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I drove by Target today and the lot was full. Target doesn't have any kind of social distancing policy so it was business as usual, no lines or anything. Litera

• jonahbenton 6y ago
  Ultimately this is a balance between human well being and accounting well-fare. The former is so far and away more important than the latter it should not even be a debate. Re: Human Well Being 1. The danger of this disease is completely unappreciated There are children dying now, relatively young, low risk people having strokes, many extremely rapid progressions with no explanation, and evidence of absolutely unprecedented long term/permanent damage in organs of survivors. Every single medical person seeing this disease up close is terrified of it. 2. We don't know what reasonable health precautions are Here I define "reasonable" as- not have every trip to a public space be a game of Russian Roulette. We are still finding out how the disease spreads, how it acts in the body, what the impacts are- while working through all sorts of fictional reporting from early outbreak centers. We have speculative assertions about immunity, but little concrete evidence. We are very, very far from having a solid, simple, conveyable understanding of what behaviors to engage in in what circumstances, what behaviors not to, and what to do upon possible exposure that is not essential what is being done in "lockdown." 3. We don't have reasonable health governance In the US we are seeing not only the complete breakdown of rational behavior on the part of the federal government, but also the rise of mafioso behavior in using law enforcement to disrupt normal medical supply delivery. 4. We are a long way from reliable, preventative protocol Despite all the dollars and efforts going into these efforts it takes time to build up sufficient proof and understanding. 9 women cannot work together to produce a baby in a month. This is an absolutely unprecedented-in-modern-history human disaster. It is not in any way contained. We are only maybe coming to the end of the beginning. From an accounting welfare perspective- The problem businesses and individuals are facing are very simple- Contractual dollar flows, set up during "normal" times, are largely still expected in these absolutely not normal times. There is no mechanism to suspend these contracts, no collection of them, no standardization, no understanding of the implications of suspensions other than widespread financial badness. The flows have to be maintained. Having the source of all dollars mint them to maintain these flows for an extended period is not hard from a policy perspective, not hard from an implementation perspective, not hard even from a financial system implication perspective. Maintaining lockdown with a central bank balance sheet funded UBI is the only answer. It should be so blindingly obvious.
• TehCorwiz 6y ago
  The lock-downs weren't necessary. They became necessary when the federal government obstructed any efforts at establishing widespread testing practices. With comprehensive testing we could isolate the affected quickly and accurately, preventing the spread in the first place. Other countries have had success at that. In the absence of sufficient testing though we have to assume that anyone and everyone could be infected, therefor in order to prevent a run away wildfire like scenario which would overwhelm our hospitals (there just aren't enough beds anywhere for everyone to get sick at the same time) isolation becomes the only remaining option to slow the spread and flatten the curve to prevent more people from dying. The dead cannot rebuild a business.
  • gdilla 6y ago
    The lock downs were necessary to keep loads of stupid people ruining any self-responsibility-stay-home-when-sick-don't-have-parties reasonable, less restrictive tactic in place. If you maximize inconvenience, then even these people have a harder time breaking the rules. Still, ya, people violate, but it's much less.
  • mixmastamyk 6y ago
    > the federal government obstructed any efforts at establishing widespread testing practices. What does that mean?
    • TehCorwiz 6y ago
      https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/coronavirus-testing-cdc-fda-red-tape-invs/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/coronavirus-testing-...
      • ethbro 6y ago
        That a government administration that failed to appropriately staff and retain employees finds itself unable to enact emergency policy in a timely and complete manner? I am shocked!
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
• macintux 6y ago
  The 2-week lag time after infection would seem to make the scalpel approach impossible, at least without testing. Give us the freaking tests.
• sveme 6y ago
  Or maybe the US needs a real social security system.
  • mberning 6y ago
    We do. In fact some people are getting paid more on unemployment than when they were working. Some employees have been upset that they didn’t lose their job. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/she-got-a-paycheck-protection-loan-her-employees-hate-her-for-it.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/she-got-a-paycheck-protectio...
    • jorblumesea 6y ago
      By a European definition, we definitely do not have a "good social safety net". You would be shocked at how inadequate the US system is compared to a "real" social safety net. You can even see this in the COVID crisis where European countries are paying 60-80% of salaries, whereas in the US you get a one time check of $1200. Maybe 1-2 months worth of expenses, and that's being generous. A good example of the different mindsets and standards.
      • robk 6y ago
        You'd be surprised at how poor business operating metrics here vs there
      • maxerickson 6y ago
        There's federal unemployment assistance of $600 a week in the US. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/economy/unemployment-benefits-stimulus-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/econ... The $1200 is a 'stimulus' payment going to everyone. Paying businesses to keep people on payroll may have been a better policy (as the disruption gets longer that changes).
        • jorblumesea 6y ago
          Good point, thanks for correcting me.
• MattGaiser 6y ago
  I don't know if one can blame the drop in business on the lockdown. Even if the furniture store were open, I doubt a lot of people would see that as a spending priority at this time. Even if they opened, would it really help them?
  • jhwang5 6y ago
    No. By then, they'd be accustomed to buying furniture off Amazon /s.
    • MattGaiser 6y ago
      Well, my grandmother is getting into Wayfair, so maybe not sarcasm. My point is more whether asking whether any significant number of people are buying furniture at all?
      • JoshTriplett 6y ago
        Some people are finding themselves suddenly in need of home-office furniture. But yes, furniture does seem like the kind of purchase that will get deferred when money is tighter.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        For me, it's not even the money right now. I have a few purchase/service types of things that I should take care of one of these days but aren't urgent. So I'm holding off on things that would involve trips to stores (if they're even open), home delivery, etc. I'm not totally avoiding leaving the house, but I'm also holding off on things that can't be handled by a quick run into a store at off hours.
      • nrb 6y ago
        Many people are spending lots of time at home, enough to realize they aren't totally happy with their furnishings, and are available to accept deliveries. I would imagine the answer to that is yes.
  • davidf560 6y ago
• mberning 6y ago
  If your job feeds your family and keeps a roof over their head, it is essential.
  • CydeWeys 6y ago
    You're defining the term to be meaningless then, because it encompasses almost all employment. If we didn't shut most things down there'd be a catastrophic number of deaths in this country, after which people would be socially distancing on their own out of pure raw fear. Stores that don't sell groceries were never going to pull through this doing well under any scenario. People were always going to radically curtail their going out and spending, one way or another.
    • mberning 6y ago
      We don’t know for a fact what would happen without these restrictions. At this point the data available does not point to a clear conclusion either way. Some countries and states that imposed the harshest restrictions are being hit the hardest. Some with little to no restrictions are faring well. It is dishonest to say that without restrictions a disaster will happen. Nobody knows and the observed data does not support such a statement.
      • cycomanic 6y ago
        You are either dishonest or need to learn about correlation and causation. So tell me what would have happened in New York if they had not put a lock down into place? Do you seriously believe the number of dead would be similar to what we see at the moment? The whole reason why the US has now the highest death numbers is because the federal government ignored all warning signs. Maybe if there had been a plan your president would have heeded the advice he was given measures like e.g. In South Korea would have been possible. Once you are on the steep bit of the exponential, the only solution that is left is to pull the emergency break.
        • JPKab 6y ago
          The US doesn't have the highest per capita numbers. You do understand that the US population is much higher than individual European nations, right? Your entire point is ignorant and flawed. Please explain to me how other countries with higher per capita infections screwed up, since your poor grasp of the US federalist system is binding you to proper expectations of what the US Federal government is responsible for.
• generalpass 6y ago
  It is impossible to know what is essential and what is non-essential, due simply to the fact that the economy is more complex than anyone can ever comprehend. I noted, from the beginning, that government did not put forward the standard state-apologist economist to rubber-stamp these economic policy decisions, and cleverly disguised the policies as public safety. My suspicion is that not even those guys were willing to go on record attempting to predict what the outcome of these actions will be.
  • eric_cc 6y ago
    > It is impossible to know what is essential and what is non-essential This is just not true whatsoever. E.g. Food supply & medical services are essential. A hat store is non-essential.
    • davidf560 6y ago
      A hat store is essential to the owners and employees of said store. And maybe they sell items like scarves that could be used for face coverings, etc. Perhaps we should be thinking high risk and low risk instead of essential and non-essential. A hat store with appropriate distancing measures and cleaning protocols is probably low risk.
      • cycomanic 6y ago
        Well their lives are also essential to the employees of the store. Apart from the fact that that no customers would come in.
      • cycomanic 6y ago
        Also regarding the low risk vs essential well that's exactly what is being planned at the moment. Look at the interview with Cuomo on the daily show on Thursday (?). They are looking both risk and importance for when they reopen things. That said, by saying the economy is more important than people dying, this is not an either or decision. Do you think thousands of extra dead are good for the economy? What about the health workers, by not shutting down you would essentially put them into the situation where they have to deal with a completely overwhelmed health care system, leading to more dead health workers (the primary reason for dead health workers in China and Italy was that they were so overworked and stressed they could not follow best safety practices).
• cycrutchfield 6y ago
  Does your friends’ store sell food? If not, why are you comparing them to Target?
• tempsy 6y ago
  A lot of people laid off are getting more with unemployment than they were actually working (extra $600/week due to stimulus bill). The reason why a lot of people can’t pay is not because they won’t have that money eventually but because the state unemployment benefit offices are steeped in bureaucracy and aren’t processing these claims fast enough. Some states make it much harder than others by design. This is a preventable crisis.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • nostromo 6y ago
    But how many people are losing their healthcare? ... during a pandemic? And how many of those people won't go to a hospital because they're uninsured now?
    • tempsy 6y ago
      Depends on the situation. Anyone furloughed still keeps all their benefits. Some laid off have benefits for longer.
  • acdha 6y ago
    Citation needed for that “a lot”, especially given how many news stories there are about significant delays before getting payments (see e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unemployment-benefits-6-2-million-waiting-or-nj-pa/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unemployment-benefits-6-2-milli...) and the need to pay significantly more (COBRA) or go without health insurance until qualifying for and getting on Medicaid. There are definitely some people in low wage states getting more but that is far from universal even though it’s a standard right-wing talking point.
    • tempsy 6y ago
      Extra $2400/mo plus some percent of your salary means almost everyone making $50k or less is made whole or making more. That’s a significant percentage of those service workers who were most vulnerable to being laid off. If you are furloughed you keep all your benefits and still qualify for unemployment Some companies are paying for healthcare for a period of time post layoffs
• nostromo 6y ago
  The craziest thing about this is that we're going to have mass unemployment, and tens of millions of people are going to lose their healthcare, just in time for a new wave of infections. Politicians don't always understand the secondary and tertiary effects of their policies.
  • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    Yep and those people will lose everything should they have to go to the hospital and be admitted for over a day. To collect unemployment, these people had to be "let go" from their insurance providing jobs. And I strongly doubt the people who were let go trend towards being able to afford COBRA. So even if they do survive which is more likely than not, they will be ruined financially after weeks of no or diminished pay along with 5 figure hospital bills.
    • TechBro8615 6y ago
      Hasn’t the federal government committed to paying for all covid treatment and testing costs of uninsured patients?
      • taborj 6y ago
        Yes they did [0], but the current administration is "bad" so we can't bring up any of the good things they've done. [0] https://nypost.com/2020/04/03/us-government-will-cover-uninsured-americans-covid-19-treatment/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/03/us-government-will-cover-unins...
        • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
          And also because their promises are meaningless. Trump said people would be covered, but as recent as the 9th of this month, there isn't a real plan to do so. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/20/coronavirus-treatment-uninsured-195218 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/20/coronavirus-treatme...
  • 6y ago
• newacct583 6y ago
  > Maybe we really need the scalpel approach Which is what, exactly? I mean, it sounds like you just want to open that one furniture store because it's low risk and small. OK, I'd get behind that, but that doesn't really fix anything real, does it? Do you argue for opening all retail shops? All restaurants? All places of business? What about the employees of those businesses we just opened? Do they have to go back to work? What if they have immunocompromised family at home? And, at the end of the day, when you open all those businesses, are people going to start buying furniture again? Probably not. Really, people aren't staying home because the government is magically telling them to. If this was really an unrealistic paradigm we'd see rampant cheating, and we don't. People are staying home because they're scared of dying. You don't fix that by changing the closure rules. You can only fix that by addressing the actual pandemic. So... maybe you should aim your scalpel at the disease instead? How much have you read about testing regimes? Have you called your congressperson to get this stuff funded?
  • clairity 6y ago
    > "People are staying home because they're scared of dying. You don't fix that by changing the closure rules. You can only fix that by addressing the actual pandemic." no, that fear and panic was induced by a combination of political and media fervor where overstating the problem gives them more power, attention, esteem and stature. so taking away that frenzy could also reduce the fear and panic.
    • cycomanic 6y ago
      [citation needed]
    • dboreham 6y ago
      To be honest I didn't see any of that. I saw considerable media coverage underplaying the severity of the risk.
    • fzeroracer 6y ago
      Really? Because everything I've seen from the media has massively understated how dangerous the virus is, while medical professionals and people actively dealing with this on the front lines are horrified.
• magicalist 6y ago
  > Target doesn't have any kind of social distancing policy so it was business as usual, no lines or anything. That's definitely state by state, fwiw. > but I've found myself drifting towards believing this is all complete madness, that politicians have failed to draw any distinction between reasonable health precautions in problem areas and unreasonable blanket policies Well, yes, I don't think anyone was expecting for a pandemic in the US to end up being handled by slapdash decisions by non-experts and instead have some level of preparation, guidance and coordination from our extensive scientific and public policy experts who had prepared for this situation. We might still not have masks or unemployment checks, but we'd likely have measured policy sooner and we'd actually be coordinating on things like testing.
  • EvanAnderson 6y ago
    Given that civil service, outside the military, has been demonized by the right since the Reagan years I expect that, at least at the federal level, major incidents of a non-military nature will be handled by slapdash decisions made by non-experts.
    • dr_dshiv 6y ago
      This. I moved to the Netherlands and it is incredible how general competence in governance makes such a huge difference in quality of life.
    • doyougnu 6y ago
      So much this. I just moved to Germany and the difference in civil servants and general infrastructure is palpable compared to the US
  • jconley 6y ago
    It's deeper than state by state, It's county by county, city by city, store by store. Varying policies everywhere.
  • ethbro 6y ago
    > > Target doesn't have any kind of social distancing policy so it was business as usual, no lines or anything. > That's definitely state by state, fwiw. Is it? As an employee of a T10 US retailer, I'm pretty sure we've enacted mandatory social distancing and maximum-customer-in-store policies across all our stores. Target should be doing more at the corporate level.
• throwaway41920 6y ago
  Indeed, the most economically destructive responses like the lockdowns were put into place weeks before less economically destructive responses like widespread mask use. In fact, when the lockdowns started they were even telling people there was no use for most people to use masks. Responses across the board seem to be random and haphazard. There doesn't seem to even be a clear goal to the lockdown. Originally it was to flatten the curve so as to not overwhelm medical services. We'd still have the same amount of people infected, but it would be spread out. But many (though not all) hospitals are seeing a decline of cases and even furloughing workers because of lack of activity. So now the argument has turned to we need more testing, but to what end? Tracking and quarantining infected individuals requires much more than simply testing (for instance, look at the problems New York had in tracking just a few cases at the very start of the outbreak), and it's doubtful that we'll be able to contain the outbreak at this advanced stage (it seems like millions have been infected in New York alone). We should have a clear goal for our actions (especially when they're this destructive!), but it seems like everyone in power is just winging it.
  • bgorman 6y ago
    There is a clear goal of lockdown policies in the US: to advance the political ambitions of politicians. Many politicians see this as their time in the spotlight, their time to show off their "executive" skills, their time to blame the other political party/politicians.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    The first sign of leadership issues was entering lockdowns without even vague exit criteria. It's also become clear there was (or is?) no endgame in mind.
    • tly_alex 6y ago
      The exit cretiera is pretty clear to me, which is no new infections for 14 days.
      • mirekrusin 6y ago
• dkdk8283 6y ago
  It’s time to reopen everything. Shutting down our economy wasn’t worth it.
  • tly_alex 6y ago
    I don't think stay-at-home equals shutting down. Many business are still running, ppl are buying and selling things, just not in a crowded market any more. It's time for ppl to stay at home and help the medical workers to treat sicks. Gathering at state office and rally for reopening is the most stupid thing I have ever seen in years. It made news across US last week and I find it very distrubing.
  • fzeroracer 6y ago
    I'll ask you like I've asked others: Are you personally willing to die for the sake of opening the economy? If you knew that you were at risk and catching the coronavirus would result in your death, would you do so for the sake of the economy?
    • dkdk8283 6y ago
      Yes. I have a condition that’s been associated with increased mortality from covid-19 infections. If I’m weak and can’t survive so be it. Rather me die than everyone else slowly waste away to famine.
• danaris 6y ago
  The businesses are not what's essential. The people are. When trying to come up with a policy that will help the most, start from first principles, like "people are what we care about; businesses and the economy are there to serve us, not the other way around." Because...yes, if we don't reopen everything, millions of people are going to be in serious financial trouble. But if we do reopen everything, millions of people are going to be in serious medical trouble. If we get tens to hundreds of thousands of people dying in the span of a few weeks, how do you think that will affect the economy? Even leaving aside the psychological and human toll. Provide for the people. Make sure the truly essential workers (the ones needed to keep us fed, clothed, healthy, and with the lights on) have what they need to be safe and healthy themselves, and then keep the rest of us fed, clothed, and healthy, and keep the lights on, out of the government's purse.
  • daenz 6y ago
    >The businesses are not what's essential. The people are. Yes, the people, who are sustained by their businesses. We can go back and forth on this, but it's not a mutually exclusive "only X is essential, not Y."
    • cortesoft 6y ago
      Right, but our businesses produce way more than enough to sustain our people... normally, this is great, and the excess can go into luxuries for people. We can still sustain people for a while without producing the extra that lets us have a luxurious life... we just need to make sacrifices for a bit. We need to do a better job of spreading that sacrifice around, is the issue.
      • erik_seaberg 6y ago
        The economy is too big to centrally plan what depends on what. We've stopped producing tools and supplies for essential jobs (and parts for those tools, and so on). Instead we're drawing down stockpiles that hadn't been sold yet. When those stalled pipelines fully drain it's going to get ugly.
• dehrmann 6y ago
  One of the more insightful things I read recently was that, like a virus spreads, economic damage from a lockdown also follows an exponential curve.
• TechBro8615 6y ago
  Just wait until we hit May 1 and the second round of rent payments. Personally, I still haven’t even gotten the $1200 check even though I’m eligible for it.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    A surprising amount of stimulus actually went to places that need it less. The median household in the Bay Area makes too much to qualify (NYC is in a somewhat better situation), and most of the small business loans went to more rural businesses.
• wpietri 6y ago
  The problem here is not the lockdowns. It's that Trump administration failures have meant we are not making good use of the time the lockdowns bought us. In basically the same way that a failed federal response means we wasted the time when we knew a pandemic was coming. The correct response is aggressive testing and tracing. As the data shows, this worked fine for S Korea: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest Until our number of active cases gets within our test-and-trace capacity, shelter-in-place orders are the only option (aside from mass sickness and death, of course). Models suggest we're getting there, some states sooner than others: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/25/844088634/when-is-it-safe-to-ease-social-distancing-heres-what-one-model-says-for-each-sta https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/25/8440886... You're right that another egregious failure was in financial support of workers and small business owners. Again, that was a giant federal mistake. There's no long-term need for most of these businesses to close; it's just that they don't individually have the capacity to weather this downturn. But systemically we have the capacity, and long term it will be way more effective to get existing businesses through this than to force a bunch of bankruptcies.
  • cameronbrown 6y ago
    And who makes these tests? You seem to be happy to blame the Trump administration when the reality is, there isn't enough capacity to manufacture hundreds of millions of tests this quickly. SK already had that capability.
    • wpietri 6y ago
      And why don't we have that capacity? If a federal government should be good for anything, response to predictable national disasters has to be pretty high up on the list.
      • cameronbrown 6y ago
        Because companies and consumers enjoy cheap Chinese labour.
• jarjoura 6y ago
  I have had a couple friends who are in their 30s get really sick from the virus. Knocked out for 4 weeks. I've seen reports that there is permanent damage to the lunges, but who knows. There are so many "facts" out there and all contradicting. Still, the point I'm trying to make is even if you're lucky to get mild to no symptoms, you don't know if that will be you. What if you are one of the unlucky ones who gets severely wiped out? For every restaurant with a waiter who gets dangerously sick, would that restaurant close down? Would people not eat there anyway, even if the owner kept it open? Even if there's no lockdown, there is still going to be lots of wreckage from this. All this "shelter-in-place" is doing is exposing how bad our safety net is, and how unprepared our governments are in managing widespread panic.
• joe_the_user 6y ago
  Sure, a more sensible approach would be all shops need strong social distancing measures and the state subsidizes essential shops in implementing. Moreover, the state "freezes" the status of shops that can't open under these conditions and guarantees they'll be able to open in reasonable circumstances after this is done or once things reach a more stable circumstance. But remember, the lockdowns didn't appear as a "good", a sensible approach, they simply became a last-ditch, necessary approach when the Federal entities and institutions in charge of dealing with stuff basically failed. And that's the thing, the pandemic prevention team was fired to save money - think of it. But overall, anything devoted to emergency conditions has been fair game 'cause it wasn't paying it's way. So when the desperate measures went into place, there weren't resources to do them sanely and sensibly. There wasn't time to think about it. The influence of the larger corporate entities intent on profits remained huge. The economy has been constructed as a machine without an off-switch over the last twenty years. And this isn't a matter of production processes but a matter of finance. Machines can be stopped and restarted, it may cost some resources but very technically achievable. Things are most working even now. The specific structures driving the situation are the integration of large capital structures and government. The ideal situation of a bond holder is government that have no way to suspend payments, no mechanism or will stop the machine because stopped machine will stop fixed payments. And that's the thing, we're clinging desperately to this final, ill-conceived "STOP!" because there is a strong urge in various circles to get things going no matter the cost and it's clear the cost would be high.
• OGWhales 6y ago
  Sweden is taking a different approach. Once time passes, we will look at different countries and learn from the decisions they made. These are terribly difficult decisions to make with massive consequences.
  • dr_dshiv 6y ago
    And a lot of fear-based political groupthink. It is hard to make reasonable arguments against lockdown because "Science" and "by not being careful, you are literally killing people"
  • ghaff 6y ago
    I suspect that we'll also see a lot of different policies, different implementation effectiveness, and adherence to recommendations/policies that don't map very clearly to outcomes.
• bdcravens 6y ago
  In Houston, furniture stores have been open as they were deemed essential.
• spamizbad 6y ago
  The impact is huge because in the United States we purposefully have no real social safety net for individuals and only pay lip service towards supporting small business. Sadly, you can't run as rugged individualists during good times then flip a switch and become a social democracy as soon as a crisis hits. So now we are faced with the tough choice of balancing widespread poverty medium-term and saving lives near-time. We made our bed and now we're lying in it. The other challenge is on the consumer side: Even if you can legally open as an "essential" business, you're going to need a certain degree of volume to operate. As a retail store, you're beholden to how "safe" consumers feel shopping in your store, and right now evidence suggests most people want to limit non-essential trips.
• csomar 6y ago
  Worse, I have a feeling that politicians are going to use this to grab power. They kept delaying the opening of businesses and now say that not all businesses are going to open. It's going to be: You work, you don't. This is ridiculous.
• bennysonething 6y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I've a load of mates in financial services, one a chartered accountant, they re saying things like "oh they must have been bullshit businesses the ones that went bust so quick". So many people have no idea that small business live hand to mouth. In fact I would go as far to say majority of people just don't understand that the majority of businesses are in a really precarious position permanently.
  • FpUser 6y ago
    "oh they must have been bullshit businesses the ones that went bust so quick" - sounds like an airlines without bailout.
• danans 6y ago
  > Target doesn't have any kind of social distancing policy so it was business as usual, no lines or anything. In what are is this? Target in the bay area at least has lines with social distancing indicated by line waiting markers on the ground six feet apart, and employees enforcing this.
• OrgNet 6y ago
  I wonder if they could sue the government(s) for damages?
• caseysoftware 6y ago
  "Flatten the curve" was built on the premise of keeping infection (and eventually hospitalization) rates low to not overwhelm the healthcare system. Since enacting social distancing, closures, etc we have two bits of good news: a) outside of NYC (half of the US cases), no one was overwhelmed and b) the infection -> hospitalization rate is way lower than projected. Either one of those make the case that we can loosen things a little. School shouldn't go back into session, dance clubs shouldn't open, but going shopping for "non-essentials" should be considered as long as patrons can respect social distancing policies and the stores are sanitizing things well. There are still risks no matter what but there is no "risk free" situation in reality.
• hn_check 6y ago
  "I started out believing lockdowns were necessary, but I've found myself drifting towards believing this is all complete madness" You 39 days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598242 "I manage a fund for a living" ... "We are committing suicide" ... "We need to immediately change our approach and adopt what the UK is doing. AMA" People are often incredibly insincere on here (whatever pads and provides a moral buttress for the argument at hand), but claiming that you're a converted lockdown advocate is seemingly dishonest. Another interpretation -- guy who desperately needs the market to recover think we should just let a lot of people die because he's personally impacted. Here's a cute anecdote to support the argument about this mom & pop couple.
• hkai 6y ago
  While I agree with you, the demand for harsh, business-killing lockdowns seems to be driven by the media rather than politicians - they regularly post scary articles saying that even young people will get disabled for life if they get the virus, that 10% of the population will die, and so on.
• sneak 6y ago
  "Essential business" is just code for "grocery store, or well-connected". I have heard stories directly from business owners of getting the rules changed hour-to-hour via their state level lobbyists or other backchannels to officials. When all this shakes out, it's going to be quite a wealth transfer, that's for sure. I just wish it hadn't ended up squeezing out (and continuing to squeeze) so many people who worked so tremendously hard to get where they are. The real losses here will be small businesses. It's a real tragedy.
• hn_check 6y ago
  Note that my comment that pointed out that bedhead is grossly insincere above, if out outright intentionally lying, was flagged.