In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

Military spending isn’t every measure of the power of a country, but the US does spend as much on its military as the next ten countries combined..

Yes, the borders are the big (yes, very big) exception to "normality". But even that will pass when there are effective treatments or a vaccine. This won't go on forever.

This submission provided a fun example of title editing. The article title exceeds HN's 80 char limit, so had to be changed. The submitted title was "Industries that provided in-person services may never operate in-person again", which is not bad, but it's a bit misleading. The qualifier "strictly" is important, because without it you get kind of the opposite of what the article is actually saying, which is more along the lines of this quote: "You’re going to still see your doctor, but now you’ll be adjunctively cared for virtually as well"

It's a subtle distinction, but it's consistently surprising how small nuances in titles produce widely divergent discussions. A comment like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23294773, to take an obvious example, is a reflexive objection to the submitted title ("may never operate in-person again") but the word "strictly" defangs that objection in advance. There are other comments in this thread that you can tell were mostly reacting to the submitted title, too, since they're arguing with something it said, rather than what the article says.

Why this is fun: it turns out that you can take a strict substring of the article title (in this case a tail) which solves the problem perfectly. That is my favorite category of title-shortening. Often the substring isn't obvious at first and you get a satisfying click when you realize it works.

With all respect, I find this perspective incomprehensible, astonishing, deeply depressing.

My take, as a NYer, as someone working on a COVID project, as someone who so far has been lucky to only know of one serious hospitalization in my extended circle- it is exceptionally dangerous. I use the phrase "Russian Roulette" and I stand by that.

1% of likely-infected New Yorkers have died. Probably at least 80% of the NYC population remains at risk.

It does not just target and kill the elderly and infirm. Of teens and pre-teens, New York City has seen thousands of infections, hundreds of hospitalizations, many dozens of deaths. Every age, every demographic impacted.

There is so much we don't know about exposure to infection dynamics, about symptomatic vs asymptomatic progression, about medium and long term impacts.

Yes, life presents all kinds of dangers, people have to work, all sorts of essential jobs have to be staffed, the absolute failure of the Federal government "leadership" to do even the minimum from a financial, logistic, or medical perspective is unforgivably, sociopathically criminal and reduces the practical options on the table-

ALL that aside this virus is no effing joke.

The only reason body counts US-wide are not in the millions is because of shutdowns and various bits of behavioral and epidemiological good fortune the details of which we will only figure out later.

It is almost certainly the case that 90% or more of the US population remain vulnerable, and if people become careless, deaths will rise again.

One more point- I have been in many internet arguments about the various statistical/aggregate measures, eg suggestions that only 30% antibody prevalence may be enough for herd immunity, studies of superspreaders, etc-

Aggregate statistics are BS.

They tell you nothing about you or your family's individual risk in any specific situation. The number of people "doing everything right" yet winding up in the hospital is countless (as are the people doing everything wrong and remaining well). We know a lot yet are still just looking for the keys under the streetlamp.

We are not done with this. This may only be the end of the beginning.

Stay safe. Cheers.

The article is about this: "a catalyst that will make remote working the norm", not this: "human behaviours changing so dramatically".