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Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

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Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#471
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can be easily flipped around though. From the perspective of people who see the virus as not in fact that dangerous in the grand scheme of things, it looks like a lot of people couldn't care less about the lives of others: the people who are trapped on their own for months at home under house arrest, the people who spent their lives building a business who tomorrow will have to tell their teammates it's all over…

A lot of people seem to believe “the economy” is about profits, conspicuous consumption, and something like what you might see in a rap video. In reality, it is how we house, clothe, feed, and provide the most basic humans needs.

Fact: if we do nothing and don't buy time to prepare, our healthcare system collapses, a lot of people die and there'll be a lot of unforeseen consequences. You can say, think and believe that that's not much of an issue, but you can't proof it.

Your argument: "the economy is important, we can't do without"

Yes it is, but the economy will rebound like it always does. It will not disappear. We need to flatten the curve, gain more insight in other consequences. We don't need to lockdown forever, but we can't immediately reopen either. Both would be stupid, we need to find a middle ground.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#472
post #458
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always remember that "the NSA is spying on everybody" was "conspiracy stuff" too. Right until it wasn't. And regarding Corona: Sweden never introduced a quarantine, and they seem to be in good shape compared to others. Not saying I agree with that policy, because I don't. But the topic isn't as "black and white" as it appears. Here in Germany, as of today, many of the already few restrictions where lifted as well.

Funny, I just heard today that Oktoberfest was going to be cancelled. That's hardly a back to normal situation. Germany is one of the few countries that has managed to do test+trace well enough to contain outbreaks. It's definitely a model to be copied .. but you have to get the testing in place first!

And yet shops up to 800sqm are open again and the shopping street in in front of me apartment (in a larger German city) is crowded.

And no, we didn't contain the outbreak. But we have 20,000 ICU beds. Unlike France, Italy or Spain, who only have about 5000 each.

While in those countries, people could not be treated for lack of capacity, here in Germany we still have about 50% free ICU beds (as of two days ago, according to the health ministry).

That's why we have low mortality, while still having a pretty large number of infected people.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#474
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're endangering peoples' lives by driving yes, but it's more like a few persons at most and huge inconvenience for a whole lot of people. COVID-19 could end up sickening tons of individuals at once and contributing much more death.

All the comments in response are clear then that it is a question of degree. At x deaths caused, we stop permitting this. That means the discussion is only moved to determining what that threshold x is. And so the right thing is to move past that to find what the cost-benefit analysis is.

X is the number of people who would overwhelm your local hospital system. If the cost of you getting a haircut is that it renders healthcare inaccessible for your region, such that they cannot care for people who need it (e.g. people who get in car accidents) then that cost is too high.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#475
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people think the richest country in the history of the world could figure something like this out, but those people don’t seem to understand how it became the richest country to begin with. The United States was built on laissez faire exploitation and that is not going to change overnight.

Nonsense. Laissez faire exploitation results in banana republics.

Laissez faire exploitation results in banana republics in the victim nations, and ultra wealthy first world countries in the predator nations.

I.e. the US and UK have gone ahead wonderfully; the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, South Africa.. not so much

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#476
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always remember that "the NSA is spying on everybody" was "conspiracy stuff" too. Right until it wasn't. And regarding Corona: Sweden never introduced a quarantine, and they seem to be in good shape compared to others. Not saying I agree with that policy, because I don't. But the topic isn't as "black and white" as it appears. Here in Germany, as of today, many of the already few restrictions where lifted as well.

Just pointing out to you and people replying that you guys have already degenerated into just the sort of data-point-cherry-picking-with-no-comprehensive-knowledge-base debate that HN User markbnj was talking about. We don't have the data was markbnj's point. (I'd go even further and say most of the people on HN don't even know what data would be good to have, and wouldn't have the capacity to comprehend the full mea…

Could you tell me what "data cherry picking" I did?

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that will be for everyone , just that it is likely to be for many people , and those people may not be able to know if they're in that category until it's too late either. Obviously some landlords will be understanding and defer/waive payments long enough that people can repay, but my common sense says that, as cruel as it might be, what I described will also happen to a lot of people. I imagine in tho…

That legal barrier already exists - and the proscription is very broad. Why do you think we’ll just rip the bandage off instead of gradually phasing rent and mortgage payments back in?

There has been no suggestion that this debt will be cancelled. If a family can barely make ends meet in normal times, how will they pay back several months' rent arrears? And what will happen when they don't?

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#478
post #446
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've been wondering for a while is how long Facebook et al would let conspiracy stuff run wild once it came close to damaging their own interests. It's one thing to look at a forest fire from a distance and say "it's people's right to play with matches", quite another thing when it reaches your own office. Neither Facebook staff nor management are immune to the consequences of a pandemic. There is a legitim…

Always remember that "the NSA is spying on everybody" was "conspiracy stuff" too. Right until it wasn't. And regarding Corona: Sweden never introduced a quarantine, and they seem to be in good shape compared to others. Not saying I agree with that policy, because I don't. But the topic isn't as "black and white" as it appears. Here in Germany, as of today, many of the already few restrictions where lifted as well.

> Here in Germany, as of today, many of the already few restrictions where lifted as well.

This is a misleading way to phrase (or perceive) it. Yes, most shops are open again under strict limitations. No restaurants, bars, churches, stadia, theaters, big shopping malls etc., even in the most permissive state (NRW). No gatherings even in private. At the same time, more and more German states are requiring citizens to wear masks for shopping and transportation. Travel within the country is subject to limitations. A few schools will now open to conduct final exams, but most schools and especially kindergartens will remain shut for months. With the R0 still close to 1 anything else would be madness.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bailing them out of what? The term "bail out" is usually understood to mean replacing funds after the owner of them lost them through bad decision making. What's happening here isn't a conventional bailout. Governments have destroyed the businesses of private investors deliberately and explicitly - reductions in the damage aren't bail outs.

The virus would have shut them down anyway if they had stayed open and their employees and customers became ill. The bad decision making here is the lack of foresight to keep cash on hand to weather a storm like this, despite making record profits in the billions. We are all told if we don’t keep 6 months of cash on hand we are financially negligent. Large companies were begging for money within two weeks of shutdown…

Sweden shows that view is wrong.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#480
post #438

I usually stay out of the political/topical threads on HN but this is personal to me. From my point of view few if any of us commenting here are knowledgeable enough to connect all the disparate data points we keep snatching at and synthesize them into conclusions that are likely to be correct. The people who can do that are working on it, and generally too busy at the moment to post on forums or give interviews. The…

Something I've been wondering for a while is how long Facebook et al would let conspiracy stuff run wild once it came close to damaging their own interests. It's one thing to look at a forest fire from a distance and say "it's people's right to play with matches", quite another thing when it reaches your own office. Neither Facebook staff nor management are immune to the consequences of a pandemic. There is a legitim…

The problem is relying on FB as the arbiter of truth. Ideas that sounded insane a few weeks back, and might have been censored for the sake of the confused masses, like the possibility the virus escaped from a bio-lab or that masks really help, are now respectable. FB, Google, Twitter, etc, will, by default, protect the status quo, the safe, consensual views, and censor anything else. This is very dangerous.
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