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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’

#171

Post by CydeWeys »

randallsquared wrote: post #85
pacificmint wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the cases are so low precisely because we have enacted these measures. If we had not done that we'd probably look more like New York right now. The more effective your measures are, the more it is going to look like they were unnecessary. Or to reuse your metaphor: A campfire can turn into a wildfire really quickly. If we hadn't thrown the tsunami onto it when it was the size of a campfire, we might have g…

New York was only a few days behind California. Density matters so much that it's going to take a long time to arrive at good answers for how much lockdowns affected this, and there will be very strong pressure for a long time not to arrive at any conclusion other than "it worked", regardless of whether that's the truth. Which, obviously, it might well be!

A few days is a very long time when you're talking about an exponential curve. Shutting down a few days earlier relative to the start of the outbreak can easily halve the total number of deaths. And CA shut down 4 days before NY on an absolute basis and even earlier than that on a basis relative to the progression of the spread of the outbreak.

Acting early enough trumps everything else.

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

#172

Post by CydeWeys »

kmtrowbr wrote: post #157
CydeWeys wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. The common cold is a catch-all term for over 200 different mild upper respiratory viruses, the clear majority of which are not coronaviruses. The most common strain of virus causing the common cold is a rhinovirus, which does have the property of mutating well and thus being hard to develop a resistance to. It is true that some of the common cold strains are coronavirus, but not most of them, and regardless, th…

It seems like you know more than I do -- that's good news, thank you for correcting me! I was wrong about coronavirus causing all forms of the common cold. They only cause 15%, whereas rhinoviruses as you say, cause 30–80%. Still, "the Coronavirus" COVID-19 causing virus is an RNA virus correct? Those mutate rapidly & in fact, evading immune systems via rapid evolution, is part of what has allowed RNA viruses to exis…

There's a lot, lot, lot more to it than simply saying that it's a DNA vs an RNA virus and that one categorically mutates faster than the other. The most relevant factor here is that COVID-19 only has a single strand of RNA, whereas e.g. influenza has 8. This allows a lot more mutation from pieces of RNA swapping around between different strands, which just can't happen on COVID-19. You can sort of think of it as analogous to sexual vs asexual reproduction; the former has a lot more potential for variation. Plus there's factors relating to the specific mechanism that coronaviruses use to attach to animal cells that make them less capable of mutating into any sort of a different shape that's still effective at all.

And I'm nothing close to an expert on any of this. But refer to sources, e.g.:

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-coronavirus-mutates-slow...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-coronavirus-isnt-m...

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

#173

Post by CydeWeys »

nightstaywalki wrote: post #117
eropple wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

Millions of people would have become newly unemployed regardless, as a result of the pandemic. The pandemic is an ongoing global catastrophe. Refusing to take efforts to mitigate it doesn't mean it's not still a catastrophe. Social distancing was always going to happen regardless of whether it was mandated. People are rational enough that they won't put themselves into close proximity with others if it could easily mean death (especially because of how overcrowded the hospitals would be).

There isn't a country on Earth right now that isn't doing social distancing of one form or another. It's an inevitable consequence of a pandemic; it's not some elective choice that we made.

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

#174

Post by CydeWeys »

PudgePacket wrote: post #127
colmvp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Milk it?" This is the biggest worldwide pandemic in over a century. It's going to fundamentally reshape society for many years to come.

You can't bury your head in the sand about this. Frankly, in comparison to this, almost nothing else is even worth mentioning. And anyway, it's not like there's sports to cover. Almost nothing else is going on besides the pandemic because everything was shuttered to fight the pandemic and even that is just barely enough.

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

#175

Post by erik_seaberg »

empath75 wrote: post #51
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.

It’s preventing one to three million Americans from dying this year. How much is that worth to you.

It was probably the right thing because it was conceivable to end up with 30 million pneumonia victims and no way to treat them all. But we shouldn't forget we had to waste 0.1% of all 328 million lives (one month/78.54 years under house arrest) and counting.

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

#176

Post by CydeWeys »

fullshark wrote: post #140
CydeWeys wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it time. They're still in full exponential growth, whereas every place that enacted social distancing rules a couple weeks ago or more is now plateauing.

Possibly, their numbers the last 4 days are bizarre, potentially due to holiday effects. My guess is what's going to happen is they will see more deaths, but not an unreasonable number and both sides of the debate will declare victory as they move the goal posts sufficiently.

My guess is that they'll end up having to do more stringent social distancing measures anyway, but that a lot of people will end up having unnecessarily died because they waited so long relative to other countries. Because currently they are on track for an unreasonable number of deaths, and it would reasonable to change the course of action so that that doesn't happen.

I'm not seeing a lot of subtlety in these outcomes, nor possibility of both sides (credibly) claiming that they were right. We'll know soon enough either way.

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

#177

Post by malandrew »

jacobolus wrote: post #77
christophilus wrote: post #47

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…

> other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread Let’s be precise. Some other countries haven’t locked down hard and aren’t seeing a big spread yet . You mentioned Sweden. Here was Time a few days ago: > A head doctor at a major hospital in Sweden says the current approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.” He says healthcare workers at his hospital who have tested positive for the…

On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other countries that have shutdown. It's about middle of the pack. Personal responsibility lets us have our cake and eat it too.

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

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

#178

Post by malandrew »

CydeWeys wrote: post #83
christophilus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Various European countries. Sweden comes to mind.

Sweden has more deaths per capita from coronavirus than the US, has an exponentially increasing death rate (i.e. they haven't turned the corner yet), and a very high case fatality rate of 9.4% indicating that they're severely under-testing. This is not what a successful disease prevention strategy looks like.

Sweden's deaths per capita is neck and neck with the United States and following approximately the same trajectory with no lockdown. It's neither appreciably better nor appreciably worse.

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

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

#179

Post by ColonelSanders »

jdminhbg wrote: post #149
ColonelSanders wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all this would do is incentivize executives to run inefficient businesses into the ground. What incentive would an executive have to run a business into the ground? It's a business - the motive to gain profit and ambition won't leave because profit is shared. Regardless - my point is - what's wrong with being generous to workers? Why not share a bit of that with people who work so the motivation and incentives are…

> What incentive would an executive have to run a business into the ground The one given above: laying off workers to make the business competitive results in having your salary clawed back for three years. Staying inefficient and getting out-competed does not.

> laying off workers to make the business competitive results in having your salary clawed back for three years.

If the company goes out of business due to inefficiency - then the market will supply another one that can treat workers and investors well.

And maybe it should be clawback against all assets and profits earned in the CEO's lifetime. That will give them motivation to pay off the spurned employees the fired, then start earning more for themselves.

Since this is all about free markets and scale, we need to have optimistic forecasts. There's a credit against the CEO to pay off the employees due to management failing, but the CEO can always try again in the future to pay off their newly accrued debt by making better decisions for investors and employees.

Imagine - if all management decisions were binded 50% to the welfare of the employee and 50% to profit? Bound by the law? Or face strict liability, financial penalties and possibly criminal charges for causing jeopardy to the workers? That's absolute genius.

It's all about how we define competition. What if competition is redefined to imply responsibility and obligation to caretake for workers, and every business on Earth is subject to it? What's wrong with that?

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

#180

Post by david38 »

jacobolus wrote: post #77
christophilus wrote: post #47

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…

> other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread Let’s be precise. Some other countries haven’t locked down hard and aren’t seeing a big spread yet . You mentioned Sweden. Here was Time a few days ago: > A head doctor at a major hospital in Sweden says the current approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.” He says healthcare workers at his hospital who have tested positive for the…

The good thing is we’ll see in the end. Lots of predictions. It’s almost as if you can’t be criticized for being too cautious. Sure, but the good will won’t last forever.

The US accepts 22k deaths a year without blinking due to flu. That’s just the flu. What’s the magic number we’re willing to accept? 50k? 100? There has to be a percentage of the population we are willing to accept as casualty because we already do, just unstated.

The lockdown will ultimately spread misery far and wide if left unchecked. Massive rise in poverty, violence, drug abuse, depression, crime, suicide, homelessness, prostitution, etc.

People need to be more clear on what they’re willing to accept. Right now there is no real discussion on “what next”. Lots of obsessing over the current body count though.

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