Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the wrong comment for this post - you cite 'misinformation' as problem, and then go on to mislead/misinform with a misrepresentative anecdote. 1) Your anecdote is not consistent with the national concern - it's local to your area. My father is currently in a hospital for an unrelated reason and it's almost empty -> they are 'prepared for war' and there isn't a single COVID patient in the entire area, let alon…
>> My father is currently in a hospital for an unrelated reason and it's almost empty -> they are 'prepared for war' and there isn't a single COVID patient in the entire area, let alone hospital. They are all empty. Which is just as anecdotal. The virus doesn't spread everywhere at once, and there are a lot of places in the country/world that aren't NYC/North Jersey yet. If they have similar population density and do…
Recall that the outbreak started in central Europe weeks before the USA locked down. Even in the harder hit countries, there are quiet hospitals almost everywhere. Look at Switzerland - it shares a huge land border with northern Italy and has large numbers of people who move across the borders, it volunteered to take Italian patients in. Swiss hospitals are receiving financial bailouts because they're so quiet, it's on the downcurve for a long time now yet it has never implemented house arrest (just closing shops and other gathering places). Even the Italians didn't need to send Ticino patients in the end.
There's a lot of experience with this right now. There are a few cities or local hotspots where for unclear reasons the disease hits harder than the vast majority of places. But even in those harder hit places field hospitals are hardly used.
It is incredibly bad news that Facebook is attempting to interfere with the social processes of figuring out when lockdown should end right now - and yes, that includes protests. There's no evidence lawmakers have any better insight into what's going on than anyone else, and quite a bit of evidence they may have worse insight. Silicon Valley needs to butt out or see its reputation sink the journalism-like lows.