9 ms·

I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

112 points by laura2013 6y ago

elliekelly 6y ago
> And bigger picture, I wanted to know if these are places that I would feel safe taking my family to. I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy” goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians.
- aphextron 6y ago
  >I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy” goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians. Basically all metrics have been ignored. Two weeks ago it was all "We're going to do a phased reopening with checkpoints based on the data.". A few armed protests later and my state (NC) at least is going full YOLO reopening everything but bars, based on absolutely nothing but hopes and prayers. New infections here haven't even remotely peaked, and are still rising by the hundreds every day. This is going to be a catastrophe.
  - davidw 6y ago
    It is already a catastrophe, and it looks like it'll just keep getting worse, unless we get lucky somehow, which I'm not counting on. BTW, most all economists keep pointing the finger back at fixing the public health crisis to fix the economic problems, whatever their political stripes: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/save-grandma-save-the-economy.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/sa... But we have no coherent plans to do much about the public health crisis at a national level, and the president is busy tweeting out anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      ..or, business could open with the precautions they're taking and .. nothing happens. We see the same fatality rates, grow a little, lower a little, but generally level off. It sucks it's come to this, but all of the states with lock-downs are desperately looking at states easing restrictions to see if these shelter in place orders are really worth it. We've heard that many of the people in NYC getting infected now are getting infected at home. I'm really hoping that Texas and Georgia, as they slowly open up, do not go over hospital capacities. We already know a number of people haven't gone to hospitals when they needed to; as many cut off access in preparation for a surge that never came. It's equally likely these states may not see a surge at all, even post re-opening. Yes, a lot of people may still die, but this virus is in the environment. A lot of those people would die either now, or six months from now. I don't understand how people can think complete eradication is even possible. You can't limit people's social contact forever. We are not laptops that can be placed on standby for a year or gears in a machine that can be stopped and oiled.
      - claudeganon 6y ago
        Why do people insist on unnecessary mass deaths when we have examples of how to effectively respond to this disease in countries like South Korea and Taiwan without them? Why do people lean into this falsely-premised fatalism instead of demanding what has been proven to work?
        astronautjones 6y ago
        the same reason they promote slashing public programs, welfare, benefits
        davidw 6y ago
        I don't get the downvotes for the above comment. The "choice" between "stay at home forever" or "open all the things up" is a false one. If we do test/trace/isolate, and start requiring masks in enclosed spaces, we could start opening up in a fairly safe way.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  - puranjay 6y ago
    I'm generally an optimistic person but I can't see a way out of this mess barring a vaccine or proven cure. South Korea's recent spurt shows that a single super spreader event can undo all the gains of the lockdown. My country (India) had one of the strictest lockdowns, but the economic fallout from it is too severe. The message now is that we will have to learn to live with the virus.
- justin66 6y ago
  I wouldn't say it's been ignored, I think it's more accurate to say that there is an uncomfortable and at times stark difference between politicians who attempt to address the issue by making things safer, and politicians who attempt to normalize the danger with rhetoric.
- nickbauman 6y ago
  Furthermore, we have 75k dead. If we think we've peaked, this means we lose another 75k on the way down. And of course nobody with any opinion worth considering thinks we have peaked. So it looks like we could easily break 200k... If people weren't spending money out before, it'll be twice as worse. TL;DR If you don't fix the biology, you will not get the economy sorted. This will just make everything worse. Totally backfire.
  - lucasmullens 6y ago
    > And of course nobody with any opinion worth considering thinks we have peaked. This is unnecessarily insulting. Many places have peaked, especially if you look at new cases and not deaths. There's a difference between a peak and a halfway point. We could have reached the peak but only 10% of deaths if there's a long plateau slightly lower than the peak.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  “Re-open the economy” talk has reached levels of collective delusion that I honestly find frightening. And it’s not a partisan issue either. We have the example of successful responses in places like South Korea and Taiwan, none of whose standard the US seems intent, or maybe even capable, of meeting. Instead, people in the US cling to phony performances of leadership by their various authoritarians, whether it be Andrew Cuomo for Democrats or Trump for Republicans.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Every substantive viewpoint I've seen on the subject comes back to cashflow. Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than the middle class asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?", they've internalized the system so thoroughly that they're actually protesting to get back on the treadmill.
    - ra1n85 6y ago
      >Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than workers asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?" This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust, or people that derive satisfaction from their employment. Worse, for those that would rather not go back to work and are suffering, your comment comes across as "shame on them for not asking for more". This crisis is hurting so many people, and its impact will be felt for a long time. We don't need comments like this.
      - mindslight 6y ago
        > This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust What is actually unfair to them is their businesses going bust, but here we are. We can either acknowledge the underlying reasons for why this is happening, or keep ignoring the elephant in the room of the ever-growing debt spiral. You're shooting the messenger with grandstanding empathy, and that style of comment helps nobody. Indeed, people should be asking for more, rather than letting themselves be disenfranchised by fatalistic propaganda. People should be demanding a competent public health response. People should be demanding timely unemployment benefits that don't hinge on the whims of states forcing businesses to close. People should be demanding loans and disaster payments for small businesses that aren't stacked to benefit large connected companies. People should be demanding the right for workers to walk out over negligent conditions. People should be demanding a commercial rent stoppage. And people should be demanding an end to trickle-up economics so we aren't in these same inflexible overleveraged positions for the next crisis.
- fastball 6y ago
  Given that your children are unlikely to be at serious risk from COVID-19, I'm not sure why. Your child is much more likely to be adversely affected (in the long term) by sustained economic stagnation than by this virus.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    Tell that to the parents of the children who just died of Kawasaki-like inflammation from the virus in NYC. We’re still seeing novel presentation of symptoms in various cohorts and have no idea of its long term impacts on children or anyone else.
    - fastball 6y ago
      We have no idea about the long term effects of closing down economies either. In statistical terms, very few children have died of COVID-19. We're not even sure that syndrome you mentioned is caused by COVID-19, so it seems a bit premature to tell anything to their parents. Kinda disgusting you'd go there so quickly, in fact.
      - claudeganon 6y ago
        We’re not certain, but all signs point to it being so, and we’re rushing advisements to pediatric care providers accordingly: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-baby-s-case-may-be-first-that-links-15260415.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-baby-s-... I don’t understand why demanding caution against harm to children in a dangerous, unpredictable situation is “disgusting.” It certainly seems less so to me then an a false confidence that could throw them into harms way.
        fastball 6y ago
        What's disgusting is using (statistically insignificant) dead children to try to make your point, which is only going to be proven out by actual statistics.
- sixothree 6y ago
  Not only that. But even after they "come around", I will be avoiding those businesses that acted recklessly. For instance the Walgreens nearest me employees weren't wearing masks until recently. Some restaurants are open _now_ with table service outside being served by people not wearing masks. I will never be going to those restaurants. I may never return to Walgreens.
- backtracking 6y ago
  That is an entirely subjective measure that can only be determined by each individual/household rather than something that can be determined centrally and applied to everyone.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  The issue here is politicians need to communicate a clear message on what is acceptable and what is not and instead even at local, city, and state, levels we see in many states politicians trying to one up or put down each other. The simple fact is we cannot continue in the shut down state we have and the rules of the shut down need to be heavily revised so as not to appear as arbitrary and unneeded. It gets worse because there does not seem to be any acceptable date and that is unreasonable in an extreme. The line in the sand will have to be drawn and efforts put towards protecting the most at risk. We also have to recognize just how much person to person interaction that many businesses truly are. From actual touching to handing items back and forth if not handling items in shared environments. Social distancing really cannot work in some businesses and this needs to be accounted for because they cannot be kept shut down without accepting some risk; namely hair care, massage, hair care, but not to be ignored the biggest one, medical care. If it safe for a dentist or optometrist to work on you then a hair dresser can follow similar but appropriate restrictions. Besides telling people how to protect themselves they need to tell people how to be polite in this new world we face and how to protect yourself from people who don't take the same caution you do without aggravating the situation.
- alexbanks 6y ago
  Yeah. Sure you can reopen restaurants if you want, but I certainly will not go.
kube-system 6y ago
Wow, the comments on that blog are a dumpster fire.
- notRobot 6y ago
  Internet comments almost always are, outside of a few niche communities. HN seems to have some of the better discussions on the internet, but it's obviously not perfect either.
- josefresco 6y ago
  To Mark's credit, he's down in the muck replying to their (batshit crazy) comments and throwing it right back in their faces.
  - logfromblammo 6y ago
    It would be smarter to hire a team of social media experts to do that for him, and rotate out the point person through the decon shower and then into the kittens+puppies room whenever they get too much crazy on them.
- evmar 6y ago
  I know it's probably not "Russian bots", but... Two of the comments post the same CDC 2017 list, and both come from twitter accounts with 0 posts (one is 100% retweets of anti-"liberal" content). I'm never sure how plausible it is for someone to have the time to sit on twitter all day just to RT these things and then jump onto rando blogs to leave long comments like these.
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    Edit
    - itronitron 6y ago
      I think the OP is referring to the commenters on Mark Cuban's blog (and not the ones on HN)
mindslight 6y ago
What the fuck is up with those comments? I mean the answer is obvious, but still. At that point, just shut them off. As for the actual topic, it's almost as if "closed" or "open" isn't the entirety of the subject? It seems like we could be dealing with some kind of underlying meatspace problem that needs to be addressed before things can go back to "normal". Who knew?! (/s) Months ago it was apparent that this virus was going to cause an absolute clusterfuck in the US due to decrepit infrastructure and a failed society ethos. What I couldn't imagine was just how slow the train wreck would be. I guess we're all stuck generally inside and washing groceries for the next year while the idiots cheerlead their simplistic ignorance, and expendable employees are put through the meat grinder to keep the economy simulating.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  > expendable employees are put through the meat grinder to keep the economy simulating Fun fact, the last stimulus bill also had legislature in it that removes all liability from businesses so employees can't sue them for making them work in unsafe conditions pertaining to covid such as if they make a bunch of people work in room with close contact and no air circulation.
- eropple 6y ago
  > At that point, just shut them off. There is value in exposing and making it very, very hard to miss the level of brainworms with which we are dealing.
- nradov 6y ago
  There is no evidence that washing groceries actually reduces infection risk.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Just as there was "no evidence" that wearing a respirator reduces infection risk... The way I see it, everything coming into the house gets disinfected. This way, home can remain home, without eg needing to constantly over-worry about touching my face. I agree it's likely overboard, which is why I threw it out as an example of ridiculous things we are doing. But the advice on TV is, at best, meant to probabilistically keep most people from spreading the infection. I'm aiming to definitively keep myself clear for the sake of my older family.
timbigman 6y ago
Of everyone doing this, I think that he should have more sympathy for those struggling during this time. Don't hire people to find violations. Help out people that are starving
- will_walker 6y ago
  He’s not posting any identifying information. This is incredibly valuable service for those in reopening states to make an informed decision on whether to continue to take precautions.
  - timbigman 6y ago
    Many people in tech all speak from an incredible place of privilege, being able to work from home. There are many that are depressed and sitting at home. These are the people we need to help. Instead of trying to find violations, look for people that are hurting and help them out
    - ModernMech 6y ago
      I'm sorry, but until I see some proposals from politicians to help depressed people beyond "open up businesses", I'm going to remain very skeptical this is actually a legitimate thing they are concerned about rather than a cynical appeal to emotion. The very people who claim to be so concerned with depression right now are the ones where were and are advocating to slash social support systems. Sure, let's help people who are depressed and sitting at home. This begins with listening to public health experts, who have been begging for politicians to listen to their proposals to combat depression. If the first and only proposal to combat depression is "open up businesses and get people back to work" then how can we be sure these people will still be serious about depression after people get back to work?
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Yea, I agree people should focus on solutions instead of ratting people out. This entire ordeal has produced an insane amount of 'snitching' .. three Australian boys face a $1,000+ fine for having beer together on a roof. Say you loose your job, your unemployment is stuck in bureaucratic hell, and you just want to have a beer with your two best friends to forgot about how fucked things are. Then you get helicopters and megaphones and a $1k fine. That's insane. This entire ordeal has been a tragic example of people turning other people in and judging them for all their decisions, without offering people any real help or relief: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/#vocubulary-zeiggheist https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon... This time has really brought out the worst in society and government and we should never look back upon this time with any sense of honor.
mark_l_watson 6y ago
I just sent the URI to a friend with a restaurant. I think Mark Cuban did a public service here, ignoring some of the horrible comments left on his blog. Even though I am at risk (old age and damaged lungs from pulmonary embolisms), I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law. I wish more people would look at the covid-19 crisis as something that is serious but that we have to adapt to long term. If restaurants limit seating, use discardable menus, all employees wear masks, disinfect as appropriate, etc., etc. then we achieve Cuban’s feel safe to take the family criterion.
- JPKab 6y ago
  I agree with you. It's nice to see reasonable people who understand the risk personally. I saw a comment the other day where somebody said that we can't open anything up until a vaccine is developed. That is one extreme. then you have the other crowd who says just open it up and let me go see football and baseball games. I think the worst part about all of this has been the fact that it's happened in a election year. We have a habit in this country of turning every election into an existential crisis, which is a recipe for creating radicalized viewpoints. Our media has now turned this into a partisan issue and now it's being treated as such.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    The problem is there really isn't a sensible middle ground option. It's like only spraying enough water on a fire to keep it from spreading out of control but not enough to put it out. When you're house is on fire there really is only two sensible options. Let it burn down your house or put it out. It doesn't make a lot of sense to get the R down to ~1. This is a partial lockdown that last until the vaccine comes out and kills 1600 people a day. It seems better to lock down and test and trace harder until r gets to .5 then wait for it to mostly extinguish then cautiously open up. Or let it rip through the populous until we have herd immunity.
- economicslol 6y ago
  >I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law. This is obviously the right measure to take but I don't think any states have the infrastructure to do that currently. You need massive testing tracing capacity and we don't seem to be close to that at all. Yet all the states are reopening while cases and deaths increase almost everywhere outside NYC
torgian 6y ago
Wow, comment section there is a true dumpster fire. That said, it seems that America is just flailing about and hoping for the best. and not even expecting the worst if the comment section is to be believed.
- sam1r 6y ago
  Ok but those comments are pretty hilarious browsing through
- valuearb 6y ago
  It’s literally amazing. I never knew the Stasi were such a big cultural meme in Texas.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Wow, I’m getting downvoted for this innocuous observation?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  For those curious, a significant percentage of the commenters seem to think that this is exactly equivalent to the Stasi.
  - stevehawk 6y ago
    Turns out a lot of them can't even spell Stasi right.
  - tom_ 6y ago
    I wonder if this is due to a team hired by a competing billionaire?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - MSM 6y ago
    Which, to me, really illustrates the astroturfing going on. I can go months without ever seeing any reference to the Stasi and, in this single comment section, I see dozens of references? There have been plenty of similar programs through history but a bunch of "Americans" point to the same German group to illustrate their point? It doesn't add up at all.
jrobn 6y ago
The stock market is soaring, People are dying at an ever increasing rate, and It’s becoming painfully obvious to most people what a total failure our federal govt’s as been. Things are about to move into dust bowl depression with the extremely rich at the top and 90% wallowing in desperate poverty. I’m afraid the American experiment is over and it’s a sad outcome.
- JPKab 6y ago
  People are dying at an increasing rate? What data are you referencing? I'm a little blown away by statements like this. The United States is not New York City. New York City is a single location in a massive country. Other than New York City there really has not been a problem with coronavirus in the United States compared to other nations in the world. It is imperative that we all act responsibly to prevent other parts of the United States from getting to a bad place but we should maintain perspective that this is not the end of the world. https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259629409016954883?s=20 https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259629409016954883... https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259601646591582212?s=20 https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259601646591582212...
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    You've got it backwards. New York's curve has flattened, and is trending downwards. When you remove New York from the US numbers, the trends look much worse. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/06/opinion/coronavirus-deaths-statistics.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/06/opinion/coron...
    - JPKab 6y ago
      The detected cases are increasing due to an increase in testing. Nate Silver has a great post the other day where he broke down the fact that the ratio of new cases per test administered has gone down. I'm not saying we should all just act as normal, but I am saying that the media is creating a more pessimistic picture than is warranted by talking about positive cases without the context of an increase in tests administered. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts-are-meaningless/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts...
Nbox9 6y ago
> Media coverage, showcasing owner sentiment and infection statistics, paint a picture of a large degree of latent fear in the marketplace. Imagine how traumatic it will be if the death toll spikes up. We have fear because the virus is still active and deadly. If those fears are found to be justified than I suspect even smaller more sane opening up steps will be unpopular.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  And that’s not even touching the civil litigation risk.
itronitron 6y ago
This is a nice example of private business picking up the mantle of what is ordinarily thought of as a government function. All the hostile comments (on the blog) are probably being made by people that favor small government and therefore theoretically in favor of a private company doing the survey. But apparently they don't want anyone telling them what to do.
- eru 6y ago
  Not sure people there have such a coherent ideology? Restaurants NOT opening when the restrictions were lifted is actually a good sign if you are interested in small government: it tells that the restrictions were most probably non-binding as a constraint. Ie they were telling people to do stuff that they would have done anyway. (Compare to eg a 0.1 dollar/h minimum wage: almost no-one would actually be at that minimum wage, so it's 'non-binding' in the same sense.) Government constraints that are non-binding or almost non-binding aren't too bad. Since they don't change market outcomes (too much).
  - hippich 6y ago
    I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).
    - albntomat0 6y ago
      I'm not sure they would be anywhere near full occupancy even without government restriction. I can imagine a significant portion of the population self-limiting to essential activities only, regardless of the level of government restrictions.
      - jonfw 6y ago
        if that was true- why bother with regulation in the first place?
disease 6y ago
The bigger story here is the comment section. Why are Americans so enamored with conspiracy theories and hate?
- dawnerd 6y ago
  It’s not just America... You have anti-5G/anti vaccine nuts in Canada and Europe too. We just seem to be louder.
  - economicslol 6y ago
    Is it really on the same scale though? It's quite hard getting a sense of what's normal from Social Media sites since they are so US-centric. It certainly seems like a large portion of the population here misunderstand basic science, statistics, biology, economics, etc. Having been educated in the US public school system it's not that surprising that people are so poorly informed.
    - dawnerd 6y ago
      I'm not sure, like you said it's kind of hard to tell with the US bias social media and the media in general. From recently memory though, I don't think there was cases of this in the States https://apnews.com/4ac3679b6f39e8bd2561c1c8eeafd855 https://apnews.com/4ac3679b6f39e8bd2561c1c8eeafd855 (But we're definitely more radical in other areas like protesters with guns).
notyourday 6y ago
I have to say I feel really sad how out of touch with life outside most of HN posters are. It must be nice to wax about theoretical problems and theoretical solutions when one thinks he is secure about where his or her check is coming from. Let me tell you about what is happening in New York. On Saturday I saw a line three blocks long. Not tiny blocks. New York sized long blocks. That was a line filled with mostly blacks and latinos, some with children. It was barely moving. At the end of the line there was national guard giving out small shopping bags on onions, carrots and potatoes. Based on me timing it I estimate it took ~3 hours for someone joining at the end of the line to get what is, objectively, $10 worth of vegetables if bought in one of the supermarkets targeting poor Hispanic community. The only reason why they are standing in that line for three hours is because that $10 to them is money. Oh and if your state unemployment claim is "pending" then you do not get the fed $600/week unemployment either. There's a very popular Bar/restaurant in Bushwick ran by a great but rather odd dude. 191 Knickerbocker. I guess he is relatively well off or he is good enterprising guy who manages to raise a lot of money. It provides free meals a couple of times a week. No questions asked. They are not much but they would certainly get you through the day. It has a half a block long line, split relatively evenly between latinos and whites. Initially the latter group did not want to be seen in the line, hiding their faces when others whom they thought were in the same socio-economic demographics went by. Occasionally you would see people crying. By now they don't care -- just avoid eye contact. About a week ago on Saturday one of the chefy driven relief trucks showed up. The went around the entire block by the middle of the day. When the people got there, they got two small paper bags of vegetables. The lines was mostly latinos. From talking to a couple of people who were volunteering they estimated about 4 hour wait between the time one joined the line and the time to get those bags. My wife, who worked a white collar medicine related field was laid off and filed for unemployment in mid-march. Her unemployment claim is still pending. She's not alone. There are people who lost their jobs around beginning of March who are in the same boat. The NYS unemployment system does not have real time status. It does not have messaging. Its call system does not support queuing! People redial hundreds of times a day through the maze of prompts just to be disconnected because there are too many people calling. She legitimately lost it a couple of times. If I was not still making money, we would have been eating through the savings to cover rent. We rent our apartment from a family who lives in the same building. Both of them have been laid off. Neither of them have been able to get unemployment -- their claims are "pending". Every week they look more and more terrified as the only thing that lets them to put food on a table is me paying rent. And there's an eviction moratorium now until August, which means I can , at the cost of ruining a relationship with the landlord to whom I'm paying market rent, stop paying them. Oh and NYS unemployment fund is running out of money. Last week the first of my wife's friends who used to only worry about when they would be able to go out to do "girl's brunch" have been laid off. The laid off person is shell shocked. At the end of April their company was absolutely convinced there were no layoffs coming. We are only in the first act. This economic showdown only started at the end of March. Unless you own your own company and you can cut 90% of your expenses and still get enough revenue to pay yourself your white collar job is not safe. People working for companies in layoffs.fyi are the example.

112 points by laura2013 6y ago

> And bigger picture, I wanted to know if these are places that I would feel safe taking my family to. I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy” goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians.

aphextron 6y ago
>I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy” goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians. Basically all metrics have been ignored. Two weeks ago it was all "We're going to do a phased reopening with checkpoints based on the data.". A few armed protests later and my state (NC) at least is going full YOLO reopening everything but bars, based on absolutely nothing but hopes and prayers. New infections here haven't even remotely peaked, and are still rising by the hundreds every day. This is going to be a catastrophe.
- davidw 6y ago
  It is already a catastrophe, and it looks like it'll just keep getting worse, unless we get lucky somehow, which I'm not counting on. BTW, most all economists keep pointing the finger back at fixing the public health crisis to fix the economic problems, whatever their political stripes: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/save-grandma-save-the-economy.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/sa... But we have no coherent plans to do much about the public health crisis at a national level, and the president is busy tweeting out anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    ..or, business could open with the precautions they're taking and .. nothing happens. We see the same fatality rates, grow a little, lower a little, but generally level off. It sucks it's come to this, but all of the states with lock-downs are desperately looking at states easing restrictions to see if these shelter in place orders are really worth it. We've heard that many of the people in NYC getting infected now are getting infected at home. I'm really hoping that Texas and Georgia, as they slowly open up, do not go over hospital capacities. We already know a number of people haven't gone to hospitals when they needed to; as many cut off access in preparation for a surge that never came. It's equally likely these states may not see a surge at all, even post re-opening. Yes, a lot of people may still die, but this virus is in the environment. A lot of those people would die either now, or six months from now. I don't understand how people can think complete eradication is even possible. You can't limit people's social contact forever. We are not laptops that can be placed on standby for a year or gears in a machine that can be stopped and oiled.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      Why do people insist on unnecessary mass deaths when we have examples of how to effectively respond to this disease in countries like South Korea and Taiwan without them? Why do people lean into this falsely-premised fatalism instead of demanding what has been proven to work?
      - astronautjones 6y ago
        the same reason they promote slashing public programs, welfare, benefits
      - davidw 6y ago
        I don't get the downvotes for the above comment. The "choice" between "stay at home forever" or "open all the things up" is a false one. If we do test/trace/isolate, and start requiring masks in enclosed spaces, we could start opening up in a fairly safe way.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
- puranjay 6y ago
  I'm generally an optimistic person but I can't see a way out of this mess barring a vaccine or proven cure. South Korea's recent spurt shows that a single super spreader event can undo all the gains of the lockdown. My country (India) had one of the strictest lockdowns, but the economic fallout from it is too severe. The message now is that we will have to learn to live with the virus.
justin66 6y ago
I wouldn't say it's been ignored, I think it's more accurate to say that there is an uncomfortable and at times stark difference between politicians who attempt to address the issue by making things safer, and politicians who attempt to normalize the danger with rhetoric.
nickbauman 6y ago
Furthermore, we have 75k dead. If we think we've peaked, this means we lose another 75k on the way down. And of course nobody with any opinion worth considering thinks we have peaked. So it looks like we could easily break 200k... If people weren't spending money out before, it'll be twice as worse. TL;DR If you don't fix the biology, you will not get the economy sorted. This will just make everything worse. Totally backfire.
- lucasmullens 6y ago
  > And of course nobody with any opinion worth considering thinks we have peaked. This is unnecessarily insulting. Many places have peaked, especially if you look at new cases and not deaths. There's a difference between a peak and a halfway point. We could have reached the peak but only 10% of deaths if there's a long plateau slightly lower than the peak.
claudeganon 6y ago
“Re-open the economy” talk has reached levels of collective delusion that I honestly find frightening. And it’s not a partisan issue either. We have the example of successful responses in places like South Korea and Taiwan, none of whose standard the US seems intent, or maybe even capable, of meeting. Instead, people in the US cling to phony performances of leadership by their various authoritarians, whether it be Andrew Cuomo for Democrats or Trump for Republicans.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Every substantive viewpoint I've seen on the subject comes back to cashflow. Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than the middle class asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?", they've internalized the system so thoroughly that they're actually protesting to get back on the treadmill.
  - ra1n85 6y ago
    >Our national propaganda is so strong, that rather than workers asking "why do I have to go to work every day just to pay rent to the bank?" This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust, or people that derive satisfaction from their employment. Worse, for those that would rather not go back to work and are suffering, your comment comes across as "shame on them for not asking for more". This crisis is hurting so many people, and its impact will be felt for a long time. We don't need comments like this.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      > This is not fair to people that have spent their lifetimes building businesses and are watching them go bust What is actually unfair to them is their businesses going bust, but here we are. We can either acknowledge the underlying reasons for why this is happening, or keep ignoring the elephant in the room of the ever-growing debt spiral. You're shooting the messenger with grandstanding empathy, and that style of comment helps nobody. Indeed, people should be asking for more, rather than letting themselves be disenfranchised by fatalistic propaganda. People should be demanding a competent public health response. People should be demanding timely unemployment benefits that don't hinge on the whims of states forcing businesses to close. People should be demanding loans and disaster payments for small businesses that aren't stacked to benefit large connected companies. People should be demanding the right for workers to walk out over negligent conditions. People should be demanding a commercial rent stoppage. And people should be demanding an end to trickle-up economics so we aren't in these same inflexible overleveraged positions for the next crisis.
fastball 6y ago
Given that your children are unlikely to be at serious risk from COVID-19, I'm not sure why. Your child is much more likely to be adversely affected (in the long term) by sustained economic stagnation than by this virus.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  Tell that to the parents of the children who just died of Kawasaki-like inflammation from the virus in NYC. We’re still seeing novel presentation of symptoms in various cohorts and have no idea of its long term impacts on children or anyone else.
  - fastball 6y ago
    We have no idea about the long term effects of closing down economies either. In statistical terms, very few children have died of COVID-19. We're not even sure that syndrome you mentioned is caused by COVID-19, so it seems a bit premature to tell anything to their parents. Kinda disgusting you'd go there so quickly, in fact.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      We’re not certain, but all signs point to it being so, and we’re rushing advisements to pediatric care providers accordingly: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-baby-s-case-may-be-first-that-links-15260415.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-baby-s-... I don’t understand why demanding caution against harm to children in a dangerous, unpredictable situation is “disgusting.” It certainly seems less so to me then an a false confidence that could throw them into harms way.
      - fastball 6y ago
        What's disgusting is using (statistically insignificant) dead children to try to make your point, which is only going to be proven out by actual statistics.
sixothree 6y ago
Not only that. But even after they "come around", I will be avoiding those businesses that acted recklessly. For instance the Walgreens nearest me employees weren't wearing masks until recently. Some restaurants are open _now_ with table service outside being served by people not wearing masks. I will never be going to those restaurants. I may never return to Walgreens.
backtracking 6y ago
That is an entirely subjective measure that can only be determined by each individual/household rather than something that can be determined centrally and applied to everyone.
Shivetya 6y ago
The issue here is politicians need to communicate a clear message on what is acceptable and what is not and instead even at local, city, and state, levels we see in many states politicians trying to one up or put down each other. The simple fact is we cannot continue in the shut down state we have and the rules of the shut down need to be heavily revised so as not to appear as arbitrary and unneeded. It gets worse because there does not seem to be any acceptable date and that is unreasonable in an extreme. The line in the sand will have to be drawn and efforts put towards protecting the most at risk. We also have to recognize just how much person to person interaction that many businesses truly are. From actual touching to handing items back and forth if not handling items in shared environments. Social distancing really cannot work in some businesses and this needs to be accounted for because they cannot be kept shut down without accepting some risk; namely hair care, massage, hair care, but not to be ignored the biggest one, medical care. If it safe for a dentist or optometrist to work on you then a hair dresser can follow similar but appropriate restrictions. Besides telling people how to protect themselves they need to tell people how to be polite in this new world we face and how to protect yourself from people who don't take the same caution you do without aggravating the situation.
alexbanks 6y ago
Yeah. Sure you can reopen restaurants if you want, but I certainly will not go.

kube-system 6y ago

Wow, the comments on that blog are a dumpster fire.

notRobot 6y ago
Internet comments almost always are, outside of a few niche communities. HN seems to have some of the better discussions on the internet, but it's obviously not perfect either.
josefresco 6y ago
To Mark's credit, he's down in the muck replying to their (batshit crazy) comments and throwing it right back in their faces.
- logfromblammo 6y ago
  It would be smarter to hire a team of social media experts to do that for him, and rotate out the point person through the decon shower and then into the kittens+puppies room whenever they get too much crazy on them.
evmar 6y ago
I know it's probably not "Russian bots", but... Two of the comments post the same CDC 2017 list, and both come from twitter accounts with 0 posts (one is 100% retweets of anti-"liberal" content). I'm never sure how plausible it is for someone to have the time to sit on twitter all day just to RT these things and then jump onto rando blogs to leave long comments like these.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  Edit
  - itronitron 6y ago
    I think the OP is referring to the commenters on Mark Cuban's blog (and not the ones on HN)

mindslight 6y ago

What the fuck is up with those comments? I mean the answer is obvious, but still. At that point, just shut them off. As for the actual topic, it's almost as if "closed" or "open" isn't the entirety of the subject? It seems like we could be dealing with some kind of underlying meatspace problem that needs to be addressed before things can go back to "normal". Who knew?! (/s) Months ago it was apparent that this virus was going to cause an absolute clusterfuck in the US due to decrepit infrastructure and a failed society ethos. What I couldn't imagine was just how slow the train wreck would be. I guess we're all stuck generally inside and washing groceries for the next year while the idiots cheerlead their simplistic ignorance, and expendable employees are put through the meat grinder to keep the economy simulating.

hanniabu 6y ago
> expendable employees are put through the meat grinder to keep the economy simulating Fun fact, the last stimulus bill also had legislature in it that removes all liability from businesses so employees can't sue them for making them work in unsafe conditions pertaining to covid such as if they make a bunch of people work in room with close contact and no air circulation.
eropple 6y ago
> At that point, just shut them off. There is value in exposing and making it very, very hard to miss the level of brainworms with which we are dealing.
nradov 6y ago
There is no evidence that washing groceries actually reduces infection risk.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Just as there was "no evidence" that wearing a respirator reduces infection risk... The way I see it, everything coming into the house gets disinfected. This way, home can remain home, without eg needing to constantly over-worry about touching my face. I agree it's likely overboard, which is why I threw it out as an example of ridiculous things we are doing. But the advice on TV is, at best, meant to probabilistically keep most people from spreading the infection. I'm aiming to definitively keep myself clear for the sake of my older family.

timbigman 6y ago

Of everyone doing this, I think that he should have more sympathy for those struggling during this time. Don't hire people to find violations. Help out people that are starving

will_walker 6y ago
He’s not posting any identifying information. This is incredibly valuable service for those in reopening states to make an informed decision on whether to continue to take precautions.
- timbigman 6y ago
  Many people in tech all speak from an incredible place of privilege, being able to work from home. There are many that are depressed and sitting at home. These are the people we need to help. Instead of trying to find violations, look for people that are hurting and help them out
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    I'm sorry, but until I see some proposals from politicians to help depressed people beyond "open up businesses", I'm going to remain very skeptical this is actually a legitimate thing they are concerned about rather than a cynical appeal to emotion. The very people who claim to be so concerned with depression right now are the ones where were and are advocating to slash social support systems. Sure, let's help people who are depressed and sitting at home. This begins with listening to public health experts, who have been begging for politicians to listen to their proposals to combat depression. If the first and only proposal to combat depression is "open up businesses and get people back to work" then how can we be sure these people will still be serious about depression after people get back to work?
djsumdog 6y ago
Yea, I agree people should focus on solutions instead of ratting people out. This entire ordeal has produced an insane amount of 'snitching' .. three Australian boys face a $1,000+ fine for having beer together on a roof. Say you loose your job, your unemployment is stuck in bureaucratic hell, and you just want to have a beer with your two best friends to forgot about how fucked things are. Then you get helicopters and megaphones and a $1k fine. That's insane. This entire ordeal has been a tragic example of people turning other people in and judging them for all their decisions, without offering people any real help or relief: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/#vocubulary-zeiggheist https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon... This time has really brought out the worst in society and government and we should never look back upon this time with any sense of honor.

mark_l_watson 6y ago

I just sent the URI to a friend with a restaurant. I think Mark Cuban did a public service here, ignoring some of the horrible comments left on his blog. Even though I am at risk (old age and damaged lungs from pulmonary embolisms), I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law. I wish more people would look at the covid-19 crisis as something that is serious but that we have to adapt to long term. If restaurants limit seating, use discardable menus, all employees wear masks, disinfect as appropriate, etc., etc. then we achieve Cuban’s feel safe to take the family criterion.

JPKab 6y ago
I agree with you. It's nice to see reasonable people who understand the risk personally. I saw a comment the other day where somebody said that we can't open anything up until a vaccine is developed. That is one extreme. then you have the other crowd who says just open it up and let me go see football and baseball games. I think the worst part about all of this has been the fact that it's happened in a election year. We have a habit in this country of turning every election into an existential crisis, which is a recipe for creating radicalized viewpoints. Our media has now turned this into a partisan issue and now it's being treated as such.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  The problem is there really isn't a sensible middle ground option. It's like only spraying enough water on a fire to keep it from spreading out of control but not enough to put it out. When you're house is on fire there really is only two sensible options. Let it burn down your house or put it out. It doesn't make a lot of sense to get the R down to ~1. This is a partial lockdown that last until the vaccine comes out and kills 1600 people a day. It seems better to lock down and test and trace harder until r gets to .5 then wait for it to mostly extinguish then cautiously open up. Or let it rip through the populous until we have herd immunity.
economicslol 6y ago
>I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law. This is obviously the right measure to take but I don't think any states have the infrastructure to do that currently. You need massive testing tracing capacity and we don't seem to be close to that at all. Yet all the states are reopening while cases and deaths increase almost everywhere outside NYC

torgian 6y ago

Wow, comment section there is a true dumpster fire. That said, it seems that America is just flailing about and hoping for the best. and not even expecting the worst if the comment section is to be believed.

sam1r 6y ago
Ok but those comments are pretty hilarious browsing through
valuearb 6y ago
It’s literally amazing. I never knew the Stasi were such a big cultural meme in Texas.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Wow, I’m getting downvoted for this innocuous observation?
ashtonkem 6y ago
For those curious, a significant percentage of the commenters seem to think that this is exactly equivalent to the Stasi.
- stevehawk 6y ago
  Turns out a lot of them can't even spell Stasi right.
- tom_ 6y ago
  I wonder if this is due to a team hired by a competing billionaire?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- MSM 6y ago
  Which, to me, really illustrates the astroturfing going on. I can go months without ever seeing any reference to the Stasi and, in this single comment section, I see dozens of references? There have been plenty of similar programs through history but a bunch of "Americans" point to the same German group to illustrate their point? It doesn't add up at all.

jrobn 6y ago

The stock market is soaring, People are dying at an ever increasing rate, and It’s becoming painfully obvious to most people what a total failure our federal govt’s as been. Things are about to move into dust bowl depression with the extremely rich at the top and 90% wallowing in desperate poverty. I’m afraid the American experiment is over and it’s a sad outcome.

JPKab 6y ago
People are dying at an increasing rate? What data are you referencing? I'm a little blown away by statements like this. The United States is not New York City. New York City is a single location in a massive country. Other than New York City there really has not been a problem with coronavirus in the United States compared to other nations in the world. It is imperative that we all act responsibly to prevent other parts of the United States from getting to a bad place but we should maintain perspective that this is not the end of the world. https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259629409016954883?s=20 https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259629409016954883... https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259601646591582212?s=20 https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259601646591582212...
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  You've got it backwards. New York's curve has flattened, and is trending downwards. When you remove New York from the US numbers, the trends look much worse. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/06/opinion/coronavirus-deaths-statistics.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/06/opinion/coron...
  - JPKab 6y ago
    The detected cases are increasing due to an increase in testing. Nate Silver has a great post the other day where he broke down the fact that the ratio of new cases per test administered has gone down. I'm not saying we should all just act as normal, but I am saying that the media is creating a more pessimistic picture than is warranted by talking about positive cases without the context of an increase in tests administered. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts-are-meaningless/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts...

Nbox9 6y ago

> Media coverage, showcasing owner sentiment and infection statistics, paint a picture of a large degree of latent fear in the marketplace. Imagine how traumatic it will be if the death toll spikes up. We have fear because the virus is still active and deadly. If those fears are found to be justified than I suspect even smaller more sane opening up steps will be unpopular.

ashtonkem 6y ago
And that’s not even touching the civil litigation risk.

itronitron 6y ago

This is a nice example of private business picking up the mantle of what is ordinarily thought of as a government function. All the hostile comments (on the blog) are probably being made by people that favor small government and therefore theoretically in favor of a private company doing the survey. But apparently they don't want anyone telling them what to do.

eru 6y ago
Not sure people there have such a coherent ideology? Restaurants NOT opening when the restrictions were lifted is actually a good sign if you are interested in small government: it tells that the restrictions were most probably non-binding as a constraint. Ie they were telling people to do stuff that they would have done anyway. (Compare to eg a 0.1 dollar/h minimum wage: almost no-one would actually be at that minimum wage, so it's 'non-binding' in the same sense.) Government constraints that are non-binding or almost non-binding aren't too bad. Since they don't change market outcomes (too much).
- hippich 6y ago
  I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    I'm not sure they would be anywhere near full occupancy even without government restriction. I can imagine a significant portion of the population self-limiting to essential activities only, regardless of the level of government restrictions.
    - jonfw 6y ago
      if that was true- why bother with regulation in the first place?

disease 6y ago

The bigger story here is the comment section. Why are Americans so enamored with conspiracy theories and hate?

dawnerd 6y ago
It’s not just America... You have anti-5G/anti vaccine nuts in Canada and Europe too. We just seem to be louder.
- economicslol 6y ago
  Is it really on the same scale though? It's quite hard getting a sense of what's normal from Social Media sites since they are so US-centric. It certainly seems like a large portion of the population here misunderstand basic science, statistics, biology, economics, etc. Having been educated in the US public school system it's not that surprising that people are so poorly informed.
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    I'm not sure, like you said it's kind of hard to tell with the US bias social media and the media in general. From recently memory though, I don't think there was cases of this in the States https://apnews.com/4ac3679b6f39e8bd2561c1c8eeafd855 https://apnews.com/4ac3679b6f39e8bd2561c1c8eeafd855 (But we're definitely more radical in other areas like protesters with guns).

notyourday 6y ago

I have to say I feel really sad how out of touch with life outside most of HN posters are. It must be nice to wax about theoretical problems and theoretical solutions when one thinks he is secure about where his or her check is coming from. Let me tell you about what is happening in New York. On Saturday I saw a line three blocks long. Not tiny blocks. New York sized long blocks. That was a line filled with mostly blacks and latinos, some with children. It was barely moving. At the end of the line there was national guard giving out small shopping bags on onions, carrots and potatoes. Based on me timing it I estimate it took ~3 hours for someone joining at the end of the line to get what is, objectively, $10 worth of vegetables if bought in one of the supermarkets targeting poor Hispanic community. The only reason why they are standing in that line for three hours is because that $10 to them is money. Oh and if your state unemployment claim is "pending" then you do not get the fed $600/week unemployment either. There's a very popular Bar/restaurant in Bushwick ran by a great but rather odd dude. 191 Knickerbocker. I guess he is relatively well off or he is good enterprising guy who manages to raise a lot of money. It provides free meals a couple of times a week. No questions asked. They are not much but they would certainly get you through the day. It has a half a block long line, split relatively evenly between latinos and whites. Initially the latter group did not want to be seen in the line, hiding their faces when others whom they thought were in the same socio-economic demographics went by. Occasionally you would see people crying. By now they don't care -- just avoid eye contact. About a week ago on Saturday one of the chefy driven relief trucks showed up. The went around the entire block by the middle of the day. When the people got there, they got two small paper bags of vegetables. The lines was mostly latinos. From talking to a couple of people who were volunteering they estimated about 4 hour wait between the time one joined the line and the time to get those bags. My wife, who worked a white collar medicine related field was laid off and filed for unemployment in mid-march. Her unemployment claim is still pending. She's not alone. There are people who lost their jobs around beginning of March who are in the same boat. The NYS unemployment system does not have real time status. It does not have messaging. Its call system does not support queuing! People redial hundreds of times a day through the maze of prompts just to be disconnected because there are too many people calling. She legitimately lost it a couple of times. If I was not still making money, we would have been eating through the savings to cover rent. We rent our apartment from a family who lives in the same building. Both of them have been laid off. Neither of them have been able to get unemployment -- their claims are "pending". Every week they look more and more terrified as the only thing that lets them to put food on a table is me paying rent. And there's an eviction moratorium now until August, which means I can , at the cost of ruining a relationship with the landlord to whom I'm paying market rent, stop paying them. Oh and NYS unemployment fund is running out of money. Last week the first of my wife's friends who used to only worry about when they would be able to go out to do "girl's brunch" have been laid off. The laid off person is shell shocked. At the end of April their company was absolutely convinced there were no layoffs coming. We are only in the first act. This economic showdown only started at the end of March. Unless you own your own company and you can cut 90% of your expenses and still get enough revenue to pay yourself your white collar job is not safe. People working for companies in layoffs.fyi are the example.