8 ms·

I guess I will be the "Did you read the article?" guy because most of the people in the comments here are really overreacting to what was said in the article.

by slg 7y ago

I guess I will be the "Did you read the article?" guy because most of the people in the comments here are really overreacting to what was said in the article. This isn't a plan to maintain a full lockdown for the next 3 months. It was simply a comment that the stay-at-home orders are unlikely to be completely gone in three months. It is talking about the return to semi-normal life. It isn't saying all non-essential businesses need to be closed for the next 3 months. LA County has already moved to start opening up and this article says they will continue on that path.

whalesalad 7y ago
Do you live here? The article certainly mentions that there is already a slow opening occurring. The issue is a lack of trust or faith in the gov't to do that at a good enough pace, or to even do it correctly at all. The angst you are feeling from the comments is from people who live here.
- slg 7y ago
  Yes, I live in LA county and I understand the angst, but I think it is overboard to claim that residents are going to riot because they won't be able to go to a crowded bar in June.
  - ibejoeb 7y ago
    >residents are going to riot because they won't be able to go to a crowded bar in June I hate this juvenile, dismissive angle that's so pervasive here. There are serious considerations here. It's not just about enjoying life. First: how are we going to fund compulsory unemployment for another 3 months?
    - whalesalad 7y ago
      Totally. And what about all the non-essential businesses? A friend of mine owns a dog washing business. None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment and 2. he can’t re open anyways because he’s not essential. So he just sits around day after day watching his business go down the toilet.
      - triceratops 7y ago
        > None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment He should pay his employees more money.
        counterpoint1 7y ago
        He raises prices to support higher pay, dog grooming now costs $500, none of his former customers can afford it, the company goes bankrupt and the employees are back on unemployment again. You can't just pretend that every business can magically afford to raise wages. This isn't Apple paying kids in China 50 cents to build an iPhone they sell for $1,000, this is a local business that's probably barely able to pay the founder a middle-class salary in the best of times.
      - reaperducer 7y ago
        ...until unemployment insurance runs out. People like that don't understand that it's not forever. Or worse, they run it out, go back to work, then there's another lock-down because infection rates go up. Now they're not eligible for unemployment at all because they haven't paid into the system for too long. (At least that's how it works in the three states where I have experience filing for unemployment. I doubt that California lets people collect money forever.)
        harambaebae69 7y ago
        There's likely to be a teary-eyed politician who goes up in front of Congress as unemployment benefits end and insists they be renewed because it's almost Christmas and how heartless must you be to take food out of an orphans mouth during the holiday season yada yada There's a long history of this happening in the USA if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement-ebook/dp/B074P5JP8C/ https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement...
      - kevinskii 7y ago
        Once he is allowed to re-open, won't the first issue go away as well? I believe unemployment benefits are contingent on not having a job to go back to. If they're allowed to return to work and your friend wants them back, then they couldn't choose to stay home and continue to collect unemployment.
    - slg 7y ago
      Many of the people who are unemployed now will go back to work sometime in the next three months. The article is framing that three month timeline as closer to the end of the reopening process while many of the comments here, including yours, are framing that three month time frame as the start of the reopening effort.
    - seccess 7y ago
      I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted. If people are afraid to be in public, then the restaurants, bars, and shops won't see full-scale business return. Those jobs and business will be lost anyway, perhaps with more people infected than necessary. Or, we try and find some middle-ground "new normal" that lets people feel safe in public. Or something else? I have no idea and I doubt many people in this comment section really know either.
      - timr 7y ago
        "I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted." Because there's no point debating such a question. Arguing that we should leave lockdowns in place because people would be too scared to go outside even if we lifted the lockdowns, is tautological. If the argument is that people are going to stay home anyway, then we should open the economy on first principles.
        seccess 7y ago
        I don't think its that simple, because it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I think CA has the right idea to lift restrictions at the state level so that less at-risk rural areas can try it out. It will give an idea as to what LA county would need to do: if things go okay then a reopen is reasonable, if people don't feel comfortable without some kind of "distancing" rules then those would need to be considered, or something else. So yeah, of course there is a point in debating such a question. And there are real ways to find answers. Probably even better ones than what I said.
    - ravenstine 7y ago
      > It's not just about enjoying life. Even so, this is not something anyone should apologize over. Life should be worth living. To someone who has lived their whole life being able to enjoy life in any which way is experiencing a massive shock right now. Of course people want to be able to go to crowded bars, be around other people, go to concerts, ride roller coasters, get wasted, etc. We rely on these things because life is boring at best and usually bad for a lot of people. If we don't have anything to look forward to, even simple things, we lose hope. Gee, I'm really sorry that it seems selfish or even "conservative" to the smarty pants who are content living indoors and consuming media and frozen dinners. Most of us get tired of that and it becomes frightening when our jobs are in question or have no job at all. Just being able to go to a crowded bar, be around other people, having a pint, and not having to wear masks, sounds really damned good right now. I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion. EDIT: Many of the people who make that kind of argument also say "cry me a river" when someone whose business or job is "nonessential" says anything negative about their predicament. Um, you people ought to look at your own jobs and question just how "essential" they are. I don't think I've ever worked an "essential" job in my life, yet I'm payed much more than most "essential" workers are.
      - ibejoeb 7y ago
        Exactly. LA can't even open a beach. The beach is the safest place to be right now.
        slg 7y ago
        LA's beaches are starting to open tomorrow [1]. LA is making clear progress towards reopening. I understand they aren't doing it as fast as some want, but that isn't an excuse to pretend that no progress is being made at all. [1] - https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888 https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888
      - aphextron 7y ago
        >"I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion." Everyone wants to simply feel happy. Everyone is sick and tired of all of this. Everyone wants to go out to a bar and have a pint. But we can't. We just can't. And not because the government says so. But because many many many more people than necessary will die if we do. That's the reality we live in now. And not understanding that, while acting as if your feelings matter more than others' lives makes you sound like a spoiled child. That is what people are being "high and mighty" about.
    - 650REDHAIR 7y ago
      The same way we’ve funded endless wars for 20 years?
      - ibejoeb 7y ago
        Income tax.
    - messick 7y ago
      Well, if we take $2k payments and make them monthly, in a decade or so we'll reach a meaningful percentage of the direct costs of the Iraq/Afghan wars.
      - Alupis 7y ago
        $2,000 x 150,000,000 = $300,000,000,000 That's 300 billion dollars every month... And that's for only 150 million adults...(there's a lot more than that) It's estimated to have cost about 3 Trillion dollars for the Iraq war, a 17+ year conflict[1]. At $300 billion a month (on the extreme low end), that's $3 Trillion every 10 months. Put another way - we could fund another 17+ year long armed conflict every 10 months at that rate. The entire 2021 federal budget is projected to be around 4.8 Trillion... and they estimate they'll only bring in $3.8 Trillion in revenue. Disregarding that your projection is grossly innacurate, how is this something we can do? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#Indirect_and_delayed_costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_W...
        pashamur 7y ago
        I know this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but raise the top marginal tax rates. Not a nominal raise, but something significant, like 20%. And the cap gains rate as well. Basically move to a more redistributive system like Europe, which can afford to do this for a lot of their citizens. That's how we've funded war-like efforts in the past, and if this is likened to a WWII style mobilization effort (which it has been by several politicians, then the well off citizens need to pitch in much more than they are now).
        Alupis 7y ago
        It would simply not be enough. If you took all of Bill Gates' ($107 billion) and all of Jeff Bezos' ($145 billion) and all of Larry Ellison's ($59 billion) money... every single penny, you'd still wouldn't be able to pay for even a single complete month of this program. It's an enormous amount of money. What the Nordic counties do doesn't scale to the third largest country by population... Not to mention they don't pay for their own military protection (barely) among other differences. Funded wars? Wars have almost always involved massive debt being taken on by the federal government. It's just simply not feasible to run that way for long term.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    This is NYC a week ago. It goes around the block. https://ibb.co/tQdf3RS https://ibb.co/tQdf3RS It's a food line. This is what they got at the end https://ibb.co/KKnC0pd https://ibb.co/KKnC0pd Politicians simply don't get it. White collars do not get it. They will, soon. Not politicians, the white collars.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    People feed their families and provide them with healthcare by working as waiters, bartenders, and stylists. There are a lot of them. Stop acting like this is just about entitled tech workers demanding a night on the town.
    - Rebelgecko 7y ago
      Almost everyone I know in the service industry is the same or better money now compared to when they actually worked (notable exception being people that got paid under the table or lied about tips)
      - messick 7y ago
        Almost everyone you know needs to rethink their careers if they are so terrible at them. Assuming the people in your example actually exist, of course.
        Rebelgecko 7y ago
        What are you talking about? It's just a sideeffect of how unemployment + stimulus money was doled out (and how they're treated for tax purposes)
alxmdev 7y ago
For what it's worth, none of that subtlety is reflected in the article's 10+ word title, at all.
- ardy42 7y ago
  > For what it's worth, none of that subtlety is reflected in the article's 10+ word title, at all. You don't go to a headline for subtlety.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
I just don't buy it. If they were aiming to return to semi-normal life, they'd announce we're transitioning away from "stay at home". It seems very much like they're aiming to open up the bare minimum amount required to avoid riots or economic collapse, and people will continue to be ordered to stay at home.
- majormajor 7y ago
  What is the difference between your take and the parent take? All I see is you assuming a negative - but not fully described - motive of preferring to keep people at home even if there wasn't a virus out there? > “Our hope is that by using the data, we’d be able to slowly lift restrictions over the next three months,” vs >aiming to open up the bare minimum amount required to avoid riots or economic collapse why do you believe the root goal is "keep people at home" vs "respond to a disease?"
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I don't think it's a versus. I acknowledge that "keep people at home forever" is a disease response measure, not some evil plan they cooked up for no reason. But the fact that they have a reason does not make it an acceptable measure. It's especially frustrating because I've repeatedly seen people argue that it's a strawman, that nobody's really planning to stay at home forever. Even in this comments section, about an article where LA county says "yeah we're staying at home for the next 3 months at least", people insist they didn't mean it!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
orblivion 7y ago
Seems like a great argument for good branding. "Partially Closed" vs "Partially Open".
dang 7y ago
Usually the misleadiness goes no deeper than the headline, but in this case the article is also contributing, and maybe not only the article but the statements the article is reporting on. "Stay-at-home orders will with all certainty be extended for the next three months" is a strange way to describe the process of opening up. Most likely this way of putting it is the product of some political constraint-solving. I've replaced the title with a phrase from the article that manages to be both accurate and noncommittal.
jupiter90000 7y ago
One thing I wonder is how well limiting certain things people can do will work. For example, if only the beach or parks are open, will you actually have a higher concentration of people showing up there that normally wouldn't because it's one of only several choices for things to do? Even if retail is limited to like 50% capacity, will you just have the people waiting to go in the store pile up into a crowd outside waiting to go in? I doubt the stores will be able or want to enforce distancing outside their location. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

by slg 7y ago

whalesalad 7y ago

Do you live here? The article certainly mentions that there is already a slow opening occurring. The issue is a lack of trust or faith in the gov't to do that at a good enough pace, or to even do it correctly at all. The angst you are feeling from the comments is from people who live here.

slg 7y ago
Yes, I live in LA county and I understand the angst, but I think it is overboard to claim that residents are going to riot because they won't be able to go to a crowded bar in June.
- ibejoeb 7y ago
  >residents are going to riot because they won't be able to go to a crowded bar in June I hate this juvenile, dismissive angle that's so pervasive here. There are serious considerations here. It's not just about enjoying life. First: how are we going to fund compulsory unemployment for another 3 months?
  - whalesalad 7y ago
    Totally. And what about all the non-essential businesses? A friend of mine owns a dog washing business. None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment and 2. he can’t re open anyways because he’s not essential. So he just sits around day after day watching his business go down the toilet.
    - triceratops 7y ago
      > None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment He should pay his employees more money.
      - counterpoint1 7y ago
        He raises prices to support higher pay, dog grooming now costs $500, none of his former customers can afford it, the company goes bankrupt and the employees are back on unemployment again. You can't just pretend that every business can magically afford to raise wages. This isn't Apple paying kids in China 50 cents to build an iPhone they sell for $1,000, this is a local business that's probably barely able to pay the founder a middle-class salary in the best of times.
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      ...until unemployment insurance runs out. People like that don't understand that it's not forever. Or worse, they run it out, go back to work, then there's another lock-down because infection rates go up. Now they're not eligible for unemployment at all because they haven't paid into the system for too long. (At least that's how it works in the three states where I have experience filing for unemployment. I doubt that California lets people collect money forever.)
      - harambaebae69 7y ago
        There's likely to be a teary-eyed politician who goes up in front of Congress as unemployment benefits end and insists they be renewed because it's almost Christmas and how heartless must you be to take food out of an orphans mouth during the holiday season yada yada There's a long history of this happening in the USA if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement-ebook/dp/B074P5JP8C/ https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement...
    - kevinskii 7y ago
      Once he is allowed to re-open, won't the first issue go away as well? I believe unemployment benefits are contingent on not having a job to go back to. If they're allowed to return to work and your friend wants them back, then they couldn't choose to stay home and continue to collect unemployment.
  - slg 7y ago
    Many of the people who are unemployed now will go back to work sometime in the next three months. The article is framing that three month timeline as closer to the end of the reopening process while many of the comments here, including yours, are framing that three month time frame as the start of the reopening effort.
  - seccess 7y ago
    I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted. If people are afraid to be in public, then the restaurants, bars, and shops won't see full-scale business return. Those jobs and business will be lost anyway, perhaps with more people infected than necessary. Or, we try and find some middle-ground "new normal" that lets people feel safe in public. Or something else? I have no idea and I doubt many people in this comment section really know either.
    - timr 7y ago
      "I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted." Because there's no point debating such a question. Arguing that we should leave lockdowns in place because people would be too scared to go outside even if we lifted the lockdowns, is tautological. If the argument is that people are going to stay home anyway, then we should open the economy on first principles.
      - seccess 7y ago
        I don't think its that simple, because it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I think CA has the right idea to lift restrictions at the state level so that less at-risk rural areas can try it out. It will give an idea as to what LA county would need to do: if things go okay then a reopen is reasonable, if people don't feel comfortable without some kind of "distancing" rules then those would need to be considered, or something else. So yeah, of course there is a point in debating such a question. And there are real ways to find answers. Probably even better ones than what I said.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    > It's not just about enjoying life. Even so, this is not something anyone should apologize over. Life should be worth living. To someone who has lived their whole life being able to enjoy life in any which way is experiencing a massive shock right now. Of course people want to be able to go to crowded bars, be around other people, go to concerts, ride roller coasters, get wasted, etc. We rely on these things because life is boring at best and usually bad for a lot of people. If we don't have anything to look forward to, even simple things, we lose hope. Gee, I'm really sorry that it seems selfish or even "conservative" to the smarty pants who are content living indoors and consuming media and frozen dinners. Most of us get tired of that and it becomes frightening when our jobs are in question or have no job at all. Just being able to go to a crowded bar, be around other people, having a pint, and not having to wear masks, sounds really damned good right now. I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion. EDIT: Many of the people who make that kind of argument also say "cry me a river" when someone whose business or job is "nonessential" says anything negative about their predicament. Um, you people ought to look at your own jobs and question just how "essential" they are. I don't think I've ever worked an "essential" job in my life, yet I'm payed much more than most "essential" workers are.
    - ibejoeb 7y ago
      Exactly. LA can't even open a beach. The beach is the safest place to be right now.
      - slg 7y ago
        LA's beaches are starting to open tomorrow [1]. LA is making clear progress towards reopening. I understand they aren't doing it as fast as some want, but that isn't an excuse to pretend that no progress is being made at all. [1] - https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888 https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888
    - aphextron 7y ago
      >"I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion." Everyone wants to simply feel happy. Everyone is sick and tired of all of this. Everyone wants to go out to a bar and have a pint. But we can't. We just can't. And not because the government says so. But because many many many more people than necessary will die if we do. That's the reality we live in now. And not understanding that, while acting as if your feelings matter more than others' lives makes you sound like a spoiled child. That is what people are being "high and mighty" about.
  - 650REDHAIR 7y ago
    The same way we’ve funded endless wars for 20 years?
    - ibejoeb 7y ago
      Income tax.
  - messick 7y ago
    Well, if we take $2k payments and make them monthly, in a decade or so we'll reach a meaningful percentage of the direct costs of the Iraq/Afghan wars.
    - Alupis 7y ago
      $2,000 x 150,000,000 = $300,000,000,000 That's 300 billion dollars every month... And that's for only 150 million adults...(there's a lot more than that) It's estimated to have cost about 3 Trillion dollars for the Iraq war, a 17+ year conflict[1]. At $300 billion a month (on the extreme low end), that's $3 Trillion every 10 months. Put another way - we could fund another 17+ year long armed conflict every 10 months at that rate. The entire 2021 federal budget is projected to be around 4.8 Trillion... and they estimate they'll only bring in $3.8 Trillion in revenue. Disregarding that your projection is grossly innacurate, how is this something we can do? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#Indirect_and_delayed_costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_W...
      - pashamur 7y ago
        I know this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but raise the top marginal tax rates. Not a nominal raise, but something significant, like 20%. And the cap gains rate as well. Basically move to a more redistributive system like Europe, which can afford to do this for a lot of their citizens. That's how we've funded war-like efforts in the past, and if this is likened to a WWII style mobilization effort (which it has been by several politicians, then the well off citizens need to pitch in much more than they are now).
        Alupis 7y ago
        It would simply not be enough. If you took all of Bill Gates' ($107 billion) and all of Jeff Bezos' ($145 billion) and all of Larry Ellison's ($59 billion) money... every single penny, you'd still wouldn't be able to pay for even a single complete month of this program. It's an enormous amount of money. What the Nordic counties do doesn't scale to the third largest country by population... Not to mention they don't pay for their own military protection (barely) among other differences. Funded wars? Wars have almost always involved massive debt being taken on by the federal government. It's just simply not feasible to run that way for long term.
- notyourday 7y ago
  This is NYC a week ago. It goes around the block. https://ibb.co/tQdf3RS https://ibb.co/tQdf3RS It's a food line. This is what they got at the end https://ibb.co/KKnC0pd https://ibb.co/KKnC0pd Politicians simply don't get it. White collars do not get it. They will, soon. Not politicians, the white collars.
- nostromo 7y ago
  People feed their families and provide them with healthcare by working as waiters, bartenders, and stylists. There are a lot of them. Stop acting like this is just about entitled tech workers demanding a night on the town.
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    Almost everyone I know in the service industry is the same or better money now compared to when they actually worked (notable exception being people that got paid under the table or lied about tips)
    - messick 7y ago
      Almost everyone you know needs to rethink their careers if they are so terrible at them. Assuming the people in your example actually exist, of course.
      - Rebelgecko 7y ago
        What are you talking about? It's just a sideeffect of how unemployment + stimulus money was doled out (and how they're treated for tax purposes)

alxmdev 7y ago

For what it's worth, none of that subtlety is reflected in the article's 10+ word title, at all.

ardy42 7y ago
> For what it's worth, none of that subtlety is reflected in the article's 10+ word title, at all. You don't go to a headline for subtlety.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

I just don't buy it. If they were aiming to return to semi-normal life, they'd announce we're transitioning away from "stay at home". It seems very much like they're aiming to open up the bare minimum amount required to avoid riots or economic collapse, and people will continue to be ordered to stay at home.

majormajor 7y ago
What is the difference between your take and the parent take? All I see is you assuming a negative - but not fully described - motive of preferring to keep people at home even if there wasn't a virus out there? > “Our hope is that by using the data, we’d be able to slowly lift restrictions over the next three months,” vs >aiming to open up the bare minimum amount required to avoid riots or economic collapse why do you believe the root goal is "keep people at home" vs "respond to a disease?"
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I don't think it's a versus. I acknowledge that "keep people at home forever" is a disease response measure, not some evil plan they cooked up for no reason. But the fact that they have a reason does not make it an acceptable measure. It's especially frustrating because I've repeatedly seen people argue that it's a strawman, that nobody's really planning to stay at home forever. Even in this comments section, about an article where LA county says "yeah we're staying at home for the next 3 months at least", people insist they didn't mean it!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

orblivion 7y ago

Seems like a great argument for good branding. "Partially Closed" vs "Partially Open".

dang 7y ago

Usually the misleadiness goes no deeper than the headline, but in this case the article is also contributing, and maybe not only the article but the statements the article is reporting on. "Stay-at-home orders will with all certainty be extended for the next three months" is a strange way to describe the process of opening up. Most likely this way of putting it is the product of some political constraint-solving. I've replaced the title with a phrase from the article that manages to be both accurate and noncommittal.

jupiter90000 7y ago

One thing I wonder is how well limiting certain things people can do will work. For example, if only the beach or parks are open, will you actually have a higher concentration of people showing up there that normally wouldn't because it's one of only several choices for things to do? Even if retail is limited to like 50% capacity, will you just have the people waiting to go in the store pile up into a crowd outside waiting to go in? I doubt the stores will be able or want to enforce distancing outside their location. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.