do a thread on vaccine distribution, because it is just so insane
As everyone knows by now, governments around the world are paralyzed by vaccine logistics
Who should get it? In what order?
Does age trump race? Does profession trump health?
2\ What is enabling this political paralysis is the illusion, universally held by Very Decent People, that if we don't distribute in accordance with Equity (undefined bullshit word), then various needy people will be Priced Out, and Inequality Will Increase!
3\ Now, let's take a giant step back
This vaccine costs somewhere between $3 & $40 per dose
NOBODY in the US for whom COVID is an existential thread cannot afford this
The average welfare recipient's cable bill is 2x the cost of this vaccine
1\ Rumors of overwhelmed hospitals have become so lurid in South Africa that a chain of urgent care centers had to put out a press release denying the rumors