>I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy” goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians.
Basically all metrics have been ignored. Two weeks ago it was all "We're going to do a phased reopening with checkpoints based on the data.". A few armed protests later and my state (NC) at least is going full YOLO reopening everything but bars, based on absolutely nothing but hopes and prayers. New infections here haven't even remotely peaked, and are still rising by the hundreds every day. This is going to be a catastrophe.
But we have no coherent plans to do much about the public health crisis at a national level, and the president is busy tweeting out anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories.
..or, business could open with the precautions they're taking and .. nothing happens. We see the same fatality rates, grow a little, lower a little, but generally level off.
It sucks it's come to this, but all of the states with lock-downs are desperately looking at states easing restrictions to see if these shelter in place orders are really worth it. We've heard that many of the people in NYC getting infected now are getting infected at home.
I'm really hoping that Texas and Georgia, as they slowly open up, do not go over hospital capacities. We already know a number of people haven't gone to hospitals when they needed to; as many cut off access in preparation for a surge that never came. It's equally likely these states may not see a surge at all, even post re-opening.
Yes, a lot of people may still die, but this virus is in the environment. A lot of those people would die either now, or six months from now. I don't understand how people can think complete eradication is even possible. You can't limit people's social contact forever. We are not laptops that can be placed on standby for a year or gears in a machine that can be stopped and oiled.
> We've heard that many of the people in NYC getting infected now are getting infected at home.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at, but there is a recent study showing that COVID cases correlate well with commuting in NYC - it's not the case that people who stay at home are getting infected just as much:
>..or, business could open with the precautions they're taking and .. nothing happens.
Maybe. But probably not. The fact that this decision is being made with zero preparation is terrifying. There is no PPE generally available. There are no contact tracing programs in place. There has been effectively zero federal response or any form of coherent strategy released. Hell, you can't even buy hand sanitizer in the stores again yet. Of course we can't live in isolation forever. But absolutely nothing has been done to make reopening any safer than we were two months ago. And saying "welp, let's hope it just goes away", with no safety measures in place, is going to mean hundreds of thousands of deaths.
It's not clear that it has been. Singapore was at that point, until a sudden spike in new cases overwhelmed them and they had to lock down. South Korea just re-closed their bars and pushed back school reopenings, because a single guy started a cluster of 80 cases and they don't trust their contact tracing to handle that many. Taiwan and Vietnam are either lucky or have better strategies than simply "do a lot of contact tracing", but in either case it's not obvious that other countries can replicate their success.
It's not eradication, but it's a much more fine-grained tool that lets some of the economy open back up in a safer way. It's what we should be aiming for everywhere.
The US might not be able to do quite as well, but it feels like we're barely even trying.
So we're seeing two different methods: Sweden (and I guess soon, the UK and the rest of the world) taking measures to slow the spread, but realizing it will spread to everyone.
South Kora, New Zealand, etc where they are going for complete elimination. Now ask yourself this ... when will South Korea or NZ be able to reopen their borders? They will have little to no immunity, so possibly not for a year or more.
> They will have little to no immunity, so possibly not for a year or more.
That last bit is a moot point. Herd immunity is not something we aspire to here in the United States. Even if infection results in immunity, which has not been proven yet, the number of people infected in the US that would be needed for herd immunity would involve millions of people dying.
> So we're seeing two different methods: Sweden (and I guess soon, the UK and the rest of the world) taking measures to slow the spread, but realizing it will spread to everyone.
I expect that's a pretty cartoonish reading of Sweden's public policy. (The UK's public policy is cartoonish lately, but they've definitely backed away from "let's all get sick.")
I think it might be fairer to say it was possible for countries that caught it early enough, and responded quickly enough to prevent it spreading out of control.
Unfortunately, I think it's a bit too late for the USA to do that now.
This is a strawman! You're right, nobody has shown eradication. But there are examples of control, with a straightforward set of techniques for getting there. It is difficult and requires competency to execute those techniques, but we should be coming together to do those difficult things and demanding competent execution of them from our leaders. There is really no excuse to do otherwise at this point, long after other countries have already done the work to cut through the uncertainty and demonstrate a much more successful approach.
But we aren't doing this, we're instead bickering incessantly and fatalistically rationalizing a much worse outcome than necessary. It is a deep deep historical failure of leadership.
Apart from Taiwan, who locked down travel from China in Dec-Jan even _before_ the WHO declaimed that "no human to human transmission is possible", can you please let me know which country has successfully eradicated Coronavirus ?
Why do people insist on unnecessary mass deaths when we have examples of how to effectively respond to this disease in countries like South Korea and Taiwan without them? Why do people lean into this falsely-premised fatalism instead of demanding what has been proven to work?
This. It's hard to believe that a portion of the country is so anti-mask that they accept a 30% increased risk of a 50% chance of a multi day fever OVER a fashionable piece of homemade fabric or bandana.
If you want to reopen the economy - and we all do - masks are part of what makes that happen, and makes it "stick", without a second wave causing further stay at home orders as infections spike.
This site doesn't show Texas as really having the capacity to do that effectively, but it could be wrong or a bit out of date, as much is these days even if well-intentioned.
This kind of site is a core example of why people are skeptical of the "false choice, we can open up responsibly" narrative. In practice, if a graphic designer makes a nice-looking chart where a state is red, that seems to be treated as a conclusive argument that opening up isn't responsible. The site doesn't appear to have any specific argument why Texas is wrong to think it can safely open up, just fixed numerical thresholds which Texas hasn't hit.
Those thresholds seem reasonable to me. The fact that so many states are "red" on the map (not ready to reopen, not the political "red") is indicative that we wasted a lot of time in the US not getting ready. This failure is going to continue to cost us billions of dollars, to say nothing of lives lost.
- At ~7:00am Sunday, May 3, I only saw one "customer" not wearing a mask at a grocery store inside the inner loop. (Quotes because this person got caught trying to walk out the front door with a 40 of something while I was still waiting outside for a cart; not inclined to count them.) All employees that I saw were masked, though I did see one pull their mask down under their chin for a minute or so to speak to a coworker standing next to them.
- Friday evening (May 9) we needed gas on the way back from bringing in a package for a relative who is out of town. The League City Buc-ees was bustling when we stopped by around 6:30pm; employees were masked, but I didn't see any masked customers. My spouse noticed an additional masked customer that I didn't see.
- On the way back in, I also noticed that the Twin Peaks in Webster had a pretty full parking lot. I saw a few people leaving who were not masked, but I wasn't close enough to get any sense of things like what fraction were wearing a mask, what fraction were seated outside, and how well-spaced the tables were.
Sample's too small to even try to reason from, but I've been wondering how much (if any) of the difference is accounted for by the type of establishment/patron demographics, proximity to downtown, and change over time.
I live in the heights but I haven't been to the grocery store since March. I wonder if the distinction is grocery store vs corner store/bar/restaurant. I imagine cautious poeple are much more likely to go to the grocery store than to a corner store/bar/restaurant.
Yes--it seems quite possible that the venue (and times of day) are strongly selecting for different patrons, which is a big part of why I hesitate to blame distance-from-downtown or wonder whether people have relaxed a lot in a week. But the latter wouldn't shock me, either.
I'm generally an optimistic person but I can't see a way out of this mess barring a vaccine or proven cure. South Korea's recent spurt shows that a single super spreader event can undo all the gains of the lockdown.
My country (India) had one of the strictest lockdowns, but the economic fallout from it is too severe. The message now is that we will have to learn to live with the virus.
The issue here is politicians need to communicate a clear message on what is acceptable and what is not and instead even at local, city, and state, levels we see in many states politicians trying to one up or put down each other.
The simple fact is we cannot continue in the shut down state we have and the rules of the shut down need to be heavily revised so as not to appear as arbitrary and unneeded. It gets worse because there does not seem to be any acceptable date and that is unreasonable in an extreme. The line in the sand will have to be drawn and efforts put towards protecting the most at risk.
We also have to recognize just how much person to person interaction that many businesses truly are. From actual touching to handing items back and forth if not handling items in shared environments. Social distancing really cannot work in some businesses and this needs to be accounted for because they cannot be kept shut down without accepting some risk; namely hair care, massage, hair care, but not to be ignored the biggest one, medical care. If it safe for a dentist or optometrist to work on you then a hair dresser can follow similar but appropriate restrictions.
Besides telling people how to protect themselves they need to tell people how to be polite in this new world we face and how to protect yourself from people who don't take the same caution you do without aggravating the situation.
I wouldn't say it's been ignored, I think it's more accurate to say that there is an uncomfortable and at times stark difference between politicians who attempt to address the issue by making things safer, and politicians who attempt to normalize the danger with rhetoric.
Not only that. But even after they "come around", I will be avoiding those businesses that acted recklessly. For instance the Walgreens nearest me employees weren't wearing masks until recently. Some restaurants are open _now_ with table service outside being served by people not wearing masks.
I will never be going to those restaurants. I may never return to Walgreens.
That is an entirely subjective measure that can only be determined by each individual/household rather than something that can be determined centrally and applied to everyone.
Furthermore, we have 75k dead. If we think we've peaked, this means we lose another 75k on the way down. And of course nobody with any opinion worth considering thinks we have peaked. So it looks like we could easily break 200k... If people weren't spending money out before, it'll be twice as worse.
TL;DR If you don't fix the biology, you will not get the economy sorted. This will just make everything worse. Totally backfire.
> And of course nobody with any opinion worth considering thinks we have peaked.
This is unnecessarily insulting. Many places have peaked, especially if you look at new cases and not deaths.
There's a difference between a peak and a halfway point. We could have reached the peak but only 10% of deaths if there's a long plateau slightly lower than the peak.
“Re-open the economy” talk has reached levels of collective delusion that I honestly find frightening. And it’s not a partisan issue either.
We have the example of successful responses in places like South Korea and Taiwan, none of whose standard the US seems intent, or maybe even capable, of meeting. Instead, people in the US cling to phony performances of leadership by their various authoritarians, whether it be Andrew Cuomo for Democrats or Trump for Republicans.
Every substantive viewpoint I've seen on the subject comes back to cashflow. Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than the middle class asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?", they've internalized the system so thoroughly that they're actually protesting to get back on the treadmill.
>Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than workers asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?"
This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust, or people that derive satisfaction from their employment.
Worse, for those that would rather not go back to work and are suffering, your comment comes across as "shame on them for not asking for more". This crisis is hurting so many people, and its impact will be felt for a long time. We don't need comments like this.
> This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust
What is actually unfair to them is their businesses going bust, but here we are. We can either acknowledge the underlying reasons for why this is happening, or keep ignoring the elephant in the room of the ever-growing debt spiral.
You're shooting the messenger with grandstanding empathy, and that style of comment helps nobody. Indeed, people should be asking for more, rather than letting themselves be disenfranchised by fatalistic propaganda. People should be demanding a competent public health response. People should be demanding timely unemployment benefits that don't hinge on the whims of states forcing businesses to close. People should be demanding loans and disaster payments for small businesses that aren't stacked to benefit large connected companies. People should be demanding the right for workers to walk out over negligent conditions. People should be demanding a commercial rent stoppage. And people should be demanding an end to trickle-up economics so we aren't in these same inflexible overleveraged positions for the next crisis.
> This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust
This will primarily be true of businesses with strong brick and mortar services (but especially those renting brick and mortar); the result will be that, in the future,
1. Owners will divest earnings as much possible rather than investing in growth in order to jump into bankruptcy protection more rapidly next time
2. Accountants will recommend accounting for 4 weeks of paid leave classified as sick leave that will be used up during a quarantine.
Frankly, if every substantive viewpoint you've seen comes back to cashflow, that means you're dismissing viewpoints you don't understand as unsubstantive. A lot of people derive most of their meaning in life from hanging out with friends and working to provide for their family; they find it miserable to sit on their butts all day watching Netflix, even if the government keeps them well fed.
The context is "re-open the economy", and so I was referring to the economic arguments. One doesn't have to just sit around watching movies. Doing so is a choice. For example, catch up on those home improvement projects you've been putting off - that is providing for your family. People that enjoy being productive will generally find a way to be productive outside the economic structure. This is still Hacker News, right?
Considering most countries try to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system, your child is affected by it though not directly. It should just not get sick, or have any form of preexisting condition about to pop up, or infect it's parents to name some possibilities.
I am merely taking the wording at face value. The point was not "is this a place I would want to shop?", it was "is this a place I would take my family?" The implication is clearly different.
Tell that to the parents of the children who just died of Kawasaki-like inflammation from the virus in NYC. We’re still seeing novel presentation of symptoms in various cohorts and have no idea of its long term impacts on children or anyone else.
I don’t understand why demanding caution against harm to children in a dangerous, unpredictable situation is “disgusting.” It certainly seems less so to me then an a false confidence that could throw them into harms way.
How would we know the statistical significance of the harm to these children in the case of novel symptom presentation, when we don’t know the rate of overall infection, the duration of immunity, or any myriad other things about the disease path at this point?
Instead of admitting our ignorance of the situation and embracing precaution, you’re painting that ignorance as strength and hiding behind appeals to decorum. So again, which is the more “disgusting” to engage in?
> Instead of admitting our ignorance of the situation and embracing precaution, you’re painting that ignorance as strength and hiding behind appeals to decorum.
Where in the world are you getting that? This is not something we are totally ignorant about.
Even if the syndrome you decided to tout is 100% COVID-19s fault, it has still only killed 3 children. That is the definition of statistically insignificant.
Again – statistically, with our current knowledge, children in general do not have much to fear from this virus. We know that people are dying, and we know that the vast majority of the people dying are not, in fact, children.
You seem to be saying that because we don't know everything, we can't make informed decisions at all. But we can. Based on what we know, children have very little relative risk.
> Even if the syndrome you decided to tout is 100% COVID-19s fault, it has still only killed 3 children. That is the definition of statistically insignificant.
This is literally not true. I think you're trying to claim it's not a big deal because most children who contract covid will not die in this way. But this doesn't have any relationship to the statistical analysis of significance that tries to determine causality. In your hypothetical you've stipulated that covid19 is 100% at fault. There's no need for statistics in this case because the confidence at 100% i.e. somehow science has proved the mechanism in your hypothetical.
> Again – statistically, with our current knowledge, children in general do not have much to fear from this virus.
You could have said the same thing about AIDS. Statistically with current knowledge circa 1981 straight people had nothing to fear from AIDS. Statistically in 1983, years after the initial outbreak the proportion of people dying from AIDS as opposed to those who were living with HIV was infinitesimal. And then people started dying at higher, alarming rates. That took over a decade. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_the_United_States#...)
I'm not saying covid is AIDS, but we're mere months into this thing and noticing strange syndromes in children. To blanket claim that "statics show us" anything with the certainty you're projecting is shortsighted.
Okay, but I wasn’t saying COVID isn’t more dangerous for children statistically. I said you are misusing the idea of statistical significance and and are overconfident about the long term effects of a new disease.
I just sent the URI to a friend with a restaurant. I think Mark Cuban did a public service here, ignoring some of the horrible comments left on his blog.
Even though I am at risk (old age and damaged lungs from pulmonary embolisms), I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law.
I wish more people would look at the covid-19 crisis as something that is serious but that we have to adapt to long term. If restaurants limit seating, use discardable menus, all employees wear masks, disinfect as appropriate, etc., etc. then we achieve Cuban’s feel safe to take the family criterion.
>I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law.
This is obviously the right measure to take but I don't think any states have the infrastructure to do that currently. You need massive testing tracing capacity and we don't seem to be close to that at all. Yet all the states are reopening while cases and deaths increase almost everywhere outside NYC
I agree with you. It's nice to see reasonable people who understand the risk personally.
I saw a comment the other day where somebody said that we can't open anything up until a vaccine is developed. That is one extreme. then you have the other crowd who says just open it up and let me go see football and baseball games.
I think the worst part about all of this has been the fact that it's happened in a election year. We have a habit in this country of turning every election into an existential crisis, which is a recipe for creating radicalized viewpoints. Our media has now turned this into a partisan issue and now it's being treated as such.
The problem is there really isn't a sensible middle ground option.
It's like only spraying enough water on a fire to keep it from spreading out of control but not enough to put it out. When you're house is on fire there really is only two sensible options. Let it burn down your house or put it out.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to get the R down to ~1. This is a partial lockdown that last until the vaccine comes out and kills 1600 people a day.
It seems better to lock down and test and trace harder until r gets to .5 then wait for it to mostly extinguish then cautiously open up. Or let it rip through the populous until we have herd immunity.
Wow, comment section there is a true dumpster fire.
That said, it seems that America is just flailing about and hoping for the best. and not even expecting the worst if the comment section is to be believed.
Which, to me, really illustrates the astroturfing going on.
I can go months without ever seeing any reference to the Stasi and, in this single comment section, I see dozens of references? There have been plenty of similar programs through history but a bunch of "Americans" point to the same German group to illustrate their point? It doesn't add up at all.
Do yourself a favor and install shutup.css to shield yourself from one of the ultimate showcases of human idiocy — Internet comment sections. (Irony intended.) Even works on iOS.
Do you have any data supporting this? I'd like to think I could be an accurate judge of this myself, but given that my consumption of media is extremely biased by my location and languages of literacy, I don't think my anecdotal data is worth anything.
I was talking about online discussions (e.g., comments on Blog Maverick, etc). Australians have been very supportive on the whole of measures here, but I've still seen some absolutely baffling discussions online that descend into immediate, heated disputes.
We had one notable protest in Australia in which a few were arrested and a policeman injured, but no, people here don't walk around showing off guns thankfully.
I don't think its unreasonable to be upset at what Cuban did here. People just want to go back to normal without a billionaire's hired snitch at the table next to them.
It’s like being upset at people posting photos of your disgusting restrooms on Yelp. A public business has to own its own behavior.
Cuban didn’t call out any businesses by name; it was a completely anonymous survey. But if your business is flouting safety expectations you should expect that eventually some customers are going to call you out publicly, with photos, videos etc as supporting evidence.
Mark Cuban did these businesses a favor, if they listen.
He didn't do anything even remotely invasive. If they want to go back to crowded restaurants full of people without masks sitting too close together they are going to discover pretty quickly how big of a mistake that is.
He hired a team of secret snitches. If physical distancing and masks hadn't damaged social trust enough already, now Texans in Dallas have to worry about a billionaire's ability to place hidden tattle tales in their midst.
Even if they had publicly made themselves known, which they should have, you can't seriously argue that what Cuban did wasn't invasive.
How is it invasive? He sent shoppers to determine the rate of compliance. Honestly the government should have done this. I didn’t even see him calling out any location by name. Why are you so angry?
Secret Snitches? You are aware this was all reported anonymously so no one knows what stores were or weren't operating withing guidelines. So who exactly does this affect?
This is a nice example of private business picking up the mantle of what is ordinarily thought of as a government function. All the hostile comments (on the blog) are probably being made by people that favor small government and therefore theoretically in favor of a private company doing the survey. But apparently they don't want anyone telling them what to do.
Not sure people there have such a coherent ideology?
Restaurants NOT opening when the restrictions were lifted is actually a good sign if you are interested in small government: it tells that the restrictions were most probably non-binding as a constraint.
Ie they were telling people to do stuff that they would have done anyway.
(Compare to eg a 0.1 dollar/h minimum wage: almost no-one would actually be at that minimum wage, so it's 'non-binding' in the same sense.)
Government constraints that are non-binding or almost non-binding aren't too bad. Since they don't change market outcomes (too much).
I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).
Exactly this, restaurants rarely make big bucks unless they have huge takeout already or get multiple uses out of each table. If you have the former you are doing well without your dining room, if you don't 25% is pointless.
I'm not sure they would be anywhere near full occupancy even without government restriction. I can imagine a significant portion of the population self-limiting to essential activities only, regardless of the level of government restrictions.
If a majority of the population doesn't exercise prudence, then it sounds like there is a very good chance for a restaurant to get back to full occupancy.
Many of these commenters aren't against the act of testing the regulation- they're against the regulation- and they see this blog post as support towards that regulation.
Two of the comments post the same CDC 2017 list, and both come from twitter accounts with 0 posts (one is 100% retweets of anti-"liberal" content). I'm never sure how plausible it is for someone to have the time to sit on twitter all day just to RT these things and then jump onto rando blogs to leave long comments like these.
It’s likely they get these words and phrases from a popular tv network, radio program or podcast. The fact they can’t spell them makes it less likely they read them from a popular columnist or blogger.
HN doesn't usually fare that much better with COVID-19. It got politicized in the US, so there is a partisan faction that is going to parrot or at the very least, try to explain away, whatever the federal line of the day is, no matter how crazy.
I don't think I see many people arguing appeals to the party line. I'm probably posting more about it because I'm frustrated that, while I despise the current white house admin, I do think the lockdowns as implemented are likely to do more harm than good, especially as time goes on. I hate getting lumped in with the president, or having it be assumed that the president's line of rhetoric is representative of my thinking. I hate seeing people post dumb entitled shit about how the lockdown only hurts the rich and anyone who thinks otherwise is fine with killing people. There's so much garbage on both sides of the issue, but unlike most political issues, this one hits home for almost everyone.
> I do think the lockdowns as implemented are likely to do more harm than good, especially as time goes on.
I completely disagree. Places are very likely to be shutdown regardless, whether due to government authority or the virus rampaging the workforce. One of those is more permanent than the other.
We could send people back to work, but doing so safely requires effective testing & equipment. The USA bungled their response to the crisis, and so it has neither of those things. Which means reopening the economy at this point is probably going to sacrifice a lot more lives.
The entire point of the lockdown was to buy enough time to put into place the stuff we need to safely reopen. And clearly that didn't happen.
It would be smarter to hire a team of social media experts to do that for him, and rotate out the point person through the decon shower and then into the kittens+puppies room whenever they get too much crazy on them.
Internet comments almost always are, outside of a few niche communities. HN seems to have some of the better discussions on the internet, but it's obviously not perfect either.
I installed the `Shut Up` Firefox extension and now only see comments on places where I actually, actively, want to see the conversation. It changed my experience of the internet.
> Media coverage, showcasing owner sentiment and infection statistics, paint a picture of a large degree of latent fear in the marketplace.
Imagine how traumatic it will be if the death toll spikes up. We have fear because the virus is still active and deadly. If those fears are found to be justified than I suspect even smaller more sane opening up steps will be unpopular.
Is it really on the same scale though? It's quite hard getting a sense of what's normal from Social Media sites since they are so US-centric. It certainly seems like a large portion of the population here misunderstand basic science, statistics, biology, economics, etc. Having been educated in the US public school system it's not that surprising that people are so poorly informed.
I have to say I feel really sad how out of touch with life outside most of HN posters are. It must be nice to wax about theoretical problems and theoretical solutions when one thinks he is secure about where his or her check is coming from.
Let me tell you about what is happening in New York. On Saturday I saw a line three blocks long. Not tiny blocks. New York sized long blocks. That was a line filled with mostly blacks and latinos, some with children. It was barely moving. At the end of the line there was national guard giving out small shopping bags on onions, carrots and potatoes. Based on me timing it I estimate it took ~3 hours for someone joining at the end of the line to get what is, objectively, $10 worth of vegetables if bought in one of the supermarkets targeting poor Hispanic community. The only reason why they are standing in that line for three hours is because that $10 to them is money. Oh and if your state unemployment claim is "pending" then you do not get the fed $600/week unemployment either.
There's a very popular Bar/restaurant in Bushwick ran by a great but rather odd dude. 191 Knickerbocker. I guess he is relatively well off or he is good enterprising guy who manages to raise a lot of money. It provides free meals a couple of times a week. No questions asked. They are not much but they would certainly get you through the day. It has a half a block long line, split relatively evenly between latinos and whites. Initially the latter group did not want to be seen in the line, hiding their faces when others whom they thought were in the same socio-economic demographics went by. Occasionally you would see people crying. By now they don't care -- just avoid eye contact.
About a week ago on Saturday one of the chefy driven relief trucks showed up. The went around the entire block by the middle of the day. When the people got there, they got two small paper bags of vegetables. The lines was mostly latinos. From talking to a couple of people who were volunteering they estimated about 4 hour wait between the time one joined the line and the time to get those bags.
My wife, who worked a white collar medicine related field was laid off and filed for unemployment in mid-march. Her unemployment claim is still pending. She's not alone. There are people who lost their jobs around beginning of March who are in the same boat. The NYS unemployment system does not have real time status. It does not have messaging. Its call system does not support queuing! People redial hundreds of times a day through the maze of prompts just to be disconnected because there are too many people calling. She legitimately lost it a couple of times. If I was not still making money, we would have been eating through the savings to cover rent. We rent our apartment from a family who lives in the same building. Both of them have been laid off. Neither of them have been able to get unemployment -- their claims are "pending". Every week they look more and more terrified as the only thing that lets them to put food on a table is me paying rent. And there's an eviction moratorium now until August, which means I can , at the cost of ruining a relationship with the landlord to whom I'm paying market rent, stop paying them. Oh and NYS unemployment fund is running out of money.
Last week the first of my wife's friends who used to only worry about when they would be able to go out to do "girl's brunch" have been laid off. The laid off person is shell shocked. At the end of April their company was absolutely convinced there were no layoffs coming.
We are only in the first act. This economic showdown only started at the end of March. Unless you own your own company and you can cut 90% of your expenses and still get enough revenue to pay yourself your white collar job is not safe. People working for companies in layoffs.fyi are the example.
> Its call system does not support queuing! People redial hundreds of times a day through the maze of prompts just to be disconnected because there are too many people calling.
If that's the case, can you script out the needed phone tree selections to make it less frustrating? This still works on android:
People used to do this when calling cards were more frequently used. You could setup a speed dial with all the pauses to dial the calling card, wait, enter the account number, wait, and dial your contact number. I think it'd probably work to repeatedly navigate a phone tree menu.
Unfortunately, it is not that easy because one can get dropped into different IVR trees for no rhyme or reason where the same sequence of key presses sends one into at least one of the two different paths. One path at least theoretically leads to an agent while another path leads to a hangup. If she does not get approved this week I will have to resort to scripting Asterisk.
I'm a little blown away by statements like this. The United States is not New York City. New York City is a single location in a massive country.
Other than New York City there really has not been a problem with coronavirus in the United States compared to other nations in the world.
It is imperative that we all act responsibly to prevent other parts of the United States from getting to a bad place but we should maintain perspective that this is not the end of the world.
The detected cases are increasing due to an increase in testing.
Nate Silver has a great post the other day where he broke down the fact that the ratio of new cases per test administered has gone down.
I'm not saying we should all just act as normal, but I am saying that the media is creating a more pessimistic picture than is warranted by talking about positive cases without the context of an increase in tests administered.
Seems to confirm, 28% increase in the past month overall in tests performed per positive. But this graph doesn't give any regional focus unfortunately - all we can say is that on a national scale, the positive test rate is decreasing. It is entirely possible that there is an increase being hidden by a larger decrease in the hot spots, but the next month should give us the answer.
> The detected cases are increasing due to an increase in testing.
People keep saying this, but at least for Illinois the numbers don't fit. The growth rate has been almost completely steady since the results of the shelter-in-place were seen.
> Nate Silver has a great post the other day where he broke down the fact that the ratio of new cases per test administered has gone down.
I think this is what's happening instead of finding new cases. We're just identifying more uninfected people.
The stock market tanked 22.6% in one day. Of course, some traders and speculators got themselves into trouble, but the economy was fine and happily continued its expansion.
What the fuck is up with those comments? I mean the answer is obvious, but still. At that point, just shut them off.
As for the actual topic, it's almost as if "closed" or "open" isn't the entirety of the subject? It seems like we could be dealing with some kind of underlying meatspace problem that needs to be addressed before things can go back to "normal". Who knew?! (/s)
Months ago it was apparent that this virus was going to cause an absolute clusterfuck in the US due to decrepit infrastructure and a failed society ethos. What I couldn't imagine was just how slow the train wreck would be. I guess we're all stuck generally inside and washing groceries for the next year while the idiots cheerlead their simplistic ignorance, and expendable employees are put through the meat grinder to keep the economy simulating.
> expendable employees are put through the meat grinder to keep the economy simulating
Fun fact, the last stimulus bill also had legislature in it that removes all liability from businesses so employees can't sue them for making them work in unsafe conditions pertaining to covid such as if they make a bunch of people work in room with close contact and no air circulation.
Just as there was "no evidence" that wearing a respirator reduces infection risk...
The way I see it, everything coming into the house gets disinfected. This way, home can remain home, without eg needing to constantly over-worry about touching my face.
I agree it's likely overboard, which is why I threw it out as an example of ridiculous things we are doing. But the advice on TV is, at best, meant to probabilistically keep most people from spreading the infection. I'm aiming to definitively keep myself clear for the sake of my older family.
There's still no evidence that wearing masks reduces infection risk to the wearer. There is evidence that wearing masks reduces infection risk to those around the infectious wearer of the mask. It is, incidentally, the exact reasons surgeons wear masks -- not to protect themselves from a patient but to protect a patient from themselves.
While it may not prevent you from catching the disease, it's pretty much a certainty that it will help mitigate the initial infectious dose you experience if you are exposed. A low initial infectious dose buys your immune system more time to learn to produce antibodies.
There's no evidence for this to be the case. If we are going to go into "It is common sense to do X" then why stop at "it is a common sense, wear a mask" and not include "It is common sense, if you have co-morbidity then it is you job to self-isolate and let the others to continue to function"
How would someone build a physical filter that only works in one direction? I'm having some trouble finding good sources on air filter design, I did see some mentions of differing porosity on different sides looking at HVAC filters but unfortunately no details on the mechanisms/principles behind it. Most of the information I have seen regarding lack of mask effectiveness comes from mask type, improper use, and conservation of supply for those most in need, not the actual mask itself, implying that masks are in fact effective if they are used properly, with effectiveness depending on mask design - your comment appears to be referring to use in general.
I would think however that placing any physical barrier in the path of an airflow is going to have an effect regardless of direction, as some non zero portion of particles are always going to impact the barrier.
Edit: It appears from other comments you may in fact be referring to improper use of masks that are also not specifically designed to maximize filtration ability. I would still submit that some degree of mitigation is better than none, but I can see how a false sense of safety could outweigh the benefits of the mask.
> There's still no evidence that wearing masks reduces infection risk to the wearer. There is evidence that wearing masks reduces infection risk to those around the infectious wearer of the mask. It is, incidentally, the exact reasons surgeons wear masks.
I think I agree with you, but the conversation about the personal protective value of masks has become so confused that it's very difficult to discuss. You've got people counting N95 respirators as "masks," it's almost always unclear what statistic a commentator is focusing on, and then there's anger (justified or unjustified) about the evolution of the CDC recommendations for the general public.
I'm in NYC. Anecdotally from going out at least half of the people do not wear them correctly. Mostly the nose is not covered. This is not the case just outside, it is also the case for mask wearers inside the stores.
In my view public wearing masks is social signaling. I find it disappointing that CDC decided to change its message on masks under pressure from "do something!" crowd.
What contributed to the crazy spread of COVID in NYC initially and what continued to contribute the spread after the stay at home order was NYC mass transit, especially the subway. The number of people using the subway now dropped but the trains are still fairly packed early in the mornings and late in the evenings as MTA has been cutting the frequency of trains.
Of everyone doing this, I think that he should have more sympathy for those struggling during this time. Don't hire people to find violations. Help out people that are starving
He’s not posting any identifying information. This is incredibly valuable service for those in reopening states to make an informed decision on whether to continue to take precautions.
I'm sorry, but until I see some proposals from politicians to help depressed people beyond "open up businesses", I'm going to remain very skeptical this is actually a legitimate thing they are concerned about rather than a cynical appeal to emotion. The very people who claim to be so concerned with depression right now are the ones where were and are advocating to slash social support systems. Sure, let's help people who are depressed and sitting at home. This begins with listening to public health experts, who have been begging for politicians to listen to their proposals to combat depression. If the first and only proposal to combat depression is "open up businesses and get people back to work" then how can we be sure these people will still be serious about depression after people get back to work?
Yea, I agree people should focus on solutions instead of ratting people out. This entire ordeal has produced an insane amount of 'snitching' .. three Australian boys face a $1,000+ fine for having beer together on a roof.
Say you loose your job, your unemployment is stuck in bureaucratic hell, and you just want to have a beer with your two best friends to forgot about how fucked things are. Then you get helicopters and megaphones and a $1k fine. That's insane.
This entire ordeal has been a tragic example of people turning other people in and judging them for all their decisions, without offering people any real help or relief:
I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy” goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians.