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Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

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Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#41

Post by dezgeg »

onion2k wrote: post #10
stephenr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some things, like remote working, I don't think we'll ever go back. This could go two ways: (a) people realise that remote working is very doable, because they managed at short notice, during a crisis, and thus it will increase. (b) people will believe that remote work is not doable, because they didn't manage at short notice, during a crisis, and thus it will not increase. I would be very surprised if anyone w…

Given the potential cost savings for both businesses and individuals there is already an incentive to do it; this situation will force companies to make the effort and try. I'd be surprised if there are many companies that get to the end of, say, 12 weeks of quarantine and haven't figured out how to make it work at least to some extent, or at least worked out some of the things that block it so they can start working…

Few weeks ago there were local reports of increased sales of teleconf gear (like webcams) thus companies and probably individuals have invested money in remote working gear. So I am hopeful that companies/people will want to get their money's worth of that equipment and keep using it.

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#43

Post by taejo »

founderling wrote: post #6
onion2k wrote: post #4

When will stores be open again, when will we do meetups again, when will we be able to travel again? Around 10 weeks for stores and meetups, longer for travel depending on the destination. However, Covid-19 will likely be a lesson in single point of failure, supply chain dependency, and failure planning. To that end things will take decades to go back to the way they were. Companies will not be willing to accept mass…

Interesting, that you say longer for travel. To what extend is travel restricted at the moment? What happens when someone from - say - Germany flies to the UK? As far as I can see, flights can still be booked.

The EU allows flights from the EU, EEA and the UK, but no others, so Germany-UK happens to be allowed but there are no flights from any non-European country to Germany.

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#44

Post by dont__panic »

credit_guy wrote: post #25

I think as soon as serology tests become widely available and cheap, lots of people will get a "certificate of immunity" and be allowed/encouraged to return to work. My thinking is that in 3 months (i.e. around end of June), lots of people will be back to work. In the US in particular, public schools get money from the federal government conditional on administering state tests. It doesn't look like the stimulus bill…

This does largely depend on state. See that NYS has cancelled state exams, and is weighing the options on the graduation-requirement Regents exams: https://chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2020/03/20/its-official-new-y...

Meanwhile, NYC's mayor has suggested that it's unlikely for schools to resume this school year at all: https://www.silive.com/coronavirus/2020/03/mayor-nyc-schools...

Definitely depends on your region, though. I think you might be jumping the gun a bit w.r.t. serology tests -- consider that the entire United States can only complete something like 20,000 tests per day right now, we're likely going to have to wait for normal tests (like what we're doing now) to become less important before we can even begin to focus resources on serology tests. And when only a small portion of the population has caught COVID, it's still going to be very important to test flu-like illnesses and isolate contacts of infected individuals for months.

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#45

Post by Der_Einzige »

hither2 wrote: post #19

A few weeks. This is an over-reaction. The push for suppressing entire populations for months and years are coming from those that want to dis-empower these populations the rest of the time. If by "normal" you mean the neo-liberal/neo-marxist agenda "progressing"... that is increasingly unlikely

Wow a textbook example of dog whistling on HN of all places! I never thought I'd see the day...

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#46

Post by rckoepke »

https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data This shows an "unexpected" inflection point starting March 28 which slowed the USA death growth from 2.7 day doubling to 3.4 days doubling. Even at that slower rate 900 million Americans would be dead by the end of May, so obviously there will be a major slowdown in deaths over the next 8 weeks.

https://neherlab.org/covid19/ indicates maybe sometime between July and October things will normalize (ICU's will no longer be over capacity).

https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/ The phase space plot from Johns Hopkins dataset still shows no recent improvement of trajectory, in contrast to the NYT dataset.

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#47

Post by dont__panic »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

Folks are estimating many weeks, even months. But consider: the doubling time is around 4-5 days. We'll hit 1M worldwide maybe Friday. 40 days after that, we'll hit 1B people. That's about the estimated total that typically get infected by a pandemic. Peak infection. Two or three weeks after that, everybody will be through it. No problem; scars and health issues; death; whatever, it'll be over. So 60 days to do anyth…

Without mitigation, sure. But of course the deaths, overwhelmed hospitals, etc. would be horrific.

Instead, we're trying to "flatten the curve" in most countries. This means we're directly trying to lower the doubling time, which means that we won't develop herd immunity the same way. Lots of pockets of never-infecteds will exist where COVID can crop up again.

I'd also caution estimating based on current "confirmed case" counts. Almost every country has suffered from test shortages, and even those that haven't had shortages haven't been testing everyone -- in most cases, if you aren't having trouble breathing, you're advised to just stay at home and assume you're infected. So honestly nobody knows just how many people are infected.

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#48

Post by hither2 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #45
hither2 wrote: post #19

A few weeks. This is an over-reaction. The push for suppressing entire populations for months and years are coming from those that want to dis-empower these populations the rest of the time. If by "normal" you mean the neo-liberal/neo-marxist agenda "progressing"... that is increasingly unlikely

Wow a textbook example of dog whistling on HN of all places! I never thought I'd see the day...

The comment is not dog whistling...people need to stop misusing political terminology. It renders words meaningless. Considering that you depend upon hiding behind words, it is best not to deconstruct your own shield.

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#49

Post by detaro »

taejo wrote: post #43
founderling wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, that you say longer for travel. To what extend is travel restricted at the moment? What happens when someone from - say - Germany flies to the UK? As far as I can see, flights can still be booked.

The EU allows flights from the EU, EEA and the UK, but no others, so Germany-UK happens to be allowed but there are no flights from any non-European country to Germany.

Entry for non-residents isn't possible, but flights still are as far as I know. Of course very extremely reduced, but it appears you can still book tickets for some flights. (Not counting one-off government recovery flights getting tourists back home, which probably make the majority of "passenger" air travel entering the EU right now)

Re: Ask HN: When do you expect life will get back to “normal”?

#50

Post by Der_Einzige »

hither2 wrote: post #48
Der_Einzige wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow a textbook example of dog whistling on HN of all places! I never thought I'd see the day...

The comment is not dog whistling...people need to stop misusing political terminology. It renders words meaningless. Considering that you depend upon hiding behind words, it is best not to deconstruct your own shield.

Conflating neoliberalism and neomarxism together is textbook dog whistling. I don't know of anyone on earth who even identifies as a "neomarxist" but we all know what using those terms interchangeably means for ones held political ideology...
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