5 ms·

LA Mayor closes movie theaters, bars, nightclubs, entertainment venues, gyms

58 points by ceohockey60 7y ago

jupp0r 7y ago
I wonder whether this will be enough to sufficiently reduce infection rates or if stricter measures will be required. It’s really like driving in the dark with so few test being performed. By the time we realize that it’s not enough, it might be too late. There is a 2 week delay in the feedback loop.
- ericd 7y ago
  Not a doctor, but it seems pretty obvious from the state of our testing and what's happened in Italy that everyone who is able needs to be self-quarantining, now. Not like avoiding nightclubs, but more like avoiding leaving their houses. We need to do something as closely resembling what China did as we can bear. Since that seems unlikely to come from the top for a bit, we need to start heavy social pressure on each other.
  - jupp0r 7y ago
    I agree with you but nothing I see around me in SoCal makes me think voluntary self isolation is going to cut it.
    - ericd 7y ago
      I agree, the gym next door is still hosting dance classes. Just a way of trying to slow it a bit. But it's going to take a formal lockdown.
- nokasy 7y ago
  Stop wondering and speculating. Everyone mass broadcasting at the same time whatever they are wondering about is probably creating more issues than the actual virus. Once upon a time, many to many mass broadcast used to be banned on the network. Why? Cause it would overwhelm hardware. But everyone just blindly assumes that human minds under conditions of many to many mass broadcasts will keep functioning as if there is no upper limit. The reactions of people on the net these days to one crisis after another, resemble the same symptoms of broadcast overload. The info flows and streams needs to change. What's weird is, these days it's not hard to find the right person/authority figure locally and directly contact them and have a one to one chat about issues or ideas but everyone is instead broadcasting. That dynamic needs to change.
  - wurst_case 7y ago
    Interesting analogy. Do you know where I can read up on the history of many to many mass broadcasting and the issues of broadcast overload?
    - 555g 7y ago
      Not sure. Probably networking/distributed systems textbooks or network/telco hardware docs prior to 2000-2003. That was the conventional wisdom back then. Dig around in IEEE and ACM articles of the period and you will find lot of commentary about the broadcast/scaling issues. Back then Data Centers didn't exist as they do today. Most large system architects didn't believe emerging new startups like Twitter/Facebook/YouTube etc would survive because the scaling problem, that many to many broadcast required, hadn't been cracked yet. There was only email and IM back then and no one was broadcasting to millions of people every 2 mins. Because it would just crash everything. That's why large companies at the time like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft etc totally missed the social media boat. They didn't believe it would work and were already running into scaling issues with their own systems. It mostly all luck that it worked out. Telcos worldwide upgraded pipes and Moore's law drastically dropped cost of processing exactly around that period making data centers/cloud possible. And all of a sudden we are in a new world were many to many mass broadcasting is a reality. Beyond the CS side to this recommended reading would be Howard Simon's concept of Bounded Rationality, it's implications, work arounds etc. It's based on studying large orgs and how they fail when human cognitive limitations get hit. That kind of approach probably needs to be scaled up/developed to handle the broadcast issue. With everyone broadcasting it's easy to hit mental bandwidth limits. And then mistakes start happening. People react to each others mistakes, hide them etc. Fixing thing get more and more complicated and then you have a runaway cascade. It becomes a trap.
      - jupp0r 7y ago
        As a ham radio operator, I can tell you that it’s completely ok to allow everyone to broadcast if there is a small system of common sense rules in place that determines when to send and when to wait.
aphextron 7y ago
> "However, the good news is that 75% of the tests coming back from county labs are negative." How on earth is this good news? 25% of people coming back positive sounds absolutely insane.
- blhack 7y ago
  Because the projected figures are often times between 50-70% positive.
- jfoutz 7y ago
  This is pure speculation based on incomplete and casually arranged data, feel free to dismiss me as a crackpot. The U.S. really didn't have any capacity to test for months. Only recently, a small amount of testing has become possible. Oklahoma burned up nearly its entire daily ration to test the Utah Jazz, for example. I'd guess the biases in place would indicate whoever is able to authorize tests had a fairly broad view of "who has ncovid" so they're burning their tests on a broad array of very sick patients. It's good news, because whoever can authorize testing will gain experience about what severe cases really look like. Fewer critical but non infected patients will be tested, so more tests can be used for less severe or possibly even asymptomatic cases.
- fiblye 7y ago
  As far as I know, not everybody is getting tested. I'm assuming it's mostly those showing symptoms and seeking tests, or those who believe themselves to have been exposed seeking tests. It's still a high number, but not the apocalypse.
not_a_moth 7y ago
Want to play devil's advocate Closing all schools, closing gyms, closing restaurants It's obvious we can't contain the virus A ton of otherwise healthy adults and children, not at risk from virus, are going to damage their health both mental and physical to "flatten the curve" for the sake of the elderly How about a different protocol: Society resumes per normal and if you're elderly or high risk, stay indoors and avoid contact until there's herd immunity, which given transmissibility could happen quickly
- forkexec 7y ago
  That's not how herd immunity works... there is zero immunity. Caregivers cannot risk infection because their risk to their cared is too great and getting everyone infected isn't a strategy for anything other than mass death.
  - not_a_moth 7y ago
    I don't follow, herd immunity greatly reduces the virus because when a critical mass gains immunity it can't easily reproduce At that point it will be much safer for the vulnerable There isn't mass death because the elderly will be isolated, a lot of elderly at risk here don't need caregivers and for the ones that do basic protocols can be adopted
    - addHocker 7y ago
      How do you isolate against a disease that is spread by assymptotic carriers? You cant. This option is not a option, never was, and for this virus never will be.
    - fpoling 7y ago
      Except we do not know that immunity from Covid is long-lasting. Based on similarity with other corona viruses one cannot expect that. It could be just few months. The best hope that virus mutates to a milder form. But that requires the longest chain of transmission so the evolutionally pressure has chance to work. Increasing social distance is precisely what pushes the virus in that direction.

58 points by ceohockey60 7y ago

I wonder whether this will be enough to sufficiently reduce infection rates or if stricter measures will be required. It’s really like driving in the dark with so few test being performed. By the time we realize that it’s not enough, it might be too late. There is a 2 week delay in the feedback loop.

ericd 7y ago
Not a doctor, but it seems pretty obvious from the state of our testing and what's happened in Italy that everyone who is able needs to be self-quarantining, now. Not like avoiding nightclubs, but more like avoiding leaving their houses. We need to do something as closely resembling what China did as we can bear. Since that seems unlikely to come from the top for a bit, we need to start heavy social pressure on each other.
- jupp0r 7y ago
  I agree with you but nothing I see around me in SoCal makes me think voluntary self isolation is going to cut it.
  - ericd 7y ago
    I agree, the gym next door is still hosting dance classes. Just a way of trying to slow it a bit. But it's going to take a formal lockdown.
nokasy 7y ago
Stop wondering and speculating. Everyone mass broadcasting at the same time whatever they are wondering about is probably creating more issues than the actual virus. Once upon a time, many to many mass broadcast used to be banned on the network. Why? Cause it would overwhelm hardware. But everyone just blindly assumes that human minds under conditions of many to many mass broadcasts will keep functioning as if there is no upper limit. The reactions of people on the net these days to one crisis after another, resemble the same symptoms of broadcast overload. The info flows and streams needs to change. What's weird is, these days it's not hard to find the right person/authority figure locally and directly contact them and have a one to one chat about issues or ideas but everyone is instead broadcasting. That dynamic needs to change.
- wurst_case 7y ago
  Interesting analogy. Do you know where I can read up on the history of many to many mass broadcasting and the issues of broadcast overload?
  - 555g 7y ago
    Not sure. Probably networking/distributed systems textbooks or network/telco hardware docs prior to 2000-2003. That was the conventional wisdom back then. Dig around in IEEE and ACM articles of the period and you will find lot of commentary about the broadcast/scaling issues. Back then Data Centers didn't exist as they do today. Most large system architects didn't believe emerging new startups like Twitter/Facebook/YouTube etc would survive because the scaling problem, that many to many broadcast required, hadn't been cracked yet. There was only email and IM back then and no one was broadcasting to millions of people every 2 mins. Because it would just crash everything. That's why large companies at the time like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft etc totally missed the social media boat. They didn't believe it would work and were already running into scaling issues with their own systems. It mostly all luck that it worked out. Telcos worldwide upgraded pipes and Moore's law drastically dropped cost of processing exactly around that period making data centers/cloud possible. And all of a sudden we are in a new world were many to many mass broadcasting is a reality. Beyond the CS side to this recommended reading would be Howard Simon's concept of Bounded Rationality, it's implications, work arounds etc. It's based on studying large orgs and how they fail when human cognitive limitations get hit. That kind of approach probably needs to be scaled up/developed to handle the broadcast issue. With everyone broadcasting it's easy to hit mental bandwidth limits. And then mistakes start happening. People react to each others mistakes, hide them etc. Fixing thing get more and more complicated and then you have a runaway cascade. It becomes a trap.
    - jupp0r 7y ago
      As a ham radio operator, I can tell you that it’s completely ok to allow everyone to broadcast if there is a small system of common sense rules in place that determines when to send and when to wait.

aphextron 7y ago

> "However, the good news is that 75% of the tests coming back from county labs are negative." How on earth is this good news? 25% of people coming back positive sounds absolutely insane.

blhack 7y ago
Because the projected figures are often times between 50-70% positive.
jfoutz 7y ago
This is pure speculation based on incomplete and casually arranged data, feel free to dismiss me as a crackpot. The U.S. really didn't have any capacity to test for months. Only recently, a small amount of testing has become possible. Oklahoma burned up nearly its entire daily ration to test the Utah Jazz, for example. I'd guess the biases in place would indicate whoever is able to authorize tests had a fairly broad view of "who has ncovid" so they're burning their tests on a broad array of very sick patients. It's good news, because whoever can authorize testing will gain experience about what severe cases really look like. Fewer critical but non infected patients will be tested, so more tests can be used for less severe or possibly even asymptomatic cases.
fiblye 7y ago
As far as I know, not everybody is getting tested. I'm assuming it's mostly those showing symptoms and seeking tests, or those who believe themselves to have been exposed seeking tests. It's still a high number, but not the apocalypse.

not_a_moth 7y ago

Want to play devil's advocate Closing all schools, closing gyms, closing restaurants It's obvious we can't contain the virus A ton of otherwise healthy adults and children, not at risk from virus, are going to damage their health both mental and physical to "flatten the curve" for the sake of the elderly How about a different protocol: Society resumes per normal and if you're elderly or high risk, stay indoors and avoid contact until there's herd immunity, which given transmissibility could happen quickly

forkexec 7y ago
That's not how herd immunity works... there is zero immunity. Caregivers cannot risk infection because their risk to their cared is too great and getting everyone infected isn't a strategy for anything other than mass death.
- not_a_moth 7y ago
  I don't follow, herd immunity greatly reduces the virus because when a critical mass gains immunity it can't easily reproduce At that point it will be much safer for the vulnerable There isn't mass death because the elderly will be isolated, a lot of elderly at risk here don't need caregivers and for the ones that do basic protocols can be adopted
  - addHocker 7y ago
    How do you isolate against a disease that is spread by assymptotic carriers? You cant. This option is not a option, never was, and for this virus never will be.
  - fpoling 7y ago
    Except we do not know that immunity from Covid is long-lasting. Based on similarity with other corona viruses one cannot expect that. It could be just few months. The best hope that virus mutates to a milder form. But that requires the longest chain of transmission so the evolutionally pressure has chance to work. Increasing social distance is precisely what pushes the virus in that direction.