California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact • Hacker News Board

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#281

Post by dahdum » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 12:18 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #252

dahdum wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're arguing the budgets won't be cut or frozen, the data is the success metrics of those programs.

You're saying that cutting (meaning reducing, not zeroing) budgets of social and health programs can kill up to 0.5% of the entire population of a state? Because that's the CFR of the virus. You're aware that even programs on reduced budgets can offer a reduced set of services, and prioritize the ones with most impact? (i.e. most lifesaving potential). And that their work will be far easier if there are fewer total s…

> You're saying that cutting (meaning reducing, not zeroing) budgets of social and health programs can kill up to 0.5% of the entire population of a state? Because that's the CFR of the virus.

I'm not saying that, but I could have been more clear.

The Great Recession is not a great comparison to a continued lockdown scenario, unemployment peaked at 10% while current reports are putting us already at ~14% and rising. The recession reduced demand but didn't wipe out sectors, nor did it cascade nearly as fast. Heart attacks and traffic fatalities will go down as the studies show.

I don't think I'm being contrarian, these pacts were setup to provide the political cover necessary for those qualified to make the call. My prediction is CA/OR/WA reopen on roughly the same schedule as everyone else, with just slight stricter restrictions. Such as quarantining the sick, isolating the high-risk, and other measures to bring the CFR down.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#282

Post by BurningFrog » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 12:26 AM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #90

BurningFrog wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, that one group of states would become a Single Point of Failure. If that centralized and coordinated leadership is incompetent and/or corrupt, there is no Plan B.

Sure there is. The Western States Pact is the plan B.

That's my point :)

I'm arguing letting the central federal government handle everything.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

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Post by spankalee » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 12:29 AM UTC

yingw787 wrote: post #76

spankalee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I fear that tomorrow Why fear? This is my dream! The Senate is irreparably broken. There is no conceivable way that it can become more fairly representative of the people without a breakup of the United States. The smaller less populous states aren't going to just give up their outsized power voluntarily. California is suffering the most due to the Senate's structural unfairness, and it has the most to gain from su…

Dude...if we're talking about secession, we're talking about civil war. In a country with the second most nuclear weapons in the world. With a federal government already looking to adversaries for cooperation. You're talking nuclear missiles or chemical weapons fired against San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Seattle from land-based silos in the Dakotas, or mutinies aboard our SSBNs, or Russian troops landing en masse in…

This is super hyperbolic. Why would Texas or Mexico invade? Why would the US nuke a people trying to exercise their right to self-determination. It doesn't make any strategic, tactical, or political sense.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

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Post by 0x8BADF00D » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

nawgszy wrote: post #258

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Fed had done the right thing by raising interest rates, and the government didn't interfere in the market with massive spending, USD could have remained the reserve currency for the foreseeable future. But nobody in Washington has the guts to do the right thing. Especially the Fed. Also, if this "pact" leaves the United States, that is when I'll be leaving the shithole called CA. I'm not paying for the free ri…

It's a bit funny to see capitalist corporations making obscene amounts of money violating laws and ethics and trickling a bit of that ill-gained wealth down to software engineers, who then turn around and say everyone should have wealth like them and not need gov't assistance when their own company is one of the drivers of inequality...

That's due to excessive regulation. Regulations benefit large incumbents, as opposed to smaller competitors/startups. The real driver of inequality is the government. Usually through excessive regulations, bailouts, and inflation. In a truly free market, prices go down, as competition is fierce. Perfect competition and pareto efficiency are concepts everyone on here should have knowledge of, if only at a surface level.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

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Post by maerF0x0 » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:08 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #256

maerF0x0 wrote: post #149

I have yet to see a cogent validation of the total lives saved by lockdown when considering all other health impacts such as suicide rates from isolation, heart disease/stroke/diabetes from extra sedentary lifestyle etc. not to mention the suicide by fentanyl in a subsequent economic recession/depression. Any aware of such an analysis?

I'm generally worried about this sort of thing as well, and wish people were looking into this. However, we have pretty good estimates on how many people will die if we don't shelter and isolate, and I think that trumps what would inevitably be some very vague guesses as to how many people might die as side effects of sheltering and isolation. And regardless, many of those potential deaths could be preventable with t…

> we have pretty good estimates on how many people will die if we don't shelter and isolate

This is a fantastic point/rebuttal and has helped shift my perspective somewhat. We can do things about tomorrow's suicides, heart attacks and diabetes later, though not too too much later.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

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Post by btilly » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

vondur wrote: post #228

btilly wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concrete examples. Early in office, Trump got rid of the department created by Obama to respond to pandemics. Early in this epidemic, we bungled getting testing out. Got it out in broken form. Had to get it out again. All the while we turned down an effective test advocated by the WHO. And when testing existed, had rules that tested so little that they missed the existence of community spread until it was well establ…

Wasn't the issues with the initial tests that there weren't accurate and their simply weren't enough to go around? As far as disbanding the Pandemic team, it's not really true, there was a shuffling of who was in charge of it. It was finally transferred to the Vice President. As far as I can tell, the FDA approved an emergency policy to Help Expedite the Availability of Diagnostics on Feb 19th. The US probably has mo…

Wasn't the issues with the initial tests that there weren't accurate and their simply weren't enough to go around?

The USA shipped out tests after other countries, and with a faulty reagent that caused false positives. Causing labs that should have been able to do their own tests to have to ship samples to an overwhelmed CDC. See https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/05/905484/why-the-c... for verification.

The CDC promised new tests, but they took weeks to arrive. In the meantime federal bureaucracy roadblocked the development of independent tests. Finally the Seattle Flu study went and ahead and tested...only to find that COVID-19 had community spread for several weeks in that testing vacuum. You can verify that at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de....

As far as disbanding the Pandemic team, it's not really true, there was a shuffling of who was in charge of it. It was finally transferred to the Vice President.

Let's go for a fuller version: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pan...

Long story short, a number of people were let go, what was left was moved around in the bureaucracy, the political leadership left in charge claims that it still works, but the people left and other politicians claim that it was hamstrung.

Given that the US response has been so weak, it it questionable whether it operated at all effectively.

As far as I can tell, the FDA approved an emergency policy to Help Expedite the Availability of Diagnostics on Feb 19th.

Yes, at which point they created a bureaucratic nightmare for the approval process. As the NY Times article outlines, the lab that actually found community spread was NOT able to get through the approval process.

The US probably has more contact with China due to trade/travel than most other countries. I don't believe the numbers from China, they are sure to be way higher than they report.

Yes, the USA has a lot of travel. You are far from alone in not believing China. However there is no reason to believe that they are lying about having effectively shut down the virus. (Even the social distancing we are doing here seems to be working, and China was a lot more extreme.)

I don't think the Federal Government really has the ability to shut down a states beaches that aren't Federally managed.

Never underestimate the reach of the Commerce Clause. The President's ability to declare quarantines and apply them to whomever for whatever reason is extreme.

I don't know the limits for sure. But I doubt that he would have had less ability to act than various governors have had.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

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Post by triceratops » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #188

tathougies wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly unlikely. Republicans are for state's rights, and the current president and administration seems especially in favor of it. He basically told the states to get their acts together and put the feds into a mainly supportive role, which is as it should be.

Republicans might claim to support state's rights, but they certainly aren't principled consistent supporters of it. Just take a drug legalization. Many Republicans have been vehemently opposed to it. Take a look at the Supreme Court decision Gonzalez v. Raich , where Steve Scalia no less, wrote that the feds could interfere with your growing some plants inside your own home for your own personal use. Remember that t…

> Remember that the "states rights" movement started as a response to federal action to end segregation.

It's way older and more sinister than that. States' rights was first used to justify the continuation and expansion of the institution of slavery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_...

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#288

Post by acid__ » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #261

nostromo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the current rate of infection that plan will require many years of quarantine. We need more people exposed, not fewer.

That assumes no investment in upgrading our hospital capacity and testing & PPE production. At one end of the spectrum you have (mythically) infinite hospital capacity and staffing, testing capacity, and contact tracing ability. In that world, you reopen everything, and let people go about their lives. At current capacity, we need to slow things down. If we can increase capacity enough in the coming weeks and months,…

Things were quite bad but they've improved rapidly over the past weeks and months.

Hospitals have actually, counter-intuitively, seen a reduction in usage. The number of hospitalizations has been far lower than expected (~20% of IHME's modeled values) and when combined with the fact that non-COVID patients have been avoiding hospitals (even for serious emergencies like heart attacks and strokes!), many are reporting entire wards being completely unused according to reports from medical professionals on Twitter, Facebook, and r/medicine.

Also, 150,000 test results are coming in every day. That's 5x the per-capita testing rate of South Korea (~5,000 tests per day) and while we certainly can and should increase testing dramatically, the US is actually doing pretty well on testing relative to global numbers.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#289

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #271

sandworm101 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are told not to travel unless necessary. Kayaking is never necessary. The Canadian military, the people responsible for search and rescue over HUGE areas, are themselves locked into extraordinary isolation measures. Many are living far from loved ones specifically to maintain operational readiness for real national emergencies. They aren't going to be very happy if they have to break isolation to rescue a kayak pa…

So you kayak in a lake within swimming distance of shore. This is the thing: people need to be trusted to do the right thing. What we want to avoid wasn’t people kayaking but people requiring rescue. That should just work by asking it of people.

Talk to any first responder. Playing around near shore results in plenty of calls. It isn't just the big helicopter that pulls people off icebergs. A needless ambulance callout, followed by a kid sitting in hospital with a badly broken bone, is exactly the sort of thing we need to avoid. Doing anything recreational on the water is to be avoided.

There is a horse farm near my house. They are curtailing riding as much as possible specifically because they know that riding horses can be dangerous, especially for kids. They don't want any trips to hospital right now.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

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Post by ummwhat » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:43 AM UTC

johncearls wrote: post #154

roywiggins wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He let who knows how many Americans back in from China without testing or quarantining them. Not much of a travel ban.

Quarantining is a fancy word for arrest, with zero cause. There were no "tests" at the time. And finally, thankfully, it is illegal to refuse an American citizen entry to the United States.

>Quarantining is a fancy word for arrest, with zero cause.

There is probable cause. You probably have the virus. Spreading it around is negligent manslaughter. This court sentences you to two weeks in a hotel.