111–120 of 157 posts
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.
The broader topic of the pandemic brings out inane discussion in other countries and on other sites too.
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HN doesn't usually fare that much better with COVID-19. It got politicized in the US, so there is a partisan faction that is going to parrot or at the very least, try to explain away, whatever the federal line of the day is, no matter how crazy.
I don't think I see many people arguing appeals to the party line. I'm probably posting more about it because I'm frustrated that, while I despise the current white house admin, I do think the lockdowns as implemented are likely to do more harm than good, especially as time goes on. I hate getting lumped in with the president, or having it be assumed that the president's line of rhetoric is representative of my think…
I completely disagree. Places are very likely to be shutdown regardless, whether due to government authority or the virus rampaging the workforce. One of those is more permanent than the other.
We could send people back to work, but doing so safely requires effective testing & equipment. The USA bungled their response to the crisis, and so it has neither of those things. Which means reopening the economy at this point is probably going to sacrifice a lot more lives.
The entire point of the lockdown was to buy enough time to put into place the stuff we need to safely reopen. And clearly that didn't happen.
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 agree with you. It's nice to see reasonable people who understand the risk personally. I saw a comment the other day where somebody said that we can't open anything up until a vaccine is developed. That is one extreme. then you have the other crowd who says just open it up and let me go see football and baseball games. I think the worst part about all of this has been the fact that it's happened in a election year.…
It's like only spraying enough water on a fire to keep it from spreading out of control but not enough to put it out. When you're house is on fire there really is only two sensible options. Let it burn down your house or put it out.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to get the R down to ~1. This is a partial lockdown that last until the vaccine comes out and kills 1600 people a day.
It seems better to lock down and test and trace harder until r gets to .5 then wait for it to mostly extinguish then cautiously open up. Or let it rip through the populous until we have herd immunity.
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There is no evidence that washing groceries actually reduces infection risk.
Just as there was "no evidence" that wearing a respirator reduces infection risk... The way I see it, everything coming into the house gets disinfected. This way, home can remain home, without eg needing to constantly over-worry about touching my face. I agree it's likely overboard, which is why I threw it out as an example of ridiculous things we are doing. But the advice on TV is, at best, meant to probabilisticall…
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Why do people insist on unnecessary mass deaths when we have examples of how to effectively respond to this disease in countries like South Korea and Taiwan without them? Why do people lean into this falsely-premised fatalism instead of demanding what has been proven to work?
I don't get the downvotes for the above comment. The "choice" between "stay at home forever" or "open all the things up" is a false one. If we do test/trace/isolate, and start requiring masks in enclosed spaces, we could start opening up in a fairly safe way.
This. It's hard to believe that a portion of the country is so anti-mask that they accept a 30% increased risk of a 50% chance of a multi day fever OVER a fashionable piece of homemade fabric or bandana.
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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.
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..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.
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I don't get the downvotes for the above comment. The "choice" between "stay at home forever" or "open all the things up" is a false one. If we do test/trace/isolate, and start requiring masks in enclosed spaces, we could start opening up in a fairly safe way.
> start requiring masks in enclosed spaces, This. It's hard to believe that a portion of the country is so anti-mask that they accept a 30% increased risk of a 50% chance of a multi day fever OVER a fashionable piece of homemade fabric or bandana.
If you want to reopen the economy - and we all do - masks are part of what makes that happen, and makes it "stick", without a second wave causing further stay at home orders as infections spike.
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Every substantive viewpoint I've seen on the subject comes back to cashflow. Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than the middle class asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?", they've internalized the system so thoroughly that they're actually protesting to get back on the treadmill.
>Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than workers asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?" This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust, or people that derive satisfaction from their employment. Worse, for those that would rather not go back to work and are suffering, your comment comes across as "shame o…
This will primarily be true of businesses with strong brick and mortar services (but especially those renting brick and mortar); the result will be that, in the future,
1. Owners will divest earnings as much possible rather than investing in growth in order to jump into bankruptcy protection more rapidly next time
2. Accountants will recommend accounting for 4 weeks of paid leave classified as sick leave that will be used up during a quarantine.
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People are dying at an increasing rate? What data are you referencing? I'm a little blown away by statements like this. The United States is not New York City. New York City is a single location in a massive country. Other than New York City there really has not been a problem with coronavirus in the United States compared to other nations in the world. It is imperative that we all act responsibly to prevent other pa…
You've got it backwards. New York's curve has flattened, and is trending downwards. When you remove New York from the US numbers, the trends look much worse. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/06/opinion/coron...
Nate Silver has a great post the other day where he broke down the fact that the ratio of new cases per test administered has gone down.
I'm not saying we should all just act as normal, but I am saying that the media is creating a more pessimistic picture than is warranted by talking about positive cases without the context of an increase in tests administered.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts...