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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’

#501

Post by thu2111 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #35
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 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…

It's rational, you just haven't seen the data causing people to ask these questions. Perhaps because aforementioned newspaper outlets aren't showing you.

Here is some.

Graphical comparison of UK (hard lock down) with Sweden (not much lockdown e.g. restaurants and shops still open)

http://www.theblogmire.com/a-comparison-of-lockdown-uk-with-...

There's basically no difference.

Switzerland's proportion of positive tests as a fraction of all tests (i.e. is it spreading) shows no epidemic and no effect from lockdown, again, presented visually here in the tweet that's a reply to the first:

https://twitter.com/FScholkmann/status/1249703752904425478

In Switzerland the apparent reproduction number started to fall before lockdown began (see the shaded graph):

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-lockdown-impact-covid...

https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ansteckungsraten-flachten-berei...

(you can delete the paywall to see the headline and summary)

There are other reasons to be skeptical. Epidemics naturally come and go very quickly. The "lockdown" concept comes from epidemiologists. These people have a history of proposing extreme measures that turn out to have had no effect when compared to control groups, or when people simply realise that the epidemic entered decline before the recommended measures were implemented. If the lockdown ends up having no effect it'd be counter-intuitive but entirely predictable from how things worked out in the past. For instance, look at the history of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK.

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

#502

Post by bobthepanda »

stronglikedan wrote: post #479
streb-lo wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The journalists are just doing what their employer asks them too. Their employer is trying to sell papers/clicks. No enough people are willing to pony up for good journalism like the parent comment -- I'm generalizing but most people don't even like to read long form journalism anymore. If we want to know why journalism sucks we need to look in the mirror.

When I look in the mirror, I don't see someone wanting clearly biased, opinionated, decontextualized, or downright unfacts, trying to be spun as news, with zero retractions or apologies when it's called out. Those are the reasons journalism sucks, and it has nothing to do with what I see in my mirror.

Are you representative of the country at large, though?

I think the parent comment was using we to refer to the collective.

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

#503

Post by zo1 »

ipunchghosts wrote: post #381

Is there a good news site worth paying for today that actually has ALL news. It infuriates me that when I go to CNN.com's "news" site, there are ads at the bottom with things like "Before you review Amazon Prime, read this" and "America's #1 Stock Picker: 'Must buy now'" How can anyone be okay with this? This is like picking up an astronomy journal that has ads in the back for psychics.

Its not just CNN, all of them are doing it. Another really bad one: EBay!

At this point we need to realize that websites are just placeholders for virtual billboards that they then sell to advertisers. It's a really bad incentive for them to add to their website, as it fundamentally changes their revenue model. It's no longer about (as an example) making sure you find the right product (and lots of it) so that they can make a large cut out of the sale. Instead, they prioritize "eyeballs" and ridiculous page after page views of exactly the same products because they get more ad-views that way.

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

#504

Post by Ensorceled »

frockington1 wrote: post #306
Ensorceled wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculations for operating "business as usual" in the USA gave ranges from 1.7 to 5 million dead with extremes of 4-8% death rate (13+ million). This is based on a collapsed health care system causing the vast majority of cases requiring ventilators to result in death. Roll two die, if you roll snake eyes you would die. But, in my experience, most people saying things like "cure cannot be worse than the disease" are…

I remember people screaming that it would be worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor two weeks ago. Still waiting on anything that level of sheer panic and pandemonium. Sadly I don't think anyone is going to be willing to admit they were wrong anytime soon.

News flash, it is worse than 9/11, more dead in NYC AND a larger economic impact (well other than COVID hasn't yet started two wars)

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

#505

Post by undefined1 »

streb-lo wrote: post #412
koheripbal wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We exactly need to reward original investigative journalism like this with subscriptions. So few "journalists" do anything more than repeat twitter trends these days.

The journalists are just doing what their employer asks them too. Their employer is trying to sell papers/clicks. No enough people are willing to pony up for good journalism like the parent comment -- I'm generalizing but most people don't even like to read long form journalism anymore. If we want to know why journalism sucks we need to look in the mirror.

There was a writer on Sam Harris' podcast (I think Matt Taibbi in this episode[1]) who said he was having a really hard time getting interest in any article that wasn't about Trump. Interest virtually disappeared in anything else. The 24/7 reality TV show is what gets attention and it's easy to produce.

So depressing.

1. https://samharris.org/podcasts/140-burning-fourth-estate/

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

#506

Post by thu2111 »

nunoonun wrote: post #223
nickthemagicman wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn't prove anything about lockdowns given that the UK has plenty of healthcare capacity and in fact like elsewhere its hospitals are nearly empty right now. If fewer British people survive in their hospitals all it may show is those hospitals aren't very good, but it wouldn't be due to being "too late" as that would require deaths due to overload.

If you look at the huge drop in cardiac ER admissions it's clear that people are dying because they are having heart attacks and not going to hospital when they should. There's actually a severe problem with hospital underload right now. Governments, supposedly following the science, have built emergency field hospitals and shut down other medical work to protect hospitals that are now nearly empty. This was not predicted by anyone pushing lockdowns and is a grotesque mis-prediction with deadly consequences.

Nobody will talk about it at the moment, but I suspect when all this is studied in years to come the UK will be seen to have done worse partly because its population over-reacted to government extortions to "stay home, save the NHS". People are going to die just because they aren't going to hospitals they've been told they need to "protect" as some sort of moral mission. The NHS is often called a national religion, which isn't quite right - it's a religion to some and unfortunately those people aggressively attack anyone who points out what an institutional failure it is. It's easily believable that people will be avoiding hospitals in the UK in greater numbers than elsewhere right now.

We need to watch out for a lot of retroactive nonsense in the coming months. People will claim epidemiologists predicted all this (they didn't), that the lack of lockdown explains differing death rates (already disproven completely by the case of Sweden). Cold logic is all that will clear the fog.

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

#507

Post by Ensorceled »

empath75 wrote: post #210
erik_seaberg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not under house arrest. I’m working from home with my family around me. I’m actually enjoying it for the most part. We’ve picked up baking, started going on walks together as a family. It’s not anything like dying for a month or whatever weird equivalence you’re trying to draw.

They have made a calculation based completely on productivity and effect on GDP. The USA lost 1 month of "critical" productivity and we only have time with children, a resurgence of baking and netflix watched lists to show for it. That you and your family weren't part of the "dead" statistics didn't even factor into their equations.

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

#508

Post by thu2111 »

watertom wrote: post #203
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…

I’ve participated in Homeland Security pandemic exercises. One in particular had a R0 of about 2, and a death rate of 1.3%, with a hospitalization rate of 10%, and and acute care rate of 3%. All numbers lower than CoVID-19. What happened in the exercise was that all hospitals got over run, very quickly, it took months for the infection rates to flatten. Nobody could get into a hospital and get any proper care, entire…

Your exercises were worthless because they were based on the assumption epidemiology is usefully correct, and it's clearly not.

I mean, I wonder how you reach the conclusions you do? Just read your own post back to yourself. You say the numbers in SARS-COV-2 are worse than for your simulation yet the outcomes observed in reality are empty hospitals that need to furlough workers because they are so underworked. Reality has disproven the simulations, but it sounds a lot like you're concluding reality is wrong?

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

#509

Post by adequateness »

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.

Given how quickly forecasts were cut from 200,000 to 60,000 it is likely those estimates of millions of deaths were never correct. However, for the sake of argument lets assume that it was accurate and 2 million would have died. We can estimate the value of those lives saved using the value of statistical life that the EPA has for evaluating the effect of regulations[1]. Adjusting for inflation gives a value of $9.5 million today. Saving 2 million lives at 9.5 million per life gives a value of $19 trillion. The 2008 Great Recession cost Americans $22 trillion[2]. Many expect the recession now to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis[3][4].

[1] https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v...

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/financial-crisis-cost-gao_n_2...

[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/18/coronavirus-economic-cr...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=v_-ZY1QAr2g

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

#510

Post by claudiawerner »

selectodude wrote: post #429
streb-lo wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The journalists are just doing what their employer asks them too. Their employer is trying to sell papers/clicks. No enough people are willing to pony up for good journalism like the parent comment -- I'm generalizing but most people don't even like to read long form journalism anymore. If we want to know why journalism sucks we need to look in the mirror.

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give peo…

Jobs was right to say it's not part of some grand conspiracy, but if you look more closely, you see that people ("consumers") and media are both produced by the same ideological and economic forces that serve each other. It's not some sinister plot, it's just how culture has developed to this point.

The media does give people what they want, but where do people get ideas of what they want? It's a dialectic, not a one-way causative relationship.

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