16 ms·

> 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 loc

> 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
  I'm concerned that would magnify shortages due to hoarding, among other problems.
  - Press2forEN 6y 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.
    - zzleeper 6y ago
      Other places in Europe, South America, etc seem to have implemented much tighter lockdowns without having to resort to a Humvee scenario though. Just fining people outside is a good incentive.
      - dorchadas 6y ago
        I think it's partially cultural as well, though. Americans are all about their individual freedom and "rights", even when it puts others at risk. It's a joke, and really, at times, this country seems like one big death cult.
    - aledalgrande 6y ago
      Lockdown was pretty successful in Italy and yes, there was military on the street and police checking if you were allowed to be around (grocery shopping, essential worker etc.), tracing you back and arresting you if you were lying. It wasn't a looting race.
- jaggednad 6y ago
  Yep, as it stands we are just pulling off the band aid in the slowest and most painful possible way. The handling of the crisis by the Trump administration has been so far beyond stupid that there isn’t even a word for it
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  The UPS guy making deliveries is fine. Having family over for dinner isn't. The situation would look different now, had there been proper leadership in January. When the President says "It's a flu. HOAX!" his fans believe him, and that's why in France, Germany, Italy and Spain new cases are declining but in the US they are still going up. In my deep red corner of the woods there's different cars in front of each house seemingly every other day and music, too. That's what you do in the face of the plague, you party!
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    If it goes long enough, perhaps some Darwin effect will kick in...
  - SkyBelow 6y ago
    This would imply there is a political leaning to those treating it seriously and those who don't. From my personal experience, the people I know who are fans of him and the people I know who want nothing to do with him are both not treating this seriously. They are okay with visiting a friend, going shopping just to get out the house, not trying to reduce their shopping trips to once a week or less but instead going out daily. People going out daily to get food from restaurants. Where I worked a transitioned to WFH for about 98% of the employees, but so many were still stopping by the office that the employees who couldn't work from home and felt they were at increased risk eventually contacted upper management and now every visit to the office is recorded and a manager has to provide a justification for why that employee had to be on site. I think we have to look at little deeper into the America psyche to see what is driving this. (As for where I live, the 2016 vote was almost a 50/50 split in the surrounding area.)
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  A full lockdown would have to include hospitals, firefighters, EMTs, cops, powerplant operators, food distribution, etc. And unless you quarantined every person individually (and did a perfect job, at that), two weeks is not sufficient. Several months at least. And even then, the odds of successful containment are pretty low.
  - cfmcdonald 6y ago
    It seems that several countries have been very successful in containing the virus, starting with China. The U.S. has been very lax in its response to this virus, and now many people seem to be excusing that with the assumption that, well, it was impossible to contain in the first place.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      It is unfair to compare a western democracy with a totalitarian government. China has options that we have collectively decided we don't want to have.
      - cfmcdonald 6y ago
        Okay, let's compare it to Australia then. Or South Korea, or Taiwan. p.s. I don't think Americans collectively decided anything about what options we would use to combat the virus. The federal executive branch effectively decided to do nothing, or nothing coherent and consistent, and states have individually scrambled to come up with their own responses, with varying levels of effectiveness.
        james_s_tayler 6y ago
        New Zealand also doing well with our lockdown!
  - peterwoerner 6y ago
    What's that kung fu line, walk on the right side of the road you are okay, walk on the left side of the road you are okay, walk in the middle you get smashed. We can decide to take the loss and let most people get infected, or we can be super aggressive about lockdown and contain it. Instead, we seem to have a compromise which is seems to take the loss, but slower with a porous lockdown which will have to last indefinitely. Now the other worlds are imagined in my head, so this may not be the case, but it is hard to look at e.g. New Zealand and not be frustrated by America's response.
mikem170 6y ago
>If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is manageable. I thought the purpose of the lockdown was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed? Maybe that is what you meant by manageable? My two cents: Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? We have been locked down and covid still circulates through the population, and appears that it will do so until we reach herd immunity and/or have a vaccine, with the likely/hopeful outcome, based on how these types of coronaviruses often behave, being a decrease in the danger posed by this specific virus over time. Playing devils advocate: How much of a difference do mandated lockdowns even make? Sweden doesn't have a lockdown and they are doing better than a number of other western countries, worse than some others, but pretty much well within the same bell curve given the fuzzy data we have at the moment. When does it become selfish to tell tens of millions of people they can't provide for themselves because you are scared of the coronavirus. They might not be. The risk profile can be very different for different people. As long as the hospitals are not overwhelmed why not self-isolate, and let other people do what they want? That was the justification when we started these lockdowns, to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed, right?
- sethammons 6y ago
  You are getting down voted, and I'm not sure why. I've grown the opinion that you cannot have any discussion around any measured approach related to COVID. It seems some people view COVID as guaranteed death and any questioning of lock downs ending means that you are or are about to be a mass murderer.
  - cfmcdonald 6y ago
    One reason could be that GP seems to assume that spread to herd immunity is inevitable, ignoring the countries that have had great success in containing the virus.
    - mikem170 6y ago
      What countries are you thinking of? New Zealand has been able to pretty much eradicate the virus through lockdowns and contact tracing, but they only had 1000 cases. There is no precedent for doing that in a country with millions of cases, like the U.S. It may be too late for that. So is the purpose of continued lockdowns in the U.S. to eradicate the virus? That is what I am skeptical about, I don't see the evidence that such a thing is possible.
throwaway_USD 6y ago
>This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. From the second the federal government put the "opening up" in the hands of each State it seemed like a massive effort from the top down to distance themselves from any bad outcomes and take credit for any good outcomes. Maybe it is better to have the Governors in charge, but once traveling/airports begin picking up again...State boarders and policies become pretty meaningless.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > From the second the federal government put the "opening up" in the hands of each State The federal government never put it there, it was always there because the closing down was always in the hands of each state, because that's where the lockdown orders originated. And that's arguably not the problem, anyway, as those policies are going to need to vary by state (and by smaller areas within states in many cases), anyway, the problem is more the federal withdrawal of support for testing, the failure of support for response needs (and the active redistribution of resources, including direct theft from states who acquired their own) driven by political affinity between the federal executive and state executive rather than public health needs, and the subtle and overt federal pressure (and direct federal mandates, in the case of meat packing) for premature, irresponsible reopening by the states (subtle including things like not providing robust financial supports so as to create bottom-up pressure for reopening.)
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Trump could order a nation wide shutdown if he wanted to.
    - nradov 6y ago
      Such an order wouldn't be legally binding outside of federally controlled facilities (and perhaps air and sea ports). For better or worse, US states remain sovereign entities.
      - rbanffy 6y ago
ardy42 6y ago
> 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. Exactly. At the start of this it was made clear that lock-downs would be pointlessly destructive if they were eased back too quickly: we'd get all the economic pain for little gain against the virus. But it seems like that's roughly the course our leadership is taking...
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  The lockdowns were pointless to begin with, where governors shut down all business but let 24/7 subways keep running. In addition, lockdown was only going to flatten the curve, not get rid of the virus. Point being to not overwhelm the medical system and increase IFR. The medical system in the US was never overwhelmed, not even close (40k ventilators demanded by NY, needed 1/5 of it). So, we spent $5T for the same effect of never needing to lockdown (look at countries that didn’t lock down), knowing we’d need to open up anyways because this is unsustainable.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Also, without enforcement, they were more like "stay at home suggestions" rather than stay at home orders. Tons of people around me are out and about, horsing around, and there's no change in traffic down my street. Everyone is treating it as a joke, and there's no enforcement, so it's pointless.
    - eanzenberg 6y ago
      Pointless, besides being $7T in the hole.
      - ryandrake 6y ago
        Given two choices: A: Don't do Stay At Home = Lots of people die + medium economic loss B: Strictly enforce Stay At Home = Fewer people die + large economic loss ...somehow America managed to choose: C: Half-ass Stay At Home = Lots of people die + large economic loss
klenwell 6y ago
> This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. Paul O'Neill died recently (not COVID-19 related). I don't have many business heroes. O'Neill was one of the them. (Andrew Grove is the other.) Here's how O'Neill turned ALCOA around when he took it over in the 80s: A few minutes before noon, O'Neill took the stage. He was fifty-one years old, trim, and dressed in gray pinstripes and a red power tie. His hair was white and his posture military straight. He bounced up the steps and smiled warmly. He looked dignified, solid, confident. Like a chief executive. Then he opened his mouth. "I want to talk to you about worker safety," he said. "Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of work. Our safety record is better than the general American workforce, especially considering that our employees work with metals that are 1500 degrees and machines that can rip a man's arm off. But it's not good enough. I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries." The audience was confused. These meetings usually followed a predictable script: A new CEO would start with an introduction, make a faux self-deprecating joke--something about how he slept his way through Harvard Business School--then promise to boost profits and lower costs. Next would come an excoriation of taxes, business regulations, and sometimes, with a fervor that suggested firsthand experience in divorce court, lawyers. Finally, the speech would end with a blizzard of buzzwords--"synergy," "rightsizing," and "co-opetition"--at which point everyone could return to their offices, reassured that capitalism was safe for another day. O'Neill hadn't said anything about profits. He didn't mention taxes. There was no talk of "using alignment to achieve a win-win synergistic market advantage." For all anyone in the audience knew, given his talk of worker safety, O'Neill might be pro-regulation. Or, worse, a Democrat. It was a terrifying prospect. ... Within a year of O'Neill's speech, Alcoa's profits would hit a record high. Here's an extended excerpt from Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit: http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits Imagine a president who came out in February, even early March, with a message like that. Imagine our response had been organized around that message: "I intend to keep all Americans safe, rich and poor, old and young. I intend to go for zero deaths."
- votepaunchy 6y ago
  > Imagine a president who came out in February, even early March, with a message like that ... Considering the virus was spreading in the US in late January any action at that time would have been much too late.
Frost1x 6y ago
I think part of the strategy here is to minimize the perception of risk associated with the disease and fact that it's preventable/manageable but at a cost to the current economic structure we have. If labor in the US begins to normalize or minimize the perception of risk of death associated with COVID as just another threat "out of their control" (now proven not to be the case), they'll continue working and producing as before--e.g. like risks associated with car fatalities, seasonal flu, heart disease/obesity/diabetes deaths largely influenced by sedentary lifestyles, etc. Bob and Alice go to work, Bob contracts COVID, has serious illness, and dies two weeks later. Alice and friends are fine and give a moment of silence, "well, that's just the way things are, what could we do?", then continue on, just like we do every day. It's not until you're directly effected do you seem to care about other's lives, pretty terrible way to live IMHO. A potential sideflip is that the gamble doesn't work and people start dying, perception doesn't shift, and a social, political, and cultural revolution take place resulting in demands for significant changes for labor rights in the US. I don't see that happening though. I think the divide we're seeing about this lockdown is that people are really growing tired of their precarious situations (housing, food, essentially things tied to finances and necessary debts to survive) created by business trends and are starting to internalize just how little employers really care about them, regardless of the nearly insulting propaganda/advertisements about appreciation for front line workers. They're being exploited, putting their lives at risk, and a few folks are profiting drastically off of it while propping these people up as heroes in marketing campaigns when many pretty much have to continue if they don't want to go into financial ruin (effecting critical life needs like housing, food, health insurance,, some ability to do things they want to do...happiness). The worst part is that it's not just businesses. This culture of transactional relationships and financial focus we've allowed to permeate everything from friendships, family, community, etc. has brought out the absolute worst in people. Some of those mostly unaffected, working remote, continuing with gainful employment are showing they too want their transactional culture to continue. "I don't care about your life, I want my haircut." Some on the other hand don't have money and realize its necessary to survive so they blame the government lockdown for their precarious financial situation when its really the highly leveraged labor market the US created that's at fault. It's pretty disgusting all around.
0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
> This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. Also a profound lack of reading the future.
ping_pong 6y ago
It's easy to say we should just stay in lockdown until things are manageable when you have a job that allows you to work from home. I have several friends who are directly impacted by this. Two of them work at small businesses that will shut down in a couple of months. I have one that has no income because he lost his waiter job and supply teaching job at the same time. I have some friends that are suffering from mental health issues. One person I know is living 5 people in a one bedroom apartment. This is a very hard, almost impossible situation, so don't be so judgemental against people that want to end the lockdown. I fully understand why they want to, because realistically there's no end in sight and even 2 months is a very long time for people to do nothing and starve in their apartments for both food/money and interaction.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  ^ This Without exception, everyone I've seen or heard of advocating for continuing the lockdowns/shelter in place have remote-friendly jobs with direct deposit. I'd wager most have months of cash reserves. While their 401k's have suffered, they're still paying their mortgage, feeding their families, and - at the worst levels - are exceptionally bored. On the other side, I see people (friends and family) choosing to wait to pay their rent in favor of groceries. * I'm in Austin, so almost 2 months in counting the SXSW cancelation on May 6th.. which was a good idea in that it probably prevented us from being a NYC or New Orleans in the short term.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    I advocate for the continued lockdown, but then I also advocate for universal basic income and universal healthcare, which are usually dismissed as "socialism". The way it is in the US, with healthcare tied to a job (or paid at insurance market rates) and pretty much no social safety nets is a disaster waiting to happen. It turns out the disaster doesn't need to wait anymore.
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
      Comrade don't admit so many things in one place or no one will join the party.
disabled 6y ago
> 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 That was the objective by our president, from the get-go. Remember who is in office: a malignant narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. When an authoritarian ruler (even a soft one) says something, even if it sounds like an exaggeration, like "lock her up" or "I Could Stand In the Middle Of Fifth Avenue And Shoot Somebody And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters", you should absolutely believe them at face value. They are not people to be messed with. Also, in the US, a death from something adverse is nothing more than a statistic. The 60,000+ deaths (likely to be double based on the deaths reported compared to previous years) are nothing more than a statistic. Remember that. It is sick but true. You should take a look at the countries that are part of the European Union, that are east of the Iron Curtain. They have dealt with crises before, and relatively recently, and they seem to have done pretty well in the circumstances. The IMHE group at the University of Washington, which is a world-renowned team, posts projections on COVID-19 statistics both in the US and from EU countries [1]. [1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
chronofar 6y ago
> If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is manageable. Oh? And what exactly is "manageable" in your (apparently well qualified) eyes?
stjohnswarts 6y ago
It's impossible for most people in America to lockdown for more than 2 or 3 months and not make income. People are living a pipe-dream if they think America will just stay inside for a couple of years while a vaccine is developed, if there is ever one developed. Even other countries with extensive social networks have to eventually fail because they don't have unlimited resources in an economy that produces nothing.

peterwoerner 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
I'm concerned that would magnify shortages due to hoarding, among other problems.
- Press2forEN 6y 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.
  - zzleeper 6y ago
    Other places in Europe, South America, etc seem to have implemented much tighter lockdowns without having to resort to a Humvee scenario though. Just fining people outside is a good incentive.
    - dorchadas 6y ago
      I think it's partially cultural as well, though. Americans are all about their individual freedom and "rights", even when it puts others at risk. It's a joke, and really, at times, this country seems like one big death cult.
  - aledalgrande 6y ago
    Lockdown was pretty successful in Italy and yes, there was military on the street and police checking if you were allowed to be around (grocery shopping, essential worker etc.), tracing you back and arresting you if you were lying. It wasn't a looting race.
jaggednad 6y ago
Yep, as it stands we are just pulling off the band aid in the slowest and most painful possible way. The handling of the crisis by the Trump administration has been so far beyond stupid that there isn’t even a word for it
HarryHirsch 6y ago
The UPS guy making deliveries is fine. Having family over for dinner isn't. The situation would look different now, had there been proper leadership in January. When the President says "It's a flu. HOAX!" his fans believe him, and that's why in France, Germany, Italy and Spain new cases are declining but in the US they are still going up. In my deep red corner of the woods there's different cars in front of each house seemingly every other day and music, too. That's what you do in the face of the plague, you party!
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  If it goes long enough, perhaps some Darwin effect will kick in...
- SkyBelow 6y ago
  This would imply there is a political leaning to those treating it seriously and those who don't. From my personal experience, the people I know who are fans of him and the people I know who want nothing to do with him are both not treating this seriously. They are okay with visiting a friend, going shopping just to get out the house, not trying to reduce their shopping trips to once a week or less but instead going out daily. People going out daily to get food from restaurants. Where I worked a transitioned to WFH for about 98% of the employees, but so many were still stopping by the office that the employees who couldn't work from home and felt they were at increased risk eventually contacted upper management and now every visit to the office is recorded and a manager has to provide a justification for why that employee had to be on site. I think we have to look at little deeper into the America psyche to see what is driving this. (As for where I live, the 2016 vote was almost a 50/50 split in the surrounding area.)
rootusrootus 6y ago
A full lockdown would have to include hospitals, firefighters, EMTs, cops, powerplant operators, food distribution, etc. And unless you quarantined every person individually (and did a perfect job, at that), two weeks is not sufficient. Several months at least. And even then, the odds of successful containment are pretty low.
- cfmcdonald 6y ago
  It seems that several countries have been very successful in containing the virus, starting with China. The U.S. has been very lax in its response to this virus, and now many people seem to be excusing that with the assumption that, well, it was impossible to contain in the first place.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    It is unfair to compare a western democracy with a totalitarian government. China has options that we have collectively decided we don't want to have.
    - cfmcdonald 6y ago
      Okay, let's compare it to Australia then. Or South Korea, or Taiwan. p.s. I don't think Americans collectively decided anything about what options we would use to combat the virus. The federal executive branch effectively decided to do nothing, or nothing coherent and consistent, and states have individually scrambled to come up with their own responses, with varying levels of effectiveness.
      - james_s_tayler 6y ago
        New Zealand also doing well with our lockdown!
- peterwoerner 6y ago
  What's that kung fu line, walk on the right side of the road you are okay, walk on the left side of the road you are okay, walk in the middle you get smashed. We can decide to take the loss and let most people get infected, or we can be super aggressive about lockdown and contain it. Instead, we seem to have a compromise which is seems to take the loss, but slower with a porous lockdown which will have to last indefinitely. Now the other worlds are imagined in my head, so this may not be the case, but it is hard to look at e.g. New Zealand and not be frustrated by America's response.

mikem170 6y ago

>If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is manageable. I thought the purpose of the lockdown was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed? Maybe that is what you meant by manageable? My two cents: Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? We have been locked down and covid still circulates through the population, and appears that it will do so until we reach herd immunity and/or have a vaccine, with the likely/hopeful outcome, based on how these types of coronaviruses often behave, being a decrease in the danger posed by this specific virus over time. Playing devils advocate: How much of a difference do mandated lockdowns even make? Sweden doesn't have a lockdown and they are doing better than a number of other western countries, worse than some others, but pretty much well within the same bell curve given the fuzzy data we have at the moment. When does it become selfish to tell tens of millions of people they can't provide for themselves because you are scared of the coronavirus. They might not be. The risk profile can be very different for different people. As long as the hospitals are not overwhelmed why not self-isolate, and let other people do what they want? That was the justification when we started these lockdowns, to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed, right?

sethammons 6y ago
You are getting down voted, and I'm not sure why. I've grown the opinion that you cannot have any discussion around any measured approach related to COVID. It seems some people view COVID as guaranteed death and any questioning of lock downs ending means that you are or are about to be a mass murderer.
- cfmcdonald 6y ago
  One reason could be that GP seems to assume that spread to herd immunity is inevitable, ignoring the countries that have had great success in containing the virus.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    What countries are you thinking of? New Zealand has been able to pretty much eradicate the virus through lockdowns and contact tracing, but they only had 1000 cases. There is no precedent for doing that in a country with millions of cases, like the U.S. It may be too late for that. So is the purpose of continued lockdowns in the U.S. to eradicate the virus? That is what I am skeptical about, I don't see the evidence that such a thing is possible.

throwaway_USD 6y ago

>This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. From the second the federal government put the "opening up" in the hands of each State it seemed like a massive effort from the top down to distance themselves from any bad outcomes and take credit for any good outcomes. Maybe it is better to have the Governors in charge, but once traveling/airports begin picking up again...State boarders and policies become pretty meaningless.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> From the second the federal government put the "opening up" in the hands of each State The federal government never put it there, it was always there because the closing down was always in the hands of each state, because that's where the lockdown orders originated. And that's arguably not the problem, anyway, as those policies are going to need to vary by state (and by smaller areas within states in many cases), anyway, the problem is more the federal withdrawal of support for testing, the failure of support for response needs (and the active redistribution of resources, including direct theft from states who acquired their own) driven by political affinity between the federal executive and state executive rather than public health needs, and the subtle and overt federal pressure (and direct federal mandates, in the case of meat packing) for premature, irresponsible reopening by the states (subtle including things like not providing robust financial supports so as to create bottom-up pressure for reopening.)
- sjg007 6y ago
  Trump could order a nation wide shutdown if he wanted to.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Such an order wouldn't be legally binding outside of federally controlled facilities (and perhaps air and sea ports). For better or worse, US states remain sovereign entities.
    - rbanffy 6y ago

ardy42 6y ago

> 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. Exactly. At the start of this it was made clear that lock-downs would be pointlessly destructive if they were eased back too quickly: we'd get all the economic pain for little gain against the virus. But it seems like that's roughly the course our leadership is taking...

eanzenberg 6y ago
The lockdowns were pointless to begin with, where governors shut down all business but let 24/7 subways keep running. In addition, lockdown was only going to flatten the curve, not get rid of the virus. Point being to not overwhelm the medical system and increase IFR. The medical system in the US was never overwhelmed, not even close (40k ventilators demanded by NY, needed 1/5 of it). So, we spent $5T for the same effect of never needing to lockdown (look at countries that didn’t lock down), knowing we’d need to open up anyways because this is unsustainable.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Also, without enforcement, they were more like "stay at home suggestions" rather than stay at home orders. Tons of people around me are out and about, horsing around, and there's no change in traffic down my street. Everyone is treating it as a joke, and there's no enforcement, so it's pointless.
  - eanzenberg 6y ago
    Pointless, besides being $7T in the hole.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      Given two choices: A: Don't do Stay At Home = Lots of people die + medium economic loss B: Strictly enforce Stay At Home = Fewer people die + large economic loss ...somehow America managed to choose: C: Half-ass Stay At Home = Lots of people die + large economic loss

klenwell 6y ago

> This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. Paul O'Neill died recently (not COVID-19 related). I don't have many business heroes. O'Neill was one of the them. (Andrew Grove is the other.) Here's how O'Neill turned ALCOA around when he took it over in the 80s: A few minutes before noon, O'Neill took the stage. He was fifty-one years old, trim, and dressed in gray pinstripes and a red power tie. His hair was white and his posture military straight. He bounced up the steps and smiled warmly. He looked dignified, solid, confident. Like a chief executive. Then he opened his mouth. "I want to talk to you about worker safety," he said. "Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of work. Our safety record is better than the general American workforce, especially considering that our employees work with metals that are 1500 degrees and machines that can rip a man's arm off. But it's not good enough. I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries." The audience was confused. These meetings usually followed a predictable script: A new CEO would start with an introduction, make a faux self-deprecating joke--something about how he slept his way through Harvard Business School--then promise to boost profits and lower costs. Next would come an excoriation of taxes, business regulations, and sometimes, with a fervor that suggested firsthand experience in divorce court, lawyers. Finally, the speech would end with a blizzard of buzzwords--"synergy," "rightsizing," and "co-opetition"--at which point everyone could return to their offices, reassured that capitalism was safe for another day. O'Neill hadn't said anything about profits. He didn't mention taxes. There was no talk of "using alignment to achieve a win-win synergistic market advantage." For all anyone in the audience knew, given his talk of worker safety, O'Neill might be pro-regulation. Or, worse, a Democrat. It was a terrifying prospect. ... Within a year of O'Neill's speech, Alcoa's profits would hit a record high. Here's an extended excerpt from Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit: http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits Imagine a president who came out in February, even early March, with a message like that. Imagine our response had been organized around that message: "I intend to keep all Americans safe, rich and poor, old and young. I intend to go for zero deaths."

votepaunchy 6y ago
> Imagine a president who came out in February, even early March, with a message like that ... Considering the virus was spreading in the US in late January any action at that time would have been much too late.

Frost1x 6y ago

I think part of the strategy here is to minimize the perception of risk associated with the disease and fact that it's preventable/manageable but at a cost to the current economic structure we have. If labor in the US begins to normalize or minimize the perception of risk of death associated with COVID as just another threat "out of their control" (now proven not to be the case), they'll continue working and producing as before--e.g. like risks associated with car fatalities, seasonal flu, heart disease/obesity/diabetes deaths largely influenced by sedentary lifestyles, etc. Bob and Alice go to work, Bob contracts COVID, has serious illness, and dies two weeks later. Alice and friends are fine and give a moment of silence, "well, that's just the way things are, what could we do?", then continue on, just like we do every day. It's not until you're directly effected do you seem to care about other's lives, pretty terrible way to live IMHO. A potential sideflip is that the gamble doesn't work and people start dying, perception doesn't shift, and a social, political, and cultural revolution take place resulting in demands for significant changes for labor rights in the US. I don't see that happening though. I think the divide we're seeing about this lockdown is that people are really growing tired of their precarious situations (housing, food, essentially things tied to finances and necessary debts to survive) created by business trends and are starting to internalize just how little employers really care about them, regardless of the nearly insulting propaganda/advertisements about appreciation for front line workers. They're being exploited, putting their lives at risk, and a few folks are profiting drastically off of it while propping these people up as heroes in marketing campaigns when many pretty much have to continue if they don't want to go into financial ruin (effecting critical life needs like housing, food, health insurance,, some ability to do things they want to do...happiness). The worst part is that it's not just businesses. This culture of transactional relationships and financial focus we've allowed to permeate everything from friendships, family, community, etc. has brought out the absolute worst in people. Some of those mostly unaffected, working remote, continuing with gainful employment are showing they too want their transactional culture to continue. "I don't care about your life, I want my haircut." Some on the other hand don't have money and realize its necessary to survive so they blame the government lockdown for their precarious financial situation when its really the highly leveraged labor market the US created that's at fault. It's pretty disgusting all around.

0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago

> This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. Also a profound lack of reading the future.

ping_pong 6y ago

It's easy to say we should just stay in lockdown until things are manageable when you have a job that allows you to work from home. I have several friends who are directly impacted by this. Two of them work at small businesses that will shut down in a couple of months. I have one that has no income because he lost his waiter job and supply teaching job at the same time. I have some friends that are suffering from mental health issues. One person I know is living 5 people in a one bedroom apartment. This is a very hard, almost impossible situation, so don't be so judgemental against people that want to end the lockdown. I fully understand why they want to, because realistically there's no end in sight and even 2 months is a very long time for people to do nothing and starve in their apartments for both food/money and interaction.

caseysoftware 6y ago
^ This Without exception, everyone I've seen or heard of advocating for continuing the lockdowns/shelter in place have remote-friendly jobs with direct deposit. I'd wager most have months of cash reserves. While their 401k's have suffered, they're still paying their mortgage, feeding their families, and - at the worst levels - are exceptionally bored. On the other side, I see people (friends and family) choosing to wait to pay their rent in favor of groceries. * I'm in Austin, so almost 2 months in counting the SXSW cancelation on May 6th.. which was a good idea in that it probably prevented us from being a NYC or New Orleans in the short term.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  I advocate for the continued lockdown, but then I also advocate for universal basic income and universal healthcare, which are usually dismissed as "socialism". The way it is in the US, with healthcare tied to a job (or paid at insurance market rates) and pretty much no social safety nets is a disaster waiting to happen. It turns out the disaster doesn't need to wait anymore.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
    Comrade don't admit so many things in one place or no one will join the party.

disabled 6y ago

> 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 That was the objective by our president, from the get-go. Remember who is in office: a malignant narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. When an authoritarian ruler (even a soft one) says something, even if it sounds like an exaggeration, like "lock her up" or "I Could Stand In the Middle Of Fifth Avenue And Shoot Somebody And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters", you should absolutely believe them at face value. They are not people to be messed with. Also, in the US, a death from something adverse is nothing more than a statistic. The 60,000+ deaths (likely to be double based on the deaths reported compared to previous years) are nothing more than a statistic. Remember that. It is sick but true. You should take a look at the countries that are part of the European Union, that are east of the Iron Curtain. They have dealt with crises before, and relatively recently, and they seem to have done pretty well in the circumstances. The IMHE group at the University of Washington, which is a world-renowned team, posts projections on COVID-19 statistics both in the US and from EU countries [1]. [1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

chronofar 6y ago

> If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is manageable. Oh? And what exactly is "manageable" in your (apparently well qualified) eyes?

stjohnswarts 6y ago

It's impossible for most people in America to lockdown for more than 2 or 3 months and not make income. People are living a pipe-dream if they think America will just stay inside for a couple of years while a vaccine is developed, if there is ever one developed. Even other countries with extensive social networks have to eventually fail because they don't have unlimited resources in an economy that produces nothing.