Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
Suppose a black man grows up in a good family, gets a good education, gets a good job, gets married, and has a few children. He never breaks the law, never gets arrested, and is a good family man. One day, he is pulled over by a white police officer and is not treated in the same way that the police officer would normally treat a white man. But, the black man obeys the police, shows his valid license and registration, and is eventually released, even though he feels like he should have been treated with more respect. Who should he blame? The police officer because he is obviously a racist? Maybe. But, how about placing at least some of the blame on the disproportionate number of black men who did not follow the same law abiding course in life, and had some influence on the police officer's perception about life. Police officers are supposed to follow a standard procedure, but they are only human.
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Good point. It’s a bit like what happens when someone picking romaine lettuce in the San Joaquin Valley of California has to relieve himself, has diarrhea, but has no hand washing facilities, and a few dozen heads get contaminated with e-coli. Someone in New Jersey gets very sick, and the culprit turns out to one of the few dozen bad heads, grown in one field. But then many thousands of bags from that company and field are pulled off the shelves and destroyed. The news reaches consumers by television, and millions of people not only throw away all the romaine lettuce in their refrigerators, even from other companies, and even from other states, but stop buying romaine for a month, a year, forever. That seems really silly. (But I still get nervous in the face of a Caesar salad after the outbreak several years ago.) But meanwhile, government inspectors from the Department of Agriculture or wherever are grabbing more heads of romaine in the packing plants and testing it. Store owners may decide to keep it off the shelves. All romaine is suspected, just because of a couple dozen heads grown in one field out of a hundred million from around the country, with no more outbreaks.
Now, what if it’s not one head in ten million, or one in a million, or one head in a thousand, or one in a hundred, or one in ten, but 28.5%? If nearly three out of ten heads of male romaine lettuce was likely to be contaminated, the inspectors would be very careful to examine and test the male heads thoroughly, simply because they are more likely to make people sick. If 28.5% of male romaine can harm you, but only 4.4% of male iceberg lettuce, you would probably want all lettuce destroyed, period. But meanwhile, you’d expect inspectors to be checking the heads of romaine even more carefully. It’s just common sense, for the public welfare. Maybe even every head of all lettuces should be tested. That would be expensive, but if it’s necessary, so it goes.
What if someone gave you tickets to some event, say a real football game, with 50,000 people in the stands. Would you go if you knew there were ten COVID-19 positive people there? How about 500 (1%)? How about if there were 2,200 COVID-19 positive people in the stands (4.4%). What if it were 28.5% COVID-19 positive, nearly a third? Would you want everyone tested? I would. If fans wearing home team paraphernalia were 28.5% likely to be positive or become positive, wouldn’t you expect extra attention to be paid to testing the home team fans? Wouldn’t you hope you are sitting among the away team fans (not that that would be safe, either). Testing like that makes everyone safer, whatever their favorite team.