Young was among them, according to the employee who pointed her out sitting in her car in the parking lot. She allegedly took bottles of alcohol without paying.
Getting drunk during pregnancy is how the “Greatest Generation” created the boomers.
I mean, the facts are pretty straightforward: she used a deadly weapon (a motor vehicle) to attack pedestrians (the officers).
Had she simply submitted to the initial arrest, she would have faced a fine and some community service. Shoplifters rarely face anything more serious than that. In an attempt to avoid those minimal consequences, she chose to escalate from a simple property crime to assault with a deadly weapon. The best she could hope for would have been a lengthy prison sentence.
No, the case is straightforward and boring. The only interesting factor I found in it was fetal alcohol syndrome.
Trust, but verify. I believed them when they said they had a video, and I believed them when they provided a written description of the video. They would look extraordinarily bad to be caught lying about something so easy to verify, so I saw little reason not to trust.
It fit the pattern: individual gets caught committing a minor criminal act, but rather than facing the music and accepting the slap on the wrist punishment, they instead choose to escalate to the point of endangering people, and then Pikachu-face when they get shot.
What does her race have to do with this case?
Did “being black” stop her from hearing or understanding the officer calmly ordering her to get out of the car? Did “being black” prevent her from seeing the other officer in front of her vehicle? Did “being black” force her to put the car in gear and depress the accelerator?
I’ll save my outrage for cases like Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, George Floyd, and other actual victims of police abuse. I have no sympathy for someone who would endanger lives to avoid facing minimal and deserved consequences for their own criminal actions.
I don’t think you understood my point. You seem to have missed an important difference in meaning between “verified” and “verifiable”.
“Three angels can dance on the head of a pin” is not a verifiable statement. It can’t be proven true or false. “There are three cats in this bag” is readily verifiable, even if that fact has not yet been verified.
Their claims were readily verifiable at the moment they made them; they were verified when the video was released.
Knowing that the police would want to paint themselves in as positive light as possible, and knowing how bad they would look in getting caught making so blatant a lie, trusting their statement was not unreasonable.
The evidence I had was the specific nature of their claim. They claimed they would be showing me a video of a woman driving a car at an officer. That is a verifiable claim: if the video eventually shows something else, everyone observing it will immediately know that the initial claim was a bald-faced lie.
Contrast with a non-verifiable claim, such as “the officer felt endangered”. That isn’t something that can be definitively proven. The officer may have felt endangered. The officer may have felt perfectly safe and is simply lying to portray themselves in a better light.
Where the only “proof” of their claim is the claim itself, and they have a motivation to lie about it, we cannot trust them to speak the truth. But, where the “proof” of their claim is an objectively verifiable fact that will soon come to light, there is little reason not to trust it: they would immediately destroy their credibility to lie about a verifiable fact.
The evidence I had was their readily verifiable claim. A specific, objective fact, easily demonstrated if true, and easily refuted if false. I trusted that they weren’t so fucking stupid as to lie about an objective fact. Turns out that they were, indeed, telling the truth in that specific case. That doesn’t mean they are telling the complete, unvarnished truth about everything. They could be lying about everything I can’t verify. But I don’t need their non-verifiable claims; the verifiable ones exonerate the officers.
Just out of cutiousity, who is telling you that the cops are always lying? Are you going to believe that person in the future, now that you have clear, compelling evidence that cops don’t always lie?
I believe police only where their claims are readily verifiable. When they tell me it’s 9:30AM, I’ll believe them. I’m still going to check my watch to verify their claim, and I’ll get plenty suspicious if and when their claim conflicts with the facts, but that didnt happen here.
When they tell me something that can’t be verified, I don’t trust it.
You have insinuated that my trust of police is unconditional; that is a lie. You have insinuated that my trust in police is racially motivated. That, too, is a lie. Both of those insinuations arise from your own assumptions, not from my statements, arguments, or reality.
I believe police only where their claims are readily verifiable.
I wait for proof because police are untrustworthy. It’s irresponsible to just take police at their word and use their justifications on the off chance that they haven’t covered their bodycam or “lost” the footage.
You have insinuated that my trust of police is unconditional; that is a lie. You have insinuated that my trust in police is racially motivated. That, too, is a lie.
I think you’re willing to believe the police when proof is not available, and that you’re willing to take at face value what a racist institution puts out there.
It’s irresponsible to just take police at their word and use their justifications on the off chance that they haven’t covered their bodycam or “lost” the footage.
There was no claim of lost footage. A claim of lost footage is not easily verifiable. Is the footage really lost? Or is it “conveniently” lost? There is room for them to tell a plausible lie: you and I can’t prove that the footage actually existed. It is possible that it never did, and it is possible that if it did, it was inadvertantly destroyed. It’s also possible that someone is lying their ass off to protect themselves, knowing we cannot positively verify the truth of their claim.
I would not trust a claim that is not verifiable, but they didn’t make a non-verifiable claim here. The claims they made were readily verifiable, even though they had not yet been verified.
If they had no intention of releasing it, the lie they would have told would have been that it didn’t exist, or was lost. I can’t conceive of a reason why they would say “we will release it at <time>” with the intention of being deceitful. That’s an easily verifiable claim: they either release it, or they don’t. There is no room for them to receive with that claim: they will be caught on such a deception in short order, and being caught in a blatant, overt lie is far more damaging to their credibility than a strong but unproven suspicion that they are lying.
Likewise with the content of the video. If they are going to release it, it doesn’t make any sense that they would tell a bald face lie about what we are going to see in it. Again, there is no room for them to deceive: they will be caught on such a deception in short order.
Neither of these claims had been verified, but the nature of both claims was easily verifiable. They aren’t going to deliberately destroy their credibility, so it is reasonably safe to trust their easily verifiable claim, even before it is actually verified.
I think you’re willing to believe the police when proof is not available, and that you’re willing to take at face value what a racist institution puts out there.
Depends on the nature of the claim, not the entity making it.
“I’m going to show you a video of a woman driving her car at an officer” - yes, I’m going to trust that claim without proof, until such time as the claim is disproven.
“None of the 11 officers present had their body cameras turned on, and the dash cameras from the 8 cruisers present were all faulty or pointing away from the scene” - no fucking way am I going to trust that claim.
I wait for proof because police are untrustworthy.
I think that in the absence of proof, you broadly assume the police are guilty until proven otherwise. I don’t think you actually wait for proof; I think you jump immediately to a conclusion based not on the circumstances of the case, but on the races and/or jobs of the individuals present.
I think that you had reached your conclusion by the end of the headline, and didn’t need to actually read the article.</time>
I think that you had reached your conclusion by the end of the headline, and didn’t need to actually read the article.
I’ve been following this story since before the pigs announced they were going to release footage.
I think that in the absence of proof, you broadly assume the police are guilty until proven otherwise.
Yes. In every last case. Pigs have been behaving so poorly for so long that there is no reason to do anything but mistrust them until the instant they provide incontrovertible proof. Their word is less than worthless. Anything they say without actual evidence to back it up is a fucking lie as far as I’m concerned, and anyone who defends them without available proof does so out of naivete or bad faith because they love it when pigs murder unarmed black people for them.
“Guilty until proven innocent” is the legal standard of a dictatorship, lynch mob, organized crime syndicate, or kindergartner. There is nothing of value to take away from your position.
“Guilty until proven innocent” is the legal standard of a dictatorship, lynch mob, organized crime syndicate, or kindergartner.
First of all, we’re talking about my personal standard for believing someone. I do not trust people who voluntarily join an institution with a long unrepentant history of racist oppression. Their word is garbage and I require actual evidence.
They chose to become cops. I don’t trust them for the same reason I don’t trust white supremacists. It’s like trusting a babysitter wearing a NAMBLA shirt.
Because you have never had any formal training on the laws governing use of force, and your worldview is shaped by the opinions of people who have never had any formal training on the laws governing use of force. Unfortunately, with a few rare exceptions (Chris Dorner, Philando Castile spring to mind) the deceased also had no formal training on the laws governing use of force.
Dorner knew them, and committed suicide by cop. Castile knew them, followed them, and was murdered.
It is a travesty that our government only provides this training to police. It should be taught in high-school civics/social studies/government classes, so the general public is aware of when it can use force, and when force may be used on it.
Because you have never had any formal training on the laws governing use of force
Cops’ “formal training” includes courses on “kill-ology”. They get rewarded with paid vacation and the adoration of people like you. I’ve run into people like you on reddit. As long as I keep responding, you’re planning to fire off one of these pro-murderpig comments every 24 hours or so to see how long you can keep me going.
As with reddit, I can choose to not participate. I’m making that choice. Inflict yourself on someone else. I’m free to leave.
Witness states she put down the bottles before she left the store. The description of the video states she accelerated towards an officer. The video shows an officer step in front of the slow rolling vehicle. He even takes a step forward right before he jumps on the hood. He was also able to safely get away from the slow moving vehicle after he fired a shot, something that he could have done before choosing to end a life
Witness states she put down the bottles before she left the store.
Whether she did or did not take the bottles is completely irrelevant to the shooting. A complaining witness claimed she had; officers had sufficient cause to conduct a stop and investigate that complaint.
The description of the video states she accelerated towards an officer. The video shows an officer step in front of the slow rolling vehicle.
The video shows an officer stepped in front of a stopped vehicle. That vehicle was later driven toward the officer. The description is accurate; your claim is not.
Pedestrians have the right-of-way over vehicles. Even if she was moving when he stepped in front of her, she was obligated to stop, both under traffic laws, and per the lawful instructions given by the officers. She was not justified in driving toward the officer.
She escalated from being suspected of shoplifting to committing assault with a deadly weapon.
He was also able to safely get away from the slow moving vehicle after he fired a shot, something that he could have done before choosing to end a life
That might be relevant if he had a “duty to retreat” from the assault. Do you believe he had a legal obligation to retreat? If so, under what legal theory do you believe he acquired that obligation?
Rhe police had her license plate number. Her physical description. They had the nature of her offence being a non-violent crime. The car did not quickly accelerate and the police officer against all common safety advice put himself in the path of the vehicle.
That his first action was to pull a gun and fire and not just get out of the way and approach the problem at a later time in a less heated situation is excessive force. Back when I worked security I watched lots people pull this stunt on police officers before and surprise - none of them got shot and none of the police got hit by a car and everybody still got their resisting arrest charge at the end if the day.
If you are scared enough your psychological reaction is to stay in a place of safety or to flee and cars provide the opportunity to both… Which is why you aren’t supposed to put yourself in the path of someone’s potential escape with your body. People are panicy animals who can divert entirely to basic instinct, particularly when they are hurt or in a lower estimation of being able to defend themselves like pregnancy.
This is an example of someone killed because of bad police training and decision making that ignored entirely how scary even normally benign police interactions can be to black women. If she was worried about harm to her baby because of the police’s habit of putting people forcefully on the ground or slamming them against cars she would be placed under extreme distress having one yell at her to leave her car like they meant to do her violence.
The police here created wholecloth the “need” to shoot this woman. From the moment they started escalating, blocking her route of egress and not taking the moment of thought to ask if this could not be de-escalated and addressed later safely given the minor nature of the complaint.
The officer’s decision to stand in front of her car may indeed be “against all common safety advice”. For your argument to prevail, however, you will have to go a little further. You will have to demonstrate that his actions were unlawful, or otherwise so egregious as to justify her deliberately moving her vehicle toward him. Unfortunately for your argument, there is no legal prohibition against him standing in front of her car.
Without that justification, her actions posed a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, which justifies the use of any level of force, up to and including lethal force, to stop that threat.
You have not answered my question. Did the officer have a duty to retreat? If so, under what legal theory do you believe that duty arose?
This is an example of someone killed because of bad police training and decision making that ignored entirely how scary even normally benign police interactions can be to black women.
Scared or not, she had a legal duty to follow the officer’s lawful instructions. Scared or not, she had a legal duty to yield to a pedestrian in the path of her vehicle. Neither her race nor her sex nor her medical condition relieve her of those legal duties.
They may gain the legal justification needed to avoid prison in the States but here in Canada they would be fucked and they would have had the legal duty to retreat. The duty of police here is to merit only so much force as is required in a situation for all parties to get to safety and reassess if the situation merits any harm. Even if someone takes a swing at you with a weapon lethal force is only justified if all other potential options for resolving the conflict have been exhausted. Since she was rolling very slowly the potential threat to life was low. The officer had time to both draw and aim a weapon which means he also had time to remove himself from the psth of the car. Also the scope of the percieved crime comes into play. It was a non-violent supposed theft of property. Here unless someone has seen the uninterrupted process of selection, concealment and removal from property the crime is not chargable. Stores however are able to ban customers from their premises based on the criteria of suspicion of prior theft. So an arrest made under the circumstances of incomplete suspicion of theft would likely just fall apart in court. Escalating to yelling at her and making her feel her life is threatened in the first place for such a mild offence would have been considered at least a little dodgy. Ideally here police are supposed to utilize means to de-escalate conflict. Losing their cool for a minor charge and escalating the conflict to yelling even if the case was airtight would have been seen as a need to retrain them.
Here’s what thia would have looked like in my country. They would have stated the person was under arrest and was to leave the vehicle, tell them the legal consequences of resisting arrest but to do so in a calm.way that keeps the situation safe for all. If the cost to safety of themselves and the public of enforcing the arrest is too dangerous given the nature of the crime then any force applied would be potentially considered improper use of force. Since the he only thing endangered is a small amount of property the authority of the officer neither of those things are worth more than the safety of all involved. Legal ramifications can happen safely elsewhere after everyone has cooled off. They had the tools to do that.
The police here would not be justified. The limitations of their powers are that their first duty is to the safety and to protect the lives of the public and themselves. Their authority to command is entirely second to this. The question of “were there ways to resolve this safely for all parties without a non-violent resolution” would be asked. But even if something is lawful does not make it just.
Regardless of ruling, what happened here is essentially that these officers placed more value on an inflated idea of their authority than the safety of themselves and the woman. They placed themselves in the path of harms way for a percieved stolen property under $50. They shot someone and effectively killed two because they felt justified doing so for a charge of property under $50. Their first reaction they made to being lightly jostled by a car was not to remove themselves from her path and pursue the charge later with the tools they had or even to draw a weapon to warn her to stop and give her a second chance of compliance. Their first reaction was to draw take a second to aim and then fire a lethal shot. At the end of the day she was killed for an improper reaction to authority over a tiny amount of property that the police valued more than her safety.
If that is the society you want I am at least glad that I don’t have to live in it. For a country that calls itself “land of the free” the powers you give to police is inhumane.
here in Canada they would be fucked and they would have had the legal duty to retreat.
Yes, Canada prosecutes victims of violent attacks for not running away fast enough, and causing harm to their attackers.
Generally speaking, the US does not. In most of the US (36 of 50 states), we have legislatively affirmed that the victim’s decision to meet force with force is unassailable. The presence of a potential means of retreat does not negate a self defense claim; the victim is free to do anything they believe necessary to end the threat posed by the attacker. Our license to use force ends when the threat ends.
That is a power we claim for ourselves, and not one given solely to our cops.
No, what Canada has done right is enacting a stronger social safety net. Universal healthcare, for example. Your citizenry has a greater expectation of aid and comfort than ours, and that has translated to much less of the kinds of desperation that drive criminal activity. The US certainly has many things to learn from Canada, but “duty to retreat” is not one of them.
You are assuming a lot here. The USA also procecutes victims for not running away fast enough and causing harm to their attackers. There is a history of people in your country as well who have been charged after defending themselves from a violent assault / rape / murder attempt even in states with more protected self defense clauses
So I posit that your concept of how law works in the case of self defense is a lot more similar between our two countries than you think. The difference lies in how much power and authority we grant police as a society. Here becoming a cop is either a 2 year standardized college course or a 6 month intensive boot camp for RCMP hopefuls as a primer and then an apprenticeship cadet program working under a seasoned officer. The techniques taught as absolute basic are soft skills, psychology, critical thinking, legal knowledge as well as self defense and weapon skills. While they are granted some extra authority over a regular citizen for the most part their rights are the exact same as any regular citizen in terms of how excessive force works.
Your citizenry’s permissiveness in wild west style police justice kills people needlessly. It’s the people’s expectations as a whole that grant them the sort of powers of an occupying military force. The entire model of policing is needlessly dangerous and values following orders more than people’s welfare.
If you’re using Marissa Alexander to demonstrate your point, you either don’t understand the laws governing use-of-force, or you don’t understand her case. Or both. Her case was similar to that of Jerome Ersland. Both used lethal force well after the justifying threat had ended. That’s not self-defense. That’s murder. Like many of the people in this thread, neither Alexander nor Ersland properly understood the laws governing use-of-force.
I haven’t reviewed the Brittany Smith case, but I suspect I’ll find a similar problem.
Your citizenry’s permissiveness in wild west style police justice
I reject your characterization of defensive force as “police justice”. You can certainly find cases where police have used excessive force, such as Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, George Floyd. But these cases are the rare exception, and our citizenry is certainly not “permissive” of them.
The process of “justice” starts when the accused submits to the authority of the courts. Fleeing from the court’s jurisdiction invites the use of force; using deadly force in an attempt to flee endangers lives and thus invites a lethal response.
So we agree that excessive force is still a thing in the US! Ah good I had no bloody clue what you meant about “people not running away fast enough” but you interpreted me saying that all peaceful avenues of resolution including retreat being exhausted before life or body threatening violence is justified.
The process of justice should be secondary to the safety of citizenry and dynamic in it’s application. If you are treating someone who passed a counterfeit bill or performed some act of petty theft like they have surrendered all of their rights and put them in a place of danger or kill them because of it then you have put the process of law and authority before people and thus the cart before the horse.
And you are permissive. Listen to yourself and all the comments here which argue that the cops had every right to kill this woman. None of it considering how a family was shattered for something so mundane as two bottles of wine and the hurt egos of a couple of officers who felt right cornering her in her car and yelling at her until she was flustered enough to make a mistake. Literally a two second mistake. She might not even have hit the gas, she might have just taken her foot off the brake. You condone this. In your heart of hearts what is right is a just is a dry calculation that has no empathy for people who do not behave when they are scared. How a single slip up justifies their death and exonerates these officers. If a jury thinks like you then these officers WILL go scott free. That is permissiveness. That is why your police are going to do this again and again and never be incentivized to be better and to properly de-escalate where possible. If the municipalities whom these cops are employed by aren’t moved to step up and enforce upon their officials and police that this is not okay then the easiest course is to just do what they were doing before. Nothing ever gets better and more people will die for stupid reasons.
I had no bloody clue what you meant about “people not running away fast enough”
Duty to retreat == “you will be aconvicted if you don’t run away from your attacker fast enough”
When you face a credible, criminal, imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm, whatever action you take to survive is acceptable. Nobody should be able to argue “you didn’t run away fast enough” and convict you for trying to survive. The person with a “duty to retreat” is the violent criminal attacker, not their victim. Placing that duty on the imperiled person violates that person’s civil rights and human rights.
The process of justice should be secondary to the safety of citizenry
Correct. What you fail to understand is that the officer is a member of the citizenry. The process of justice is, indeed, secondary to the lives of those imperiled by an unlawful use of lethal force.
You keep getting hung up on the alleged shoplifting. The shoplifting is irrelevant to the shooting. She was not shot because she was shoplifting.
Your focus should be on the fact that she drove her car into a person, without caring about the harm she could cause in doing so. Deliberately driving a car into a person is assault and battery with a deadly weapon. She was shot to stop the immediate danger she posed to her intended victim. That is not a “single slip up”. That is not justifiable simply because she is “scared”.
You keep talking about how the officer put himself in harm’s way. That is victim blaming. You wouldn’t say that a woman puts herself in harms way by wearing a short skirt. If she is raped, criminal liability rests solely on the rapist, no matter how “recklessly” she wore her skirt. Likewise, full criminal liability for deliberately driving into a pedestrian falls on the driver, not the pedestrian.
Nothing ever gets better and more people will die for stupid reasons.
Agreed. What we need, desperately, is for our laws governing the use of force to be taught to everyone and not just to police, lawyers, judges, and concealed carriers. Cops keep “getting away” with killing people because they are following the letter of the law. They are “getting away with it” because the government trains them - and only them - on the law.
Every justifiable homicide at police hands is an indictment of our government providing officers with this training, while withholding it from the public at large. We should be demanding the same training in our schools, and not just the police academy.
At this point it is obvious to me that you have not listened to anything I have said. Your authoritarian stance is incompatible with a model of compassionate de-escalation and you are more interested in being right on the technicality of law. Discussing this with you further is a waste of effort.
I disagree with you on only one issue of inportance: that the officer should have allowed her to leave.
I support de-escalation, and compassionate policing, and these officers did a reasonable job on that point. The first officer spoke calmly and respectfully. His voice was raised only enough to be heard through the window and over the engine, and was lowered when she opened that window. When he could not convince her to get out of the car, he attempted to negotiate a less stressful compromise: do not leave.
Could he have done a better job at de-escalation? Maybe. Maybe not. De-escalation requires the subject’s cooperation. They have to be willing to accept a less-hostile engagement. There might have been something he could have said or done to entice her voluntarily cooperation. There might not. She might have escalated to violence no matter what was said or done. His inability to de-escalate the situation says far more about her than about him.
I disagree on one other point: Expecting her to comply with her duty to avoid hitting pedestrians with her car isn’t accurately described as “authoritarian”. Authoritarian generally refers to restrictions on much higher order behaviors, such as noise restrictions or code enforcement. “Not hitting people with your car” is far too basic a concept for that. Killing someone for leaving their trash cans out after trash day is authoritarian. Killing someone while they are actively trying to kill you is not.
The most authoritarian concept discussed in this thread is the idea that a pedestrian officer should not use force on a driver who is actively trying to run him over.
One thing I whole heartedly agree on is that further discussion with you is, indeed, a waste of effort.
This isn’t a left/right issue. The divide here is between people who have learned the laws governing the use of force, and people who haven’t. The problem is that the cops are in the first camp, and the people being killed (and the people outraged at them being killed) are all in the second.
The only viable solution to this problem is to broadly teach these laws to people before they decide whether to act a fool.
Vomit covered seats is the standard package with aircanada now. They must have missed the option to upgrade for 299 to have a seat without bodily fluids.
Uggh it’s so reductive I’m tired of it. There’s so much more wrong with us than just capitalism but nobody likes being called out or needing to take themselves down a few pegs so, let’s blame it all on capitalism yeah!
The greed and selfishness rotting at our societal core is bigger than just capitalism, and we need to stop pretending we don’t all need to change in some BIG ways, if things are going to start improving. Capitalism or not.
Seems like clickbait, stirred up by the fire department.
“This delay, no matter how minimal, contributed to a poor patient outcome,” the fire department wrote.
This was written into what, the EMS call report (“records reviewed by the reporter”)?
Generally EMS reports are not a place to opine as to medicolegal causation, so this is an odd detail to include. I think EMS would report an egregious failure to yield to police. They might note in the call sheet that a vehicle delayed the trip by X seconds, but the inclusion of specific blame is just so out of place.
Further, EMS is a profession of first aid, not pathology, epidemiology, and outcomes. Especially not without reviewing medical records of the subsequent treatment and outcome at the hospital, probably even medical records from prior the event, too, they are not competent to give such an opinion.
The statement itself proves my point. This delay, “no matter how miniminal, contributed to a poor patient outcome.” Sounds like something an EMS driver would say. I’m reading hints of grandiosity and road rage, road indignation, really. Really, no matter how minimal? That’s not logical. My $0.02.
As someone who works in emergency medicine, this article sounds very overdramatic. If the patient was so unstable they died receiving care in the back of an ambulance, odds are they weren’t going to live in the hospital either
I hope that these decisions don’t become more widespread.
Edit: For the sake of clarity, I, of course, respect the fact that a private business is free to make such decisions, and I do understand that the likely reason for this decision was to, as was mentioned, reduce profit loss by keeping employees healthy, but I still do not wish for mask mandates to make a widespread return; their all-too-recent existence is not a memory that I think too fondly of.
I have no desire for someone to force something on me “for my own good”. If something is truly beneficial, then the public will freely adopt it; people generally won’t willingly endanger themselves. What the conversation should be about is if you are endangering the life of another.
Side note, your argument for throwing ice on stairs is lacking scope. If it was one’s personal stairs then by all means; however, an area that is to be expected to be used by the public cannot willfully endanger them; If not a criminal charge, then it is certainly a lawsuit waiting to happen. As for removing car brakes, again that depends on exactly what you mean. If the car is not in such a state that would recklessly endanger the life of another, then why would it matter?
All in all, one should look at things in such a way as to balance public safety, and individual liberty. It is always a trade off. I personally would err on the side of liberty, but this is not without its realistic restrictions.
That question is a little more complicated than one that can be answered by a simple “yes”, or “no”. The simplest answer that I can give is that I’m not opposed to wearing a mask; however, whether or not I would choose to wear one is highly dependent on circumstance.
If something is truly beneficial, then the public will freely adopt it
Hah. Look up how some people fought seat belt laws. Just like masks and vaccines they're not actually doing much most of the time, but you'll be glad to have them when it matters, or rather you will be missing them when it matters.
You just left out the rest of the sentence when you quoted “… but you’ll be glad to have them when it matters, or rather you will be missing them when it matters.”
And the point is most people don’t get in daily car accidents, and putting on your mask doesn’t necessarily mean you will be exposed to a disease that day. They are a type of safety precaution you sometimes use in situations where they don’t do anything, and that doesn’t mean that they were useless, it means no dangerous stuff happened.
That kind of danger, the kind that only gets you 1/10 times, is the kind people are famously bad at understanding. Our instincts say if someone survived doing something unharmed that it is safe, but sometimes riding in a car is safe and sometimes it isn’t. We get too easily comfortable with things we shouldn’t have because their consequences are delayed or inconsistent, and it happens everywhere.
Eta: I find it odd that the masks bother you more than the spreading disease that they are a “symptom” of. Personally, for over a decade now, I had hoped that sick people around here would start wearing medical masks on their own prerogative, like many other places/cultures already do. It feels on par with washing your hands to me. But then it became a political issue…
You just left out the rest of the sentence when you quoted “… but you’ll be glad to have them when it matters, or rather you will be missing them when it matters.”
Why would one “be missing them”? I would assume that whatever one needs to reduce risk would generally be available should they have need.
And the point is most people don’t get in daily car accidents, and putting on your mask doesn’t necessarily mean you will be exposed to a disease that day. They are a type of safety precaution you sometimes use in situations where they don’t do anything, and that doesn’t mean that they were useless, it means no dangerous stuff happened.
Again, though, why should the government force people to do what is wise for their own personal health, and saftety? A person can assess their own risk, and act accordingly.
I find it odd that the masks bother you more than the spreading disease that they are a “symptom” of.
I have no qualm with the use of masks – in actuality, I would encourage it. What I take issue with is the enforcement of their use.
Speed limits, and seat belts are not equivelant examples. A speed limit is a restriction on risk to others, and property, a seatbelt is a reduction on the risk to only oneself, unless one has passengers, but even that has its logical limits. I can perhaps see the parallel you are drawing with speed limits, but I’m not entirely sure that it is necessarily an accurate comparison to make. To speed requires willful intent to endanger. As such, I could see it being argued that it is a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle. Not wearing a mask, however, is really only willful intent to endanger anothor if one is knowingly ill, and willfully spreads it to others (and, if so, it should be punished accordingly); however, if one is not knowingly ill, then there is no aggression.
Hm, that is a fair point. Perhaps it should come down to reasonably articulable suspicion of public endangerment. You are quite right that ignorance of one’s wrongdoing is no excuse. So perhaps I should restate what I had originally said to instead be that one should only be held accountable if they are spreading a communicable disease to others if they could, on reasonable grounds, be aware of their illness prior to spreading it.
Your mask isn’t there for your own good. Wearing a mask may reduce the viral load you may receive if you’re exposed, improving the odds your immune system can stamp out any nascent infection, but that’s just a bonus.
The purpose of a mask in a mask mandate is to protect others from you in the event you’re infected but in the window between becoming infectious and becoming symptomatic and therefore aware (and possibly beyond if you’re the kind of person that knowingly mixes with others and coughs openly when sick). Because it’s for people who don’t know they’re sick, it only works if everyone does it. So it’s mandated for the good of the whole.
This was particularly important with the original strain of SARS-COV-2 because it had a particularly long incubation period.
The more aggressive variants since, along with more sensitive immune responses in most people due to vaccination, exposure, or both have shrunk that window significantly, but it hasn’t disappeared.
General, society wide, mandates aren’t imo necessary under the prevailing conditions, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be situations (close knit group with a spike in cases for example) where reintroducing such rules make sense.
Your mask isn’t there for your own good. Wearing a mask may reduce the viral load you may receive if you’re exposed, improving the odds your immune system can stamp out any nascent infection, but that’s just a bonus. The purpose of a mask in a mask mandate is to protect others from you in the event you’re infected but in the window between becoming infectious and becoming symptomatic and therefore aware (and possibly beyond if you’re the kind of person that knowingly mixes with others and coughs openly when sick). Because it’s for people who don’t know they’re sick, it only works if everyone does it.
This is, indeed, a critical issue to note. When thinking about such types of policy (I’m referring to policy on the government level), I try to follow the “non-aggression principle”. What one must then ask is: “Does not wearing a mask violate the NAP?”. If one is aware of their transmissable ilness and is knowingly spreading it to others by not wearing a mask, then this certainly would be a violation of the NAP. In such cases, one would be required to wear a mask. Now if we are talking about a case where an individual isn’t ill, yet their bodily autonomy is still being infringed upon by being forced to wear a mask, then this would also be a violation of the NAP. That being said, things become a bit more grey if we are talking about the situation where one could transmit an ilness asymptomatically. I’m inclined to say that, in this transition point, it would be best to rely on people’s own precautionary measures like getting vaccinated, and self-masking; however, I agree that I am biased into this line of thought. (Some extra discussion if you are interested)
This was particularly important with the original strain of SARS-COV-2 because it had a particularly long incubation period.
Please forgive me if I am incorrect – epidemiology is certainly not my strong suit – but isn’t this statement contradictory? I have the understanding that “incubation period” means that one is asymptomatic while the virus replicates within themself.
Incubation period (also known as the latent period or latency period) is the time elapsed between exposure to a pathogenic organism, a chemical, or radiation, and when symptoms and signs are first apparent. – Wikipedia:
If one is asymptomatic (no coughing, no runny nose, no sneezing, etc.) then wouldn’t they not be transmitting the virus? The only thing that I can think of is that one may be sluffing off virus through physical contact, but, if so, there are a few issues: the first issue would be that masking would then become pointless, and the other would be that one could simply wash their hands after contact, unless, of course, we are talking about a virus that could hypothetically be absorbed through the skin.
General, society wide, mandates aren’t imo necessary under the prevailing conditions, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be situations (close knit group with a spike in cases for example) where reintroducing such rules make sense.
I have no issue with a closed group deciding to implement such restrictions amongst themselves; people are free to do as they wish so long as it does not infringe on the lives of others. I just, personally, hope that this doesn’t become more widespread, yet again.
If something is truly beneficial, then the public will freely adopt it; people generally won’t willingly endanger themselves.
You’re extremely naive if you think that’s true. Explain the thousands upon thousand of COVID death that were due to people not following the most vanilla guidelines to prevent that from happening in the first place.
I did say “generally”. Also, in the general sense – I’m not specifically talking about Covid – if a person chooses to endanger themself, then that is not of my concern.
TSA mandates will be announced in about a week. It’s already been leaked. Two weeks to slow the spread. Literally. Same playbook as last time. I expect them to stick around for much much longer.
It’s all over the regular places that would report that kind of thing. There’s a coordinated leak and media thing that seems to be going on. I’ve even seen it reported on YT in the last couple of days. They started with the new strain new booster news a couple days ago in mass media, which was another thing leaked 2 weeks ago.
It’s all over the regular places that would report that kind of thing.
I remind you, this is not a source. The entire point of citing a source is so that the reader is not required to assume the information’s origin, nor to place trust in its purveyor.
Just like reddit, giving a specific source turns the discussion to the source. Go use your preferred search engine. I told you there’s fish in that spot. I’m not going to hand you the fish because you don’t like fishing.
Just like reddit, giving a specific source turns the discussion to the source.
I’m sorry, what? This statement makes little sense. Are you saying that you are opposed to citing sources because you think that someone will claim that your source is non-trustworthy? That is litterally the entire point of citing a source.
Ironically, if one does look into your claim, they may come across this article. A nice excerpt from it is as follows:
CLAIM: Transportation Security Administration managers were told on Aug. 15 that by mid-September they, along with airport employees, will again be required to wear face masks and by mid-October the policy will apply to travelers as well. Further, the managers were told that COVID-19 lockdowns will return by December.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. No such announcement was made to TSA managers, an agency spokesperson told The Associated Press. A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued a now-expired travel mask mandate in 2021, confirmed that such rumors are “utterly false.”
THE FACTS: With COVID-19 hospitalizations steadily inching up in the U.S. since early July, some on social media are falsely claiming that federal employees were told that mask requirements and other pandemic-era restrictions will start returning this fall.
The claim originated on the Aug. 18 episode of “The Alex Jones Show,” where its namesake host said an anonymous “high-level manager in the TSA” and an unnamed “Border Patrol-connected” source told him about the alleged announcement. Jones is known for spreading conspiracy theories.
It's been a week, I'm still waiting on those TSA mandates. ... Hell, I'm still waiting on the National Guard's mass round-ups into those non-existent FEMA camps ....
Imagine if you opened a restaurant, and I went around lying to everyone that you spit in the food. As a result, your restaurant loses business. Shouldn’t you have legal recourse to prevent me from spreading such lies about your business, and to recoup the losses you incurred?
I don’t mean to suggest that Musk has a valid case under the law, only to point out that the law in question is actually quite reasonable and necessary.
Whether the restaurant remains profitable is beside the point. If you can demonstrate that even one customer chose not to visit your restaurant as a result of my lies then I could be liable for defamation.
Suppose you were a business making, say, voting machines. It's a good business -- there are a lot of elections, they have to be tabulated, and you have a way of making that tabulation easier to do. You're not going to be Google or Microsoft, but you're in a comfortable niche.
Then comes a bunch of dumbfuck conspiracy theorists who accuse you of rigging the vote against their favored candidate. You're not happy about this, but this is just a bunch of nutjobs. To some extent, what can you do? Then this major news organization takes up what those conspiracy theorists are saying, and they're doing this to enrich themselves by putting out news that these dumbfucks like to hear. This amplification is damaging to your business (because it's costly to defend yourself and you're losing business anyway), and you can prove that this major news organization is doing this on purpose, for their own profit.
You sue that major news organization. Discovery is a delight, because these people really did know that there was no evidence for any of these conspiracy theories, but they kept repeating them over and over again, damaging your business.
Does this sound familiar? That's why we have laws so that victims of libel can recover some of those damages.
Now, I'm not saying Musk is justified. Musk can go threatening to sue, etc., and I'm sure ADL lawyers would be delighted to argue before a judge to tell Musk to fuck off, since he really doesn't have grounds to stand on.
Source of what? Drunk driving? That would probably be the individual, who knowing that the only mode of transportation for the night is to drive themselves and still decided to drink and then drive. Is that specific enough for you or are you still struggling with the concept?
Much FEWER people driving drunk, though, which is the point. Just because the solution doesn’t take the problem from 100 to 0 doesn’t mean that taking it to 20 or whatever isn’t beneficial.
Also, “having some proper punishment won’t hurt you” is ridiculously wrong, based on the US having one of if not THE most punitive “justice” system and amongst the highest rates of crime of all western countries.
Prevention and restorative justice works MUCH better at decreasing crime than revenge-based punishment.
The highest incarceration and punishment rate in the world. If you went by the statistics, Americans are, “apparently,” 4.3 times more likely to be criminals than Chinese citizens, and it just gets worse from there, as every other country in the world has even fewer people incarcerated per 100,000 people.
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