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Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

governor.wa.gov

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Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#301

Post by cavisne »

icelancer wrote: post #223
chrisco255 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They announced $50 billion in SBA loans (up to $2 million per business) for small and medium businesses. Interest rate is 3.75%. These kind of funds will help a lot of businesses float through: https://www.sba.gov/about-sba/sba-newsroom/press-releases-me...

Loans? Not grants? While large businesses get quantitative easing, bailouts of airline industries, etc? Sounds about right. Also from the announcement, lol: "businesses with credit available elsewhere are not eligible" Ah, so if you can get credit elsewhere, you can't get our help, even if it's needed.

Governments have more fiscal freedom to give out loans than grants. Many of the prior bailouts were also loans (at terms that no bank would offer hence the bailout bit).

Businesses should take advantage of these, and a restaurant operating in a city where operating a restaurant is illegal will not have credit available anywhere else.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#302

Post by tathougies »

smt88 wrote: post #174
dragonwriter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bailout of the banks has started with 0% rates and massive QE, which at the end of the day while I think necessary to prevent a credit crisis Well, no, if you bailed out businesses and consumers directly, there also wouldn't be a credit crisis. Structurally, though, that's fiscal stimulus, which isn't the Feds job, and good luck getting much of that through Congress, and by that I mostly mean the Senate Republi…

HN's culture against partisan political statements looks particularly like sticking one's head in the sand these days. Coronavirus is not a political thing, but our (partisan) elected leaders had an enormous amount of power over how prepared we were, and their agendas shape the on-going response. It's impossible to talk accurately about the problem or solution without mentioning parties and politicians by name.

This is crazy. There is nothing any party could do to have prevented the virus from reaching the United States, aside from a complete shutdown of the borders, including for American citizens. It is too transmissible, too undetectable, etc, to prevent it. Containment is the only feasible option, and America is actually ahead of the curve. Unlike Italy and France and Europe, American states are shutting down before hospitals have yet to be overrun.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#303

Post by ncallaway »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #232
ncallaway wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go ahead and call you a cynic here. Do you really think there's any way that the State of Washington will be permanently banning events over 50 people? Do you really think there's any way that the State of Washington will be permanently preventing the operation of bars, dine-in restaurants, and entertainment facilities? I'm generally pretty skeptical of creeping government powers myself, but this just...…

What about South Korea’s use of data in crisis? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51733145

Sure, I think those privacy concerns are a little bit different.

I am slightly more hesitant about things like that, but at the same time I think that use of data has probably greatly helped their response in controlling the epidemic. Overall, I'm probably in favor of the use of this kind of data in this scenario, but the "slippery-slope" argument makes a lot more sense there to me.

While we've had epidemics and pandemics in the past, we've never had them with the intersection of shared personal data before. We haven't really had any time as a society to think about the utility or the dangers of this kind of approach.

Once the acute phase of the crisis is over, I'd love to see a lot of thinking go into how we can get the benefits of this kind of data while mitigating as much of the privacy downsides as possible.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#304

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

m0zg wrote: post #271
ken wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without work, I can’t make hours to keep my health insurance, so I’ll be forced to buy COBRA, which is just as expensive as rent. (Or I could risk going without, while living at this continent’s ground zero for a pandemic.) Entire industries are being shut down. There are no easy answers here.

Protip: COBRA is almost always more expensive than a comparable plan you can buy from an exchange. Often hundreds of dollars a month more expensive if you have a family.

The only problem with getting a plan on an exchange is that you may need to satisfy a deductible again. YMMV of course.

With COBRA I believe you can also pay your premium after the month it's due. This can be advantageous because you can opt to not pay for your last month before switching to another plan if you end up not using any services from your COBRA plan that month.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#305

Post by tathougies »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #100
eyegor wrote: post #42

This is going to be an economic catastrophe unless there's somehow a nationwide bailout to literally all brick and mortar businesses. I know of several local bar/restaurants that are considering shutting down for good, and a colleague near Melbourne told me of 4 that already have (I'm eastern US). Even if this all blows over in 3 months, we'll have a huge surge in homelessness and folks needing social assistance acro…

Totally agree. The bailout of the banks has started with 0% rates and massive QE, which at the end of the day while I think necessary to prevent a credit crisis will do nothing to help the real economic situation; demand is dead for a while because of the health situation. We should consider more radical measures like temporary rent/mortgage freezes.

Most likely, given that both the White House and the Speaker agree that there should be a financial package aimed at those individuals affected, this is one of those times when both banks and individuals will be given relief.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#306

Post by spion »

Fiveplus wrote: post #247
brightsize wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Herd immunity" or something along those lines, apparently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22577132

Wow that twitter thread linked was a wild ride. They really are doing a huge experiment in the middle of a world-wide pandemic. I'll be really interested to see how it all works out.

There is a huge backlash and they seem to be backing off of that idea. We'll see.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#307

Post by tathougies »

ddingus wrote: post #267
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is horrible, but likely not too many. In Italy they are currently kicking people over 60 out of the hospitals to make way for the younger people who are more likely to survive with medical treatment.

And they have roughly 5 times the beds per 1000 people too.

No they don't. Italy has much fewer critical care beds (the kind needed for COVID) than the United States, which is #1 in the world.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#309

Post by jader201 »

tathougies wrote: post #298
eyegor wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be no underlying financial issue, but percentage wise we're going down much faster. September to Oct 2008 was a 9.5% drop (steepest month drop). Past 30 days was a 20.5% drop. Tracking s&p 500.

That's because of people panic selling, and it's a wonderful opportunity to buy cheap stocks.

The problem is stocks continue to fall — hard — and nobody knows where the floor is.

It’s also unclear how long it will take everything to recover, if they do continue to fall.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#310

Post by sdkaufman »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #156
ncallaway wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK's answer to the problem is starting to look a lot more sensible than total economic chaos being caused by all other methods. The UK's answer to the problem may result in manyfold more dead than this approach. We won't be able to know until after the fact. In that state of unknown, I prefer the approach that values lives over dollars.

Lives and dollars are not totally different things. How many lives will be ruined by total financial destruction? How many will commit suicide in the months and years after due to financial issues?

Governments at all levels, companies and non-profits can (and I don't doubt will) help mitigate the financial hit in the months and years ahead. The California state government has for example promised to keep paying teachers and school staff. [1] Many tech companies for example are continuing to pay maintenance staff despite office closures. [2] NBA players have donated to arena staff affected by cancellations. [3]

But there is nothing anyone can do to bring back our loved ones.

[1] https://edsource.org/2020/newsom-assures-districts-theyll-be...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-google-facebook-...

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/us/nba-player-donations-coron...

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