12 ms·

In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

62 points by tzvsi 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
May never operate strictly in person again, was the original title. I guess I'll give the benefit of the doubt that it was an honest mistake, but it's a mistake that vastly changes the meaning of the headline.
- prvc 6y ago
  Most definitely. I was clickbaited by this. Even the correct headline puts a negative spin on something which is potentially even beneficial though.
- dang 6y ago
  Agreed - I just posted about this before I saw your comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295148
- DennisP 6y ago
  What is the length limit on HN titles?
jakozaur 6y ago
In Poland tele consultation in healthcare were rare. Now it is the norm including drug prescribtion and paid sick leave. Some consultations will go back, but a lot of changes will become the new norm.
- jagger27 6y ago
  Telehealth is a great asset. Minor diagnostics can be done so much faster without waiting rooms and checkins while freeing up more time and space for more serious in-person care.
ars 6y ago
This seems like the biggest social transition since the always-connected cellphone/smartphone.
- asveikau 6y ago
  I don't understand why people are assuming this instead of the easier explanation of that (1) things will eventually bounce back and (2) somebody born in 1-2 generations will have no idea what the pandemic was like. As precedent, I cite the 1918 flu. In 1918 people were getting arrested for not wearing masks. The following decade was called "The Roaring '20s," and I don't presume it roared because of all the social distancing and masks. All of us reading were born later, and if we heard about the 1918 flu, maybe in a history class as I remember, most of us probably reacted with ... "what? what's so bad about a flu?" Society moved on pretty quickly. Now, SARS-CoV-2 happened 17 years after SARS-CoV, so the counter-point to this argument is maybe we get more of these things in the coming decades. But. I still think it's pretty likely our grandkids forget about all this. Edit: I guess another difference vs 100 years ago is we now have the technology to do things at a distance. So yes, maybe some people will find they prefer to do some things over video streaming and it sticks. I still think in-person stuff will make a comeback.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    My mom doesn't recall even hearing much about the 1956 flu.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Before this, I wouldn't have remembered unprompted that there was a 1956/57 flu and, even prompted, I couldn't really have told you anything about it. My understanding is it did spread fairly slowly and didn't affect the US much. Perhaps the far lesser amount of international travel at the time played some role.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    The Spanish Flu happened before the rise of the modern welfare states. Now that the state is responsible for healthcare in many developed nations, there is enormous pressure to keep the levels of infected low in order to avoid burdening the public health system. Also, it may be that today the elderly are such a crucial block for winning votes, that politicians are under pressure to show they are protecting the elderly even if a disease has less impact on younger demographics. The incredibly strict rules which e.g. France and Belgium instituted during the lockdown struck me as extreme and an unprecedented limitation on citizens’ freedom, but the authorities must have felt that they absolutely had to take this action. The way the lockdown has proceeded shows that the state has the necessary police apparatus in place to enforce whatever hygiene rules they want. That level of decisiveness was not present during the Spanish Flu, and so things do not necessarily have to go back to normal.
madengr 6y ago
My kids have been having their music lessons (cello & viola) remotely since the quarantine. For the advanced student, I can see 50% of lessons workable as remote, but not more than that. My kid may switch to every other lesson remote (two lessons per week at 45 minutes each). For the beginner, it doesn’t work that well, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
- sitkack 6y ago
  But we need to figure out why the initial lessons are better in person than remote. It could be that small changes are needed in camera placement, or screens or something we haven't thought of. For many instruments you outline, it is how the bow or the instrument is held, this might be better online with the right tools, esp if you had multicamera pose estimation, it might not even need a teacher the majority of the time. Or, it might listen to the student and tell them they should rest or contact the teacher for some realtime feedback. Are instruction times the length they are because of other issues? Should they be longer or shorter? Can a single teacher oversee multiple students at the same time? Does it _need_ to be 1:1 for the whole session?
  - triyambakam 6y ago
    Why do we _need_ to figure that out? Humans _need_ real in person interaction for health. I don't want to live one hundred percent of my life remotely.
  - learnstats2 6y ago
    You're proposing essentially that the vast amount of skill that teachers have (as educators) can now be replaced by robots. That wasn't the case before coronavirus and won't be the case afterwards. The best robot teacher that exists is Duolingo, and I don't know a single person who has learned a language to a conversational level that way.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Language and music aren't the same; arguably, the part of the class that involves learning how to hold an instrument correctly could be replaced by technology. As for why this wasn't the case before coronavirus: there was no reason to. There wasn't good enough of a market. Now, there is, so perhaps some ideas from this situation will stick around for longer. (Then again, I've heard numerous reports that in general, remote school classes are a huge dumpster fire. I don't expect any of that staying when the schools are allowed to reopen. But maybe the postmortems will bring some nuggets of insight about effective remote schooling.)
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
Wherein "never [...] again" means "for as long as we remember current events". Which may last a couple years, a couple decades, or anything in between.
lykr0n 6y ago
I can't see myself wanting do continue doing anything remote when it's safe to stop. A lot of these articles are "we wern't doing this before COVID-19, but now we can't go out we're doing this remotely and therefor we're going to do this after the threat of COVID-19 disappears." I do like the increased options, but part of the reason I like to go visit my Therapist's office is that it's an office. I'm going to a different location at a set time to do something- doing it over Zoom is a good alternative to not having it but I feel like I get less out of it. In part because I live in a small apartment and there is a bunch of distraction, but also It feels impersonal. My guess is a lot of people will want the option to have virtual session/whatever, but few will take it consistently. I love have the option to work remotely when I want to, but I almost never do because I'm more productive in the office. It's nice option to have if I don't wake up on time.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Do you think that would be different if you lived in a place big enough for a dedicated office?
  - lykr0n 6y ago
    It sure would make it better, and this WFH shit has made me start to looming for a larger place that can do this. But this doesn't scale for everyone- they either can't afford a larger place or the area can't support it. The big thing for me is going some place else allows for a shifting of mindset. I don't want my therapist's office to be the same place where I work which is the same place I get doctors appointments
    - lonelappde 6y ago
      There may be other solutions. What if instead of spending an hour commuting to the therapist, you spend half an hour ritually preparing your room for therapy? Hanging a curtain, switchin the lighting color, etc. What if you had a VR-CAVE-like projection system and you downloaded a "wallpaper" from your therapist for use in your session?
LockAndLol 6y ago
> That being said, my whole team, myself included, are noticing that as we continue to provide Zoom sessions we’re getting better and better client sessions; we’re having breakthroughs all the time now. Excuse me, but Zoom? How is that still allowed in healthcare? Are all privacy issues resolved?
- navbaker 6y ago
  Paid versions of Zoom implement stricter privacy measures and conform to formal security audits. I work for a government contractor and the paid version of Zoom we use is certified for official business according to some arcane standard.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    So you figure Zoom lied to ordinary users saving all the money and effort needed to do it properly, but they made sure to also build a special secure version for their "paid" users who have an official certification? Let me suggest a question you'd be better off asking. Imagine that to your astonishment they just pocketed the money and gave you the same crap as everybody else, who do you think pays? Have you seen anywhere a pile of money you get as a prize if they'd just lied? No? Because there isn't one.
    - navbaker 6y ago
      I’m just relaying the (presumably reliable) information given to us by our fairly robust IT department. If you have credible evidence that Zoom is lying to their corporate partners, I will absolutely pass it along!
narrator 6y ago
So we're all going to learn to cut our own hair and pull our own teeth?
- tzs 6y ago
  If you don't live alone, it's not actually all that hard to do home haircuts if you just want a basic haircut. The 1500 hours of training it takes to get a class A barber certificate in Texas (the first state whose requirements I happened to find on the web), which I presume is similar for barbers in other states, covers a whole lot more than just a simple haircut. A lot of things that can be done reasonably easily, at least in a basic way, at home require a lot more training and preparation when offered as a service to the public. When offering a service to the public you have to deal with a much wider variety of situations, and you have a much higher volume making things like sanitation a lot more important. (For anyone curious, that 1500 hours is 180 hours of theory, and 1320 hours in instruction and practical work. The theory is 50 hours of anatomy, physiology, and histology of hair, skin, muscles, nerves, cells, circulatory system, digestion, and bones; 35 hours of barber laws and rules; 30 hours of bacteriology, sterilization, and sanitation; 10 hours on disorders of the skin, scalp, and hair; 5 on each of salesmanship, barbershop management, chemistry, shaving, (scalp, hair treatments, and skin); 4 each on sanitary professional techniques, professional ethics, and the scientific fundamentals of barbering; 3 on cosmetic preparations; 2 each on (shampooing and rinsing), (cutting and processing curly and over-curly hair), (haircutting, male and female), and (theory of massage of scalp, face, and neck). 1 hour each on (hygiene and good grooming), barber implements, (honing and stropping), (mustaches and beards), facial treatments, (electricity and light therapy), and history of barbering. The 1320 practical work is 800 hours of cutting (men's, women's, children's, curly, and razor), 80 hours of shaving, 55 of styling, 40 of shampooing and rinsing, 30 of bleaching and dyeing, 28 or waving, 25 of straightening, 25 of cleansing, 22 of professional ethics (how does this differ from the 4 hours covered in the theory part, I wonder?), 22 of barbershop management, and a bunch more subjects requiring from 8 to 17 hours).
  - sonthonax 6y ago
    Not to denigrate the profession, but the ‘theory of barbering’, would be the most infuriatingly mediocre 5 working weeks. While plenty of barbers are smart people, you don’t need to smart to be a barber. I’m fairly sure the reason there’s 50 hours of anatomy alone is so the lowest common denominator can pass.
ttul 6y ago
Consider that there may never be an effective vaccine. It may take a decade for enough people to obtain some level of immunity or for the virus to mutate to a less dangerous form.
- ghaff 6y ago
  People are going to go back to living some semblance of normally, vaccine or not. They already are in many places.
- ttul 6y ago
  Why the downvotes for this comment? Do any of you even listen to TWIV?
booleandilemma 6y ago
I know this isn't the popular opinion, but aren't we blowing the virus out of proportion a bit? Don't something like 20-25% of all New Yorkers already have antibodies? Doesn't that show the virus isn't that dangerous? The body count would be in the millions by now.
- htnsao 6y ago
  Yeah for most it's just a dry cough, if that. The worry worts and the pansies have wrecked the economy.
- tzs 6y ago
  > Don't something like 20-25% of all New Yorkers already have antibodies? Doesn't that show the virus isn't that dangerous? The body count would be in the millions by now. For many viral diseases the severity in a particular individual depends on how much of the virus they were exposed do. I don't believe that know yet if COVID-19 is such a disease. For such diseases, you could have a case where a large fraction of the population is going to get it regardless of whether you continue as normal or you social distance and stay at home as much as feasible, but in the former case most get a large enough dose to get very sick or die and the the latter case most get a small enough dose to not get sick or just get mildly sick. In both cases you would have a large fraction with antibodies.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  With all respect, I find this perspective incomprehensible, astonishing, deeply depressing. My take, as a NYer, as someone working on a COVID project, as someone who so far has been lucky to only know of one serious hospitalization in my extended circle- it is exceptionally dangerous. I use the phrase "Russian Roulette" and I stand by that. 1% of likely-infected New Yorkers have died. Probably at least 80% of the NYC population remains at risk. It does not just target and kill the elderly and infirm. Of teens and pre-teens, New York City has seen thousands of infections, hundreds of hospitalizations, many dozens of deaths. Every age, every demographic impacted. There is so much we don't know about exposure to infection dynamics, about symptomatic vs asymptomatic progression, about medium and long term impacts. Yes, life presents all kinds of dangers, people have to work, all sorts of essential jobs have to be staffed, the absolute failure of the Federal government "leadership" to do even the minimum from a financial, logistic, or medical perspective is unforgivably, sociopathically criminal and reduces the practical options on the table- ALL that aside this virus is no effing joke. The only reason body counts US-wide are not in the millions is because of shutdowns and various bits of behavioral and epidemiological good fortune the details of which we will only figure out later. It is almost certainly the case that 90% or more of the US population remain vulnerable, and if people become careless, deaths will rise again. One more point- I have been in many internet arguments about the various statistical/aggregate measures, eg suggestions that only 30% antibody prevalence may be enough for herd immunity, studies of superspreaders, etc- Aggregate statistics are BS. They tell you nothing about you or your family's individual risk in any specific situation. The number of people "doing everything right" yet winding up in the hospital is countless (as are the people doing everything wrong and remaining well). We know a lot yet are still just looking for the keys under the streetlamp. We are not done with this. This may only be the end of the beginning. Stay safe. Cheers.
jeffrallen 6y ago
Remote everything sucks and I will stop doing it all as soon as possible. Humans need stories, and stories take place in sets. Seeing the entirety of your life through a window on your computer is not a life.
- neonate 6y ago
  Nicely put.
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  Would you say that virtual reality isn't ready yet or that it will never be ready?
- andarleen 6y ago
  But isn't that what you mainly do in an office? For some that is not life either. Having friends outside of work, a family, a house you enjoy living in may change your perception. Not saying this on and argumentative tone. Just take into account there is more to commuting and sitting in an office all day.
- 2019-nCoV 6y ago
  The most intolerant wins. Now entrenched, most businesses will never veer from being remote-centric again.
- indigochill 6y ago
  This description immediately called to mind Rear Window for me, which largely takes place in a single apartment and is widely considered a classic film. But ironic pedantry aside, I do agree people need to get out. Even as a homebody I find myself getting grumpy if I don't get out for some sun and fresh air once in a while.
  - lonelappde 6y ago
    Rear Window wasn't about how great it was to live in that apartment. It was about someone stuck in an apartment escaping by watching other people's apartments.
mdoms 6y ago
This is very strange to read from here in New Zealand, where life is fairly close to getting back to normal. I don't see any reason why our basic lifestyles should be permanently changed by this virus. As bad as things feel now, we will eventually get on top of the epidemic and in a few short years this period will be a distant memory. I'm not saying there won't be permanent changes - I believe this is a catalyst that will make remote working the norm for many industries, including my own. But I have been hearing, for example, American podcast hosts saying they may never step inside a restaurant again (this was on The Argument, and all three hosts agreed) or people claiming that the tourism industry is permanently neutered. I just don't see human behaviours changing so dramatically, and I don't see any reason why we should be more afraid of Coronavirus in 10 years than we are of Polio today.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  yes I have no doubt that as soon as there is immunity, a vaccine, or a reliable cheap treatment (all of which is probably a matter of months or 1-2 years) people will fully go back to normal. We're social animals and we're not going to ditch physical interaction. (not to mention that research by people like Alex Pentland suggests that physical contact in a common workplace has benefits that can't be replicated remotely). Companies like Yahoo and IBM already tried out remote working and rolled their efforts back, this is simply an overraction. With the exception of telemedicine for underserved regions maybe, where it fills a genuine gap and suffered from regulation up until now.
- baxtr 6y ago
  People tend to forget that we experience pandemics every now and then. In-between life is “normal”. Just remember the famous picture of police men having all a mask on from 1918 or so. I am sure they were gone by 1920 or so
  - glofish 6y ago
    exactly, as far as the previous pandemics go this one is fairly mild, have you heard of the Hong Kong flu of 1968? Killed over a million people, we haven't even heard of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu we won't forget this virus for long time, but not because of the damage it does, but because of the damage we did to ourselves
crazygringo 6y ago
It's interesting, therapy has some pretty unique properties where in-person vs. remote can be better depending on the person. For some people, having a literal physical "safe space" and an understanding human does wonders, and there's connection and understanding that seems like it might be hard to replicate virtually. But for other people, the distance that video or phone provides actually gives them the ability to open up more than in person -- precisely because it seems less personal and therefore less threatening or potentially judging. After all, it's just a disembodied voice or a floating head on a screen. So it's pretty good to have a mix of options.
- type0 6y ago
  What are you basing this on, personal anecdotal evidence?
dang 6y ago
This submission provided a fun example of title editing. The article title exceeds HN's 80 char limit, so had to be changed. The submitted title was "Industries that provided in-person services may never operate in-person again", which is not bad, but it's a bit misleading. The qualifier "strictly" is important, because without it you get kind of the opposite of what the article is actually saying, which is more along the lines of this quote: "You’re going to still see your doctor, but now you’ll be adjunctively cared for virtually as well" It's a subtle distinction, but it's consistently surprising how small nuances in titles produce widely divergent discussions. A comment like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23294773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23294773, to take an obvious example, is a reflexive objection to the submitted title ("may never operate in-person again") but the word "strictly" defangs that objection in advance. There are other comments in this thread that you can tell were mostly reacting to the submitted title, too, since they're arguing with something it said, rather than what the article says. Why this is fun: it turns out that you can take a strict substring of the article title (in this case a tail) which solves the problem perfectly. That is my favorite category of title-shortening. Often the substring isn't obvious at first and you get a satisfying click when you realize it works.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jagged-chisel 6y ago
Does anyone offer face-to-face service over video chat? That's what I'd like to see.
kwhitefoot 6y ago
So nail bars, hair dressers, physiotherapists, dog groomers, painters and decorators, gardeners, and loads more are suddenly going to be equipped with, or replaced by, remote controlled robots? Never mind that quite a few people actually enjoy being physically close to others. The world is bigger than the Globe and Mail seems to think.

62 points by tzvsi 6y ago

May never operate strictly in person again, was the original title. I guess I'll give the benefit of the doubt that it was an honest mistake, but it's a mistake that vastly changes the meaning of the headline.

prvc 6y ago
Most definitely. I was clickbaited by this. Even the correct headline puts a negative spin on something which is potentially even beneficial though.
dang 6y ago
Agreed - I just posted about this before I saw your comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295148
DennisP 6y ago
What is the length limit on HN titles?

jakozaur 6y ago

In Poland tele consultation in healthcare were rare. Now it is the norm including drug prescribtion and paid sick leave. Some consultations will go back, but a lot of changes will become the new norm.

jagger27 6y ago
Telehealth is a great asset. Minor diagnostics can be done so much faster without waiting rooms and checkins while freeing up more time and space for more serious in-person care.

ars 6y ago

This seems like the biggest social transition since the always-connected cellphone/smartphone.

asveikau 6y ago
I don't understand why people are assuming this instead of the easier explanation of that (1) things will eventually bounce back and (2) somebody born in 1-2 generations will have no idea what the pandemic was like. As precedent, I cite the 1918 flu. In 1918 people were getting arrested for not wearing masks. The following decade was called "The Roaring '20s," and I don't presume it roared because of all the social distancing and masks. All of us reading were born later, and if we heard about the 1918 flu, maybe in a history class as I remember, most of us probably reacted with ... "what? what's so bad about a flu?" Society moved on pretty quickly. Now, SARS-CoV-2 happened 17 years after SARS-CoV, so the counter-point to this argument is maybe we get more of these things in the coming decades. But. I still think it's pretty likely our grandkids forget about all this. Edit: I guess another difference vs 100 years ago is we now have the technology to do things at a distance. So yes, maybe some people will find they prefer to do some things over video streaming and it sticks. I still think in-person stuff will make a comeback.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  My mom doesn't recall even hearing much about the 1956 flu.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Before this, I wouldn't have remembered unprompted that there was a 1956/57 flu and, even prompted, I couldn't really have told you anything about it. My understanding is it did spread fairly slowly and didn't affect the US much. Perhaps the far lesser amount of international travel at the time played some role.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  The Spanish Flu happened before the rise of the modern welfare states. Now that the state is responsible for healthcare in many developed nations, there is enormous pressure to keep the levels of infected low in order to avoid burdening the public health system. Also, it may be that today the elderly are such a crucial block for winning votes, that politicians are under pressure to show they are protecting the elderly even if a disease has less impact on younger demographics. The incredibly strict rules which e.g. France and Belgium instituted during the lockdown struck me as extreme and an unprecedented limitation on citizens’ freedom, but the authorities must have felt that they absolutely had to take this action. The way the lockdown has proceeded shows that the state has the necessary police apparatus in place to enforce whatever hygiene rules they want. That level of decisiveness was not present during the Spanish Flu, and so things do not necessarily have to go back to normal.

madengr 6y ago

My kids have been having their music lessons (cello & viola) remotely since the quarantine. For the advanced student, I can see 50% of lessons workable as remote, but not more than that. My kid may switch to every other lesson remote (two lessons per week at 45 minutes each). For the beginner, it doesn’t work that well, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

sitkack 6y ago
But we need to figure out why the initial lessons are better in person than remote. It could be that small changes are needed in camera placement, or screens or something we haven't thought of. For many instruments you outline, it is how the bow or the instrument is held, this might be better online with the right tools, esp if you had multicamera pose estimation, it might not even need a teacher the majority of the time. Or, it might listen to the student and tell them they should rest or contact the teacher for some realtime feedback. Are instruction times the length they are because of other issues? Should they be longer or shorter? Can a single teacher oversee multiple students at the same time? Does it _need_ to be 1:1 for the whole session?
- triyambakam 6y ago
  Why do we _need_ to figure that out? Humans _need_ real in person interaction for health. I don't want to live one hundred percent of my life remotely.
- learnstats2 6y ago
  You're proposing essentially that the vast amount of skill that teachers have (as educators) can now be replaced by robots. That wasn't the case before coronavirus and won't be the case afterwards. The best robot teacher that exists is Duolingo, and I don't know a single person who has learned a language to a conversational level that way.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Language and music aren't the same; arguably, the part of the class that involves learning how to hold an instrument correctly could be replaced by technology. As for why this wasn't the case before coronavirus: there was no reason to. There wasn't good enough of a market. Now, there is, so perhaps some ideas from this situation will stick around for longer. (Then again, I've heard numerous reports that in general, remote school classes are a huge dumpster fire. I don't expect any of that staying when the schools are allowed to reopen. But maybe the postmortems will bring some nuggets of insight about effective remote schooling.)

Florin_Andrei 6y ago

Wherein "never [...] again" means "for as long as we remember current events". Which may last a couple years, a couple decades, or anything in between.

lykr0n 6y ago

I can't see myself wanting do continue doing anything remote when it's safe to stop. A lot of these articles are "we wern't doing this before COVID-19, but now we can't go out we're doing this remotely and therefor we're going to do this after the threat of COVID-19 disappears." I do like the increased options, but part of the reason I like to go visit my Therapist's office is that it's an office. I'm going to a different location at a set time to do something- doing it over Zoom is a good alternative to not having it but I feel like I get less out of it. In part because I live in a small apartment and there is a bunch of distraction, but also It feels impersonal. My guess is a lot of people will want the option to have virtual session/whatever, but few will take it consistently. I love have the option to work remotely when I want to, but I almost never do because I'm more productive in the office. It's nice option to have if I don't wake up on time.

kortilla 6y ago
Do you think that would be different if you lived in a place big enough for a dedicated office?
- lykr0n 6y ago
  It sure would make it better, and this WFH shit has made me start to looming for a larger place that can do this. But this doesn't scale for everyone- they either can't afford a larger place or the area can't support it. The big thing for me is going some place else allows for a shifting of mindset. I don't want my therapist's office to be the same place where I work which is the same place I get doctors appointments
  - lonelappde 6y ago
    There may be other solutions. What if instead of spending an hour commuting to the therapist, you spend half an hour ritually preparing your room for therapy? Hanging a curtain, switchin the lighting color, etc. What if you had a VR-CAVE-like projection system and you downloaded a "wallpaper" from your therapist for use in your session?

LockAndLol 6y ago

> That being said, my whole team, myself included, are noticing that as we continue to provide Zoom sessions we’re getting better and better client sessions; we’re having breakthroughs all the time now. Excuse me, but Zoom? How is that still allowed in healthcare? Are all privacy issues resolved?

navbaker 6y ago
Paid versions of Zoom implement stricter privacy measures and conform to formal security audits. I work for a government contractor and the paid version of Zoom we use is certified for official business according to some arcane standard.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  So you figure Zoom lied to ordinary users saving all the money and effort needed to do it properly, but they made sure to also build a special secure version for their "paid" users who have an official certification? Let me suggest a question you'd be better off asking. Imagine that to your astonishment they just pocketed the money and gave you the same crap as everybody else, who do you think pays? Have you seen anywhere a pile of money you get as a prize if they'd just lied? No? Because there isn't one.
  - navbaker 6y ago
    I’m just relaying the (presumably reliable) information given to us by our fairly robust IT department. If you have credible evidence that Zoom is lying to their corporate partners, I will absolutely pass it along!

narrator 6y ago

So we're all going to learn to cut our own hair and pull our own teeth?

tzs 6y ago
If you don't live alone, it's not actually all that hard to do home haircuts if you just want a basic haircut. The 1500 hours of training it takes to get a class A barber certificate in Texas (the first state whose requirements I happened to find on the web), which I presume is similar for barbers in other states, covers a whole lot more than just a simple haircut. A lot of things that can be done reasonably easily, at least in a basic way, at home require a lot more training and preparation when offered as a service to the public. When offering a service to the public you have to deal with a much wider variety of situations, and you have a much higher volume making things like sanitation a lot more important. (For anyone curious, that 1500 hours is 180 hours of theory, and 1320 hours in instruction and practical work. The theory is 50 hours of anatomy, physiology, and histology of hair, skin, muscles, nerves, cells, circulatory system, digestion, and bones; 35 hours of barber laws and rules; 30 hours of bacteriology, sterilization, and sanitation; 10 hours on disorders of the skin, scalp, and hair; 5 on each of salesmanship, barbershop management, chemistry, shaving, (scalp, hair treatments, and skin); 4 each on sanitary professional techniques, professional ethics, and the scientific fundamentals of barbering; 3 on cosmetic preparations; 2 each on (shampooing and rinsing), (cutting and processing curly and over-curly hair), (haircutting, male and female), and (theory of massage of scalp, face, and neck). 1 hour each on (hygiene and good grooming), barber implements, (honing and stropping), (mustaches and beards), facial treatments, (electricity and light therapy), and history of barbering. The 1320 practical work is 800 hours of cutting (men's, women's, children's, curly, and razor), 80 hours of shaving, 55 of styling, 40 of shampooing and rinsing, 30 of bleaching and dyeing, 28 or waving, 25 of straightening, 25 of cleansing, 22 of professional ethics (how does this differ from the 4 hours covered in the theory part, I wonder?), 22 of barbershop management, and a bunch more subjects requiring from 8 to 17 hours).
- sonthonax 6y ago
  Not to denigrate the profession, but the ‘theory of barbering’, would be the most infuriatingly mediocre 5 working weeks. While plenty of barbers are smart people, you don’t need to smart to be a barber. I’m fairly sure the reason there’s 50 hours of anatomy alone is so the lowest common denominator can pass.

ttul 6y ago

Consider that there may never be an effective vaccine. It may take a decade for enough people to obtain some level of immunity or for the virus to mutate to a less dangerous form.

ghaff 6y ago
People are going to go back to living some semblance of normally, vaccine or not. They already are in many places.
ttul 6y ago
Why the downvotes for this comment? Do any of you even listen to TWIV?

booleandilemma 6y ago

I know this isn't the popular opinion, but aren't we blowing the virus out of proportion a bit? Don't something like 20-25% of all New Yorkers already have antibodies? Doesn't that show the virus isn't that dangerous? The body count would be in the millions by now.

htnsao 6y ago
Yeah for most it's just a dry cough, if that. The worry worts and the pansies have wrecked the economy.
tzs 6y ago
> Don't something like 20-25% of all New Yorkers already have antibodies? Doesn't that show the virus isn't that dangerous? The body count would be in the millions by now. For many viral diseases the severity in a particular individual depends on how much of the virus they were exposed do. I don't believe that know yet if COVID-19 is such a disease. For such diseases, you could have a case where a large fraction of the population is going to get it regardless of whether you continue as normal or you social distance and stay at home as much as feasible, but in the former case most get a large enough dose to get very sick or die and the the latter case most get a small enough dose to not get sick or just get mildly sick. In both cases you would have a large fraction with antibodies.
jonahbenton 6y ago
With all respect, I find this perspective incomprehensible, astonishing, deeply depressing. My take, as a NYer, as someone working on a COVID project, as someone who so far has been lucky to only know of one serious hospitalization in my extended circle- it is exceptionally dangerous. I use the phrase "Russian Roulette" and I stand by that. 1% of likely-infected New Yorkers have died. Probably at least 80% of the NYC population remains at risk. It does not just target and kill the elderly and infirm. Of teens and pre-teens, New York City has seen thousands of infections, hundreds of hospitalizations, many dozens of deaths. Every age, every demographic impacted. There is so much we don't know about exposure to infection dynamics, about symptomatic vs asymptomatic progression, about medium and long term impacts. Yes, life presents all kinds of dangers, people have to work, all sorts of essential jobs have to be staffed, the absolute failure of the Federal government "leadership" to do even the minimum from a financial, logistic, or medical perspective is unforgivably, sociopathically criminal and reduces the practical options on the table- ALL that aside this virus is no effing joke. The only reason body counts US-wide are not in the millions is because of shutdowns and various bits of behavioral and epidemiological good fortune the details of which we will only figure out later. It is almost certainly the case that 90% or more of the US population remain vulnerable, and if people become careless, deaths will rise again. One more point- I have been in many internet arguments about the various statistical/aggregate measures, eg suggestions that only 30% antibody prevalence may be enough for herd immunity, studies of superspreaders, etc- Aggregate statistics are BS. They tell you nothing about you or your family's individual risk in any specific situation. The number of people "doing everything right" yet winding up in the hospital is countless (as are the people doing everything wrong and remaining well). We know a lot yet are still just looking for the keys under the streetlamp. We are not done with this. This may only be the end of the beginning. Stay safe. Cheers.

jeffrallen 6y ago

Remote everything sucks and I will stop doing it all as soon as possible. Humans need stories, and stories take place in sets. Seeing the entirety of your life through a window on your computer is not a life.

neonate 6y ago
Nicely put.
birdyrooster 6y ago
Would you say that virtual reality isn't ready yet or that it will never be ready?
andarleen 6y ago
But isn't that what you mainly do in an office? For some that is not life either. Having friends outside of work, a family, a house you enjoy living in may change your perception. Not saying this on and argumentative tone. Just take into account there is more to commuting and sitting in an office all day.
2019-nCoV 6y ago
The most intolerant wins. Now entrenched, most businesses will never veer from being remote-centric again.
indigochill 6y ago
This description immediately called to mind Rear Window for me, which largely takes place in a single apartment and is widely considered a classic film. But ironic pedantry aside, I do agree people need to get out. Even as a homebody I find myself getting grumpy if I don't get out for some sun and fresh air once in a while.
- lonelappde 6y ago
  Rear Window wasn't about how great it was to live in that apartment. It was about someone stuck in an apartment escaping by watching other people's apartments.

mdoms 6y ago

This is very strange to read from here in New Zealand, where life is fairly close to getting back to normal. I don't see any reason why our basic lifestyles should be permanently changed by this virus. As bad as things feel now, we will eventually get on top of the epidemic and in a few short years this period will be a distant memory. I'm not saying there won't be permanent changes - I believe this is a catalyst that will make remote working the norm for many industries, including my own. But I have been hearing, for example, American podcast hosts saying they may never step inside a restaurant again (this was on The Argument, and all three hosts agreed) or people claiming that the tourism industry is permanently neutered. I just don't see human behaviours changing so dramatically, and I don't see any reason why we should be more afraid of Coronavirus in 10 years than we are of Polio today.

Barrin92 6y ago
yes I have no doubt that as soon as there is immunity, a vaccine, or a reliable cheap treatment (all of which is probably a matter of months or 1-2 years) people will fully go back to normal. We're social animals and we're not going to ditch physical interaction. (not to mention that research by people like Alex Pentland suggests that physical contact in a common workplace has benefits that can't be replicated remotely). Companies like Yahoo and IBM already tried out remote working and rolled their efforts back, this is simply an overraction. With the exception of telemedicine for underserved regions maybe, where it fills a genuine gap and suffered from regulation up until now.
baxtr 6y ago
People tend to forget that we experience pandemics every now and then. In-between life is “normal”. Just remember the famous picture of police men having all a mask on from 1918 or so. I am sure they were gone by 1920 or so
- glofish 6y ago
  exactly, as far as the previous pandemics go this one is fairly mild, have you heard of the Hong Kong flu of 1968? Killed over a million people, we haven't even heard of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu we won't forget this virus for long time, but not because of the damage it does, but because of the damage we did to ourselves

crazygringo 6y ago

It's interesting, therapy has some pretty unique properties where in-person vs. remote can be better depending on the person. For some people, having a literal physical "safe space" and an understanding human does wonders, and there's connection and understanding that seems like it might be hard to replicate virtually. But for other people, the distance that video or phone provides actually gives them the ability to open up more than in person -- precisely because it seems less personal and therefore less threatening or potentially judging. After all, it's just a disembodied voice or a floating head on a screen. So it's pretty good to have a mix of options.

type0 6y ago
What are you basing this on, personal anecdotal evidence?

dang 6y ago

This submission provided a fun example of title editing. The article title exceeds HN's 80 char limit, so had to be changed. The submitted title was "Industries that provided in-person services may never operate in-person again", which is not bad, but it's a bit misleading. The qualifier "strictly" is important, because without it you get kind of the opposite of what the article is actually saying, which is more along the lines of this quote: "You’re going to still see your doctor, but now you’ll be adjunctively cared for virtually as well" It's a subtle distinction, but it's consistently surprising how small nuances in titles produce widely divergent discussions. A comment like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23294773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23294773, to take an obvious example, is a reflexive objection to the submitted title ("may never operate in-person again") but the word "strictly" defangs that objection in advance. There are other comments in this thread that you can tell were mostly reacting to the submitted title, too, since they're arguing with something it said, rather than what the article says. Why this is fun: it turns out that you can take a strict substring of the article title (in this case a tail) which solves the problem perfectly. That is my favorite category of title-shortening. Often the substring isn't obvious at first and you get a satisfying click when you realize it works.

deleted 6y ago

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jagged-chisel 6y ago

Does anyone offer face-to-face service over video chat? That's what I'd like to see.

kwhitefoot 6y ago

So nail bars, hair dressers, physiotherapists, dog groomers, painters and decorators, gardeners, and loads more are suddenly going to be equipped with, or replaced by, remote controlled robots? Never mind that quite a few people actually enjoy being physically close to others. The world is bigger than the Globe and Mail seems to think.