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I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

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Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#101

Post by Shivetya »

elliekelly wrote: post #2

> And bigger picture, I wanted to know if these are places that I would feel safe taking my family to. I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy” goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians.

The issue here is politicians need to communicate a clear message on what is acceptable and what is not and instead even at local, city, and state, levels we see in many states politicians trying to one up or put down each other.

The simple fact is we cannot continue in the shut down state we have and the rules of the shut down need to be heavily revised so as not to appear as arbitrary and unneeded. It gets worse because there does not seem to be any acceptable date and that is unreasonable in an extreme. The line in the sand will have to be drawn and efforts put towards protecting the most at risk.

We also have to recognize just how much person to person interaction that many businesses truly are. From actual touching to handing items back and forth if not handling items in shared environments. Social distancing really cannot work in some businesses and this needs to be accounted for because they cannot be kept shut down without accepting some risk; namely hair care, massage, hair care, but not to be ignored the biggest one, medical care. If it safe for a dentist or optometrist to work on you then a hair dresser can follow similar but appropriate restrictions.

Besides telling people how to protect themselves they need to tell people how to be polite in this new world we face and how to protect yourself from people who don't take the same caution you do without aggravating the situation.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#102

Post by ModernMech »

timbigman wrote: post #67
will_walker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s not posting any identifying information. This is incredibly valuable service for those in reopening states to make an informed decision on whether to continue to take precautions.

Many people in tech all speak from an incredible place of privilege, being able to work from home. There are many that are depressed and sitting at home. These are the people we need to help. Instead of trying to find violations, look for people that are hurting and help them out

I'm sorry, but until I see some proposals from politicians to help depressed people beyond "open up businesses", I'm going to remain very skeptical this is actually a legitimate thing they are concerned about rather than a cynical appeal to emotion. The very people who claim to be so concerned with depression right now are the ones where were and are advocating to slash social support systems. Sure, let's help people who are depressed and sitting at home. This begins with listening to public health experts, who have been begging for politicians to listen to their proposals to combat depression. If the first and only proposal to combat depression is "open up businesses and get people back to work" then how can we be sure these people will still be serious about depression after people get back to work?

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#103

Post by ceejayoz »

eru wrote: post #50
jrobn wrote: post #27

The stock market is soaring, People are dying at an ever increasing rate, and It’s becoming painfully obvious to most people what a total failure our federal govt’s as been. Things are about to move into dust bowl depression with the extremely rich at the top and 90% wallowing in desperate poverty. I’m afraid the American experiment is over and it’s a sad outcome.

I'm not sure what the stock market doing well has to do with whatever things are going badly? The stock market doing well would be a rare glimmer of hope in a sea of trouble, wouldn't it be?

The concern is that it may have become disconnected from reality, and eventually crash hard.

The Dow dropped into the 7,000s in the 2009 recession. I don't see any reason to believe the current recession will be milder.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#104

Post by economicslol »

Press2forEN wrote: post #75
torgian wrote: post #26

Wow, comment section there is a true dumpster fire. That said, it seems that America is just flailing about and hoping for the best. and not even expecting the worst if the comment section is to be believed.

I don't think its unreasonable to be upset at what Cuban did here. People just want to go back to normal without a billionaire's hired snitch at the table next to them.

He didn't do anything even remotely invasive. If they want to go back to crowded restaurants full of people without masks sitting too close together they are going to discover pretty quickly how big of a mistake that is.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#105

Post by economicslol »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #19

I just sent the URI to a friend with a restaurant. I think Mark Cuban did a public service here, ignoring some of the horrible comments left on his blog. Even though I am at risk (old age and damaged lungs from pulmonary embolisms), I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law. I wish more people would look at the…

>I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law.

This is obviously the right measure to take but I don't think any states have the infrastructure to do that currently. You need massive testing tracing capacity and we don't seem to be close to that at all. Yet all the states are reopening while cases and deaths increase almost everywhere outside NYC

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#106

Post by neffy »

Nbox9 wrote: post #17
djsumdog wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..or, business could open with the precautions they're taking and .. nothing happens. We see the same fatality rates, grow a little, lower a little, but generally level off. It sucks it's come to this, but all of the states with lock-downs are desperately looking at states easing restrictions to see if these shelter in place orders are really worth it. We've heard that many of the people in NYC getting infected now a…

> I don't understand how people can think complete eradication is even possible. Eradication, to the point that contract tracing is a viable containment method, has been achieved by other countries. It is completely possible.

I think it might be fairer to say it was possible for countries that caught it early enough, and responded quickly enough to prevent it spreading out of control.

Unfortunately, I think it's a bit too late for the USA to do that now.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#107

Post by aphextron »

djsumdog wrote: post #11
davidw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is already a catastrophe, and it looks like it'll just keep getting worse, unless we get lucky somehow, which I'm not counting on. BTW, most all economists keep pointing the finger back at fixing the public health crisis to fix the economic problems, whatever their political stripes: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/sa... But we have no coherent plans to do much about the public health cri…

..or, business could open with the precautions they're taking and .. nothing happens. We see the same fatality rates, grow a little, lower a little, but generally level off. It sucks it's come to this, but all of the states with lock-downs are desperately looking at states easing restrictions to see if these shelter in place orders are really worth it. We've heard that many of the people in NYC getting infected now a…

>..or, business could open with the precautions they're taking and .. nothing happens.

Maybe. But probably not. The fact that this decision is being made with zero preparation is terrifying. There is no PPE generally available. There are no contact tracing programs in place. There has been effectively zero federal response or any form of coherent strategy released. Hell, you can't even buy hand sanitizer in the stores again yet. Of course we can't live in isolation forever. But absolutely nothing has been done to make reopening any safer than we were two months ago. And saying "welp, let's hope it just goes away", with no safety measures in place, is going to mean hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#108

Post by MSM »

ashtonkem wrote: post #54
torgian wrote: post #26

Wow, comment section there is a true dumpster fire. That said, it seems that America is just flailing about and hoping for the best. and not even expecting the worst if the comment section is to be believed.

For those curious, a significant percentage of the commenters seem to think that this is exactly equivalent to the Stasi.

Which, to me, really illustrates the astroturfing going on.

I can go months without ever seeing any reference to the Stasi and, in this single comment section, I see dozens of references? There have been plenty of similar programs through history but a bunch of "Americans" point to the same German group to illustrate their point? It doesn't add up at all.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#109

Post by Press2forEN »

economicslol wrote: post #104
Press2forEN wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its unreasonable to be upset at what Cuban did here. People just want to go back to normal without a billionaire's hired snitch at the table next to them.

He didn't do anything even remotely invasive. If they want to go back to crowded restaurants full of people without masks sitting too close together they are going to discover pretty quickly how big of a mistake that is.

He hired a team of secret snitches. If physical distancing and masks hadn't damaged social trust enough already, now Texans in Dallas have to worry about a billionaire's ability to place hidden tattle tales in their midst.

Even if they had publicly made themselves known, which they should have, you can't seriously argue that what Cuban did wasn't invasive.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#110

Post by economicslol »

dawnerd wrote: post #100
disease wrote: post #72

The bigger story here is the comment section. Why are Americans so enamored with conspiracy theories and hate?

It’s not just America... You have anti-5G/anti vaccine nuts in Canada and Europe too. We just seem to be louder.

Is it really on the same scale though? It's quite hard getting a sense of what's normal from Social Media sites since they are so US-centric. It certainly seems like a large portion of the population here misunderstand basic science, statistics, biology, economics, etc. Having been educated in the US public school system it's not that surprising that people are so poorly informed.
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