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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In its wisdom, government moved the old (and presumably ill) from hospital beds to care homes, with disastrous results. In addition, the old were cut-off from their families and treatment was withheld.
As I remember it this was not what happened. The government discharged people on an accelerated basis presuming they were not ill to care homes. The mistake was in fact that they did not test these patients for Covid, before discharge, and also did not ensure these former hospital patients would be isolated from other care home residents on arrival. |
This chimes with how I remember it. My mother had been in a distant care home and my life was mildly nightmarish having to visit her. I took an interest because I was trying to work out how it would all have affected me if she hadn't died... er... just in time.
| The problem was that many people already within care homes had existing condtions that would render them more at risk if they were to catch COVID, and it was later thought that a number of these new arrivals of hospital patients would have caught COVID during their time in hospital. The policy was later changed so all hospital discharge cases had to be tested for COVID before leaving, and care homes had to keep hospital discharge cases isolated, whether testing positive or not, from other residents for, I think, 14 days. |
This too bears the hallmark of my own recollection. At this stage of the pandemic there had not been time for 'camps' to have formed. Either within orthodoxy or between orthodoxy and crazies. I don't doubt there were policy disagreements going on but not of the 'Are we really sure what we're doing is the right thing, let's have a standing committee of outsiders to explore radical alternatives' kind.
There was no time for that!
There never is.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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An instructive exchange with Shane Fitzgerald. He had put up a piece about Christopher Hitchens, about whom I would guess we had roughly the same opinion: a flawed but heavyweight intellectual. Shane instanced Hitchens as being an unreliable lefty over Iraq in which he supported the Americans, as being an anti-theist (whatever that is) and a bit of a toper.
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Mick Harper
Hitchens just couldn't be his own man, intellectually. He had left wing instincts till the end. This is mildly pitiful in itself but if you are trying to cram your thinking into another pint pot--anti-theism--as well, then you are sure to go wrong. Or be right only by accident. The boozing comes from the need to damp down internal contradictions. A great waste.
Shane Fitzgerald
Pop psychology on top of your usual eristics. Impressive stuff.
Mick Harper
Thanks. I try to cover as many bases as possible in the briefest possible time. It helps though if you say what precisely you are referring to.
Shane Fitzgerald
I feel the same about 90% of your comments. You take some weird angle based on some weird interpretation of some line, and then you make your point with some weird turn of phrase. Case in point - 'This is mildly pitiful in itself but if you are trying to cram your thinking into another pint pot--anti-theism--as well, then you are sure to go wrong. What? pint pot--anti-theism--?
And why is it mildly pitiful to have left-wing instincts? This is the sort of thing that sounds good but means little. The left has got it wrong on many things, but the left has also been very anti-war and very pro equality? If we care about making a nicer world for most people, and about making more effective societies where we get more from citizens, then these are pretty noble aspirations.
Eristics - your general approach to argument is not Socratic or Hegelian, or anything useful like that. It's the sort of negativity that goes nowhere and drags down what may have been useful exchanges. Pop psychology - your sterling assessment of Hitchens' drinking.
Mick Harper
It would help if you use 'different' instead of 'weird' when referring to my opinions. But, yes, I meant exactly what you supposed. Hitchens is tailoring his conclusions so they will fit in with his ideological assumptions, not the facts that are being presented to him. I knew about his leftism but not his anti-theism. When they are both present, in say Iraq, he finds himself in a particularly severe knot. Which does not mean he was necessarily wrong.
I regard all ideologies as pitiful, not just left wing-ism. I'll have to pass on eristics but will concede that my theory about Hitchens' drinking was 'pop psychology'. Though I would prefer to call it a new idea thrown into the mix. It seems a reasonable explanation for self-destructive behaviour.
Shane Fitzgerald
He is more famous these days for his antitheism I would suggest. One of the Four Horsemen etc. He tied himself in a knot and ended up backing the sort of crusades in the name of big ideas his younger self deplored.
Himself and his younger brother debated about whether the Soviet Union was really atheistic. I don't think it matters in the big scheme of things one way or the other. It's more about how we believe in our ideas and not in what we specifically believe. If one believes in something in absolutist terms, all else is cast in second place and a great deal can be justified by smart people that wouldn't otherwise be justified.
Mick Harper
"It's more about how we believe in our ideas"
I didn't know there was more than one way.
"and not in what we specifically believe."
It's more about whether they are our own ideas. If you are, say, left wing that cannot be the case.
Shane Fitzgerald
You're into daft territory now. If you want me to continue with this, you'll need to like the piece. Same goes for the next few pieces, unless you come to the table with something a bit more meaningful and commensurate with the articles, which won't happen of course.
Mick Harper
Unless you say what's daft and why it's daft, I can't really do that, can I? It doesn't seem daft to me and I can't read your mind. Only then will I be able to start the slow climb to commensurateness.
Shane Fitzgerald
Most of the ideas that live in the head of every single human who has ever lived come from humans who have lived before them. It is daft to think otherwise. If it were not so, people would not understand each other enough for any sort of stable society to exist. The fact that you profess to be beyond isms is also daft.
Of course, people believe in ideas differently. We have words like 'opinion' and 'value' to capture the fact that people believe in things with various levels of intensity and depth. How we believe in things is a wide spectrum, and not some sort of binary set of 1) believe and 2) not believe.
Mick Harper
In that case I can only conclude I am daft. We'll have to leave it there.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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Shane Fitzgerald
Most of the ideas that live in the head of every single human who has ever lived come from humans who have lived before them. It is daft to think otherwise. |
Yes, most of the ideas that live in our heads did not originate with us. This is true of most every human, but who wants to be like most every other human? And it would be daft to think otherwise, but who thinks otherwise? This reminds me of a line from Nietzsche's Antichrist: "is there any actual difference between a lie and a conviction? All the world believes that there is; but what is not believed by all the world!"
| How we believe in things is a wide spectrum, and not some sort of binary set of 1) believe and 2) not believe. |
This is a lot of words to say "We all have doubts." I wonder if he he has doubts in this particular statement (i.e., believes it on a spectrum) or if he simply thinks it's true.
Eristics was a new word for me, so thank you Shane.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Pete wrote: | | Eristics was a new word for me, so thank you Shane. |
You have to get these dudes off metaphysics as soon as you can. That's an AE principle.
| Shane wrote: | | And why is it mildly pitiful to have left-wing instincts? This is the sort of thing that sounds good but means little. |
I wanted it to sound bad and mean a lot. This is the key passage.
| The left has got it wrong on many things, but the left has also been very anti-war and very pro equality? If we care about making a nicer world for most people, and about making more effective societies where we get more from citizens, then these are pretty noble aspirations. |
Shane thinks this is self-evident.
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