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New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

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Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#141
post #6

There is currently no plan in place to penalize individuals for gathering socially Then people won't take the rules seriously. Lots of people in this country still don't believe or understand how much damage this virus can inflict.

Why is the damage bad? Why not thin the population? Think about the looming stress due to the boomers living longer. If they die, housing becomes affordable. Assets move to the younger generation. Debts get canceled because their is no one left in the estate to pay. Think of this as a fire that thins the forest. New growth will come up.

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#142

It seems highly likely that the US is headed where the whole of Europe is now: over 100,000 positives, over 5,000 deaths. We waited too long for actions like this. It will take a month before we see a drop in cases and deaths

A month? Wouldn't it be more like 1-2 weeks?

The numbers you see on dashboards have A LOT of lag from the moment of infection. There's incubation. There's "nah, this is just a regular cold". There's calling the doctor. There's looking for a test kit. There's processing the test. There's reporting. Then the numbers show up on the dash.

Plus, there will be a lag between the moment the order is issued and the moment you see material changes in patterns of social interaction.

It's definitely not 1 week, and even 2 seems a little sunny side up.

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#143
post #6

There is currently no plan in place to penalize individuals for gathering socially Then people won't take the rules seriously. Lots of people in this country still don't believe or understand how much damage this virus can inflict.

Man, I hate this take. I get where it's coming from. In times of significant stress, it's important that we all pull together and do work to benefit society as a whole. And part of the way we incentivize that is by calling out people who don't do their part. I get it. But we are already inundated by outrage journalism, cancel culture, and public shaming. The last thing we need is more of that. We've already got enoug…

Probably the only time it's appropriate for outrage culture and to focus on the negative is exactly right now.

Shame and tell everyone whenever possible to stay the fuck inside because those are going to be the people that make you stay in lockdown for 6 months instead of 2.

Otherwise this will be 10x worse in the US

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#144

At this point wouldn't it be better to just implement a Chinese-style martial law lock-down? The damage to the economy is already here. Might as well shut things down for 3-4 weeks and slowly open up sections of a city. That seems better to me then dragging this thing out for 3 months or longer. I feel like these "stages" of lock-down are doing nothing but delaying the inevitable which will cause more damage in the l…

I don't think authoritarian tactics like that, while effective, would fly in the US. I for one would not be ok with that. Once the government takes that authority once, who knows what they end up doing with it when they see they can get away with it.

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snuffing the virus out is not an option at this point. Perhaps they could have done that in Wuhan in December, but it is not an choice we can make for the United States in March. And no, we aren't waiting for a vaccine. We will build herd immunity as people contract the virus, develop antibodies and recover from it. The goal now is to moderate the rate at which people acquire the disease so that the critical cases do…

Snuffing out the virus absolutely is an option. If we adopt a stance that makes R0 > We will build herd immunity as people contract the virus, develop antibodies and recover from it. This is a pipe dream, at least outside the context where we are going to accept megadeaths or years of social distancing. The hospital capacity of the US is such that, if we were to run them all at 100% and somehow hold the virus exactly…

How is it possible to make R0 It's impossible, unfortunately. There are billions on the planet without even access to the internet. Many don't have running water or consistent food. How can we get R0 less than 1 there?

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#146
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. All this talk of "flattening the curve" is counterproductive if the curve remains flattened right at capacity for an extended period of time, which is what these measures will cause, rather than spiking for a short period.

Yeah, because a quick spike wouldn't have any outside effects at all. You sound as if you're ok with millions of people dying miserably. You think a long period of decreased economy is bad, the spike might cause outright panics and armed unrest. We can print dollars, we can't resurrect the dead.

Why not make the death fast? The argument is for euthanasia not a poor life to slowly die.

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#147

At this point wouldn't it be better to just implement a Chinese-style martial law lock-down? The damage to the economy is already here. Might as well shut things down for 3-4 weeks and slowly open up sections of a city. That seems better to me then dragging this thing out for 3 months or longer. I feel like these "stages" of lock-down are doing nothing but delaying the inevitable which will cause more damage in the l…

I don't think authoritarian tactics like that, while effective, would fly in the US. I for one would not be ok with that. Once the government takes that authority once, who knows what they end up doing with it when they see they can get away with it.

I agree, as alarming as it sounds I think we'd need something much higher than a 2% fatality rate to justify completely giving up our civil liberties.

If anything it should be the elderly and vulnerable that are forced to isolate while the rest of society slows down for awhile, but even that I think is too egregious at this point.

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a reaction to people not doing it on their own sufficiently enough, like what happened in Italy. Perhaps Washingtonians are taking the recommendations more seriously, so they don't require an official mandate. That decision can't be a light one, and I don't envy those that have to make it.

> Perhaps Washingtonians are taking the recommendations more seriously I doubt that. I'm in a mid sized city in WA and I've seen a notable increase in traffic in the last week. People are leaving their homes more now. Most of the offices are empty so I'm not entirely sure where they're going, but they're going somewhere.

Seconding this. We're 30 miles north of Seattle and there are tons of people still out and about. Beautiful weather isn't helping.

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#149

It seems highly likely that the US is headed where the whole of Europe is now: over 100,000 positives, over 5,000 deaths. We waited too long for actions like this. It will take a month before we see a drop in cases and deaths

A month? Wouldn't it be more like 1-2 weeks?

The problem we are going to have in the US is some states are responding better than others. NY looks bad right now because they are testing a lot. States like Florida, Louisiana and Georgia are already in double digit deaths each and don't have the positive cases to account for them. Going forward the rate of deaths will be far more indicative of what's happening than just the positive cases and that is going to continue to climb for at least 4 more weeks. Will we see a ban on interstate travel? What happens when one state gets the outbreak under control while another state's cases are still increasing? I'm extremely doubtful that any one state in the US will see a significant slowdown in cases in the next 4 weeks. No European country has yet...

Re: New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this will open the door for NYC to fully "shelter in place" lockdown, however.

Yeah, they're boiling the frog. Each incremental step is normalized over a few days, and then there's a new, stricter mandate.

Ultimately, even if 60% of people are massively harmed or inconvenienced by the restrictions it is a life-and-death matter for healthcare workers. Viral load is a problem, and keeping down the infections will reduce patient interactions without adequate PPE and mistakes. It is indicative of a collective societal favor that we're asking nurses, PAs, and doctors to risk there lives for a preventable situation. The risk of a systemic failure to the healthcare system would be a catastrophe.
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