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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’

#221

Post by lbeltrame »

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…

> 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.

I wonder if any models take into account the availability of drugs. I wonder because (perhaps because I studied pharmacology back in the days) while not effective as a vaccine, proper clinical management of this disease with drugs would help a lot in helping hospitals.

Instead the media seems only to focus on a vaccine (which is putting all eggs in one basket, if it fails).

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

#222

Post by makomk »

slg wrote: post #64
makomk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the only US publication that seems to be making decent money from subscriptions is the New York Times, and I suspect they're at least partly trading on their name. The quality of their reporting... well, let's just say that I didn't expect to see the day when Snopes ended up debunking a conspiracy theory about the US president started by the NYT: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-profit-hydroxychloro...

That isn't a debunking of the NYT's story. It is a debunking of an interpretation of the story that many made due to either news illiteracy or malicious intent. That line got shared all over the place out of context. In context it was not the focus of the piece and was instead buried in the details as a disclaimer regarding the larger issue of who profits from this drug. Snopes isn't disputing anything actually repor…

The focus of the piece was, to quote the headline, "Trump’s Aggressive Advocacy of Malaria Drug". The article leads into the claim by talking about how that advocacy "has raised questions about his motives". Literally the only reason to mention Trump's "small personal financial interest in Sanofi" in this context is to suggest that interest is, in fact, his motive. Everything leading up to that paragraph is background recapping of stuff people already know; the article is structured with this as the key point. Crucially, the New York Times piece also omitted to mention the one piece of information that made this conspiracy theory utterly ridiculous and that Snopes used to debunk it: just how tiny that financial interest really was.

Now, a few of the more cynical and distrusting people did realise that probably meant his interest was so small that the narrative the Times would pushing would fall apart if they mentioned actual numbers, and they were right - but all the people who trusted the most respected and prominent paper on the planet not to mislead them into a nonsensical conspiracy theory took that narrative as it was intended to be taken and spread it all over social media.

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

#223

Post by nunoonun »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #214
chewz wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other countries that have shutdown. This is so untrue. Norway and Denmark had initially many more cases then Sweden but since their curves flattened. As of yesterday Norway - 26 deaths / milion Sweden - 102 deaths / million Denmark - 52 deaths / milion

U.K. 166 deaths per million with a full lockdown in place

"with a very late full lockdown in place". It actually proves that locking down early works and things get out of control extremely fast

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

#224

Post by jeltz »

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…

Stockholm (the worst hit part of Sweden) has about half the deaths per capita of the state New York (26 deaths per 100k vs 56 deaths per 100k) despite Sweden having laxer restrictions. And Stockholm is generally more densely populated.

So while I too am a bit skeptical of the Swedish policies it is doing pretty average on a global scale. Worse than some countries with harsh lockdown but also better than some countries with harsh lockdowns. It is too early to say for sure if the Swedish policy was stupid or not.

In Swedish news the currently most popular theory for why we have more deaths per capita than our Scandinavian neighbors is not necessarily our lax lockdown (though it may have made things worse) but lack of supplies and poor routines in old people's homes. This is of course speculation.

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

#225

Post by mercer »

malandrew wrote: post #177
jacobolus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

I'd say it's too early to tell. The consequences can lag for up to three weeks, no?

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

#226

Post by anewhope »

chuniverse wrote: post #216
Jommi wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still unsure how and if this is really even true nowadays. We have been doing programmatic ads for ages. We should be over this.

Ad shows up with an ironic twist in a Coronavirus article >> somebody screenshots and posts to reddit >> instant front page >> even more free advertising but somebody calls the CEO who tells his subordinates to find somebody to yell at

So the more likely reason is just uncertain and unpredictable return on ad spend, but that kinda rolls up into it.

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

#227

Post by taneq »

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.

Kind of like the Y2K bug? We spent billions on that and then nothing happened... what a waste of money, right?

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

#229

Post by mercer »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #112
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…

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 midd…

It's also an open question for me. I'm wondering though if, even with the limited data we have now, there are examples of countries that took a similar approach and had their two-weeks-later 'explosion' (or possibly three, is what I've heard).

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

#230

Post by uk_programmer »

donohoe wrote: post #159

Dear HN, Support journalism. Subscribe for a month and see how it works for you. https://www.latimes.com/subscriptions/land-subscribe-evergre...

Journalists in general have been covering up stories where it not convenient for the narrative, have done hit coordinated hit pieces on members of the public and are generally a bunch of scumbags. No I won't ever be supporting these people.
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