Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars • Hacker News Board

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#531

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #465

Dylan16807 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big of an area do you need to see this effect? I've never heard of this kind of pricing difference on a city, county, or state basis. And the stock market varies wildly on a daily and monthly basis without affecting the prices of almost anything. It seems clear to me that money is not even close to affected by consumer confidence the way the stock market is.

The difference in this case is that the stock market is a highly efficient process, where feedback paths are short, information is shared widely, and there is potential to make a lot of money on other's misjudgements, automatically correcting the price in the process. This means changes in confidence are almost immediately reflected in the price. T-shirts, on the other hand, much more slowly change to match confidenc…

Thinking something is over or under valued is very different from general confidence in the economy. In daily life you're not betting on the economy, you're part of it. You work and spend even if you think the nukes are going to kill everyone. Confidence has a vastly weaker connection to demand for goods.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#532

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

lonelappde wrote: post #455

dang wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link me to an example or two in practice?

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/fiusxv/covid19_megath... OP/mod just edits a post to put a list of links in the top self-text comment or a top-pinned comment.

This, yes, thanks.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

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Post by Pfhreak » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #345

Pfhreak wrote: post #325

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Handling food safely requires training and process. Delivering food is a totally different environment than serving it in house.

There is nothing complicated about putting food in a delivery box and driving it somewhere.

How many meals should you deliver in one delivery? In what order? Where can the food be in the car? (Is it ok to put it on the floor?) How long can the food be allowed to get cold before it's no longer ok to deliver? What are you expected to cover, insurance wise, for your delivery drivers? How is your business prepared if your delivery driver has an accident? How much do you need to contribute to vehicle maintenance? Who owns the vehicle?

Yeah, I'd say it's definitely not just 'throw food in a box' and driving it somewhere.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#534

Post by listenallyall » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

widowlark wrote: post #525

listenallyall wrote: post #363

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> most people will continue to go to work Virtually all white collar workers, tech, administrative, managerial - work from home. Teachers, school admins & university workers - home. Entertainment (shows, sports, movies, concerts) - home. Apple - home. Shitty jobs that nobody cares about except during a crisis: janitorial/sanitation - work despite the risks. Cooks/food prep - work despite the risks. Grocery store/Walm…

How do you work from home as a janitor?

That's obviously the point -- while everyone else stays safely at home, people in those jobs must come to the site and get up close to germs, other people, and possibly the virus itself. Who do you think is going to do all this "deep cleaning and disinfecting"? The CEO?

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#535

Post by lm28469 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

sershe wrote: post #523

lm28469 wrote: post #473

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Either you don't do anything and it eventually _gets_ serious, or you do something and it _looks_ serious. > you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers. Surely you'd notice if 15%+ of your family's elders died in one year. People don't seem to get that it's not so bad (health wise) as long as you take serious decisions to slow the spread, so yes, you're right, it _looks_ serious, because it is, and it w…

That remains to be seen. The consequences of current actions, while the current impact of the virus itself is basically nil, will be severe, including extra deaths (and lack of births, for that matter - didn't occur to me to count that but looking at demographic articles I realized it's also lives lost in the net), and massive waste of life-years due to economic disruption that will disproportionately affect the deve…

> while the current impact of the virus itself is basically nil

You should read about Italy, and how they're running out of hospital beds. Which means usually non life threatening issues are getting much more serious.

It's not a boolean choice between "saving lives" and "saving the economy"... If you don't do anything: people get sick, sick people can't work, the economy tanks, hundred thousand people die. If you do something, less people get sick, the economy tanks anyway, but less people die. As it turns out it seems like most government prefer prioritizing human life over money.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

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Post by easytiger » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #513

easytiger wrote: post #380

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This is incorrect. As of the weekend gone past South Korea had tested 248,000 people out of a population of 50,000,000, with 8,086 +ve cases and 72 deaths. There is a lot of memetic nonsense flying around about this online and this is part of it

248k out of 50M is still a very impressive sample size; especially compared to most scientific papers coming out these days.

There is a persistent assertion that "everyone" in SK is being tested. It's not true. There is a pretty high chance that a high % of the infected are almost asymptomatic. Fatigue might be the only thing some get. Others nothing. The problem is people asserting without statistical extrapolation a base fatality rate predicated on a division of [+ve tests/deaths]. It is exactly what WHO have done before in other epidemic like situations and it doesn't make sense.

Previous epidemics have seen these massive similar ratios promoted only to later be revised aggressively. I can offer examples if required

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#537

Post by bequanna » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

amiga_500 wrote: post #515

fortran77 wrote: post #201

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Landlords don't have expenses?

Let them go bankrupt or have the banks suspend mortgages. Not having a homeless crisis is far more important than protecting rentiers. Just throw them under the bus. They are not actually doing anything anyhow.

> Let them go bankrupt or have the banks suspend mortgages.

Is this a serious comment or are you trolling?

Forget about a recession, the devastation a policy like this would cause would plunge the US into a full blown depression. Deflation and asset price collapse across the board. YEARS of stagnation.

(To me) the answer here seems clear: A direct bailout in the form of $ to consumers and some mix of direct $ and tax credits to businesses.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#538

Post by easytiger » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

marvin wrote: post #529

easytiger wrote: post #421

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You are almost there. > but you've got to assume that they haven't tested randomly but tested people who have been in touch with known cases Yes. Well with symptoms etc. So of the people who got tested they are much more likely to test +ve. I agree. Which means real cases are massively more widespread than those tested. It is believed here in the UK that this has been fairly rife for a while now, but those who got it…

I don't follow your reasoning. South Korea has tested 35 times the number of positive cases. That's a lot. Presumably, it's not a random sample, but people who have been in touch with people who have had obvious symptoms. Maybe some random sampling in outbreak areas, I don't know their methodology. Certainly there's a number of people that are not picked up throughout that process. This means that the real death rate…

I'll use London for an example. I personally know many people who believe they have this, and, I believe I and 3 friends picked it up from each other after one visited Milan in Feb. Loads of people have this and are not counted.

> But it wouldn't be on the order of 10 times bigger.

I believe it is of that order.

> In most of the groups of sick people, there's likely to be some that show enough symptoms to prompt a test, with a positive test leading most of that group to be tracked down

Literally not because most people won't be tested unless they are in need of hospitalisation

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

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Post by MaybiusStrip » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #518

MaybiusStrip wrote: post #514

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>And what % of patients infected actually end up in the ICU vs. just have a sniffle and a cough for a few days? This data is easily available: ~20% of people who get the virus are in life-threatening condition. Thats a 1/5 chance. > I'm not saying "do nothing", but I am saying "shut down the world" is too extreme in the opposite direction. Experts disagree with you. Maybe you should ask yourself why? 1. You have a hy…

> This data is easily available: ~20% of people who get the virus are in life-threatening condition. Thats a 1/5 chance. No, it's not "easily available". There's data flying around everywhere from different countries as this situation rapidly evolves and you can torture it to tell any story you want. If the data is so easily available, couldn't you have at least linked your source? > Experts disagree with you. Maybe…

Sure, I was referring to this study which shows that 20% of cases were either severe or critical: http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...

True, this is only in China. In most other countries, it's still too early to be able to collect great data because of how quickly the situation is evolving (the denominator is bound to be wrong due to delays between cases being detected and the amount of days it takes before cases evolve into severe/critical condition or death). But it's data, and you can't easily dismiss it.

> So they are inexperienced experts giving it their best guess based on what they know about disease transmission and math.

This isn't entirely true. The epidemics in China, South Korea have more or less been resolved, and many of the steps being taken in other countries are based on comparing the outcomes in those countries compared to ones that are failing to slow the spread of the disease with disastrous consequences (Italy).

> But they clearly did not factor in the effects of shutting down the global economy for 3-6 months in their quest to optimize for a single variable.

It's possible that the health experts are not taking the economical windfall into account, but the politicians enacting the laws probably are. These decisions are being made in rooms with people who, with their knowledge pooled together, most likely have more information about the disease and the economic impact of their decisions than you.

Secondly, the reasoning for national shutdowns earlier rather than later is to shorten their length. As of now, local government officials are hoping not advocating 3-6 month shut down, but rather trying to avoid one by shutting down now. I remember reading the figure of 2 weeks but I cannot find it quickly now. We will see.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#540

Post by graeme » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #516

graeme wrote: post #212

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Counterpoint: the west has had quarantine measures in its traditions for centuries, while developing the individual rights approach. We haven’t had to use them much in living memory, but they were not permanent in the past. Quarantine has been a necessary fact of human life for centuries. We just lived in a blessed time.

You're right and I don't necessarily agree with the original comment but governments have a much bigger place our lives today than in the past. They also have a much better ability to actually permenantly enforce those new restrictions. The patriot act and all the measures taken because of 9/11 are still here simply since it is now so easy to keep them active which wasn't true in the past at all. Not because they are…

I agree it’s certainly something to watch for. One difference is everyone is paying attention. People didn’t care about the details of the patriot act.