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It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to

It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to quarantine, lockdown, etc., both in terms of where we are now and what we should do in the near future. I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It'd be pretty wild if (say) Google decided that Chrome would no longer display pages that were "too far" in their discussion and advocacy of the options.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago
> I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It's interesting that even with the best case scenario there are entities with enough power to control behavior like that. That fact is scary. If they have ulterior motives. That fact is scarier.
- spunker540 7y ago
  They don’t have the power to control behavior arbitrarily though. If they tried to shut down business last year for no reason at all, you can bet there’d be push back, protests and eventually they’d be voted out of office and laws would be changed etc. However when there is a pandemic overwhelming hospital systems around the world, they do have the power to shut things down precisely because most people agree with that decision. Clearly right now there is a vocal minority who disagrees and has chosen to protest. And as far as I can tell they are suffering no consequences besides being ridiculed and called “stupid” by the folks who consent to staying in for the greater good. The us government only has the power to shut things down when most people agree that they should have that power.
gdubs 7y ago
I’m too tired at the moment to figure out where I stand on this [issue of free speech / assembly] but I have a general question: I thought the Supreme Court has already shown that there are limits to speech, such as yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater. I guess the distinction is how directly the speech leads to harm. Would that apply in this situation where most medical experts would agree that the quarantine is necessary for saving lives? Or is the thinking that this is too far removed — like telling people they can’t protest seat-belts. Edit: I’ll clarify by saying that (my personal opinion) is that the protests are at best ... misguided. My question is about precedent on free speech / assembly under circumstances where harm might occur or it violates something like a quarantine or shelter-in-place order. The Atlantic article linked below is fascinating because I definitely have always thought of the “fire in a crowded theater example.”
- leetcrew 7y ago
  the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" quote is not a particularly good example to bring up for this topic. see this article [0] for a longer discussion, but tl;dr: it's from an ancillary opinion (ie, not part of the actual ruling) from a case that was overturned many years ago. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
- tomcam 7y ago
  Not a constitutional issue because FB, Google, etc. are private companies and can tweak the search results however they see fit.
  - wyager 7y ago
    While I don't endorse this state of affairs, the federal government has been putting constraints and obligations on private (especially commercial) speech for decades.
    - CryptoPunk 7y ago
      Only commercial speech. Private non-commercial speech has been pretty broadly protected by the First Amendment.
      - wyager 7y ago
        Commercial speech (I.e. Facebook’s censorship of material on its advertising platform) is obviously what’s in question here.
        CryptoPunk 7y ago
        Facebook's censorship has nothing to do with First Amendment rights, as it's a private platform.
- cpwright 7y ago
kevinventullo 7y ago
I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery At the risk of sounding inflammatory, there are pretty clearly some actors who would welcome death and misery upon others if it meant they made some money.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- henriquez 7y ago
  To further inflame things, it seems to me that government directing corporations to suppress peoples’ human rights of free speech and assembly is a textbook example of fascism.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Or increased their political power. Note well: I am not just talking about one side here.
- netsharc 7y ago
  Or to stay in power. Since their logic is a running economy -> stock market good -> Their faction gets reelected. I wonder how fearful the kakistocracy are about losing in November, they've been so blatantly saying that black is white for the last 4 years (watch this comment get downvoted because "Black is white!") , and they might have to face the consequences of that.
- wyager 7y ago
  Sure, like China using its influence over the WHO to mislead about the nature of the outbreak within its borders and exclude Taiwan from the international health community. I'm more worried about that than some powerless randos who are mad about the massive QALY loss we're currently going through.
  - aclsid 7y ago
    If the first sentence of your response doesn't tell you that it is about a certain brand of politics that is following that narrative, the second part should. Nobody has excluded Taiwan from anything, but they are not a member state of the UN and therefore not part of the WHO. Just because they lost the war against Communist China and lost their seat, it does not mean it is alright to smear the WHO just to achieve some sort of international recognition, which in the end feels more like a cheap shot. I don't know about you but the main thing that worries me is the long recovery process from this or getting permanent damage from this stuff if I get sick, because after you get ebola for instance, who's going to care that it started in Africa.
throwaway_covid 7y ago
I agree. Regardless of your opinions, overreactions by authorities can breed extremists. The typical profile of a “freedom fighter” is somebody who first sees their future group being treated “unfairly,” eg by watching a peaceful protest broken up violently. That’s sort of when the indoctrination begins.
throwlaplace 7y ago
> see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. Are you serious? You see little reason? What is the logical fallacy where someone relativites and discounts in order to claim good faith? You see this massive coordinated effort to antagonize and concerted effort to obfuscate the leadership of the effort and you think it's in good faith? All for the greater good of the nation's wellbeing? You might as well claim there's little reason to doubt that the current administration itself is also making a good faith effort to preserve health and well-being. There are only two conclusions that can be drawn from your comment: you are either completely and utterly naive or you yourself are dissembling.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
clairity 7y ago
the collection of arguments being made by the protesters (as reported) mostly seem farcical and incoherent, but we should very much support their right to protest and challenge the authoritarian-prone position that we must be locked down indefinitely to beat this pandemic. administrative directives need to convince a (super-)majority of the populace with evidence to gain trust and compliance. antagonistic pressure needs to remain so that the implied force behind those directives are removed as soon as possible (no sooner, no later).
- lonelappde 7y ago
  The US President, who governs by parroting the later bit of Fox News commentary, is instructing people to hoard and waste life-saving medication critically needed by lupus patients, based on fake research fake published by a fake researcher and cryptocurrency huckster. He did this after cancelling pandemic prepardness programs and blatantly lying about every basic fact about the pandemic for months. Tell me which administration is the one that needs to be held feet to the fire. The protests are fund by the Koch brothers, profiteers who inherited their wealth from their father who built oil refineries for Stalin and Hitler. A super-majority of the public support the lockdown and fear ending it too soon. Everyone living in population centers is seeing friends or family members die, and less dense areas are likely to follow.
- Faark 7y ago
  An interesting aspect: Protesting a law should be possible without disobeying it. But the usual mass gatherings are kind of a problem in this specific situation. Thus how to protest responsibly? Holding a "Its just a Flu" poster while wearing a face mask might not be that ridiculous after all.
  - clairity 7y ago
    it's not clear that these protesters are being unlawful by disobeying rules implemented via emergency powers rather than legislation. while there's force of law behind emergency powers, it's not concrete who might be harmed by the protesters (other than themselves, and they're unlikely to sue each other given the nature of the protest). with that said, yes, it's prudent to wear a mask around random strangers in close proximity while shouting (spitting) a lot, to keep from infecting each other. note that the flu is deadly too (30-60K/yr in the US), we just don't shut down the economy for it.
oldsklgdfth 7y ago
RFI: I'm interested in learning more about an alternative strategy to the lockdown.
- Exmoor 7y ago
  The most plausible one I've heard was to heavily quarantine people at higher risk of dying or having severe complications from COVID-19 while having looser restrictions on people highly unlikely to suffer serious consequences. This would, theoretically, allow the virus to propagate throughout the population and a herd immunity to develop naturally. It's relatively close to what's being done in Sweden, so I guess we'll at least end up with something of a test-case in retrospect.
  - oldsklgdfth 7y ago
    Huh, that sounds reasonable. I'm guessing you would need to wait for immunization to be developed for restrictions on high risk people are loosened?
    - SerLava 7y ago
      It's not reasonable. You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die. You can't tell who's going to die from it. You can't have everyone getting sick at once. The death rate will go up tremendously if nobody can get treatment when they have treatable symptoms. This is what "flattening the curve" means. We don't have enough protective equipment, medical supplies, hospital beds, healthcare workers, or even morgue space. The only tool left is staying inside, and so that's what we're doing now. "Herd immunity" uses the word "herd" because we don't normally use it to describe actions taken toward human beings. Sweden absolutely bungled their response and have 10x the number of deaths from this as compared to their neighbors who shut shit down.
      - CryptoPunk 7y ago
        >>You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die Yes you absolutely can. The workers interacting with the quarantined subset of the population could use PPE to avoid transmitting it to them. Packaging on groceries, as well as the grocery bag, can easily be disinfected before being transferred to the quarantined individual.
bargl 7y ago
We tend to want to lump people into camps so we don't have to go through and see all the various sub-categories and determine if they are OK or not. Some states are restricting fishing and hunting... That's not a team sport and if I use a lure (edit: as in I don't even have to go to the store for bait) I'm not going to affect anyone else. Some protesters want to get haircuts.... GET OVER IT. I feel like both sides have some valid and various levels of invalid points. In the expedience of not needing to sort the chaff, i'd side with the stay at home crowd, but there really is some shit they closed down that seems.... a little too far.
- mcculley 7y ago
  It's no surprise that a culture that didn't plan ahead or invest in public health infrastructure has haphazard and poorly defined processes.
  - bargl 7y ago
    Agreed. I'd like to point out that some people equate "invest in public health infrastructure" with free healthcare. The two aren't the same. To deal with a pandemic you need a pandemic response plan for the spike to the system. This can be done in even in the US under our current system. It'd just magnify the pros/cons of our any system in place. I'm for state run healthcare, but the argument about pandemic readiness isn't about that (imo).
    - mcculley 7y ago
      I agree that they are two separate concepts. But if a community ensures that homeless people are vaccinated and not a risk to those privately insured and also wants all children vaccinated, no matter who their parents are, that is a form of healthcare. Public health requires an investment in healthcare. Healthcare is never free. Some cultures invest in it. Some don't.
      - bargl 7y ago
        But as we've seen from spots in Europe, you also have to invest wisely. I think (as harsh as it is to say) we can learn from this and pick healthcare models that work well even under strain.
vinniejames 7y ago
This would be more analogous to Google removing those types of pages from search, which they already do en masse and have for years
- downerending 7y ago
  It seems to go a bit farther than that. IIUC, people posting about these events can have accounts suspended (not just the particular post). Beyond that, though, presumably a lot of my friends would be interested in what I have to say. FB getting in the middle of that seems pretty heavy-handed. (Personally, we're way past the point where I'd care to have a Facebook, Twitter, etc. account, partly for reasons like this, and I've deleted mine years ago.)
SerLava 7y ago
>I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. Wait, are you talking about the people who want to send everyone back to work now, even though we don't even have masks for doctors yet? Are you saying they are trying to minimize death and misery? Or are we talking about completely different people here?
- downerending 7y ago
  I don't know about the particular motives of each protester. But it's obvious that there are large numbers of people facing immediate financial ruin. And very shortly thereafter, risk of death for themselves and their loved ones. I'm not in that situation, but I wouldn't be caught dead silencing their voices.
  - SerLava 7y ago
    The answer to financial ruin is not to force everyone back into contact again, it's to give normal people their fair share of the bailout. We took something like 15,000 dollars out of everyone's future earnings for the bailout, and threw them back 1,200 of it. With those people taken care of, the protests are reduced to landowners demanding blood for their haircuts and Fuddruckers.
    - downerending 7y ago
      I don't think the protesters are asking for people to be forced back into contact. (though admittedly, restarting will mean pressure on those who'd rather not) And I seriously doubt any of the protesters are landowners, aside, perhaps from "owning" their houses. ("owning" == mortgages, in most cases)
- nopriorarrests 7y ago
  >Wait, are you talking about the people who want to send everyone back to work now This is an argument made in a bad faith. You can't send "everyone to work now", if you are not running a gulag. People who are financially secure can stay at home till 2021, nobody can force them to go to work, this is obvious. It's a question of being able to make a personal decision between staying at home or going to work.
TomMckenny 7y ago
>that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery Unless the anti-quarantine events are organized by a hostile power. And this seems likely since they are insanely harmfully, arose suddenly and with widespread and great organization and have a lot of precedent. [1][2][3] And especially since it's already been explicitly shown for at least some of the domains connected to the protests.[4] [1]https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/26/media/russia-trolls-facebook-events/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/26/media/russia-trolls-faceboo... [2]https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-accounts-organized-events-on-all-sides-of-polarizing-issues-1509355801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-account... [3]https://thehill.com/policy/technology/358025-thousands-attended-protest-organized-by-russians-on-facebook https://thehill.com/policy/technology/358025-thousands-atten... [4]https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-domain-surge/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-d...
- p1necone 7y ago
  Given this the number of people even on hacker news who are throwing very dubious arguments around and completely ignoring the fact that these protestors are obviously either acting in bad faith or very ignorant is a bit concerning too.
  - gruez 7y ago
    examples?
    - p1necone 7y ago
      The biggest one is claiming that these people are protesting because they're actually in financial trouble - all the protestors I've seen seem to be well off people complaining they want to get haircuts or go out to eat... There's also a large number of conspiracy theorists in these crowds claiming that the virus doesn't exist, or it's some kind of hoax.
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago
bsder 7y ago
> It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to quarantine, lockdown, etc., both in terms of where we are now and what we should do in the near future. The problem is that the "followers" in the "Reopen All The Things(tm)" camp is ASSUMING that you get immunity once you get Covid-19. We do not have information about this. We also do not have information about how long immunity lasts if you do get some. We also do not have data as to whether a person who has an asymptomatic case of Covid-19 can later get a case which puts him into the hospital. Herd immunity has significant limitations if immunity burns out every 6 months.
- downerending 7y ago
  The awful truth, I suspect, is that immunity will be for a limited duration, like the common cold. However, the people who are most likely to die from the virus will mostly die in the first round. Those who live through it will be far more likely to experience it as a rather unpleasant flu. And perhaps life will go on like that. Pure speculation, of course. But, we've never succeeded at a vaccination for a corona virus, and it's far from clear that we'll have one soon for this one. It could be that this will play out no matter what we do.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    I think total immunity will be a for a limited span-- perhaps long enough to prevent another outbreak for a long time, perhaps only for a moderate time. But we keep partial immunity to coronaviruses for a long time. Right now it looks like our best estimate of infection fatality rate is 0.3%, and it may very well be a lot less if the disease re-emerges in a few years because past encounters will be protective. That is, would 229E be pretty damn bad in an immunologically naive population? I think it might.
pavlov 7y ago
Facebook took down these event pages at the request of US state officials. Google also removes pages from their index at the request of law enforcement or by court order. There’s nothing wild about that.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago

> I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It's interesting that even with the best case scenario there are entities with enough power to control behavior like that. That fact is scary. If they have ulterior motives. That fact is scarier.

spunker540 7y ago
They don’t have the power to control behavior arbitrarily though. If they tried to shut down business last year for no reason at all, you can bet there’d be push back, protests and eventually they’d be voted out of office and laws would be changed etc. However when there is a pandemic overwhelming hospital systems around the world, they do have the power to shut things down precisely because most people agree with that decision. Clearly right now there is a vocal minority who disagrees and has chosen to protest. And as far as I can tell they are suffering no consequences besides being ridiculed and called “stupid” by the folks who consent to staying in for the greater good. The us government only has the power to shut things down when most people agree that they should have that power.

gdubs 7y ago

I’m too tired at the moment to figure out where I stand on this [issue of free speech / assembly] but I have a general question: I thought the Supreme Court has already shown that there are limits to speech, such as yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater. I guess the distinction is how directly the speech leads to harm. Would that apply in this situation where most medical experts would agree that the quarantine is necessary for saving lives? Or is the thinking that this is too far removed — like telling people they can’t protest seat-belts. Edit: I’ll clarify by saying that (my personal opinion) is that the protests are at best ... misguided. My question is about precedent on free speech / assembly under circumstances where harm might occur or it violates something like a quarantine or shelter-in-place order. The Atlantic article linked below is fascinating because I definitely have always thought of the “fire in a crowded theater example.”

leetcrew 7y ago
the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" quote is not a particularly good example to bring up for this topic. see this article [0] for a longer discussion, but tl;dr: it's from an ancillary opinion (ie, not part of the actual ruling) from a case that was overturned many years ago. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
tomcam 7y ago
Not a constitutional issue because FB, Google, etc. are private companies and can tweak the search results however they see fit.
- wyager 7y ago
  While I don't endorse this state of affairs, the federal government has been putting constraints and obligations on private (especially commercial) speech for decades.
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    Only commercial speech. Private non-commercial speech has been pretty broadly protected by the First Amendment.
    - wyager 7y ago
      Commercial speech (I.e. Facebook’s censorship of material on its advertising platform) is obviously what’s in question here.
      - CryptoPunk 7y ago
        Facebook's censorship has nothing to do with First Amendment rights, as it's a private platform.
cpwright 7y ago

kevinventullo 7y ago

I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery At the risk of sounding inflammatory, there are pretty clearly some actors who would welcome death and misery upon others if it meant they made some money.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
henriquez 7y ago
To further inflame things, it seems to me that government directing corporations to suppress peoples’ human rights of free speech and assembly is a textbook example of fascism.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Or increased their political power. Note well: I am not just talking about one side here.
netsharc 7y ago
Or to stay in power. Since their logic is a running economy -> stock market good -> Their faction gets reelected. I wonder how fearful the kakistocracy are about losing in November, they've been so blatantly saying that black is white for the last 4 years (watch this comment get downvoted because "Black is white!") , and they might have to face the consequences of that.
wyager 7y ago
Sure, like China using its influence over the WHO to mislead about the nature of the outbreak within its borders and exclude Taiwan from the international health community. I'm more worried about that than some powerless randos who are mad about the massive QALY loss we're currently going through.
- aclsid 7y ago
  If the first sentence of your response doesn't tell you that it is about a certain brand of politics that is following that narrative, the second part should. Nobody has excluded Taiwan from anything, but they are not a member state of the UN and therefore not part of the WHO. Just because they lost the war against Communist China and lost their seat, it does not mean it is alright to smear the WHO just to achieve some sort of international recognition, which in the end feels more like a cheap shot. I don't know about you but the main thing that worries me is the long recovery process from this or getting permanent damage from this stuff if I get sick, because after you get ebola for instance, who's going to care that it started in Africa.

throwaway_covid 7y ago

I agree. Regardless of your opinions, overreactions by authorities can breed extremists. The typical profile of a “freedom fighter” is somebody who first sees their future group being treated “unfairly,” eg by watching a peaceful protest broken up violently. That’s sort of when the indoctrination begins.

throwlaplace 7y ago

> see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. Are you serious? You see little reason? What is the logical fallacy where someone relativites and discounts in order to claim good faith? You see this massive coordinated effort to antagonize and concerted effort to obfuscate the leadership of the effort and you think it's in good faith? All for the greater good of the nation's wellbeing? You might as well claim there's little reason to doubt that the current administration itself is also making a good faith effort to preserve health and well-being. There are only two conclusions that can be drawn from your comment: you are either completely and utterly naive or you yourself are dissembling.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

clairity 7y ago

the collection of arguments being made by the protesters (as reported) mostly seem farcical and incoherent, but we should very much support their right to protest and challenge the authoritarian-prone position that we must be locked down indefinitely to beat this pandemic. administrative directives need to convince a (super-)majority of the populace with evidence to gain trust and compliance. antagonistic pressure needs to remain so that the implied force behind those directives are removed as soon as possible (no sooner, no later).

lonelappde 7y ago
The US President, who governs by parroting the later bit of Fox News commentary, is instructing people to hoard and waste life-saving medication critically needed by lupus patients, based on fake research fake published by a fake researcher and cryptocurrency huckster. He did this after cancelling pandemic prepardness programs and blatantly lying about every basic fact about the pandemic for months. Tell me which administration is the one that needs to be held feet to the fire. The protests are fund by the Koch brothers, profiteers who inherited their wealth from their father who built oil refineries for Stalin and Hitler. A super-majority of the public support the lockdown and fear ending it too soon. Everyone living in population centers is seeing friends or family members die, and less dense areas are likely to follow.
Faark 7y ago
An interesting aspect: Protesting a law should be possible without disobeying it. But the usual mass gatherings are kind of a problem in this specific situation. Thus how to protest responsibly? Holding a "Its just a Flu" poster while wearing a face mask might not be that ridiculous after all.
- clairity 7y ago
  it's not clear that these protesters are being unlawful by disobeying rules implemented via emergency powers rather than legislation. while there's force of law behind emergency powers, it's not concrete who might be harmed by the protesters (other than themselves, and they're unlikely to sue each other given the nature of the protest). with that said, yes, it's prudent to wear a mask around random strangers in close proximity while shouting (spitting) a lot, to keep from infecting each other. note that the flu is deadly too (30-60K/yr in the US), we just don't shut down the economy for it.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago

RFI: I'm interested in learning more about an alternative strategy to the lockdown.

Exmoor 7y ago
The most plausible one I've heard was to heavily quarantine people at higher risk of dying or having severe complications from COVID-19 while having looser restrictions on people highly unlikely to suffer serious consequences. This would, theoretically, allow the virus to propagate throughout the population and a herd immunity to develop naturally. It's relatively close to what's being done in Sweden, so I guess we'll at least end up with something of a test-case in retrospect.
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  Huh, that sounds reasonable. I'm guessing you would need to wait for immunization to be developed for restrictions on high risk people are loosened?
  - SerLava 7y ago
    It's not reasonable. You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die. You can't tell who's going to die from it. You can't have everyone getting sick at once. The death rate will go up tremendously if nobody can get treatment when they have treatable symptoms. This is what "flattening the curve" means. We don't have enough protective equipment, medical supplies, hospital beds, healthcare workers, or even morgue space. The only tool left is staying inside, and so that's what we're doing now. "Herd immunity" uses the word "herd" because we don't normally use it to describe actions taken toward human beings. Sweden absolutely bungled their response and have 10x the number of deaths from this as compared to their neighbors who shut shit down.
    - CryptoPunk 7y ago
      >>You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die Yes you absolutely can. The workers interacting with the quarantined subset of the population could use PPE to avoid transmitting it to them. Packaging on groceries, as well as the grocery bag, can easily be disinfected before being transferred to the quarantined individual.

bargl 7y ago

We tend to want to lump people into camps so we don't have to go through and see all the various sub-categories and determine if they are OK or not. Some states are restricting fishing and hunting... That's not a team sport and if I use a lure (edit: as in I don't even have to go to the store for bait) I'm not going to affect anyone else. Some protesters want to get haircuts.... GET OVER IT. I feel like both sides have some valid and various levels of invalid points. In the expedience of not needing to sort the chaff, i'd side with the stay at home crowd, but there really is some shit they closed down that seems.... a little too far.

mcculley 7y ago
It's no surprise that a culture that didn't plan ahead or invest in public health infrastructure has haphazard and poorly defined processes.
- bargl 7y ago
  Agreed. I'd like to point out that some people equate "invest in public health infrastructure" with free healthcare. The two aren't the same. To deal with a pandemic you need a pandemic response plan for the spike to the system. This can be done in even in the US under our current system. It'd just magnify the pros/cons of our any system in place. I'm for state run healthcare, but the argument about pandemic readiness isn't about that (imo).
  - mcculley 7y ago
    I agree that they are two separate concepts. But if a community ensures that homeless people are vaccinated and not a risk to those privately insured and also wants all children vaccinated, no matter who their parents are, that is a form of healthcare. Public health requires an investment in healthcare. Healthcare is never free. Some cultures invest in it. Some don't.
    - bargl 7y ago
      But as we've seen from spots in Europe, you also have to invest wisely. I think (as harsh as it is to say) we can learn from this and pick healthcare models that work well even under strain.

vinniejames 7y ago

This would be more analogous to Google removing those types of pages from search, which they already do en masse and have for years

downerending 7y ago
It seems to go a bit farther than that. IIUC, people posting about these events can have accounts suspended (not just the particular post). Beyond that, though, presumably a lot of my friends would be interested in what I have to say. FB getting in the middle of that seems pretty heavy-handed. (Personally, we're way past the point where I'd care to have a Facebook, Twitter, etc. account, partly for reasons like this, and I've deleted mine years ago.)

SerLava 7y ago

>I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. Wait, are you talking about the people who want to send everyone back to work now, even though we don't even have masks for doctors yet? Are you saying they are trying to minimize death and misery? Or are we talking about completely different people here?

downerending 7y ago
I don't know about the particular motives of each protester. But it's obvious that there are large numbers of people facing immediate financial ruin. And very shortly thereafter, risk of death for themselves and their loved ones. I'm not in that situation, but I wouldn't be caught dead silencing their voices.
- SerLava 7y ago
  The answer to financial ruin is not to force everyone back into contact again, it's to give normal people their fair share of the bailout. We took something like 15,000 dollars out of everyone's future earnings for the bailout, and threw them back 1,200 of it. With those people taken care of, the protests are reduced to landowners demanding blood for their haircuts and Fuddruckers.
  - downerending 7y ago
    I don't think the protesters are asking for people to be forced back into contact. (though admittedly, restarting will mean pressure on those who'd rather not) And I seriously doubt any of the protesters are landowners, aside, perhaps from "owning" their houses. ("owning" == mortgages, in most cases)
nopriorarrests 7y ago
>Wait, are you talking about the people who want to send everyone back to work now This is an argument made in a bad faith. You can't send "everyone to work now", if you are not running a gulag. People who are financially secure can stay at home till 2021, nobody can force them to go to work, this is obvious. It's a question of being able to make a personal decision between staying at home or going to work.

TomMckenny 7y ago

>that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery Unless the anti-quarantine events are organized by a hostile power. And this seems likely since they are insanely harmfully, arose suddenly and with widespread and great organization and have a lot of precedent. [1][2][3] And especially since it's already been explicitly shown for at least some of the domains connected to the protests.[4] [1]https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/26/media/russia-trolls-facebook-events/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/26/media/russia-trolls-faceboo... [2]https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-accounts-organized-events-on-all-sides-of-polarizing-issues-1509355801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-account... [3]https://thehill.com/policy/technology/358025-thousands-attended-protest-organized-by-russians-on-facebook https://thehill.com/policy/technology/358025-thousands-atten... [4]https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-domain-surge/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-d...

p1necone 7y ago
Given this the number of people even on hacker news who are throwing very dubious arguments around and completely ignoring the fact that these protestors are obviously either acting in bad faith or very ignorant is a bit concerning too.
- gruez 7y ago
  examples?
  - p1necone 7y ago
    The biggest one is claiming that these people are protesting because they're actually in financial trouble - all the protestors I've seen seem to be well off people complaining they want to get haircuts or go out to eat... There's also a large number of conspiracy theorists in these crowds claiming that the virus doesn't exist, or it's some kind of hoax.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago

bsder 7y ago

> It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to quarantine, lockdown, etc., both in terms of where we are now and what we should do in the near future. The problem is that the "followers" in the "Reopen All The Things(tm)" camp is ASSUMING that you get immunity once you get Covid-19. We do not have information about this. We also do not have information about how long immunity lasts if you do get some. We also do not have data as to whether a person who has an asymptomatic case of Covid-19 can later get a case which puts him into the hospital. Herd immunity has significant limitations if immunity burns out every 6 months.

downerending 7y ago
The awful truth, I suspect, is that immunity will be for a limited duration, like the common cold. However, the people who are most likely to die from the virus will mostly die in the first round. Those who live through it will be far more likely to experience it as a rather unpleasant flu. And perhaps life will go on like that. Pure speculation, of course. But, we've never succeeded at a vaccination for a corona virus, and it's far from clear that we'll have one soon for this one. It could be that this will play out no matter what we do.
- mlyle 7y ago
  I think total immunity will be a for a limited span-- perhaps long enough to prevent another outbreak for a long time, perhaps only for a moderate time. But we keep partial immunity to coronaviruses for a long time. Right now it looks like our best estimate of infection fatality rate is 0.3%, and it may very well be a lot less if the disease re-emerges in a few years because past encounters will be protective. That is, would 229E be pretty damn bad in an immunologically naive population? I think it might.

pavlov 7y ago

Facebook took down these event pages at the request of US state officials. Google also removes pages from their index at the request of law enforcement or by court order. There’s nothing wild about that.