https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-d...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/coron...
Also take a look at this Reddit comment
https://www.reddit.com/r/maryland/comments/g3niq3/comment/fn...
If you don't trust BuzzFeed you can go look at the domain registration information for open[enter state name].com domains.
I have seen wapo video of Michigan protest. People there were angry because they want to get their hair done or buy paint and fertilizer. They want others to go to work to they can stay home.
0-9: 1 0%
10-19: 6 0.1%
20-29: 56 0.4%
30-39: 227 1.6%
40-49: 535 3.7%
50-59: 1410 9.8%
60-69: 2863 20.0%
70-79: 3811 26.6%
80-89: 1753 25.4%
90+: 12.2%
Most working age people will be just fine. Except they are jobless. Terrible times.
[0] https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Track...
Not sure pointing fingers helps. Someone could also point fingers and claim "so you're willing to let people starve in the streets, how altruistic of you". It's a highly emotional and volatile situation, let's keep our cool.
Would you please be able to expand on the 'seasonal flu' point you made?
A study from Santa Clara just recently found that there are probably 50 to 85 times MORE infections than originally thought, just that the vast majority of them were asymptomatic.
Should we be focusing our energy on protecting our elderly and immunocompromised? Yes, absolutely.
Should we be mandating that people stay home, putting millions of perfectly healthy people out of work? It's absolutely insane to me that this was even considered, let alone implemented.
The flu and vaccine point is also well taken. For the entirety of human history the flu was a health risk for the elderly and life expectancy [excluding under 5s] was 60-70 [1]. The contemporary expectation that everyone should make it into their 80s and 90s is a strong outlier.
OTOH, people counter by pointing out that NYC is already at 0.16 [14000 / 8400000] fatality rate [2], and it's unclear how many more until this wave recedes. Then anecdotes about dead healthcare workers, reinfections, mutation rates, etc.
[0] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...
[1] https://www.quora.com/Excluding-child-mortality-what-is-the-...
[2] https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Track...
I don't. Do you? We are 3 months into this mess and have wildly divergent facts that can't be reasonably reconciled.
Some attempts:
* The regular flu season uses 75% capacity of the system. A disease that's 3x worse will lead to 225% capacity needs.
* Maybe this disease is remarkably more contagious than the flu. In a tightly packed place like NYC, you might get all the cases that you're ever going to get flowing through the system within x weeks, whereas a less infectious flu season might trickle the same caseload within 2x weeks.
* This is out of the ballpark deadly, 10x-100x worse than the flu.
Besides, many strains of flu has a vaccines available. Nothing of that sort exists for corona.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht...
Vaccines existing for the flu is the point, COVID is way less deadly considering we don't_ have a vaccine.
"The city has added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive."
I suppose the New York Times is propoganda? I know Donald Trump would agree with that statement...
Paraphrasing mostly, but this is Dr. Birx admitting that the government is overreporting by default. So even if you exclude NYC, it doesn't change my point.
Similarly if you have type 1 diabetes and you get infected with corona, you probably died with diabetic complications, but without corona you would have been totally fine.
Not sure how that doesn't change your point. In fact you are conflating two different things. On one hand you are arguing about overreporting and on the other hand don't even want to take into consideration common practices in disease statistics. Almost makes me think you are not arguing in good faith.
We need detailed demographics of infections and deaths. We need to break down the risks, because a blanket totalitarian response of "SHUT DOWN LITERALLY EVERYTHING" is absolutely ridiculous when the general population is going to be fine. We didn't shut down the world economy for SARS, H1N1, MERS or any particularly bad flu season and we shouldn't shut down for this. We should focus our limited resources on protecting the vulnerable and let everyone else get back to work. More lives will be destroyed from an extended shutdown than this virus ever could.
Look at Sweden. They decided to let the people at risk stay home while others go out and about their business. Didn't work out too well for them.
In US people are willing to sacrifice human life for economic activity
How many additional COVID19 deaths would you accept to avoid a crippling economic depression? If the answer is zero, you are not being serious. If the answer is more than zero, then as Churchill noted, we've established what kind of person you are and are now haggling over price.
Read literally, this says everyone who returns to work will die. For the future, I recommend more nuance in your writing.
Losing your livelihood does carry a substantial risk of increased death.
I'm thankful right now that I live in Canada where every week—sometimes multiple times a week—measures are added or adjusted in order to prevent anyone from falling through the cracks. Some businesses have faltered or are closing permanently, but many others are receiving substantial support.
We're currently beating the projections in Ontario, and while this is not an easy time, every action necessary is being taken to at least try and prevent as many deaths by this thing as possible.
I think things would look different if the United States had taken different measures to support people during this crisis.
The barber in this narrative should receive enough aid to get by, and enough support for their business for it to persist until it can reopen—and the people who just want their hair done should just have to wait.
Of course, such measures can only work for a while until things start breaking down. We can do without barbers for quite a while, but the more professions are offline, the worse the accumulated effect is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_governm...
To be fair that is not the actual choice on offer. Its more like being jobless, vs accepting a certain (in some cases low) probability of dying.
That is not the choice. The choice is between some uncertain chance of death plus a chance to spread the infection and a certain lack of income.
Is that actually the choice being made here?
Part of astroturfing is getting the grass roots to participate.
I wonder how astroturfed this was: SF Anti-mask League 1918. https://mobile.twitter.com/timkmak/status/125193624283456307...
I don't see how that's astroturfing though, unless they're being paid to show up? Seems unlikely?
"Astroturfing" would be when paid shills or robots spam FCC comment boards. It's not astroturfing when thousands of genuine supporters of a cause show up at a protest, whether or not there is coordination (surprise, all protests need coordination).
Trying to turn this into a sinister conspiracy -- and not genuine discontent -- is a cheap mental shortcut which lets you discount that a lot of people feel differently than you.
You could use that logic to brand the ACLU or other civil rights organizations "astroturfers", because they are trying to coordinate or bootstrap local movements. Do you think that Black Lives Matter protests have to independently, randomly coalesce in cities for them to be real movements? Obviously not. Social change is hard, and claiming "oh, but there's someone out-of-state helping them organize" is just a cheap way to invalidate any protest you don't like.
It's no better than Putin branding all NGOs as "foreign agents", to trash any civil society the Kremlin doesn't like. We can do better.
This is a deeply disingenuous statement and essentially false.
a) The protestors at the rallies clearly believe in their cause. You can't delegitimize their opinion.
b) CNN just published a study showing 2/3 worried about opening to early 1/3 worried about not opening soon enough.
That's 100M Americans, out of them it only takes a few to be very concerned.
The snippets from a recent protest of individuals describing how they are going out of business, will lose their livelihoods, homes and going destitute cannot be dismissed.
S. Korea has no lock-down with tracing. Sweden has no lock-down and is going 'kind of ok'.
It's deeply disturbing to see major companies suppress individuals' right to reasonable expression and it's not helpful to diminish their views just because a few idiots in Russia may like it.
The protests are fine, except for all the guns, which is a little spooky.
Also, your rights aren't affected. This is Facebook telling stupid people to shut up and stop spreading fud that could actually hurt people, not the government breaking up peaceful and legal assemblies.
But the government is breaking up peaceful and legal assemblies. While I don't have the article handy, there have been arrests over the past few days for refusing to leave.
As for "legal" - the First Amendment is very clear on this matter. The federal government (and through the incorporation doctrine, the governments of the several states) is specifically denied the power to prohibit this.
First let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right: it still doesn't matter, Facebook is not the government. Facebook can tell stupid people to shut up and stop putting innocent people at risk and that is not breaking up "peaceful and legal assemblies" as you put it.
Now, going back to the government breaking up "peaceful and legal assemblies" (which these are not), it still doesn't matter: you are not guaranteed every right in the constitution at all times equally. A good example of this is time, place and manner restrictions: the government can't tell you that you're not allowed to advocate for a candidate for office, that would violate the first amendment. However, they are allowed to tell you that you can't advocate for a candidate for office at 1AM with a loudspeaker in a residential neighborhood. That's effectively what these people are doing: there is a pandemic, their actions could hurt a lot of people, so their stupid assembly is not legal. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and nothing I say constitutes legal advice)
Also:
> In addition to serving as medical functions, isolation and quarantine also are “police power” functions, derived from the right of the state to take action affecting individuals for the benefit of society.
https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/specificlawsregulations.html
https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...
It’s not generally people sitting around maliciously wanting to oppress other people.
It’s more often someone who thinks they are doing good, and that “right” is just in the way.
always - really? Corporations lobbying government to curtail people's rights are driven by the desire for the greater good? Why am I in big doubt.
Unemployment is deadly. The mortality rate while in poverty is over 2.5x.
You can't really look at a past study of unemployment effects and expect it to be anything like what we're about to experience; we literally have no idea.
The economy cannot be paused without massive stimulus to keep it afloat (and no, the current stimulus isn't keeping it afloat). Some companies are entering bankruptcy as we speak. They aren't coming back.
Good system, eh?
A very large number of industries, companies and communities will be permanently wiped out from this.
There are also industries growing, and industries that will be created. And some of the industries that may be permanently eliminated may be a net positive -- cruise lines are a complete blight.
I don't know what the net-net will look like, but it's important to push back on the assumption that economic downfall will be all negative in terms of lives lost.
http://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-...
https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/how-...
Even if it survives legal review, this harms the spirit of the Bill of Rights, which is incorporated against the States.
Voters should reply in November with their ballots as appropriate.
It takes a lot to get me to defend Facebook, but the arguments popping up in this thread are proving to be more than sufficient.
Are you OK with similar rights being stripped from your hometown newspaper on the grounds that they are a "corporation", despite the explicit specification of the press as a protected entity in the First Amendment?
Citizens United v. FEC
Creating a group of people standing closely together and/or blocking the streets is a safety issue at the moment.
If the only way you can protest is to do it in public, you lack imagination.
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/early-study-covid-19-patients-s...
That's the study with the BEST outcomes. Every other study shows an even higher mortality rate among those ventilated.
If the CocaCola Corporation were advertising "Coke Float" parties right now, would that be okay?
FB does not owe an person access to FB, they only do it for the Coke ad dollars...
If you’re isolating, then you also can’t catch coronavirus from somebody attending a protest. If you’re out in public, then you could also be randomly struck by a car (unintentional injuries are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US). Do you have the same view on advertisements for Ford?
These people are exercising their constitutional right to petition their government. Facebook is trying to prevent them from doing it because they don’t want them to. No matter how justified you think that is, it is anti-civil liberties, and anti-democracy. They are also doing so (at least according to the reports I’ve read), under the guise of preventing misinformation. Again, no matter how justified you think it is, it has nothing to do with misinformation, and is a clear signal of how they intend to apply “misinformation” moderation.
The problem that underlines all of this is that no private organization should have the power to control citizens to this extent. Regardless of what you think of these protestors, Mark Zuckerberg should not be the final arbiter on whether or not they’re allowed to organise themselves. HN and many other communities like it are very vocal about what services people should have access to, things like housing, transport, healthcare... but for speech all of a sudden we need a central authority to determine who’s worthy of access.
To simply throw out their rights to control their platform is anti-civil liberties and anti-democracy as well.
If you and others do not want to visit Facebook that's your right and your right to publicize, they do not owe you or me, anything.
If it turns out more people agree with you, Facebook will feel it with their stock price and most likely make adjustments. To say that they owe the public a free-space, is a leap if not a huge jump..
> The legal questions of what FB’s rights are to control their platform are irrelevant to a discussion on the merits of how they choose to do it
But nice attempt to derail the conversation.
It’s amazing how quickly this community turns into a bunch of free market libertarians the moment censorship is brought up.
Using your line of reasoning, Verizon is a corporation that can make decisions based on what they believe the shareholders would want.
To simply throw out their rights to control their network is anti-civil liberties and anti-democracy as well.
If you and others do not want to use Verizon that's your right and your right to publicize, they do not owe you or me, anything.
If it turns out more people agree with you, Verizon will feel it with their stock price and most likely make adjustments. To say that they owe the public a neutral-network, is a leap if not a huge jump..
A 30% unemployment rate will kill substantially more people than the coronavirus.
In fact, you could argue the protesters are advocating for behavior that would prevent people from dying (people who get laid off and are now in poverty).
As you should know, poverty carries a much higher mortality rate.
What proof do you want? I figured everything I said was common sense. 30% unemployment isn't outside the bounds of possibility and poverty has been repeatedly proven to have a much higher mortality rate.
But it needn't. They could be advocating for social safety nets, but instead they want the right to put others at risk.
In fact, the Fed is predicting 32%. [2]
[1] https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/how-...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-job-losses-could...
Of course poverty has bad health outcomes, and I've just cited sources in another reply.
This is the part that isn't "blindingly obvious" and requires a bit more of a substantive argument to backup the statement that "the deaths from coronavirus will be nothing compared to the deaths caused by economic destruction".
59% of Americans could not afford $1,000 in an emergency. [1]
So you're talking about an optimistic runway of $1,000 + a $1,200 one-time benefit payment. The average person will be in poverty within 60 days.
I think you're dramatically overestimating the wealth of the average American.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-woul...
The onus is still on you to make a meaningful argument to support that statement.
You're asking me to prove something that hasn't occurred yet.
My point is, poverty is deadly, the coronavirus response causes massive unemployment, unemployment causes poverty and so it's pretty obvious that the economic implications have a death rate associated with them that won't shake out for years. In my opinion, it'll be significantly worse.
I don't like it when people hand wave away the blight of those in poverty for personal safety. These people have awful outcomes, and they're treated as collateral damage.
The media talks about death from poverty all the time, except for now. Why? You cannot pause the economy without dramatic upheavals in industry and community.
For example, one particular study found that from the 2008 economic crisis there were nearly 5,000 excess suicides in a single year. Well, this crisis is substantially worse and will last substantially longer.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
Ah, so it's an opinion unsupported by facts or evidence. Got it.
> The protestors are advocating for behavior that will literally kill people, including medical personnel.
No they are not. No more than those advocating for the repeal of prohibition advocated for drunk driving.
> The protesters are no different than those who call for deadly riots or civil war.
They are very different. You're mindset is akin to blaming those who protested for civil rights for "deadly riots or civil war". It's amazing how your arguments are so similar to those who wanted to shut down civil rights' protests.
> They deserve to be shut down for jeopardizing public health and safety.
This type of thinking is why constitutional rights are under so much threat. Just an extreme rehash of "Won't you think of the children" fearmongering to take away rights.
The constitution applies to the government, not Facebook.
Facebook is not a public entity; they are a private company and the Constitution does not constrain it. You can argue that Facebook is depriving you of your Constitutional rights until you're blue in the face, but it'll probably get you nowhere in court.
You are ironically and hypocritically violating their free speech rights by demanding that the government force them to host speech against their will. It's equivalent to the government forcing you to put up a yard sign for a candidate you don't support.
But on the other hand, if you allow people that spread extreme ideologies like fascism/nazism, communism, hatred between religious or ethnic groups, that is where you should draw the line.
In here, supporting freedom of speech and therefore the ability for deniers to have a platform sets a dangerous precedent for the whole population. Just like anti-vaccine groups, they are creating a massive hazzard for people that disagree with them, so just like the law says, your right ends where mine begins.
i'm the least fan of corporations, but you know what also can't stand for long? a president executing authoritarian power and promoting domestic terrorism that then "true americans" lap up and execute.