L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’ • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by DuskStar » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #424

DuskStar wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that landscaping is at least a field that has the possibility of operating while social distancing. As for bodies piling up in Detroit... While that's true, additional restrictions added today won't have any impact there. Either the previous restrictions were sufficient, in which case Detroit should be peaking soon, or they weren't sufficient and there'll be several times that number of bodies before these re…

You're missing the point, which is that if you think the situation is bad now, just wait how bad it'll be in two weeks if we don't act even more stringently now. Letting up on the restrictions now would be exactly the wrong thing to do when the healthcare system is already bursting at the seams; it'd make things much much worse in the weeks to come. The very earliest that it makes sense to even start considering redu…

My reading is that either restrictions were sufficient before, or the new ones won't be enough either. And the more onerous the restrictions, the less likely it is that people will be willing to follow the important ones in the future.

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

#512

Post by Lewton » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

magsnus wrote: post #500

CydeWeys wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've fallen behind in testing capacity, like many others. You have to go by hospitalizations and confirmed deaths because those are the only stats likely not to be underreported too badly.

Exactly, look at the logarithmic curve of deaths and you see a clear flattening so no "exponential growth" as you where saying.

15% of deaths happened in the past 24 hours, that's not a flattening of the curve

Maybe you're being fooled by the lack of reported deaths in the weekends in Sweden? It does mess up the curve quite a bit. But it's been like that every weekend if you look at daily deaths. And it makes the log graph look less exponential than it is

Also the log graph is a day behind the reported numbers, so tomorrow you'll see a sharp rise as they're at 1200 deaths now, making it clear that it's indeed exponential

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

#513

Post by kingaillas » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

laichzeit0 wrote: post #211

CydeWeys wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 Even if it's 150 per 100k, or even if it's 500 or 1000 per 100,000, is that too much? We need to establish an upper bound for the number of deaths we're willing to tolerate. It cannot be "zero". There is a balance between acceptable mortality and economic cons…

>The economy must suffer at any and all cost to minimise mortality as far as possible.

Sounds good. After all, death is irreversible while economic damage is not.

>So again, what is an acceptable mortality rate?

I'd phrase it more like a flattened curve. Rather than focus on a specific mortality rate, the bound to reopen the economy should be something along the lines: when the curve is flattened enough so hospitals can deal with the incoming infection rate. So this would be local to an area (city size, maybe regional) and would also adjust based on local conditions. Infection rate low enough, open the economy a bit more. Infection rate trending up, close the economy a bit more.

If that doesn't result in economy numbers that make the billionaires happy, too god damn bad.

Maybe free market uber capitalistic unregulated invisible hand economic theory needs to be rewritten or adjusted for new realities, including a section on why exactly lower wage workers (retail, service) are expected to risk their lives so the economy built on top of them, the one in which the rewards mostly go elsewhere, can function.

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

#514

Post by Lewton » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #508

watertom wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Realit…

He's clearly talking about what would happen without intervention. We do not live in that world

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

#515

Post by mrlala » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #361

Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment. New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA T…

>I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article

That sounds... fucking terrible! I assure you that you are in the minority. The last thing in the world I want online is to have to think about every click costing money.

Before you know it everything would try to move that way.. I'll be paying 5 cents for every HN thread because of "server load" or something.

I don't know what the solution is.. ads are a stupid way to prop everything up.. but your suggestion is even worst in my opinion.

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

#516

Post by CydeWeys » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #184

CydeWeys wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any sources? Epidemiologists don't think that temperature has been playing a major role here, so do you have any sources that's not just you hypothesizing this? Because one trend I see a lot on HN is people making wild guesses about things waaaaaaay outside their area of expertise ...

By wild guess you mean ignoring the comically epic pile of overwhelming evidence that shows climate is a very large factor in impeding the spread of the virus (and applies to locations regardless of testing rates or economic condition)? I've been talking about this on HN for a while now. I've been making the same case over and over. Guess what hasn't changed since I first floated it here? The higher temp areas I've b…

Can you put together some actual data then? Like, get all the relevant data for hospitalizations and deaths by locality and find a correlation against climate data? And then do the same for things like density, how early and strictly social distancing measures were put into effect, etc., and see if it has more or less correlation than those?

My gut feeling here is that climate is not a significant factor, but that those others are. And you haven't come close to actually demonstrating it with rigor beyond it just being a guess that you have (which is fine; guesses are useful).

And you're right, the connection between climate and the spread of a disease is well known, which is why if it were relevant here there would be lots of people besides you talking about it. The articles you linked do seem to show that the virus might not survive for quite as long on surfaces at high temperatures and humidities, but that's just not really that relevant for how this disease spreads. People are primarily either inhaling droplets directly, or touching things that others have touched recently and then getting it into their face. The virus surviving for hours on a surface before being touched and then touched again to a face orifice was always on the long tail of transmission methods, so flattening that tail a little bit doesn't make a meaningful difference in the overall spread of the virus.

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

#517

Post by CydeWeys » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #511

CydeWeys wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point, which is that if you think the situation is bad now, just wait how bad it'll be in two weeks if we don't act even more stringently now. Letting up on the restrictions now would be exactly the wrong thing to do when the healthcare system is already bursting at the seams; it'd make things much much worse in the weeks to come. The very earliest that it makes sense to even start considering redu…

My reading is that either restrictions were sufficient before, or the new ones won't be enough either . And the more onerous the restrictions, the less likely it is that people will be willing to follow the important ones in the future.

It doesn't logically follow that just because mild restrictions weren't sufficient, that stricter restrictions won't be. China used very strict restrictions and they stopped the spread of the disease hard.

Every incremental improvement you can do to decrease the R_0 will have its effect. Progressively stricter social distancing measures as required absolutely will work, so long as they are being obeyed anyway.

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

#518

Post by magsnus » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

Lewton wrote: post #512

magsnus wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, look at the logarithmic curve of deaths and you see a clear flattening so no "exponential growth" as you where saying.

15% of deaths happened in the past 24 hours, that's not a flattening of the curve Maybe you're being fooled by the lack of reported deaths in the weekends in Sweden? It does mess up the curve quite a bit. But it's been like that every weekend if you look at daily deaths. And it makes the log graph look less exponential than it is Also the log graph is a day behind the reported numbers, so tomorrow you'll see a sharp…

So last tuesday they reported 114 deaths yesterday they reported 114 deaths. You can't be seriously looking at the bar graph of daily deaths and see an exponential growth. If anything it seems to have stagnated. Yes we underreport during the weekend and overreport the first days after the weekend and monday was a holiday for us. But it is clear as day if you look at the logarithmic chart over deaths that our growth is slowing.

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

#519

Post by CydeWeys » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

avisser wrote: post #437

CydeWeys wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these can be explained at least. Landscaping is very non-essential, and it's hard to maintain social distancing while doing it because the way the crews operate is it's a bunch of guys riding together in one truck between each job sites (it's not a caravan of different vehicles, one per vehicle). Additionally, my mom has been complaining about the landscapers where she lives and is angry that they're still al…

> it's hard to maintain social distancing while doing it because the way the crews operate I have no idea how to quantify it, but social distancing at a grocery store, surrounded by an ever-rotating group of people, seems much more risky than a work-crew, which is composed of the same 6 people all day.

The work crews are hanging out all day every day, whereas you do your grocery shopping once a week maximum, for less than an hour, and everyone wears a mask to reduce the chance of spreading anything.

On the work crew, if one person gets it, basically everyone else on the crew is guaranteed to get it too. In the grocery store, a single visit, especially with proper precautions taken, is unlikely to spread it.

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

#520

Post by CydeWeys » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #487

CydeWeys wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need any of those buzzwords, you just need a multi-site SSO login that you pay more per year for than any one individual paper and that lets you into the paywall of all of those paywalls. It's a trivial technology problem; the hard part is in the business partnership building, specifically in getting the different newspapers to come to an agreement in how revenue from this subscription is going to be shared…

All the mumbo jumbo is the revenue sharing part.

You don't need mumbo jumbo to know how many articles a given logged-in account read in a month, though.