3 ms·

It clearly explains what the criteria for reopening is and shows which of those criteria each region has met, and quantifies how far they’ve got to go. And it’s

by mwfunk 6y ago

It clearly explains what the criteria for reopening is and shows which of those criteria each region has met, and quantifies how far they’ve got to go. And it’s kept up to date. I can’t imagine anyone looking at this and not immediately seeing how informative and useful it is.

tqi 6y ago
That's the information that is on the dashboard... what are people supposed to do with that information?
- kevmo314 6y ago
  Probably nothing, but it provides a way for the government to answer the question "when are we going to open back up?" to being "when all the checkmarks are green" instead of "when we say so".
  - josephorjoe 6y ago
    Which is actually quite valuable as transparency from decision makers makes it much easier to evaluate the quality of their decisions and to understand whether they are being foolishly capricious or they are using facts and reasonable judgement about what should be done about an ongoing crisis. Then if you disagree with the government's position, you can base an objection on facts (e.g., one of these metrics is not set at an appropriate level or is not impactful enough to guide decision making) instead of just yelling that the government is wrong and should change what they are doing.
    - mwfunk 6y ago
      IMO this might be the biggest benefit. Whenever I feel like the US is a failed state, the reason always seems to be people demanding 1-bit answers to 128-bit questions. This shows the criteria, quantifies everything, sources everything, and clearly shows what the goals are and what the current state is. If people want to argue about when to reopen, this turns the arguments into deciding what the criteria should be and how it should be measured, rather than bullshit like "I want everything to reopen now because that's what the angry man on TV told me to think". A lot of people screaming about reopening don't even seem to realize there are criteria and metrics involved, rather that it's just some arbitrary decision arbitrarily made by governors, which is why their whining is so useless. I'd be much more open to hearing people's reopen arguments if they came in the form of, "we don't need to care about this metric, because <blah> and this other metric can be lower, and this whole stage of the process doesn't need to exist, therefore we can think about reopening earlier." Instead you get neckbeards with AR-15s and Confederate flags (in Canadian border states!) screaming at public servants about...something. I don't know. They're mad and they want something to change but they have no ideas and they don't know how to communicate with people.
- KoftaBob 6y ago
  All the employers need to know this information so they know when they can reopen. It's not like they all have some direct hotline to the governor that will call them when they can open. This is a good way to keep workplaces up to date so they can let their employees know to come back. Especially since the governor is letting every one of these regions handle reopening themselves, so it won't be some statewide announcement on TV.
  - tqi 6y ago
    But this dashboard has no information / makes no claim about potential timelines. For example, Mid Hudson has a 28% share of total beds available vs 30% threshold. There is no way for a non expert to know if a 2% delta is small or large gap. There is a difference between having a lot of data and knowing what any of it means. Business owners are (by and large) not health care experts, and I think it's a bad idea to implicitly encourage people to make their own conclusions on a very complicated issue.
- munk-a 6y ago
  As a business owner it might let you plan around how likely it will be that you'll still be allowed to be open next week and get an idea of how safe potential customers are feeling. I think it doesn't do a lot for folks that just work in an office - but there are a lot of people, business owners and HR folks, that are trying to help their employees get a better grip of what the situation is and how it's trending.
- ProAm 6y ago
  You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. How you consume and process this information is up to you and what is important to you. Expecting the government to tell you what this information means would be overreach and presumptuous. This is great data on the state of New York in terms of metrics.

by mwfunk 6y ago

tqi 6y ago

That's the information that is on the dashboard... what are people supposed to do with that information?

kevmo314 6y ago
Probably nothing, but it provides a way for the government to answer the question "when are we going to open back up?" to being "when all the checkmarks are green" instead of "when we say so".
- josephorjoe 6y ago
  Which is actually quite valuable as transparency from decision makers makes it much easier to evaluate the quality of their decisions and to understand whether they are being foolishly capricious or they are using facts and reasonable judgement about what should be done about an ongoing crisis. Then if you disagree with the government's position, you can base an objection on facts (e.g., one of these metrics is not set at an appropriate level or is not impactful enough to guide decision making) instead of just yelling that the government is wrong and should change what they are doing.
  - mwfunk 6y ago
    IMO this might be the biggest benefit. Whenever I feel like the US is a failed state, the reason always seems to be people demanding 1-bit answers to 128-bit questions. This shows the criteria, quantifies everything, sources everything, and clearly shows what the goals are and what the current state is. If people want to argue about when to reopen, this turns the arguments into deciding what the criteria should be and how it should be measured, rather than bullshit like "I want everything to reopen now because that's what the angry man on TV told me to think". A lot of people screaming about reopening don't even seem to realize there are criteria and metrics involved, rather that it's just some arbitrary decision arbitrarily made by governors, which is why their whining is so useless. I'd be much more open to hearing people's reopen arguments if they came in the form of, "we don't need to care about this metric, because <blah> and this other metric can be lower, and this whole stage of the process doesn't need to exist, therefore we can think about reopening earlier." Instead you get neckbeards with AR-15s and Confederate flags (in Canadian border states!) screaming at public servants about...something. I don't know. They're mad and they want something to change but they have no ideas and they don't know how to communicate with people.
KoftaBob 6y ago
All the employers need to know this information so they know when they can reopen. It's not like they all have some direct hotline to the governor that will call them when they can open. This is a good way to keep workplaces up to date so they can let their employees know to come back. Especially since the governor is letting every one of these regions handle reopening themselves, so it won't be some statewide announcement on TV.
- tqi 6y ago
  But this dashboard has no information / makes no claim about potential timelines. For example, Mid Hudson has a 28% share of total beds available vs 30% threshold. There is no way for a non expert to know if a 2% delta is small or large gap. There is a difference between having a lot of data and knowing what any of it means. Business owners are (by and large) not health care experts, and I think it's a bad idea to implicitly encourage people to make their own conclusions on a very complicated issue.
munk-a 6y ago
As a business owner it might let you plan around how likely it will be that you'll still be allowed to be open next week and get an idea of how safe potential customers are feeling. I think it doesn't do a lot for folks that just work in an office - but there are a lot of people, business owners and HR folks, that are trying to help their employees get a better grip of what the situation is and how it's trending.
ProAm 6y ago
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. How you consume and process this information is up to you and what is important to you. Expecting the government to tell you what this information means would be overreach and presumptuous. This is great data on the state of New York in terms of metrics.