Yeeeeeah, I don't know about that. Anyone with their truck there risks forfeiting the asset that was used in commission of a crime. AKA their livelihood and likely most expensive asset. There is certainly not a bottomless pit of people wishing to do that.
Confiscating peoples' assets does not exactly engender you to a lot of political support. You're risking a massive loss in the next elections if you do that, just like how Democrats in the US are also facing huge electoral pressures on crime and COVID restrictions [1].
This idea that there's a crime wave seems to be pushed here and on reddit by month old accounts with no real proof. The reality is that crime is down in most places.
Lets look at San Francisco. I'm going to get my stats right from the San Francisco Police Department.
Homocide - Down 20%
Rape - Down 23.8%
Robbery - Down 20.7%
Assault - Down 8.8%
Human Trafficking - Down 83.3%
Burglary - Down 45.4%
Motor Vehicle Theft - Down 6%
Arson - Down 7.9%
Larceny Theft - Up 12.8%
Year over year the only type of crime that is up is Larceny Theft, and most of that is shoplifting. Everything else is down, and some of it by significant margins. There is no real basis for this "crime wave" people keep talking about. That pressure is really just right wing propaganda.
Quick Edit: When I published this the stats were only current to February 6th, but they were updated after I posted with data up to the 13th. So my numbers above are going to be slightly off, but you can confirm them by changing the timeframe to end on the 6th.
Most thefts (robbery, etc) are not reported now because people know police don't care. You also need to adjust your numbers for decreased activity (people stopped going out during COVID!). Restaurant reservations are down by 50% or more in SF [1] even despite reopening. If you use restaurant reservations as a proxy for foot traffic in general, all your metrics are strongly up when you adjust for foot traffic.
The idea that larceny (petty) theft doesn't matter is also a big reason why you think there's no crime wave. Petty theft is the crime most often encountered by everyday citizens. People don't like having their property stolen. I don't know why you refuse to acknowledge that.
> Most thefts (robbery, etc) are not reported now because people know police don't care
Underreporting has always been an issue with crime data [1], but the change in the Larceny rate doesn't seem like it's caused by an increase in underreporting. The change in reported Larceny from 2020 seems fairly correlated with COVID restrictions.
Here is the monthly Y/Y change in Larceny Theft Reported incidents for SF, for each month in 2020 vs. 2019:
Larceny did go up in 2021, especially at the end of the year when COVID restrictions started to lift, but is still down ~20% relative to 2019. Other crimes went up in 2020, but then decreased or flattened in 2021.
I think you may have a point about Larceny being encountered more, especially with foot traffic + tourism way down in many SF neighborhoods. I'm not sure how exactly to use Open Table reservations as a proxy for that, so it's hard to say whether it's relatively up or relatively down.
> Why? Crime is measured per capita, but you say it should be divided by 10,000 steps or something?
Why would petty theft and robbery be divided by population? My risk of getting my bike stolen is 0 or my phone taken at gunpoint if I stay inside my home. It is non-zero if I go out. And it increases the longer I stay out. So measuring crime per person-hour of going out makes intuitive sense. Restaurant reservations is merely an imperfect proxy for this.
> Straw man. Everyone knows that all crime creates anguish for the victim and is to be avoided. If a person compares the effects of the pandemic to the opportunity of types of crimes, it doesn't mean they love the idea of larceny. Come on. Better faith in arguing please
Except the causation for these crimes is lax prosecution caused by 1) DAs who are politically motivated and 2) Prop 47 / similar regulations in other states. Unemployment is at record lows and there's a record worker shortage driving up wages. You cannot possibly claim the "effects of the pandemic" are causing increased property crime when unemployment has been so low for so long.
> Better faith in arguing please
Ironic, coming from a 15 minute old account whose only comment is this response.
Can tell you this happened in my city. Anything not bolted down in your yard was getting stolen. Mayor gaslighting all of us saying the data doesn’t support a rise in property theft. The police had already publicly said they wouldn’t do any investigation for residential property loss under $10k, best you could do is report it and hope for recovery as piles of loot were periodically discovered. It caused a mild coordinated call on NextDoor for everyone to start reporting for the sake of the numbers but we knew we weren’t insane - we were living with it, and saw videos of it daily on NextDoor. In our town it’s calmed down quite a bit because it became an election issue, and looser bail policies were rescinded. Property crime still a problem though but nowhere near as bad. Here’s the basic law of the jungle - if you don’t have consequences for bad behavior, there will be more of it. Every city needs to decide where on the continuum they want to be, between Singapore and Liberia.
> best you could do is report it and hope for recovery
At the end of the day isn't that all you can do? File a report and hope for recovery? Is the complaint that you need to go to the station to file a report? That was already the reality for so many people. The police don't go to every neighborhood. Some neighborhoods, it's self-serve.
It's funny you say that because many people I know said they've simply stopped recording or responding to crime because everyone knows there will be no consequences for arresting somebody and the risk isn't worth arresting people in most cases.
The prediction was that next people would use the evidence that there are fewer crimes being reported as proof that nothing is wrong. This does seem very much like what we are seeing here.
Because it's least susceptible to reporting bias, and being an extreme, also offers a base point for interpolation, to independently estimate numbers of lessor crimes, especially violent ones.
That's true, but if you don't focus on murders, 2020 was one of the lowest violent crime years on record looking at SF, CA as a whole, or the entire US, so 2021 having an increase in crime is nothing more than reversion to the mean.
If all crimes resulted in dead bodies in the aftermath, I would agree with your reasoning here. But even violent crimes, most of the time, do not produce a dead body.
So given how flawed that premise was to begin with, I don't think an explanation is needed for why your overall point is disingenuous at best.
I feel like from a criminological standpoint, we would have some understanding (or even a heuristic) about the reportedness of crimes and if they are rising/falling in proportion to reported crimes.
There is. For instance, you can look at other sources, such as insurance claims; people file them to get paid, they dont care if the party responsible is prosecuted.
People trying to hype up the crime thing deliberately ignore these sources because, as you can see, it allows them to make up as much crime as they can imagine and base their argument on that.
Motor vehicle theft is up, not down (even in your own data).
Infact from my own experience in Seattle area and the auto enthusiast groups I'm in, we've definitely seen an uptick in car prowling, smashed windows, cat thefts and outright vehicle/trailer thefts.
When I published this the stats were only current to February 6th, but they were updated after I posted with data up to the 13th. So my numbers above are going to be slightly off, but you can confirm them by changing the timeframe to end on the 6th.
Even for 2/6, the site says MVT was flat (0% change). But from what I have seen, policing has also taken a back seat during the pandemic especially for non-violent, non-urgent crimes.
And then I have to ask myself how is that possible in modern society? Train robberies seem shocking enough that they HAVE to be indicative of a broader crime wave. Is there something about the US context that I am missing?
>Union Pacific laid off an unspecified number of employees across the railroad system. Including members of its railroad-only police force. Despite record profits in the billions in the last quarter of 2021.
>According to the source, the number of patrolling officers has been cut from 50 to 60 agents to eight, which the worker thinks has led to an increase in train robberies.
It's possible because Union Pacific thinks they can get taxpayers to pay for their security, and they can funnel more profits to their shareholders.
If you haven't heard the term before, this kind of response is called called "whataboutism":
> Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.
I think it's worth reading the page - the definition is:
> Whataboutism ... is a ... logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument
You've charged hypocrisy, I don't see a direct refutation of the argument. Given that, it seems like this situation exactly fits the definition of 'whataboutism'?
If you want to talk about people whose lives have been taken away - there are far more Ottawa residents in the streets defying the police than there are truckers. This occupation has galvanized a small segment of the population, but there's a much larger group that was not politically active before and now they hate anti-vaxxers.
There was nothing to debate - the convoy does not have a cohesive message. Some of them are sovereign citizens. Some of them want the government to be dissolved. Some of them want some weird QAnon stuff. The only thing that unites them is shitting in the streets and driving around waving flags and honking.
Sounds a little silly to confiscate the assets of the people bringing the food to your table. That and the towies in the area are refusing to move any of the trucks.
Trudeau just looks weak at this point, and for a prime minister that got in because of his good looks and his dad's popularity it's not a good omen.
The vast majority of truckers understand the benefits of masks and vaccines to society as a whole.
The ones protesting are either uber-libertarians (and possibly also "sovereign citizens"), dis-educated, or have some sort of mental/emotional shortcoming where they will resist any sort of directive given to them even if it goes in their in their interest.
Sometimes people will lash out anyone who gives a helpful order because they feel like they're losing control.
Surprisingly, I still have food on my table even though none of these people have worked in 3 weeks. If you're going to have a strike, you need to actually have an impact.
Heavy equipment tow operators have recieved threats of violence, which is why at least some of them have not helped.
The conflation of "anti-vax" and "anti-mandate" is absolutely infuriating, and I'm sad and upset that so many people are falling for it.
It is perfectly possible to be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate, because the case for mandates makes no scientific sense. Forcing the vaccines on people will create more anti-vaxxers, not fewer! The whole thing is completely counterproductive.
No, I'm pretty sure we got to 90% vaccination because of mandates. People want things to go back to normal, and most people don't care one way or the other about getting a shot. Giving them a little incentive helps.
Mandates make the remaining crazy people look more visibly crazy, but they were going to be there either way.
$100 is "a little incentive". Firing people from their jobs, threatening their livelihood, making them unable to put food on their table or a roof over their heads, and ostracizing them from society is brutal coercion, no matter how nicely you dress it up. Getting people vaccinated that way is not informed consent in any way, shape or form.
> People want things to go back to normal
The biggest problem is that people who defend the coercion believe that a higher vaccination rate will somehow end the pandemic. In Ontario, today, the majority of ICU cases, hospital cases, and cases cases are among the vaccinated.
It's the vaccinated who are driving the pandemic, and have been driving it the past few months. But all the blame is being heaped on the unvaccinated.
The Omicron wave will burn out, as waves do. The pandemic will end, as pandemics do. And the vaccination rate won't make one iota of difference in the long run.
To preface this, I am not bought in on the way the mandates have been done. I think there's huge room for improvement, and it feels a bit ham-fisted rather than well thought through. That said...
> In Ontario, today, the majority of ICU cases, hospital cases, and cases cases are among the vaccinated.
Looking at https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations right now, the population of the ICU is 117 unvaccinated, 15 partially vaccinated, 150 fully vaccinated. Over 90% of Ontarians age 12+ are vaccinated. This says to me that the unvaccinated 10% of the population is making up over 40% of the ICU cases. While what you've said may be technically accurate, I think it's basically saying "most people are vaccinated" and the numbers suggest unvaccinated people are hugely more likely to end up in the ICU.
Am I misunderstanding the numbers? Or are we working off different numbers?
Yes, that's the source I was using as well. And yes, your conclusion is correct, you are more likely to end up in the ICU if you are unvaccinated. Both these things are true at the same time: The vaccines work, and the majority of cases and hospitalizations are among the vaccinated.
But the strain on the healthcare system and the pandemic as a whole is driven by total numbers, not relative numbers. The majority of cases are among the vaccinated, therefore vaccine mandates won't end the pandemic. But people who argue for the mandates argue as if it was a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", and that's simply not true.
Ah - I think I see what you're saying. At the same time, I don't think I agree with your premise. The numbers in front of us seem to indicate it's not just slightly different, it's dramatically more likely to end up in the ICU as an unvaccinated person. With that in mind, one of the cheapest/lowest impact avenues to reduce ICU bed usage is via vaccinations (acknowledging that's brushing aside the issue of forcing vaccines).
Do you think it was ever appropriate to have any mandates? If so, do you think the moment it passed 50/50 in terms of ICU beds (or other similar stat) was the appropriate time to repeal them? Or what should the "trigger" have been?
Given the 40:60 ratio of ICU cases and the 10:90 split of unvax/vax, I think here it's a pretty grey area. This still seems like "too many unvaccinated people in the ICU" to me, even though they're not the majority. I can definitely empathize with it becoming a judgement call now though, and on that I agree. At some point someone is making a decision about the magic number, and I'm not sold on the current government's strategy there.
> one of the cheapest/lowest impact avenues to reduce ICU bed usage is via vaccinations
Only if it's targeted. The people ending up at the ICU skew older and many of them are probably retired. But the issue that spawned the trucker protest is vaccine mandates for the truckers, who as a group are probably a lot younger than the people who are currently occupying ICUs in Canada due to covid.
Age is the single most important factor when it comes to determining the personal risk of covid. A healthy unvaccinated child is ~1000x less likely to have a bad outcome compared to a vaccinated 80-year-old. But this is completely ignored when it comes to the mandates, the mandates are the same whether you're a 20-year-old trucker or a 60-year-old trucker, even though forcing 20-year-olds to get vaccinated is completely useless from a public health standpoint.
The second most important factor is natural immunity, because it is stronger and longer-lasting than vaccinated immunity. Again, completely ignored. Forcing people with natural immunity to get vaccinated makes zero sense.
> Do you think it was ever appropriate to have any mandates?
No, never.
If the vaccines had been more effective and actually stopped transmission, we wouldn't be having this Omicron wave, so we wouldn't have lots of people in the ICUs in the first place, which is the current reason for the mandates. The main reason so many people are still unvaccinated is because they've made their own risk assessment and decided they're fine with not getting vaccinated.
If the virus had been deadlier, vaccination rates would have been higher anyway, because fewer people would have decided to take the risk to stay unvaccinated. If the virus had been less deadly, we would have had a lower vaccination rate, but also even less people in the ICUs.
No matter which parameter you hypothetically imagine to be different, we would probably have landed in a collective societal risk assessment that would have produced the same results anyway.
> Given the 40:60 ratio of ICU cases and the 10:90 split of unvax/vax, I think here it's a pretty grey area.
Right now that page shows ~78% total utilization, and a ~20% covid utilization. So one in four ICU patients are covid patients, which sounds like a lot. But if you could magically force-vaccinate everyone, and assuming there's a 50/50 split among vaccinated/unvaccinated in the US as well, that means you would reduce total utilization from ~78% to ~68%.
How the hell does it make sense to violate people's bodily autonomy, to force them or coerce them to get vaccinated, to increase people's distrust of government and public health, in order to have ~30% free ICU capacity instead of ~20%?
What the fuck? How about increasing ICU and hospital capacity instead?!? How about looking at the 3/4 of ICU patients that are there for something other than covid and see if there's any low-hanging fruit we can take care of there in order to reduce that number instead? Why would we curb people's freedoms and rights for a slight increase in potential ICU capacity? Why should ICU capacity decide whether or not people can go to a restaurant or not? That's a micro-managed technocratic bio-fascist dystopia! The healthcare system should serve the people, not the other way around!
So, instead of stopping and blockading, people just start driving the minimum legal speed everywhere. Totally legal, but would totally get the point across. And you don't need a truck.
