Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 393 posts

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

#231

Post by r00fus »

quartzite wrote: post #180
r00fus wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "death fast", it's: 1) way more deaths and a complete congestion of medical services vs. 2) less deaths, manageable medical service and a period of painful stagnation for the economy. If you get critically sick or injured (not COVID19 related) and hospitals are overflowing, you will suffer when no one can see you because of COVID19 cases.

And the problem is that during an extended period of curve reduction there will still be people pushed out of medical care due to surging cases (but not spiking!). The total area between the number of patients and hospital capacity curves may be similar in both cases.

This also assumes an invariant capacity. Extended period gives us the opportunity increase that capacity through means including getting folks trained as hospital techs (4 week training) and having local teams sew & build our filters and masks.

Essentially given a will, we could transition part of our economy to a war footing (against the virus). Do we have the will?

Or do we capitulate and decimate the population?

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

#232

Post by rightbyte »

SN76477 wrote: post #219
tanilama wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he seems to be on top of things, other than being dismissive at first, then drastic change course when meeting with criticism

I don't mind that someone was dismissive weeks ago. I know I was. Now, I have been inside for 5 days. I saw that it was turning serious.

It didn't hit me emotionally until the pasta and toilet paper was out of stock in the stores but I would easily have taken precautions way earlier if I had any power when it hit me "rationally" in late January. The response is just way too late. Exercises should have been done. The army hospital tent should already be in place, food delivery to homes should already be in place etc.

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

#233

Post by nerdponx »

munificent wrote: post #23
ilamont wrote: 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…

This is a really naive take in my opinion. Edit: it's naive at best. Sounds more like you don't want to accept that bad shit is happening in the world. This has absolutely fuck-all to do with cancel culture and everything to do with selfish people spreading a dangerous disease.

You can make the same argument about seatbelts. The majority of people wear seatbelts because they've been asked to and they understand the danger of not wearing a seatbelt, for both themselves and their fellow passengers. But some fraction of people simply don't care, and well-intentioned people even have a tendency to say "oh just this one time." And that's why we need enforcement.

Look at this like engineering. With a large enough system, you are always going to have some components that fail. When your network has a million machines, you don't get upset when a server goes down, you just engineer some tolerance into your network, define processes to handle them, and go on with your life.

Human life is not redundant. Moreover unless you're able to outright deny people medical care for their negligence (which we can't do), unnecessary Coronavirus cases put more burden on everyone. Just like seatbelts -- even if you don't personally care if you get severely injured in a car accident, the EMTs don't have the ability to just leave your selfish ass dying on the side of the road, even if you want them to. You just wasted a lot of other people's time, energy, and money as a result of your carelessness.

If you can take simple measures to prevent components from failing, you should, especially when component failure is an expensive and intrusive proposition, even if it doesn't mean the total failure of the system.

Not to mention the fact that humans are notoriously bad at making rational utility-maximizing decisions. People often only come to regret their actions only after they've been forced to face serious consequences for their actions. Yes, this is slightly paternalistic, but it's yet another argument in favor of enforcing quarantine-like laws with actual penalties.

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

#234

Post by nerdponx »

circlefavshape wrote: post #136
munificent wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am absolutely sick to death of outrage culture, and I thoroughly agree - in fact I think the outrage probably encourages the bravado of people who are engaging in risky behaviour atm

Is preventing ICUs from getting overloaded something you consider part of "outrage culture"?

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

#236

Post by tosser0001 »

Veen wrote: post #167
aalleavitch wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great way to get rid of outrage culture, btw, would be to get rid of all the systems generating the outrage.

That assumes outrage is motivated primarily by flawed systems and not the psychological and social benefits that accrue to those who express the most outrage. It may also be true that outrage is not the best way to solve systemic problems.

I think in some cases though there are systems that funnel people into places that seem designed to evoke engagement and often the engagement triggers outrage.

I wish Jack Dorsey at Twitter would take a look at the absolute shit-show that is "Trends for You" in the Explore section. It's nothing but the most outraged people trying to whip everyone into a frenzy. I try to resist going in there, but every once in a while can't help but be sucked in and almost always regret it.

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

#237

Post by dyingkneepad »

tanilama wrote: post #216
throwaway5752 wrote: post #129

There is no doubt Cuomo should be the national point person for the response to the crisis based on his performance so far. He is independently working with regional manufacturing to retool to make critical medical PPE and ventilators, and has organized a regional coalition including CT, NJ, and PA. I have not agreed with him all the time, but his crisis management has been exemplary and he will have saved many lives…

Yeah, he seems to be on top of things, other than being dismissive at first, then drastic change course when meeting with criticism

There are people who will be in their deathbed due to COVID-19 and still be dismissive to it.

Changing opinions when facts change is not a given for everyone :/

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

#238

Post by tedunangst »

quartzite wrote: post #100
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #95

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…

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.

One wonders why they don't call it elongating the curve.

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

#239

Post by fennecfoxen »

carlosdp wrote: post #144
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #95

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 don't think authoritarian tactics like that, while effective, would fly in the US.

Much of this hinges on how it's done. First, you can't take away rights unless there's a compelling governmental interest. This interest clearly exists; however, it still doesn't fly UNLESS you restrict rights by the least restrictive means possible.

By trying voluntary restrictions first, they can demonstrate that these lesser restrictions were ineffective, and then successfully defend the more aggressive mandates in court if necessary, later.

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

#240

Post by gdulli »

ransom1538 wrote: post #224
throwaway5752 wrote: post #129

There is no doubt Cuomo should be the national point person for the response to the crisis based on his performance so far. He is independently working with regional manufacturing to retool to make critical medical PPE and ventilators, and has organized a regional coalition including CT, NJ, and PA. I have not agreed with him all the time, but his crisis management has been exemplary and he will have saved many lives…

Sorry what? His state has the highest infection rate and he just NOW did a 100% workforce reduction. He hasn't even issued "a shelter in place" order. BARS WERE OPEN MONDAY. Thousands of deaths will be on his hands. I think he should be criminally prosecuted. NY needs to be locked down NOW .

I think there's a social engineering aspect of this where it's believed by governments that drastic measures wouldn't be accepted by the public overnight. They think something like a shelter could only go smoothly after a period of ramping up to it with a period of persistent messaging and getting people used to less drastic measures first. Think of how many (more) people would be ignoring this and writing it off as a hoax if they were told out of nowhere that they had to stay home.

We're getting a picture (Burr) that the federal government knew these measures were coming a while back. My guess is that if governors and mayors of large cities had been read in back then they'd have started prepping local measures earlier.

Post reply on HN