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This is part of why I am not confident about any economic upside of us opening up. We've had numerous meat processing plants close down or run at reduced capac

• ForRealsies 7y ago
  A shame Tyson Food's has so many political connections.
• Loughla 7y ago
  The 'Back to work movement' just seems like a way to push people off of unemployment.
  • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    It seems really hard to imagine how that could be so. Why would random commentators or protesters care so passionately about unemployment budgets?
    • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      Here on HN somebody posted an analysis of the websites pushing these narratives. I recall it was two guys selling T-Shirts. They discovered the power of the meme, and align it with their business interests.
    • txcwpalpha 7y ago
      Random commentators and protestors don’t. Certain politicians do, and those politicians have done an outstanding job of convincing those random commentators and protestors that this situation is political one, bringing all of the fervor and zealotry that politics brings. This situation went from being “we are staying inside to defeat the virus” to now “we refuse to stay inside (reopen) because that lets those evil democrats (Republicans) win, and I won’t ever allow that”.
      • BEEdwards 7y ago
        I love how you politically both sides this, when the science is clearly on the stay at home side. Those damn democrats playing politics and listening to the doctors on health issues...
        • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
          I'm not sure what you're referring to as "the science". People who disagree with stay at home orders largely acknowledge that staying at home makes it harder for infectious diseases to spread. If you're saying doctors and scientists have cooked up a master plan that will eliminate the coronavirus if we just stay home a bit longer and catastrophically fail if restrictions are loosened at all, I don't think that's true.
        • clairity 7y ago
          the democrats and democratic media (npr, nytimes, etc., which tend to be my news sources) are absolutely playing up the fear and panic for their political ends (elections, legislation, fundraising, and everything else). if you don't see the politics of it, you're just not using your critical thinking skills. the science is not on the stay-at-home side. the science is on the don't-spit-in-other-people's-mouths side. how you effect that has been absolutely politicized.
        • txcwpalpha 7y ago
          I fully agree with you, but I intentionally made it two-sided because AFAIK HN guidelines don't like it when a comment thread becomes clearly politically one-sided.
      • BFatts 7y ago
        To be clear, no one is asking to stay inside - everyone wants the economy reopened again. But, there's the sensible way and there's the stupid way. The latter method involves just going to back to the way things were and pretend the virus doesn't exist. That is untenable, and the smarter folk who think that a phased opening is a better approach are the ones being shouted down.
    • claudeganon 7y ago
      They don’t. They’re stirred up by rich people through astroturf groups: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-protests-astroturf.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-prote...
      • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        Your thesis here is that the movement is made up and nobody actually agrees with it? I guess I don't know how to rigorously disprove that, but it strikes me as unlikely as well. The easiest way to stir people up is to tell them things they already believe! It seems naive to look at even a moderate sized protest and say "oh, nobody actually believes in this cause, it's astroturfed".
        • claudeganon 7y ago
          I believe that their is real discontent in the face of a deadly pandemic and massive unemployment, but also that rich people are harnessing that discontent to their own, cynical ends. These protests would not exist if we had UBI like Spain or a sane, well-managed response like Taiwan. I dunno how much history you’ve read, but the rich cynically exploiting the masses to direct their anger away from themselves and towards their enemies or other scapegoats is hardly a novel development.
          • jerf 7y ago
            UBI can't solve this problem. UBI does absolutely nothing if there's nothing to buy because nobody is working. You can't UBI your way around meat plants closing, restaurants not being staffed, stores closing, and so on. If anything, UBI encouraging more people to not work can only make it worse. The whole premise of UBI is that there's such a surplus that the only sane thing to do with it is to distribute it. There is now no surplus, and indeed credible threats of shortages. Therefore, it is only logical that the rest of the argument is now invalid. Hopefully, only temporarily.
            • claudeganon 7y ago
    • DuskStar 7y ago
      Because they pay for those unemployment budgets, perhaps? You may not agree with that perspective, but it is held by quite a few people.
  • spamizbad 7y ago
    Yep, and they are kinda doing it with a gun to people’s heads because unemployment will dry up soon.
  • claudeganon 7y ago
    That’s completely what it is, but also necessary to the process of normalizing masses of unnecessary deaths every day. It’s stunning that these propaganda narratives work in the face of countries like South Korea and Taiwan, where the response has been safely and thoroughly managed. But American exceptionalism is truly a force to behold.
  • choward 7y ago
    Nobody actually wants to go back to work. All they want is the financial security they feel from having a job. If any of these people hit the lottery for example would they be begging to go back to work?
    • ianleeclark 7y ago
      So we can do a blood sacrifice at the altar of The Cheesecake Factory because people don't want to work a shitty job?
    • mc32 7y ago
      It’s not a yes or no thing. Some people don’t like being cooped up and would rather be able to socialize in person at work, etc. Some people are fearful and would rather stay at home. There are many in between.
      • choward 7y ago
        That's true but you're only cooped up because of stay at home orders. Were people who worked full time from home complaining about being cooped up? Maybe a little but not enough to want to go into an office 40 hours a week. Sure it's nice to get out and escape from your family a little bit and socialize with different people but why does this have to equate to going to work?
        • em-bee 7y ago
          the difficulty here is of having to develop a new way to deal with this situation. it's the same problem some people face at retirement. they just have a hard time adjusting to the new situation. those of us who work from home don't have that problem. neither those that are already practicing a range of activities that don't require going outside. like reading, practicing a music instrument, painting, knitting, contributing to FOSS, etc. we just spend more time on those. everyone else needs to pick up a new hobby. if your daily routine consists of going to work, and hang out with friends in your free time, then you'll have to completely relearn how to get through the day, pick up new hobbies and find other new meaningful activities.
  • JAlexoid 7y ago
    Unfortunately money isn't limitless.
    • syshum 7y ago
      Unfortunately there are many people that believe it is... That the government can just indefinitely issue people money with no negative consequences, or worse they believe that simply "taxing the wealthy" is a path to that infinite money
      • daxorid 7y ago
        These people aren't wrong, though. Powell has printed $6T, and the DXY has gone nowhere but up, along with the SPY and the QQQ and the DJIA. Every single Thursday, we report more job losses than expected, and the market screams higher. As much as we'd like to think there will be consequences to printing money, the evidence is in that there won't be, either in currency value or market confidence. MMT has proven itself correct.
        • mindslight 7y ago
          You don't seem to be taking into account that stocks shooting up is itself the inflation. The stock market is completely disconnected from the economic forecast, because money remains easy for wall street despite everything happening on main street.
        • A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
          Has it? The argument could be made that US financial health is worse now than in 2008 and not better. Wall Street gorging on free money is not really a good argument right now if the country is literally on the verge of falling apart.
        • syshum 7y ago
          Short term you are right, as most of the printing has not actually found its way back into the economy in any real way Long term however you are very very wrong Further the Stock market is not a good indicator of economic health, never has been. Stock market is largely irrational
  • roenxi 7y ago
    There are two basic frames: (1) Most jobs were make-work. Parking everyone up doesn't really matter. (2) Most jobs add a little bit to society. Shutting everything down substantially reduces the buffer between people and a 1,500AD standard of living. Which frame a person accepts as more reasonable probably determines how they feel about the shutdowns.
    • throwaway894345 7y ago
      This comment seems like it could be insightful, but I'm a native English speaker and I can't make heads or tails of "Most jobs were make-work. Parking everyone up doesn't really matter.".
      • roenxi 7y ago
        = Most jobs are not useful, so if they stop nothing important is lost.
      • aetch 7y ago
        Basically he means that many jobs are created just to give people something to do and the jobs do not actually do any real contributions that couldn’t be rolled into another job.
  • ashtonkem 7y ago
    Ohio’s setting up a snitch website for employers to report on employees too scared to return to work, so that benefits can be stripped. If I were reading this kind of stuff in a history book and the next paragraph said “and the revolution started in...” I wouldn’t be surprised. Punishing people for being afraid of a pandemic is not a smart move.
    • Loughla 7y ago
      I honestly, genuinely believe that people are a) too divided, and b) too content to complain online v organize actual change for any sort of revolution to happen. I genuinely believe it will take a failure of an absolute overwhelming magnitude (internet goes completely down and society collapses) for an actual, classic-style revolution.
      • ashtonkem 7y ago
        Predicting if, or when, a revolution will arrive is a tricky thing. There are plenty of cases where revolutionary participants themselves dismissed the chances of a revolution hours or days before they kick off. They only look inevitable in hindsight. Regardless; even long short of kicking off a revolution, punishing the populace for being scared is bad politics.
        • qqn 7y ago
          Yes, from Dan Carlin's podcasts I learned of the book The Great Illusion (1909), the illusion being that nations gained through war. In it, the author wrote that "the economic cost of war was so great that no one could possibly hope to gain by starting a war the consequences of which would be so disastrous," concluding that a general European war was very unlikely to start, and if it did, it would not last long. This was a popular view, yet WWI still kicked off just a few years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
          • ashtonkem 7y ago
            “This time is different” is quite the siren song in several areas of human endeavors.
  • phkahler 7y ago
    People could live at home on a lot less money if not for debt and rent. But there isnt a pause button on the financial system. In fact, a lot of people may just go deeper in debt due to this.
    • tehjoker 7y ago
      There is a pause button, but we have to demand it. If the state stands down on enforcing those debts, they can't be collected. Simple.
      • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        That is a very dangerous door to open. First, at the other end of those debts are things like peoples' pension plans. People aren't going to like their pension plan's income being put on pause. Second, making (aspects of) contracts unenforceable can be very destructive if it goes too far. A huge amount of society relies on contracts in order to be able to operate; if you destroy that, you can damage society in fairly fundamental ways.
        • phkahler 7y ago
          I think a key to a strong and secure economy is to reduce and discourage debt of all kinds. Instead lowering interest rates is used to encourage spending. Debt has its place, but it always comes due.
  • TearsInTheRain 7y ago
    Or maybe people that are unemployed want to get their jobs back?
  • zrail 7y ago
    This is my understanding as well. The Federal government isn't actually funding the $600/week/worker extra to the states yet and so states are running out of cash. Obviously the only solution is to drop the states of emergency and order people back to work. It's the only possible way out of this quagmire. /s
  • kgin 7y ago
    100% agree. Shows the power of wrapping anything in “freedom words” can get people to support it, even if it means putting themselves in harm’s way.
• leetcrew 7y ago
  > And I think about how in the restaurant business how a rumor of someone catching food poisoning can kill your business... what's going to happen when a review lands on your Yelp/Google page that a customer took grandma to eat at your restaurant and 2 weeks later she died from COVID-19? Your reputation will be absolutely trashed. tbh, I don't think this would be as devastating as you say. "went to restaurant, died two weeks later" is not as clear a connection as "ordered shellfish, puked guts out next day". the thing that's so bad about food poisoning is that, not only does it suck, but it strongly implies a dirty kitchen. in my experience, people are disturbed more by the abstract thought of an "unclean" kitchen than concrete fears of getting sick.
  • mc32 7y ago
    Commercial kitchen cleanliness is out of customer control. Practicing personal safety and sanitization measures is more under our own control.
  • pacala 7y ago
    That's a very poor review. Given how long the incubation period is, plus the presence of asymptomatic carriers, it is impossible for the average person to accurately attribute the infection to a specific business.
• overthemoon 7y ago
  Congress is currently considering liability shields for precisely this. https://www.wsj.com/articles/liability-shield-is-next-coronavirus-aid-battle-11588589100 https://www.wsj.com/articles/liability-shield-is-next-corona...
  • bilbo0s 7y ago
    Liability shields would help. Not sure they would solve the public reputation problem? (I've seen the public reputation problem take down restaurants even when the restaurant did not poison the claimant.) But they would give restaurant owners confidence that there would be, at least, no legal liability. On the balance of probabilities, I'd bet that many people will just eschew dine-in experiences. At least for a year or two. Can you survive the year or two with decreased dine-in traffic? That's the question owners should be trying to answer. If your footprint is small enough, I'd suspect the answer is yes. If you've got a larger footprint than is prudent in the new reality, you'll likely need to make some changes.
    • overthemoon 7y ago
      Don't get me wrong, it seems batty to me and you make a good point re reputation vs legal consequences. What's even more mind boggling is that Georgia, for example, is allowing restaurants to open but at half capacity. Given the razor thin margins at restaurants, I don't see how this could be seen as splitting the difference. It really seems like the worst of both worlds for the restaurant, its employees, and the customers.
      • glaugh 7y ago
        Interesting. More splitting the baby than splitting the difference
    • Nasrudith 7y ago
      To be frank I think liability shields will screw over the people they are trying to help. If there is liability the customers have reason to believe you'll at least try heavily to reduce the spread. With them it is "Nope, not my responsibility." That means anyone with sense (a sadly non-universal commodity) will nope out as it screams "No reason to trust me."
• crispyambulance 7y ago
  > Just seems like everyone is getting set up to fail. It does. We are seeing a dithering half-assed response to the pandemic in the USA. If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is manageable. The way things are going now, it's like we're letting up just enough to keep the damn thing circulating, killing more people needlessly and probably necessitating more lockdowns and prolonging economic consequences in the future. This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership.
  • peterwoerner 7y ago
    If we're going to do a lockdown, we might as well as do a full lock down. Like give everyone a two week warning and then nobody leaves their house for two weeks. Two weeks, no Lowes, no McDonalds, no grocery stores, no amazon delivery drivers, no postal service, no pharmacy. Only emergency room/icu, fire fighters, emts, cops, and powerplant operators. Instead we put everyone on house arrest for an indefinite period of time.
    • zzleeper 7y ago
      That's what I hoped would happen when we started the quarantine. My food/etc supplies were based on expecting a 2w lockdown, so I kept a month of refrigerated food, or two months if we include all the rice/beans/etc, just in case we reach a breakdown scenario. Instead, here we are. Almost at the two-month mark. And infection rates where I live (NOVA) are even higher than a month ago. FML.
    • brlewis 7y ago
      I'm concerned that would magnify shortages due to hoarding, among other problems.
      • Press2forEN 7y ago
        I agree, plus a total lockdown such as what GP described would require military enforcement. Urban society would be reduced to Humvees rolling down the streets past empty Costcos and Walmarts with frightened citizens starting out their windows. Instead of protests we would have looting. It seems lockdowns cannot be implemented successfully no matter what you do. Perhaps a simple public mask requirement would have been better.
• s1artibartfast 7y ago
  That depends on context. There are cities and counties without a single Covid case to date. If I lived in one, I would feel more comfortable going back to Work. Also, those with low Rick businesses or mortgages are probably eager to go back
• sjg007 7y ago
  Trump and Republicans are pushing to open up as an excuse not to pay people to stay home. They are pushing this back on the American people and it is not right. If we get a UBI or 80% wage guarantee (like the UK did) then we could wait this out. Instead the Federal government is refusing to do its job and putting the blame on the states and individuals. We are being played.
  • twomoretime 7y ago
    Sure, clearly we should just be printing even more money...why stop at 80% wage? Why not 100%? What works in England doesn't necessarily work in the US, and presuming that Republicans are just being greedy is naive and counterproductive.
    • sjg007 7y ago
      It would work as would UBI. We can print money everyone else is. It'll cost even more otherwise.
    • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      Sure it has to work out fiscally. But America is spending hugely on public assistance now (housing included). One scenario is to cease those programs and turn to the UBI. It adds up very similarly. At some point, digging into the details, you find the single largest obstacle to a UBI is entrenched ideas and naysayers. Call them Republican or whatever you like, but they're the ones being naive and counterproductive.
• Consultant32452 7y ago
  Got some major red pilling for you on corona virus. As you are probably aware, there's several corona type viruses that infect humans, one is covid-19. You know what else is a corona virus? About 20% of the common cold. After centuries of fighting the common cold, what are the odds we'll figure out a vaccine for this novel corona virus within the next year? Probably close to zero. Maybe with all of this extra attention, something might get done, but it would honestly be a miracle. So any plans about reopening that involve a vaccine are out the door. Next, let's talk about any plans that involve "testing" as part of the plan to reopen. How much testing would you need? And what kind of testing would you need? Remember, you're not in a hospital, you're just a person who is trying to go back to work or into a grocery store. First, there's a kind of test that takes 3 days to turn around. That's useless, because in that 3 days you've gone around and infected tons of other people. Second there's the tests that take 5 minutes to turn around. Okay, that's great. So you take that test, and you're negative. Perfect. You're allowed to buy groceries today. What about tomorrow? Or the next day? How many tests would we need to make this really work? And how many of that type of test are reasonably available within the next 6 months? It's not going to happen. So any plans about "testing our way out of this" are out the door. What does this mean? Basically there's some limit of economic destruction that is going to be worse than the virus. Nobody can predict exactly what that is. Is it closing everything for 6 weeks? 3 months? No one knows. The hard truth is we're just going to have to eat it, and by eat it I mean take a lot of deaths. Hopefully in a way that doesn't overload our hospitals. What will really get your goat is realizing that public leadership has known that testing and vaccine wasn't going to work since very early on. And we've just been keeping hope alive based on lies and magic thoughts.
  • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    20% of the cold is not one corona virus; it's several. A vaccine for the cold would have to handle most of them, along with the other 80% that are noroviruses. Vaccinating against one strain of the cold doesn't do you much good when there are maybe 100 of them. Covid-19, on the other hand, is a much simpler target, just because it's one target. (Yeah, they're talking about different strains emerging. I don't know if they have drifted too far to be covered by one vaccine, though. Even if they have, three to five strains is still much simpler than the cold.) So there is more hope for a vaccine than you are saying. (That doesn't mean that I think we're going to see one next week. Maybe not even this year.) As for testing: We either need to test everyone, then quarantine everyone who's sick and trace their contacts, or else we need to test everybody, frequently. I don't see either of those happening very soon.
• hkai 6y ago
  What's your take on the estimated death toll from the lockdowns? I've seen projections of 1.4m additional deaths from tuberculosis over the next 5 years, half a million cancer deaths, and pretty much uncountable additional deaths from other reasons (suicide, substance, hunger, lack of exercise among elderly). The list goes too long - for example, people stopped coming to ER for strokes and heart attacks (a 40% decrease of ER visits) and die at home. There are 200m additional people now on the edge of starvation. I also note a correlation between a country's wealth and level of healthcare. If a country has less money, it typically has less healthcare and more deaths from ridiculous, easily preventable causes. Having a good economy appears to save lives and improve life outcomes across the board.