- My birthday
I officially became old UK pensionable age today at age 65. Nothing eventful. I have a slight creak (hernia, to be operated on once Mary is better), but other than that, my body seems to be in good shape. We live in interesting times, I am not so much worried about myself as I am worried about the robber baron fascist scumbags totally taking over the USA and the UK. The electorates in both countries have, in aggregate, been foolish enough to vote for authoritarian scumbags, and it may or may not be too late to turn that back.
2. Covid-19
The published number of new cases in Dallas County late yesterday is BAD. A new bad record.
3. The Pandemic Insurance market that never took off
This is an interesting article about an attempt, starting some time ago, to seed a general insurance market for Pandemic protection insurance. It never took off, because the potential buyers failed to take the impact of a pandemic seriously enough to be prepared to pay premiums up front. Today, it would be different, but because of the infrequent and huge payouts involved in this type of insurance, up-front payments for years are needed for insurers to have enough reserves to actually pay any resulting claims. It’s not motor insurance.
4. Pandemic mask wearing and logical fallacies
There are any number of people who are behaving like privileged asshats, laboring under the delusion that (a) not wearing a mask in public is a good idea, (b) that they somehow have this magical “freedom” to do whatever they like. This leads to all manner of expansive and bullshit claims being made when organizations mandate mask wearing. The Google School Of Law has never been busier.
“I refuse to wear a mask” justifiers are tying themselves into knots over the issue. This person hit a perfect twofer for logical fallacies in their attempt to argue that they should not have to wear a mask:
The CO2 poisoning would be news to all of the doctors and nurses who have been laboring for hours at a time for decades in hospitals wearing face masks. So I definitely detect the fragrant odor of caca on that excuse.
But notice how he tries logical fallacy #1 – Moving The Goalposts, by swiftly shifting to complaining that masks are never 100% effective anyway.
He walks right into logical fallacy #2 – Fallacy of Binary Thinking instead. No, you fool, a mask is not 100% effective. but then nobody with any pretence to smarts claimed that it is 100% effective.
To use an analogy, seatbelts are not 100% effective at stopping people from being killed or injured in road accidents. but they are mandatory, and most people accept that they are not 100% effective. However, you will notice that there is a small subset of the population who are hostile to wearing them, on the same damn grounds that people are trying to refuse to wear masks – they are not always effective, and Mah Freedoms.
However, the analogy, while useful, is not a match. The difference between a person who refuses to wear a seatbelt and who dies or is injured in a road accident is that they only harmed themselves. Not wearing a mask not only increases a person’s chances of contracting Covid, it also increases the chance that they will aerosolize the air around them with virus, which may increase the chance of others contracting the virus.
Unfortunately, pseudo-libertarians and retarded adolescents (who are often the same group) keep trying these “mah freedoms!” arguments. They are never cogent or useful, but they keep trying.
