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L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

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Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#111

Post by abakker »

christophilus wrote: post #61
torpfactory wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you act early, it will always appear you overreacted. If you act too late, well... https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000007076660/corona...

This goes both ways, though. If you act early-- and way over-react-- and it works, you get to claim to be the savior of the country, even though the reaction was disproportionate. There's no way to disprove it.

This is true, but also unhelpful. We all make significant choices all the time that cannot be proved effective, these are heuristics and not scientific theorems.

The gist is that this is more like avoiding rock climbing because you don't want to fall to your death. It's not likely that you fall to your death rock climbing, but it is MUCH less likely if you never climb. But, you can't know the future, so you can only take actions that are either right or wrong in hindsight.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#112

Post by thaumaturgy »

christophilus wrote: post #47
thaumaturgy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been very hard for me to understand this line of thinking. As I see it, there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been taken. Do you think California would not have many more cases if the measures were relaxed? Or do you think that the cases would not be all that bad? Or do you think that they would only affect people that you aren't personally concerned about? I'm asking honestly fo…

> there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been taken This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread. Our options aren't binary. It's not as if the only choice is "Nuke everything" or "Surrender". The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing. We probably could d…

Hmm.

One of the traits of this virus that makes it so different from past potential epidemics is that it's able to spread rapidly through a population for up to two weeks before it starts becoming "visible" (symptoms start to arrive in large enough numbers to become alarming). At the tail end of those two weeks, the infection may have spread enough to become very difficult to control.

So, if we took some kind of middle road, and then two weeks later the virus exploded, would that change how you felt about the approach?

I'm still treating this question honestly, btw. I completely agree that it would be nice if such severe measures were unnecessary and the damage to people's livelihoods could start getting addressed. But, the problem that policy-makers are dealing with is that this isn't an infection that responds well to a "wait and see" approach; by the time you start to "see" and react, you could be in deep trouble.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#113

Post by dkobran »

christophilus wrote: post #72
CydeWeys wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread. Which countries might that be? If you're referring to South Korea, they're ahead of the game enough on testing for this to be workable (unlike us). If you're referring to anyone else, they're simply not at that point yet in the curve, but will arrive there.

Various European countries. Sweden comes to mind.

Sweden has by far the highest number of cases/deaths with respect to neighboring countries. Finland has 1/10th of the number of deaths per capita [0]. They are also faring much worse than Denmark and Norway (in terms of both cases and deaths) where much stricter measures are enforced.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/14/sweden-22...

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#114

Post by CydeWeys »

dehrmann wrote: post #109
tempsy wrote: post #26

I’m definitely in the camp that “the cure cannot be worse than the disease” itself. Sitting in California where there are so few cases makes me wonder if the economic toll is totally worth it. Seems like we’ve used a tsunami to put out a campfire.

My fear is that 2-3 months of lockdown isn't a cure, it turns into on-and-off lockdown, herd immunity is never established because immunity wears off in 2 years, and a vaccine is 2-5 years out. Ignoring the economics, preserving life takes on new meaning if you count a every locked down day as taking away an hour of life from someone. Take the Bay Area. At 7.7M people, every day, there are 11.7 lifespans wasted by lo…

There's no basis for your fear that immunity would wear off in two years. Unlike the cold and the flu, these coronavirus strains do not mutate quickly enough to cause quick loss of immunity. It seems more akin to chickenpox, which you can only catch once (and shingles doesn't count).

So, take heart in this at least?

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#115

Post by jolan »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #56
thaumaturgy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been very hard for me to understand this line of thinking. As I see it, there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been taken. Do you think California would not have many more cases if the measures were relaxed? Or do you think that the cases would not be all that bad? Or do you think that they would only affect people that you aren't personally concerned about? I'm asking honestly fo…

Sweden has far fewer cases and death rate without a massive lockdown. If this disease is really so deadly, why isn’t their country being massively depopulated? Same for states in the US that haven’t implemented any lockdown measures.

52% of Swedish households are 1 person households[1] so they were sort of self-isolating by default. As you can see from the other replies, that wasn't enough to keep transmission at bay.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/D...

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#116

Post by CydeWeys »

ninetyfurr wrote: post #57

I wonder why nobody pays for newspapers, yet podcasts and talk radio shows pull in millions of dollars annually.

This is not based in fact. Newspapers in fact pull in much, much more total revenue than podcasts and talk radio.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#117

Post by nightstaywalki »

eropple wrote: post #103
nightstaywalki wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I'm not as sure, and I'm not sure why other people are so sure. People seem to generally respond 'of course not' and get offended that I've suggested it. I'm not really sure why.

On the off chance that you're saying this in good faith? Generally speaking it's because Just Asking Questions comes with motives that suck. Maybe you're the one whose don't and you are tragically caught up amidst the sewage flow of "screw 'em" types, but playing the percentages on bad-faith argumentation is pretty safe. Trolls and other turds make a point of wasting people's reserves of good faith as a tactic to dom…

I'm just as confused. It's prompted another strong reaction in you but I genuinely don't get why. I don't know what motives you think I have, or why I might be arguing in bad faith, or why you're talking about trolls and turds (?).

Why is it so wrong to ask 'are we sure we're going the right way - this way seems to have a lot of problems - are we sure the other way has more?' Some people literally kill themselves when they become unemployed. We have millions of new unemployed people.

You say it's not forbidden but you're comparing me to a turd for doing it. Why does it cause people to abuse me?

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#118

Post by bootlooped »

tootie wrote: post #58
rock8y wrote: post #20

Things are much worse at Gannett, parent company of usatoday. Personally, being laid off on March 31! Almost every employee is effected at this time, either furloughed for few hours a week, pay cut or let go !!

I'm surprised. I'd think online news would be one of the industries benefitting from this crisis. Is the revenue tied to lack of conversions on online ads?

Brands are sensitive to where their ads appear. Many brands do not want their ads adjacent to COVID 19 content.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#119

Post by CydeWeys »

goalieca wrote: post #106
CydeWeys wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "disease" would be a lot, lot worse without the "cure" though. There'd still be really bad economic effects; there's no scenario in which everyone would just be going about doing business as usual pretending nothing is wrong while the news is reporting on catastrophically overwhelmed hospitals and how if you get to the point where you have serious trouble breathing, you're on your own and might easily die without…

Well, the statistics are starting to show that if you're young and healthy, this is not much worse than the flu in terms of outcome. The hospitalization rate is also much lower than was reported earlier. Even just counting positive and confirmed test cases, this data is painting a pretty clear picture. Here's the data out of new york city. You can see the chart showing hospitalizations and deaths per age. The trend i…

Well, spoiler alert, not everyone is young and healthy. In fact, the majority of Americans have at least one comorbidity for coronavirus.

> Covid for new york city has a death rate of about 75 per 100k.

So far. We're still experiencing hundreds of deaths per day in the city, significantly more than all other causes combined. Your analysis is vastly premature.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#120

Post by randallsquared »

eropple wrote: post #70
nightstaywalki wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “hang your Grandma for my stocks” But people feed their children using the value of their stocks. Do you think it's possible that a seriously damaged economy will lead to more suffering and deaths than are being prevented by the lockdown?

In no realistic permutation. Thanks for asking!

Is ~20 million out of work people in the US alone not realistic? That's already happened, so you might want to become concerned.

Are widespread food shortages in six months realistic? I guess we'll see.

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