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L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

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191–200 of 568 posts

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has more deaths per capita from coronavirus than the US, has an exponentially increasing death rate (i.e. they haven't turned the corner yet), and a very high case fatality rate of 9.4% indicating that they're severely under-testing. This is not what a successful disease prevention strategy looks like.

Sweden's deaths per capita is neck and neck with the United States and following approximately the same trajectory with no lockdown. It's neither appreciably better nor appreciably worse. http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

The US, like the UK, did a terrible job early on when containment was most critical. Several states are in lockdown now but arguably, the reason for our awful current new cases/death rate is due to the resistance to taking action in February when it first hit. There are also many places in the US that are not in lockdown. From another comment: “Approximately 44 of 50 states have lower per capita death rates than Sweden.“ The US cannot be compared directly to Sweden because it doesn’t have a single policy like Sweden. It’s also worth noting that Sweden has taken some lockdown measures ie your comment about “no lockdown” isn’t accurate. Finally, it’s early days and time will tell. The UK changed their policy because there is no credible evidence that herd immunity is effective. I believe Sweden will as well once the disease spirals out of control. And hopefully less people will die as a result. Unfortunately, there will also be the insufferable few that claim we could have survived without being cautious because you can’t prove that those measures were responsible for saving lives. Don’t be that person.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has a mandatory stay-at-home order, and they issued it earlier in their outbreak than we did in theirs. That explains why they're doing so well. In South Korea they all gravitated to masks very early, and they developed enough testing capacity early on to allow contact tracing to remain viable (so far).

Australia is outside of the Covid Belt of temperatures that is ideal for SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Australia is spared for the same reason most of Latin America, most of Africa and hotter climates in Asia have been. Nigeria, Egypt, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand don't have such low death rates because they've been running testing at the rate of Germany and doing tracing & lockdown & testi…

> Nigeria, Egypt, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand

Indonesia is only testing at the rate of 116 tests per million people. You only find what you measure. When the rate of testing is that low you can't make any claims about the true coronavirus death rate in Indonesia:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

And it hasn't helped that the Indonesian government has been deliberately withholding coronavirus information from the country:

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/13/we-dont-want-...

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#193
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has far fewer cases and death rate without a massive lockdown. If this disease is really so deadly, why isn’t their country being massively depopulated? Same for states in the US that haven’t implemented any lockdown measures.

Sweden has the highest death rate per capita of all developed nations.

Where is that stat? The sources I have seen do not show that.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you know more than I do -- that's good news, thank you for correcting me! I was wrong about coronavirus causing all forms of the common cold. They only cause 15%, whereas rhinoviruses as you say, cause 30–80%. Still, "the Coronavirus" COVID-19 causing virus is an RNA virus correct? Those mutate rapidly & in fact, evading immune systems via rapid evolution, is part of what has allowed RNA viruses to exis…

There's a lot, lot, lot more to it than simply saying that it's a DNA vs an RNA virus and that one categorically mutates faster than the other. The most relevant factor here is that COVID-19 only has a single strand of RNA, whereas e.g. influenza has 8. This allows a lot more mutation from pieces of RNA swapping around between different strands, which just can't happen on COVID-19. You can sort of think of it as anal…

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-coronavirus-mutates-slow...

Thanks for sharing -- great link, I learned something, thank you.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#195
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fun part about this virus is that it works on a 10 day delay, so you can either prevent infections long before it has a chance to start killing people, or you can start dealing with the epidemic once it's too late to stop it. Also, California ICUs are at 80% capacity, so there isn't that much room left to relax unless you want them to get verwhelmed and start sending people back home to die.

Where'd you get 80%? The site I have bookmarked shows 25% ( https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/cali... )

The numbers there are funky. Best guess is that their "total available" beds are the estimated number of statewide beds that would normally be empty, and the "ICU beds needed" number is just for Covid patients.

From https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/articl... :

> About 1,178 confirmed and 374 suspected COVID-19 patients were under treatment in California’s ICUs on Tuesday, according to the latest figures from the California Department of Public Health.

> On a typical day, about 58 percent of the state’s ICU beds are occupied by patients needing treatment. Although the exact number of ICU beds currently in use was not released, the increase in COVID-19 cases suggests that about 80 percent of the ICU beds in California may now be filled.

And from https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/24/map-where-are-the-int... :

> In California, where the confirmed number of coronavirus cases was 2,181 on March 23, there are 7,345 ICU beds. Eleven counties have no ICU beds or no hospitals at all.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#196
post #66
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framing the debate as "your grandma or your 401k" is precisely the gas lighting that prevents rational discussion on this topic

I submit that you don't know what gaslighting is. Further, I submit that you're attempting to coopt the language of marginalized groups to buttress a weak and selfish viewpoint. I shall not buy what you are selling.

Right, it's not exactly gaslighting. Rather, it's a fucking strawman made in bad faith.

The stakes are not "my stocks". The stakes are civil society, which as you may or may not know, can't exist for long without a functioning economy.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#197

I wonder why nobody pays for newspapers, yet podcasts and talk radio shows pull in millions of dollars annually.

Podcasts and talk radio are mostly emotional porn.

I was in a hurry and forgot to say that they differ from real news reporting in the way that porn differs from a real relationship. Of course, the op-ed/opinion columns in traditional news media are also mostly emotional porn; but the point is that opionating is cheap and while doing it well and entertainingly does require some research and planning each day, when you get down to it it's just a performance rather than painstaking and often slow production of factual data.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to believe that 'stocks' are some abstract entity and are relevant only to the lives of people without grandmas to hang. We don't live in a vacuum. Economic activity is not some cute thing people do in their free time. Recession also costs lives, including those of some grandmas.

Yes, and one of the interesting questions would be *why is our government so much more effective at propping up "the stocks" while everyone loses their job? There's miles of room for argument over the economic policy response. But instead what we get is "the economic effects aren't worth it" where none of the assumptions are quantified.

Our economy has fallen off a cliff, and we have no view of bottom yet. What exactly do you expect anyone to be able to quantify at this early stage?

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ~20 million out of work people in the US alone not realistic? That's already happened, so you might want to become concerned. Are widespread food shortages in six months realistic? I guess we'll see.

20m out of work is awful and can be dealt with without causing a public health crisis. Keynes won; we understand how to deal with this. Food shortages don't appear to be realistic and hinge on assumptions that don't seem to hold water.

Just a few months into this thing, infections still accelerating, and food supply chains are showing signs of widespread stress and deterioration. Everything from harvest to logistics to stocking shelves is being fretted over by the people in charge of them.

I could be wrong, but I'm going to guess you have no idea what you're talking about on this particular topic.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread Let’s be precise. Some other countries haven’t locked down hard and aren’t seeing a big spread yet . You mentioned Sweden. Here was Time a few days ago: > A head doctor at a major hospital in Sweden says the current approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.” He says healthcare workers at his hospital who have tested positive for the…

On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other countries that have shutdown. It's about middle of the pack. Personal responsibility lets us have our cake and eat it too. http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

> On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other countries that have shutdown.

This is so untrue.

Norway and Denmark had initially many more cases then Sweden but since their curves flattened.

As of yesterday

Norway - 26 deaths / milion

Sweden - 102 deaths / million

Denmark - 52 deaths / milion

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