anotherparent posted:Old_school, how about we re-frame toughness and softness this way?
Tough are the medical professionals who are working overtime to help save sick people. Those people, right now, are being unbearably tough. Scientists who are working day and night to find cures and vaccines, they are tough.
Epidemiologists who produce models based on the data that they have, trying to help everyone as best they can, knowing that they will be criticized when new data becomes available and their old models are out of date - those people are pretty tough, too. Kind of like umpires who can't quite see what happened, but need to make the call on the spot anyway, even if replay later shows they were wrong.
The rest of us need to be tough and disciplined, and follow the guidelines that are the best that we have right now, based on data that changes daily, for the good of everyone in the country. It's not about you, it's about everyone.
It's really sad not to be playing baseball, but we have to suck it up and deal with it. Be mentally tough. Train as best you can, on your own, knowing that baseball will be back.
Who, in this picture, is being soft?
See we agree that it is about everyone, where we disagree I would guess is the proper course of action.
I have not offered any criticism of our first responders or medical people. I don't believe the projections, not because this isn't a severe problem that needs attention but because the models are flawed and based off worst case guesses, with lack of data, I would argue intentionally skewed to show the info they want shown and don't make any allowances for progress or solutions during the process.
IMO the models show a runaway train with nothing being done to slow it down or turn it...which is just an inaccurate assumption. I also believe these same experts missed the forecast at the beginning and now are overreacting to the correction. Seldom is anything ever as good or bad as it appears to be, that holds true with almost anything in life and it seems to be also the case with this Chinese virus.
I also believe people make bad decision under stress, I believe people learn how to deal with stress over time and learn to manage their actions to be successful a these time. Highly productive athletes, business people, crisis management, emergency room personnel, first responders are all examples of this. Some of it is inherent to people others it is learned and or grown over time. I am not sure that academics who make living speculating about things are as strong in this area.
This has nothing to do with baseball, it has everything do with how much we are going to attempt to change a country and a world. I believe if we aren't careful the cure is going to be worse then the virus, we may have already done it.