6 ms·

> 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-

> 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
        the same reason they promote slashing public programs, welfare, benefits
      - davidw 7y 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 7y ago
        That would mean it's safe for Dallas to open up, since the state is doing test/trace/isolate and the city requires masks in enclosed spaces.
        davidw 7y ago
        This site doesn't show Texas as really having the capacity to do that effectively, but it could be wrong or a bit out of date, as much is these days even if well-intentioned. https://testandtrace.com/ https://testandtrace.com/ Mark Cuban's article indicates that masks are not as prevalent as they ought to be.
        SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        This kind of site is a core example of why people are skeptical of the "false choice, we can open up responsibly" narrative. In practice, if a graphic designer makes a nice-looking chart where a state is red, that seems to be treated as a conclusive argument that opening up isn't responsible. The site doesn't appear to have any specific argument why Texas is wrong to think it can safely open up, just fixed numerical thresholds which Texas hasn't hit.
- puranjay 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
Yeah. Sure you can reopen restaurants if you want, but I certainly will not go.

aphextron 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
      the same reason they promote slashing public programs, welfare, benefits
    - davidw 7y 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 7y ago
        That would mean it's safe for Dallas to open up, since the state is doing test/trace/isolate and the city requires masks in enclosed spaces.
        davidw 7y ago
        This site doesn't show Texas as really having the capacity to do that effectively, but it could be wrong or a bit out of date, as much is these days even if well-intentioned. https://testandtrace.com/ https://testandtrace.com/ Mark Cuban's article indicates that masks are not as prevalent as they ought to be.
        SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        This kind of site is a core example of why people are skeptical of the "false choice, we can open up responsibly" narrative. In practice, if a graphic designer makes a nice-looking chart where a state is red, that seems to be treated as a conclusive argument that opening up isn't responsible. The site doesn't appear to have any specific argument why Texas is wrong to think it can safely open up, just fixed numerical thresholds which Texas hasn't hit.
puranjay 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago

Yeah. Sure you can reopen restaurants if you want, but I certainly will not go.