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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”?

#51

Post by stephenr »

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…

Of course they will try - they're forced to because a dead or quarantined workforce isn't exactly productive.

But the ongoing incentives have existed for many years, and the numbers of companies supporting true remote working has been essentially a rounding error.

The problem is that these companies are adopting it because they had literally no other choice - not because they wanted to try it - so there's automatic friction there.

I think a lot of society (particularly big city issues) could be reduced greatly if remote working was adopted more broadly, but I've also heard all manner of arguments about why remote working "doesn't work" for the past decade or so I've been doing it.

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

#53

Post by maest »

hither2 wrote: post #23
maest wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the neo-liberal/neo-marxist agenda? Also, the state of quarantine is happening at a global level, not just the US.

I'm not in the U.S. And I'm not interested in starting a flame-war. By all means, research these ideologies yourself. I was answering the poster's question with my opinion. You do not have to like it.

> not interested in starting a flame-war.

Me neither - my intention was to pose a neutrally-worded question, which I think I did.

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

#54

Post by hither2 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #50
hither2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Oh, what textbook are you reading?

You not being aware of something does not mean it does not exist.

What is this political ideology of mine you are identifying?

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

#55

Post by sali0 »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #30

My fear is that economic impacts will end up so severe that we won't really see normal again as a result for a long, long time. I hope I'm being alarmist, but my gut tells me (and my brain) that my city is hemorrhaging cash and even with economic stimulus, jobs aren't going to come back as quickly as people think. A lot of local business owners who were doing alright (making money and paying several employees) are no…

I have this same fear. Small businesses suffer immensely while large corporations thrive. I think also based on the hiring thread last week on HN, tech companies are disproportionately unaffected.

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

#56

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38
blueboo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but the big question is how much curve-flattening stretches it out in your country of residence. Some societies will choose such that their medical infrastructure will be at 10x capacity for ten times as long rather than be at 100x capacity. Others will manage to stamp it out, only to endure subsequent flare-ups. Unconstrained doubling is only a popular policy among oligarchs in power. To be fair, they do have a…

Evidence to date outside Asia is, zero flattening. Most places. Thus my estimate. If you want to posit some slight flattening, then 70 day? No more. The terrible power of geometric growth cannot be resisted for long. You need to change the growth rules entirely to beat it. No half-measures will do it.

> Evidence to date outside Asia is, zero flattening

That's not true. "new daily deaths" are fairly flat in Italy over the last week, not doubling geometrically at all.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

If the lockdown is working in other countries, then a similar state will be reached 3 weeks afterwards.

Daily new cases is down in Italy since peak on 21 March - that's a leading metric compared to deaths, although it is less precise because it can be swayed by changes in testing.

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

#57

Post by JoeAltmaier »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #56
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence to date outside Asia is, zero flattening. Most places. Thus my estimate. If you want to posit some slight flattening, then 70 day? No more. The terrible power of geometric growth cannot be resisted for long. You need to change the growth rules entirely to beat it. No half-measures will do it.

> Evidence to date outside Asia is, zero flattening That's not true. "new daily deaths" are fairly flat in Italy over the last week, not doubling geometrically at all. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/ If the lockdown is working in other countries, then a similar state will be reached 3 weeks afterwards. Daily new cases is down in Italy since peak on 21 March - that's a leading metric compared…

Well I hope its true. The curves have shown 'levelling off' before, only to return to geometric growth when testing increases.

E.g. click on a country on the left, select 'logarithmic' on the lower right and see what you think: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

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

#58

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #57
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Evidence to date outside Asia is, zero flattening That's not true. "new daily deaths" are fairly flat in Italy over the last week, not doubling geometrically at all. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/ If the lockdown is working in other countries, then a similar state will be reached 3 weeks afterwards. Daily new cases is down in Italy since peak on 21 March - that's a leading metric compared…

Well I hope its true. The curves have shown 'levelling off' before, only to return to geometric growth when testing increases. E.g. click on a country on the left, select 'logarithmic' on the lower right and see what you think: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

Sure, more time/data is needed to know for sure. If you factor in 1 week until symptoms, another 1-2 weeks until the worst part of the illness, then yes, the effect of lock down on death rates won't be seen until 2-3 weeks have passed.

This is the UK 2.5 weeks ago: https://twitter.com/stereophonics/status/1238944498006274048

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

#59

Post by thu2111 »

Tepix wrote: post #22
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

Hardly an over-reaction with 100.000 expected deaths. Of course earlier actions might have prevented this tragedy.

No, that's still an open question.

We won't really know until much more analysis is done, but there's a ton of reasons to suspect an over-reaction now. See some of the daily update links here:

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

The basic problem is confused data e.g. 100,000 deaths expected from what? Given how often COVID-19 seems to give people a little push over an edge they were very close to anyway, it's extremely hard to even define what a C19 death means, let alone do so in a way that's comparable across countries.

Meanwhile healthcare systems have been scaling up a lot but actually the projected collapse isn't close to being here even in Italy, where many hospitals are still mostly empty outside the core hotspots (leading to a question of whether it's not ventilator capacity that's needed but patient transfer capacity). And where hospitals are under pressure it may be partly due to huge numbers of staff isolating themselves as they tested positive, sometimes with no symptoms (i.e. could be false positives?). Hospitals can be overwhelmed even by normal admissions if 30% of the staff are gone due to self-isolation.

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

#60

Post by doggodad »

Day-to-day: When there's a vaccine, in about 18-36 months. If you look at the data, there will likely be multiple lockdowns in order to "reset the clock" on the pandemic curve, but it will probably be like Groundhog Day to lesser degrees over-and-over again with smaller pandemic curves until there's a vaccine. Overall, a million dead globally before a vaccine is deployed.

Economically: 10 years (a long time) because bouncing back isn't possible when ancillary businesses close and cause others to close. Right now, unemployment is going to around 35% whereas the Great Depression peaked at around 23-25%. This is, in essence, the Greater Depression. There were most recently structural problems and the global economy was overdue for a contraction, but not to the depths as being experienced without a pandemic; in essence, it is a forcing function that artificially-depresses economic activity in a lasting manner.

Overall: Not everything will be the same, but some things will. Don't let fear or magical wishful-thinking be guiding forces.

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