News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Social Distancing Festival by hakunin on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @03:17AM (#22602528)
People ate bats; Chinese government covered up the virus for a while; big US pharma wasn’t incentivized to research a solution; underinsured Americans were afraid to go to doctor; immigrants were afraid to go to doctor; US government just sunk trillions into economy (which vanished in mere hours), but can’t promise free tests and treatment for everyone; US government messed up the cautionary messaging; US has no systems in place to handle anything like this.

^ this is a list of problems I read in the news over the past few days. Pretty sure there are a lot of solutions people have been proposing, most of which are completely feasible.

Re:Social Distancing Festival by kd5bjo on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @03:35AM (#22602616)
There’s nothing that I could have personally done to affect any of the things you’ve listed here. For the vast majority of people, this is just some that’s happened and needs to be dealt with. Occasional devastating diseases have been part of the human condition for millenia, and the global coordination put forth to fight this one is unprecedented which marks real progress. It really wasn’t that long ago that stopping a pandemic at its source became anything more than a fantasy, and it’ll take a few rounds before we get it right.
Re:Social Distancing Festival by marnett on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @03:31AM (#22602593)
As a slight nitpick the US government did not sink any money during this ordeal. The Federal Reserve is not the US Government; it is our somewhat government affiliated private central bank.

Bailouts, which are likely to come, will be from the US government through the Treasury, however.

Re:Social Distancing Festival by barry-cotter on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @03:36AM (#22602621)
The Fed is a government organ. It is not a private entity. Its debts are the US government’s.
Re:Social Distancing Festival by xorcist on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @04:08AM (#22602773)
> underinsured Americans were afraid to go to doctor [...] > US government just sunk trillions into economy

These two sentences are just waiting for a punch line.