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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’

#121
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.

Ummmm....

The reason California has such few cases was because it acted sooner.

Next you will be telling us about Y2K.

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

#122

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…

> The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing.

The US has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases of any nation. The US is seeing about 2,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths a day at the moment:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Contrast the US results with Australia's or South Korea's results. Australia and South Korea are doing much better.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m definitely in the camp that “the cure cannot be worse than the disease” itself. It seems to be forbidden to debate this unfortunately.

I see it brought up quite a bit on HN, and yet... very rarely with much rigor. It is often of this sort of "I feel that the economic costs will be worse than the human life costs" without any hard backing to explain that. Challenging the opinions of the people getting airtime is fine, but only if you've got the material to back you up. Otherwise it sounds just like wishful thinking.

> Otherwise it sounds just like wishful thinking.

...what? Who would wish for this? Maybe you're pattern-matching to something for which you have a political response, without actually listening to the worry that is being expressed.

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

#124
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the joke!

It's not funny, it's just tired and repetitious, and HN discourages joking around anyway because it leads to low quality conversations and contests over who can be funnier instead of who can contribute the most meaningfully to a conversation.

I think it was more of a humorously-worded suggestion.

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

#125
The LA Times's investigation into Purdue Pharma in 2016 revealed internal Purdue documents demonstrating the company's culpability in fueling the opioid crisis.

> The documents provide a detailed picture of the development and marketing of OxyContin, how Purdue executives responded to complaints that its effects wear off early, and their fears about the financial impact of any departure from 12-hour dosing.

I don't have many recurring subscriptions, and I don't live in LA, but I signed up for the Times the day the reporting came out. So rare is quality investigative journalism these days.

Fast forward 3 years, and "Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were in negotiations to settle the claims for a payment of $10-$12 billion" (Wikipedia).

As far as I know the settlement was never finalized. And I don't want to make it seem that the Times was the only organization looking into Purdue. But I wish a fraction of that settlement could be re-invested into investigative journalism.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

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

#126
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.

The fun part about this virus is that it works on a 10 day delay, so you can either prevent infections long before it has a chance to start killing people, or you can start dealing with the epidemic once it's too late to stop it.

Also, California ICUs are at 80% capacity, so there isn't that much room left to relax unless you want them to get verwhelmed and start sending people back home to die.

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

#127
post #25

This is an interesting time for ads since people can’t buy most of the things.

And also not a lot of companies want to be associated with Covid-19 content.

Why don't they run non-covid content.. The amount they milk it is nauseating.

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> - Dense city? Quarantine. - Moderately dense? High risk individuals quarantine, everyone else social distances, but works. - etc. Across the board, if your business is the sort that can WFH (such as software companies), then you do work from home. If not, then you're open, but with precautions. Restaurants are open, but pickup only, etc. How is this _that_ much different from what's being done now?

Well for example there's lots of non-essential business that can operate while enforcing social distancing. Closing bars and restaurants makes sense. But closing stores were you walk in and walk out does not make sense. Banning fishing doesn't make sense. Very broad strokes have been used to lock stuff down.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not in CA, but our governor is deciding what must close, and even what items stores can sell. I suspect any news outlet (sans politics) would be desired to stay open. But you can't legislate everything. What are you referring to with 'Not in CA'? This is in California. I think you're confused about what's going on here, which is why you're being down-voted. This isn't about whether the LA Times is allowed to stay o…

I think the "Not in CA" sentence fragment is intended to be expanded to "I am not in California".

[deleted]

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

#130

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.

Point of clarification: Are you saying that there's no way to disprove your claim of being a savior? Or no way to disprove the reaction was disproportionate.?
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