The thing about Michael Fine is that he’s a socialist.
Interestingly, Dr. Michael Fine is against non-vaccination shaming, mainly because he isn’t very confident in the vaccines we have against COVID. One gets the impression, however, that he makes that concession in order to promote his real goal:
If everyone stops going to bars and restaurants TODAY, and stops shopping TODAY, we’ll see a drop in community transmission in about ten days, or two to three generations of spread. The load on hospitals and other health care folks will start to drop in about two weeks.
… we can just stay home for a bit, take the responsibility for public health back from a government that puts business and commerce before human lives, and, in doing so, rebuild our democracy just a little, doing for others what we would want others do for us.
He doesn’t explain how destroying our fellow citizens’ livelihoods furthers democracy. Some might think doing so will make more people dependent on the government that has so disappointed Dr. Fine.
It’s a strange ideology, socialism, desiring to consolidate power in a few as a first principle against all evidence of wisdom.
If you would like people to listen to you with sincerity and consider your point of view, you might consider taking the route of critical thinking and evidentiary arguments and resist ad hominem attacks that at the end of the day are empty and rather adolescent. I don’t know Dr. Fine personally, but I do know he is deeply respected by the scientific community and as a professor of critical thinking, the contrast between Dr. Fine’s meticulous (and impressively accurate) delivery of the evidence on the trajectory of this pandemic in RI is striking. Socialist or not, he happens to be correct. People will continue to shop and fly and feed the economy until what is happening to the airline industry is replicated in other sectors and your neighbors, and mine, will be forced to close because they will not have the staff or goods to operate. It is time for all of us to protect one another – in body, mind, and livelihood – and be grownups and stay home while the wave burns through and moves on. There is politics, opinion, denial, fear… and then there is science. Mother Nature can be a fickle @&$?!. The virus is doing its job thinning the population. We all need to do our job to stabilize the situation or this virus will just continue to evolve and your point will be moot. Stay safe and sane out there and for god’s sake; isn’t it time to set politics and school yard name calling aside and putt our energy into dealing with this emergency? It isn’t keeping any of us safer or making any of our businesses thrive.
You raise an interesting question: Is calling somebody a “socialist” an ad hominem attack? If it’s just a smear by way of getting people to ignore the substance of an argument, then probably. On the other hand, if the label describes a set of beliefs that bear on the argument on the table, then probably not.
Although posts in this “Ripples” category on the site are meant to be very quick, I think I stuck with the latter.
My core difference with your comment is that I don’t expect (and experience from the first attempt at lockdowns suggests) that it’s possible to lock down so thoroughly as to eradicate the virus. Much of the transmission last time was in the home, and then there’s the whole rest of the world to think about.
The virus will continue to evolve no matter what we do. The good news is that human beings are well equipped to win that race, although lockdowns could conceivably lead to a worse outcome… even as they destroy our economy and society.
As you may recall, Dr. Fine said explicitly that there will likely not be a lockdown, but a lock out due to staffing shortages and disruption to the supply chain. As a person who was scheduled to fly on Dec. 31 I can assure you that he was correct. Humans are nowhere as powerful as nature. Think 1918, HIV, Ebola, etc. Five million people are dead including amazing leaders like Colin Powell. A virus has a job to do- thin the population. It relies on species proximity and interaction to do it. Political affiliations have nothing to do with science. China is as far away from democratic ideal as it gets and they controlled the virus via lockdown to protect their economy. I teach college and I can assure you while remote learning was awful, face to face learning is just smoke and mirrors to collect tuition right now. It is impossible to teach with half the class, faculty, and staff always missing and testing just isn’t happening. I do believe in human rights, but am realistic about the fact that no country can shut down permanently. I understand that unfortunately nature has to do its thing to keep populations sustainable. But science is science. The death count and long COVID contradict your faith in human adaptability. They will cost us a fortune in medical expenses, logistics, and talent for years to come. For the fist time in a long time, there should be crystal clear agreement between the far left and far right from libertarianism to socialism. Stop this thing now by whatever means possible before it destroys families and businesses. Protect both. We all need to grow up and follow science and not politics. And it would serve us much better to cast an eye at long term… Read more »