7 ms·

Yelp: Local Economic Impact Report

50 points by yasp 6y ago

burlesona 6y ago
Is it just me or does it seem incorrect to refer to the “peak of the pandemic” in the US as being in the past? While there was certainly a peak in the northeast, which has now greatly reduced, the rest of the country has had more of a slow simmer which is now accelerating.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  Agreed. Until the pandemic is over, no one can confidently talk about a “peak.”
- marcell 6y ago
  Data shows the peak has passed. You can monitor ILI deaths (which includes covid) in the weekly flu report from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm . The peak of deaths was a few weeks ago, which you can view on the page linked, or in this image: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/images/NCHS25_small.gif https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/image... Edit: Please consider not down-voting citations of data.
  - cageface 6y ago
    Deaths are a lagging indicator. With case numbers shooting up unfortunately deaths almost certainly will soon too.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      A question about the cases/stats in the US. Looking at the wiki for this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Unite... and comparing the growth in cases vs growth in reported deaths, they don't match. I'd expect them to, offset by about 2 weeks (or some shortish period) as the patient recovers or dies. Instead the case rate grows by consistently over 1%, but the deaths grow by about 0.5% - both figures are very approximate bit you can see what I mean, one doesn't follow the other. Why might this be; am I making a basic stats mistake?
      - cageface 6y ago
        The explanation I’ve seen for this is that newer cases have been more concentrated in younger people that are less likely to die from it.
  - darwinwhy 6y ago
    You're not just citing data, you're also leaping to conclusions by claiming that "the" peak has passed. There may be another peak, and there's no guarantee it'll be gentler than the last.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    > Data shows the peak has passed That data shows that a peak has passed. You don't know if it's the peak. Recent daily new cases are at record levels, so there may be a higher peak in the near future. We're going to find out soon just how "seasonal" this pandemic is.
- Lammy 6y ago
  I read it more like "at the peak of societal reaction to the pandemic", as in the shutdowns and other things that directly affect Yelp's business. I doubt they're thinking of the medical aspects when they're writing a company blog post to plead with people to go spend money again so they get a cut of it :p
- baskire 6y ago
  Hospital deaths are down to their lowest ever, yet cases are high. Could just be that we are testing whereas previously we were not. And the past case volume was much higher, we just didn’t capture an accurate data point. Doesn’t help that most States are changing how they log data. Tldr daily cases isn’t necessarily representative of actual covid infection rate
  - grey-area 6y ago
    Deaths are a trailing indicator, they peak weeks after infections. Cases and then deaths went down due to significant lockdowns across the US, which saved many states like CA from the initial wave but left them extremely vulnerable to any second wave. NY is the only state that really saw the full potential impact, and caused a spike in national numbers some are mistakenly calling 'the peak'. Now US states reopened and cases are growing exponentially again and deaths will follow. The alternatives now are national quarantine with massive economic damage but saving more lives or megadeath with all the sorrow and disruption that brings, especially to the poor and disadvantaged.
    - 0xy 6y ago
      >NY is the only state that really saw the full potential impact That's because of practices like dumping patients with COVID into nursing homes full of healthy elderly people. NYC was notorious for this, and that's why nearly half of all COVID deaths in the US were in nursing homes. >Now US states reopened and cases are growing exponentially again and deaths will follow This is a guess, but it ignores the dramatically different testing criteria. Now tests are available everywhere easily to practically anyone who wants one. At the "peak" there was huge constraints on testing kits (so only the sickest possible people got them). It also remains to be seen that lockdowns don't cause more deaths via economic destruction (poverty is directly linked to mortality) than COVID. So it is absolutely not established to say lockdowns are beneficial for health reasons.
      - darkerside 6y ago
        If it's just testing, why are hospitalizations up dramatically? I keep hearing the poverty argument and it seems baseless to me. Nothing is 100%, so I acknowledge all of these scenarios are hypothetical. Still, we're trading deaths that are very hypothetical for deaths that we understand relatively well. If you're really concerned about the poor, why not lead with solutions for that (e.g. increase funding for food banks, homeless shelters, and school lunches), instead of just tearing down solutions for COVID?
- swiley 6y ago
  The east coast is where most of the US population lives. We often make generalizations about our infrastructure even though they don’t hold for Alaska.
  - burlesona 6y ago
    Wow what a snooty and rude response. Also, if California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida are geographically equivalent to Alaska in your book, you need to get out more.
  - socalnate1 6y ago
    This is not true. "In 2010, the population of the states which have shoreline on the East Coast was estimated at 112,642,503 (36% of the country's total population). " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_of_the_United_State...
ec109685 6y ago
This article is hard to parse with the percent increases and decreases and using an arbitrary demarcation date. Why not show YoY, as well as the percent of total businesses that have closed and compare that to a similar timeframe from last year.
- brauhaus 6y ago
  Not to mention that first chart, using bars plotted over the us map. Urg!
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Too right! A clear case for circles to represent the Q of the data.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Those US map charts are truly special. Probably the ugliest, least-understandable charts I've ever seen - love the labels that cut off the bars, too. lol.
  - vharuck 6y ago
    I've tried to use bars in a map for a report before. It took me a bunch of redesigns until it had something I liked (equally sized rectangles filled in proportion to the measure, no overlaps, and a thin line cutting across to show a baseline). Even then, it was nixed for taking too much effort to parse. This article's maps are barely useful. A table would've been better. If you have to label the rankings, it's a clear sign nobody can make comparisons with your map.
sargun 6y ago
Yelp was severely impacted by "the shutdown". I'm surprised that they cannot capitalize on this data and start a hedge fund or similar -- or at least sell it to a hedge fund in exchange for keeping them afloat a while longer.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- parhamn 6y ago
  Most funds that have strategies like this have “anonymized” credit card data which covers a lot more than the Yelp dataset. https://secondmeasure.com/ https://secondmeasure.com/
- foobaw 6y ago
  Yelp data is not as useful as real credit card data
- Lammy 6y ago
  They're capitalizing on the data with the way this post is composed. I don't mean that in any bad way, but the post seems worded to tug at our collective heartstrings about how many restaurants are suffering—including ${YOUR_FAVORITE}—so we should all go eat at our favorite places to make sure they survive! (and implicitly give Yelp a cut when we use their app)
- _curious_ 6y ago
  "I'm surprised that they cannot capitalize on this data" They can capitalize on the data (to varying degrees) and it would be a missed opportunity if they don't. Knowing (quickly, thoroughly, and specifically) which businesses in a given industry/market/region are open, closed temp and closed for good is very valuable insights for a variety of service-based companies.
_curious_ 6y ago
How fascinating that there are people making decisions about where to spend their money based on the race of the business owner(s). Anecdotally, growing up, I was always taught not to assess or judge people on such factors...certainly not to treat anyone differently considering it. Maybe they were wrong?

50 points by yasp 6y ago

Is it just me or does it seem incorrect to refer to the “peak of the pandemic” in the US as being in the past? While there was certainly a peak in the northeast, which has now greatly reduced, the rest of the country has had more of a slow simmer which is now accelerating.

faitswulff 6y ago
Agreed. Until the pandemic is over, no one can confidently talk about a “peak.”
marcell 6y ago
Data shows the peak has passed. You can monitor ILI deaths (which includes covid) in the weekly flu report from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm . The peak of deaths was a few weeks ago, which you can view on the page linked, or in this image: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/images/NCHS25_small.gif https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/image... Edit: Please consider not down-voting citations of data.
- cageface 6y ago
  Deaths are a lagging indicator. With case numbers shooting up unfortunately deaths almost certainly will soon too.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    A question about the cases/stats in the US. Looking at the wiki for this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Unite... and comparing the growth in cases vs growth in reported deaths, they don't match. I'd expect them to, offset by about 2 weeks (or some shortish period) as the patient recovers or dies. Instead the case rate grows by consistently over 1%, but the deaths grow by about 0.5% - both figures are very approximate bit you can see what I mean, one doesn't follow the other. Why might this be; am I making a basic stats mistake?
    - cageface 6y ago
      The explanation I’ve seen for this is that newer cases have been more concentrated in younger people that are less likely to die from it.
- darwinwhy 6y ago
  You're not just citing data, you're also leaping to conclusions by claiming that "the" peak has passed. There may be another peak, and there's no guarantee it'll be gentler than the last.
- function_seven 6y ago
  > Data shows the peak has passed That data shows that a peak has passed. You don't know if it's the peak. Recent daily new cases are at record levels, so there may be a higher peak in the near future. We're going to find out soon just how "seasonal" this pandemic is.
Lammy 6y ago
I read it more like "at the peak of societal reaction to the pandemic", as in the shutdowns and other things that directly affect Yelp's business. I doubt they're thinking of the medical aspects when they're writing a company blog post to plead with people to go spend money again so they get a cut of it :p
baskire 6y ago
Hospital deaths are down to their lowest ever, yet cases are high. Could just be that we are testing whereas previously we were not. And the past case volume was much higher, we just didn’t capture an accurate data point. Doesn’t help that most States are changing how they log data. Tldr daily cases isn’t necessarily representative of actual covid infection rate
- grey-area 6y ago
  Deaths are a trailing indicator, they peak weeks after infections. Cases and then deaths went down due to significant lockdowns across the US, which saved many states like CA from the initial wave but left them extremely vulnerable to any second wave. NY is the only state that really saw the full potential impact, and caused a spike in national numbers some are mistakenly calling 'the peak'. Now US states reopened and cases are growing exponentially again and deaths will follow. The alternatives now are national quarantine with massive economic damage but saving more lives or megadeath with all the sorrow and disruption that brings, especially to the poor and disadvantaged.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    >NY is the only state that really saw the full potential impact That's because of practices like dumping patients with COVID into nursing homes full of healthy elderly people. NYC was notorious for this, and that's why nearly half of all COVID deaths in the US were in nursing homes. >Now US states reopened and cases are growing exponentially again and deaths will follow This is a guess, but it ignores the dramatically different testing criteria. Now tests are available everywhere easily to practically anyone who wants one. At the "peak" there was huge constraints on testing kits (so only the sickest possible people got them). It also remains to be seen that lockdowns don't cause more deaths via economic destruction (poverty is directly linked to mortality) than COVID. So it is absolutely not established to say lockdowns are beneficial for health reasons.
    - darkerside 6y ago
      If it's just testing, why are hospitalizations up dramatically? I keep hearing the poverty argument and it seems baseless to me. Nothing is 100%, so I acknowledge all of these scenarios are hypothetical. Still, we're trading deaths that are very hypothetical for deaths that we understand relatively well. If you're really concerned about the poor, why not lead with solutions for that (e.g. increase funding for food banks, homeless shelters, and school lunches), instead of just tearing down solutions for COVID?
swiley 6y ago
The east coast is where most of the US population lives. We often make generalizations about our infrastructure even though they don’t hold for Alaska.
- burlesona 6y ago
  Wow what a snooty and rude response. Also, if California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida are geographically equivalent to Alaska in your book, you need to get out more.
- socalnate1 6y ago
  This is not true. "In 2010, the population of the states which have shoreline on the East Coast was estimated at 112,642,503 (36% of the country's total population). " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_of_the_United_State...

ec109685 6y ago

This article is hard to parse with the percent increases and decreases and using an arbitrary demarcation date. Why not show YoY, as well as the percent of total businesses that have closed and compare that to a similar timeframe from last year.

brauhaus 6y ago
Not to mention that first chart, using bars plotted over the us map. Urg!
- edoceo 6y ago
  Too right! A clear case for circles to represent the Q of the data.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Those US map charts are truly special. Probably the ugliest, least-understandable charts I've ever seen - love the labels that cut off the bars, too. lol.
- vharuck 6y ago
  I've tried to use bars in a map for a report before. It took me a bunch of redesigns until it had something I liked (equally sized rectangles filled in proportion to the measure, no overlaps, and a thin line cutting across to show a baseline). Even then, it was nixed for taking too much effort to parse. This article's maps are barely useful. A table would've been better. If you have to label the rankings, it's a clear sign nobody can make comparisons with your map.

sargun 6y ago

Yelp was severely impacted by "the shutdown". I'm surprised that they cannot capitalize on this data and start a hedge fund or similar -- or at least sell it to a hedge fund in exchange for keeping them afloat a while longer.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
parhamn 6y ago
Most funds that have strategies like this have “anonymized” credit card data which covers a lot more than the Yelp dataset. https://secondmeasure.com/ https://secondmeasure.com/
foobaw 6y ago
Yelp data is not as useful as real credit card data
Lammy 6y ago
They're capitalizing on the data with the way this post is composed. I don't mean that in any bad way, but the post seems worded to tug at our collective heartstrings about how many restaurants are suffering—including ${YOUR_FAVORITE}—so we should all go eat at our favorite places to make sure they survive! (and implicitly give Yelp a cut when we use their app)
_curious_ 6y ago
"I'm surprised that they cannot capitalize on this data" They can capitalize on the data (to varying degrees) and it would be a missed opportunity if they don't. Knowing (quickly, thoroughly, and specifically) which businesses in a given industry/market/region are open, closed temp and closed for good is very valuable insights for a variety of service-based companies.

_curious_ 6y ago

How fascinating that there are people making decisions about where to spend their money based on the race of the business owner(s). Anecdotally, growing up, I was always taught not to assess or judge people on such factors...certainly not to treat anyone differently considering it. Maybe they were wrong?