Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 573 posts

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#91

Post by birken »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #68
nostromo wrote: post #16

More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. I'm happy we're returning to normalcy, but it just makes me wonder "why now?" It's like the government and big business just decided overnight to declare "mission accomplished" when nothing substantial has changed. Last summer, for example, could have been the reopening, and we'd have better data and "…

Politics plain and simple. COVID protocols are very unpopular at this point and not every effective. Florida and Texas are having big inflows, california and New York huge outflows. Whatever your viewpoint this is the fact politicians see. And yes taxes and cost of living are a huge driving force not only COVID, but as long as remote work goes on people will keep moving to low cost of living and low tax states.

You don't think the fact that this country just had the largest ever COVID wave (in terms of cases), which is in the process of ending, is at all related to the decisions?

Also of the scant 40 million people remaining in California, who haven't yet moved to Texas or Florida, public support for at least some "COVID protocols" are very high [1]. I'm not sure you are giving an impartial assessment of the facts.

1: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/californ...

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#92

Post by krona »

veilrap wrote: post #78
gfodor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like they just decided - they did, they actually just decided. The change in cloth mask guidance proves it: no new data, we always knew they were ineffective.

Cloth masks are estimated to be in the 50-60% effectiveness range. To me, that's quite effective, not ineffective. Especially when applied across an entire population.

I think you're off by an order of magnitude (5-6%) if you're referring to the risk of infection vs not wearing a basic, correctly worn surgical mask. And this is pre-omicron; omicron is far more transmissible.

Happy to be corrected.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#93

Post by mylons »

nostromo wrote: post #16

More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. I'm happy we're returning to normalcy, but it just makes me wonder "why now?" It's like the government and big business just decided overnight to declare "mission accomplished" when nothing substantial has changed. Last summer, for example, could have been the reopening, and we'd have better data and "…

not in the united states. the early 2021 was the peak, and was never surpassed in the recent uptick.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#94

Post by abledon »

dnathi493 wrote: post #5

I left Apple after years of lack of any flexibility on the remote work process. They wouldn't allow transferring to any alternative office for most teams. From what I understood, VPs could protect a small minority of some of their employees if a senior leader made a case to them. Unfortunately, this just seemed to lead to the most politically connected folks going remote and directors friends and favorite hires getti…

also, isn't their new campus built atop a toxic waste site?

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#95

Post by lokar »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #29
nostromo wrote: post #16

More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. I'm happy we're returning to normalcy, but it just makes me wonder "why now?" It's like the government and big business just decided overnight to declare "mission accomplished" when nothing substantial has changed. Last summer, for example, could have been the reopening, and we'd have better data and "…

The only thing that matters is death rate for those that are vaccinated.

What about the death rate for people who can't be vaccinated?

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#96

Post by theptip »

WithinReason wrote: post #36
nostromo wrote: post #16

More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. I'm happy we're returning to normalcy, but it just makes me wonder "why now?" It's like the government and big business just decided overnight to declare "mission accomplished" when nothing substantial has changed. Last summer, for example, could have been the reopening, and we'd have better data and "…

> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and "dying from COVID".

A very under-appreciated point.

Given how hard “with vs. from” is to tease apart, excess mortality is a good way to look at things, eg

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/17/us-excess-deat...

You also need to take into account the fact that that most of the deaths in the US are amongst the unvaccinated (something like 20:1 last I checked) so your personal risk of death, if vaccinated, is very different from the overall death rate.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#97

Post by tombert »

dnathi493 wrote: post #5

I left Apple after years of lack of any flexibility on the remote work process. They wouldn't allow transferring to any alternative office for most teams. From what I understood, VPs could protect a small minority of some of their employees if a senior leader made a case to them. Unfortunately, this just seemed to lead to the most politically connected folks going remote and directors friends and favorite hires getti…

COVID made my situation worse at Apple. I worked in a satellite office (NYC), and while in the office, most folks in California were reluctant to schedule meetings later than ~2pm california time because they didn't want to keep people in the office late. When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until 9pm 3 nights a week, I guess because the managers figured that we were already home.

> Having left, I forgot what it was like to be able to focus on something other than Apple

Definitely sympathize there; we weren't even allowed to leave Github issues without Legal's approval, and when I wanted to open source something (basically an HLS server I wrote to handle my home security system), I was told that a) it was too competitive with Apple because my project had to do with video, and b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since I was salaried and well-compensated.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#98

Post by gdulli »

jb1991 wrote: post #44
gtirloni wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years That's surprising. Do you have a source?

That stat has been widely reported, in the U.S. at least. There are more deaths from Covid occurring currently in the U.S. on an average daily basis that at any prior time in the pandemic. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/24/health/covid-deaths-now-y... NY Times, Washington Post, and other media have similar stories.

"More than 2,000 Covid-19 deaths have been reported in the United States each day for the past month"

This is 2 weeks old and already out of date. Numbers are in freefall. It's now at 1,357. And cases have dropped sharply and consistently for a few weeks which means the (lagging) drop in deaths will continue for a few weeks.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#99

Post by rhino369 »

nostromo wrote: post #16

More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. I'm happy we're returning to normalcy, but it just makes me wonder "why now?" It's like the government and big business just decided overnight to declare "mission accomplished" when nothing substantial has changed. Last summer, for example, could have been the reopening, and we'd have better data and "…

It's not "mission accomplished." It's more like our withdraw from Afghanistan--admission of defeat. Omicron was like the Taliban taking Kabul in 2 weeks. We just lost to Covid--at least for now.

Essentially everyone has an immune response to covid now--either by vaccination or because you already had. That is why case number are cratering. The immune response effectiveness will fade, but all evidence points to long lasting protection against severe infections.

Last summer was the re-opening a la "mission accomplished." Then omicron evaded previous immune responses. Why won't that happen again? It might, but less of the population is vulnerable b/c Omicron spread to more of the population. There was a big group of unvaccined protected by heard immunity.

Post Omicron how many people haven't gotten a vaccine or covid? Probably less than 10% of the public.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#100

Post by WithinReason »

colinplamondon wrote: post #72
WithinReason wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and "dying from COVID".

That was true from the beginning. Legacy bureaucracies like the CDC are just recognizing what was clear in 2020.

The last wave amplified the difference. In the UK for example the last wave doesn't show up in the ICU patients chart [1], while it's clearly seen in the death chart [2]. The last wave seems to simultaneously correspond to a sudden spike in death statistics [2] and a sudden drop in excess mortality [3]. Point being, "deaths with COVID" doesn't mean a causal relationship any more, you need to look at other statistics to see how many people are dying as a result of COVID.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

[2]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

[3]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Post reply on HN