News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
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Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by dang on Monday December 27, 2021 @08:35PM (#29709296)
Please do not post flamewar comments to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It just leads to tedious, nasty flamewars—exactly what we don't want here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by fragmede on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:10AM (#29691117)
Well yeah. It's the best protection we have against serious illness for yourself, or your infecting others if you catch an asymptomatic case. Prior infection is weak defense against Omicron[1] (like, 20%).

Your work, depressing as your story is, is orthogonal to the question of getting vaccinated. Still, that's a fascinating angle I hadn't considered. You deserve hazard pay, and vacation, same as everyone else. Whether or not your vaxxed doesn't change that. That you haven't received any is the fault of your employer and our brand of capitalism, not that any of us have any real choice in that matter.

[1]https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by landemva on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:18AM (#29691157)
2008 bankster bailouts was not capitalism. 2020 bailouts of airlines and foreign cruise lines was not capitalism. Capitalism would have let those failures fail and motivated new owners would have picked up the assets at the bankruptcy.

'It's the best protection we have against serious illness'

The best protection each person has is to remove their comorbidities including being obese and having no lung capacity. Maybe eat less and exercise.

'not that any of us have any real choice in that matter.'

Go fix your own machines.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by fragmede on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:29AM (#29691218)
Your anger is misplaced. I'm not making you fix any machines. Were it up to me, you'd get 3 months vacation pay starting tomorrow, you clearly need it.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by landemva on Sunday December 26, 2021 @06:22AM (#29691496)
It's my general comment about I no longer consent. Please excuse my tone.

Three months... but it's not just the pay.

By the grace of God, the genius Satoshi Nakamoto, and my willingness to get in earlier and deeper than most, I now have some agency. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56049234-thank-god-fo...

In some ways, John Galt said and exhibited 'my body, my choice.' https://aynrand.org/novels/atlas-shrugged/

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by Zpalmtree on Sunday December 26, 2021 @10:26AM (#29693105)
Amen brother, stay strong
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by Mikeb85 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @07:04AM (#29691724)
> Capitalism would have let those failures fail

Capitalism wouldn't have shut down borders preventing airlines from taking on passengers. Government action led to airlines taking massive losses.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by hansel_der on Sunday December 26, 2021 @07:15AM (#29691800)
how is an airline entitled to profit from cross-border travel?
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by Mikeb85 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @07:44AM (#29691982)
Capitalism is about free trade. Airlines grew to their size based on a certain economic condition (free travel between nations). Pulling that out from under them resulted in massive loss of income.

It's not about entitled or not. It's about the fact government action directly harmed them, whether or not justified.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by hansel_der on Sunday December 26, 2021 @07:54AM (#29692022)
so the market conditions changed.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by wiseowise on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:59AM (#29692835)
They didn't. Authoritarian intervention happened.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by hansel_der on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @07:06AM (#29724081)
that assesment hinges on the view if the pandemic neccesitated/warranted lockdowns.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by ahoka on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:56AM (#29692809)
"Capitalism is about free trade."

No, it's not.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by Mikeb85 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @10:03AM (#29692867)
Way to be pedantic. You're right, strictly speaking it's about investing capital (in the economic sense) in order to profit from it. In practice it's all about reducing barriers to trade whether within or outside a country since every other economic system aims to limit some aspect of economic freedom as 'capitalism' is basically just the natural result of barrier-free trade.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by matwood on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:11AM (#29692469)
I'm sure an immigrant would love your job and probably do it for less money if we're really talking about unbridled capitalism.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by landemva on Sunday December 26, 2021 @03:49PM (#29696198)
It can be done with time and desire. Learn how to diagnose, cost, repair hydraulic, electrical, diesel, undercarriage, and rebuild stored energy accumulators without injuring yourself. Some of the time will be on oil/gas pads and get your MSHA papers so you can be left by yourself at night fixing a machine where there is no phone service. And use cutting gear and liquid nitrogen safely. It can be done.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by boppo1 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @11:11AM (#29693560)
It sounds like he wouldn't mind.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by rajin444 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:24AM (#29692573)
Can you quantify OPs risk from omicron? Saying “it’s the best we have” is technically true but intellectually dishonest. Volcano insurance is also the “best we have” to protect vs volcanic activity and many people don’t have it.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by dpark on Sunday December 26, 2021 @11:18AM (#29693629)
It’s also intellectually dishonest to compare volcanic activity to Covid. When’s the last time volcanic activity killed over 5 million people in the span of 2 years?
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by rajin444 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @08:10PM (#29697977)
sorry for the comparison! I was trying to highlight that risk levels are individual, not to say that one’s risk from Covid is that of being caught in a volcano. Blanket numbers (5 million have died) are almost useless when trying to assess your personal risk.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by klipklop on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:42AM (#29691290)
It’s annoying to say this, but I have my shots so please don’t reply with shrill cries calling me an anti-Vaxxer

I am guessing like many he is angered at having to choose between his job and taking a vaccine he may not want to take. This same employer didn’t likely give a single shit about his safety before.

Logic says just take the shot, but people like to feel like they have some agency in life other than their employer forcing treatment on them so they can continue to be good little drones.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by nickysielicki on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:43AM (#29691297)
> It's the best protection we have against [...] your infecting others if you catch an asymptomatic case.

This was a theory that the entire vaccination program was predicated upon. The theory was, "We can't prevent infections, but if the body is primed to have a less severe reaction to the virus, it will do a better job of clearing it quickly and the viral load will be lesser, thus bringing r0 down."

It didn't turn out to be totally true. It clears quicker but it has no meaningful reduction in peak viral load on average.

So now, given that we don't have good reason to suggest that the vaccine results in lower viral loads, it stands to reason that the majority of asymptomatic "superspreaders" going forward are more likely to be vaccinated. The unvaccinated are more likely to get seriously ill and isolate.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v...

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by arbitrage on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:18AM (#29692525)
Peak viral load is a red herring. That dogwhistle predicates that viral load is proportional to severity of illness. It doesn't work like that.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by nickysielicki on Sunday December 26, 2021 @01:10PM (#29694771)
It’s like you completely avoided reading my comment. It has nothing to do with severity of illness it has to do with infectiousness and it’s the closest thing we have to measuring infectiousness.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by colechristensen on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:30AM (#29691223)
If you’ve had covid, the benefit isn’t zero to getting a vaccine but it is also way below the threshold to use authoritarian force to get someone to take it in a free society. The people saying otherwise are full of shit and have zero ability to set guidelines based on actual risk and science instead of blind moralization.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by landemva on Sunday December 26, 2021 @06:08AM (#29691426)
I don't know if the potential benefit to me and others like me, having already recovered, somehow offsets the known risks of taking the medical treatment plus some number of booster treatments.

There is a disconnect between the thinking of those who make policy, seemingly many of the work-from-home formerly worked at office workers, and people who regularly toil in the field and have dirty fingernails.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by colechristensen on Sunday December 26, 2021 @06:30AM (#29691532)
Getting Covid obviously introduces a risk (short term and long term), surviving definitely reduces the risk of future Covid infections. I don’t think anybody disagrees with that.

Each dose of the vaccine likewise introduces new short term and long term risks and reduces future risks from covid. More so if you’ve never had covid, but still nonzero if you have had it and recovered. (Lots of people don’t really want to acknowledge one part of this or another)

The problem is how big are each of these risks and what is your tolerance for taking a certain risk (a vaccine) to prevent an uncertain risk (potentially contracting covid again)

Lots of people take sides and emphasize one set of risks as “known” and sort of pretend the other set doesn’t exist.

Covid has certainly killed a whole lot of people.

A very very large number of people have taken vaccines and a very very small number of them have had negative outcomes.

There is a risk to taking a vaccine and there is a risk to not taking a vaccine. How big is that risk and when do you decide one risk is worth the other?

One thing is for sure, whatever your opinion is, there are a lot of people out there trying to make money by reenforcing that opinion with “facts”.

Taking the vaccine is, if anything, a very small risk compared to many other risks you take every day (demonstrable by just how many people have taken it already and comparing it to, say, traffic accident statistics). The risk protection you have from surviving covid is also definitely decreasing with time.

It is hard to find information because so many people are pretending these risks are known. They just aren’t, there are bounds of uncertainty. Not huge bounds, quite a bit is actually known, but there is still uncertainty and you have to decide for yourself which risk to take and when.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by propogandist on Sunday December 26, 2021 @11:01AM (#29693459)
>and a very very small number of them have had negative outcomes.

There's no method to report adverse event, unless you go to VAERS and report it. Since coverage of negative effects will reduce the effectiveness of the propaganda being pushed, there's little coverage of adverse events, enabling the narrative to continue.

The CDC also doesn't consider people as fully vaccinated until 14 days after the 2nd injection, enabling them to skirt attribution of hospitalization or deaths that occur after the Jab.

Look at the VAERS charts of adverse events & vaccine deaths reported in 2021 VEARS compared to all other vaccines, as a starting point...

https://vaersanalysis.info/2021/12/25/vaers-summary-for-covi...

https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by colechristensen on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:32AM (#29691237)
Honest curiosity which helps with the question “where did the labor force go?”, what are you doing instead?
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by landemva on Sunday December 26, 2021 @07:24AM (#29691861)
I'm not an average. I lived frugally and haven't had a TV in a couple decades. Jeep has over 330,000 miles. My phone plan is around $30/month including tax.

Moved to place with nice community hot tub which I have time to use with other unmasked people. Helped teach a friend machine safety while excavating at his house. We also extensively talked about how he can raise his prices and I joined him on a job bid and helped him bid it. I even wore blue coveralls!

Hike. Snorkel. SUP in river. Ski. Catch up on news by talking to tourists on chair lift. Research where to go to get a couple hundred days on a surfboard.

I feel like while I might be willing to go back, nobody cares about dirty greasy blue-collar people like me. What I did regularly involved real physical hazards while working on small to $1M÷ 'large' machines which were typically broken in sometimes undisclosed ways. An extra $5/hour is not going to do it.

It won't get better until there is a general strike for about six months and a couple crop rotations. It would need to be long enough to affect the new private charter jetsetter class. The American experiment of self-sovereignty and individual choice is done for most people who are now just debt slaves.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by Nemi on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:32AM (#29692643)
Again no disrespect meant at all, only a desire to understand - but what do you do for income? How are you paying rent and such? Are you living off of savings/investments/BTC/401k?
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by throwaway75787 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @10:16AM (#29692983)
Staying at home in a top city, building relationships in my community, and becoming a cold expert at my craft.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by paxys on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:47AM (#29692732)
If you are implying that the labor force is shrinking because people are refusing to get vaccinated then no, that is provably false. The vast majority of states and employers have no vaccine mandates at all. Heck you can show up to work coughing and with a positive covid test in your hand and no one will care. And even if they did, statistics show that Americans in the labor pool have been largely vaccinated already. The ones still holding off are statistically insignificant.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by josephcsible on Sunday December 26, 2021 @12:11PM (#29694172)
> The vast majority of states and employers have no vaccine mandates at all.

This is a super misleading statistic, because people aren't evenly distributed between states or employers. Consider 100 restaurant companies, only 1 of which imposes the mandate. If the 1 is McDonald's and the other 99 are mom-and-pop restaurants, the fact that the 99 are the vast majority is irrelevant.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by presentation on Sunday December 26, 2021 @04:54AM (#29691038)
What if you were paid more?
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by LittlePeter on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:10AM (#29691112)
Those screaming at you to get jabbed and wear a mask are not Karens. Karens are anti-vax and anti-mask, according to my extensive research of memes.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by bpodgursky on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:02AM (#29692408)
It is well within the Karen meme archetype to report a service employee to his/her manager for not being vaccinated or masked.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by propogandist on Sunday December 26, 2021 @10:46AM (#29693294)
you haven't researched much, if that's the conclusion you've came to.

Here's an example from few days ago, on a Delta flight https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1474606759146708992?s=2...

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by hansel_der on Sunday December 26, 2021 @07:20AM (#29691832)
have to go looking for memes of pro- vs. anti-vax karen
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by evv555 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:29AM (#29692618)
Sounds like extensive research of your own filter bubble.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by vaxxz on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:11AM (#29691125)
What’s the problem with getting vaccinated and wearing a mask?
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by landemva on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:47AM (#29691312)
Good question. We have never eradicated a coronavirus in man nor beast. Prior experiments in beasts were overwhelming failures. It is in deer and cats, and transmits between species, so it will be around for approximately forever. I'm not taking new-tech medical treatments for something I already lived through at home without intervention.

While OSHA mandates are all the rage, MSHA actually does safety and did not mandate. Wearing a bacteria-breeding mask becomes unhealthy and is dangerous to wear because it blocks vision down. In general, people would learn a lot about safety and prevention by working under MSHA rules for awhile. I did.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by slyall on Sunday December 26, 2021 @06:25AM (#29691515)
>We have never eradicated a coronavirus in man nor beast

No cases of SARS-CoV-1 have been reported worldwide since 2004

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by landemva on Sunday December 26, 2021 @06:43AM (#29691600)
Good point. More accurate for me to say we have never eradicated a coronavirus with a vaccine.

I suppose in the present case we could try to slaughter all of the potentially infected animals. Some humans would likely resist.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by sofixa on Sunday December 26, 2021 @08:24AM (#29692194)
> More accurate for me to say we have never eradicated a coronavirus with a vaccine.

We've never had a coronavirus get as widespread and to persist as long as to require a vaccine to combat it.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by colechristensen on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:41AM (#29691284)
Some people turned masks and vaccines into moral absolutes which built up the opportunity for people in the business of selling attention to make money by claiming the opposite and other people who sell attention to oppose them. This all leads to side picking and a good old ideological battleground which is just a very attractive thing for humans.

So the problem with masks and vaccines is that it is quite profitable for people to turn it into a battleground and not so much to help people understand risks and rewards of various strategies and choose their own risks. Not to mention the huge sense of satisfaction many humans get from being “right” and letting everyone know how right they are.

The more you exaggerate and the harder you squeeze, the more opposition you get. The conclusion that comes from this is apparently that more exaggeration and authoritarianism is the solution.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by klipklop on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:53AM (#29691353)
I totally agree with this. I feel the more bullshit that gets piled on top the more I naturally just want to stubbornly resist. Even if it’s against my best interests.

Sometimes I wonder if a certain subset of the population is just naturally like this. The more authority applied the more people resist, even if they intended to do the action they authoritarian insists they do to begin with.

If you tell me to do something my automatic reaction is to say no. Childish I guess and find myself having to evaluate why I have this impulse from time to time.

One has to wonder if the media/social media shut the fuck up about the vaccines/mask arguments compliance rates would be actually higher…

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by colechristensen on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:59AM (#29691382)
In other words “reverse psychology works”. I don’t think very many people are actually trying to harm others by exaggerating about covid issues, but the results are the same.

If you find yourself in the position of stubbornly refusing to do what people insist you do, the good thought process is realizing they aren’t the boss of you whether you’re making your choices to go along or against what they want.

If you do exactly the opposite of everything someone wants you to do, they’re still controlling you.

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Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by dang on Monday December 27, 2021 @08:37PM (#29709304)
We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments. Not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by boppo1 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @11:40AM (#29693866)
Excellent summary. I'm double-vaxxed and generally wear a mask. My social circle (work/ friends/family) is the upper-middle-class liberal set. My life is pretty set with this group of people and I'm not throwing anyone out of it over covid-opinion silliness. However I'm routinely disgusted by their self satisfaction on this topic. An exchange I heard yesterday between two people close to me, spoken with no irony:

Q: "Why won't people just get the vaccine?" A: "Fear of Democrats."

Back in 2020 when this was all new, I encouraged them to wear masks while shopping, because that's what I saw people in asian countries doing and figured it wasn't unreasonable. They wanted none of it!

Them: "The CDC says we shouldn't wear masks." Me: "Fuck the CDC! They don't know what's going on any better than we do. Wear masks, they will probably help"

Now, they conveniently have no memory of that exchange and regularly evaluate others on whether or not they're properly 'masking'.

After all the BS around this, I don't at all begrudge people their choice to not get vaccinated, even though I recognize that is probably responsible for hospitals hitting capacity.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by mindslight on Sunday December 26, 2021 @01:05PM (#29694721)
IMO the way to avoid being resentful to an arbitrary half of people is to continue distancing yourself from the herd until you're at odds with most everyone. From my perspective, people who don't wear masks AND people who continue to wear ersatz surgical masks are all ignorant. Since this ends up being 97% of the population, I obviously cannot carry this opinion prominently. I just wear my own functional respirator in public, quietly model them as the petri dish they are, and deflect their questions with empathizable breadcrumbs.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by boppo1 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @01:11PM (#29694792)
>functional respirator What do you use? N95?
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by mindslight on Sunday December 26, 2021 @01:16PM (#29694850)
Half face silicone (3M 7503) with P100 filters (#2297). When/where masks are mandated, I disable the valve functionality by removing all the check valve flaps and sealing up the output with gaff tape. When they're not, I wear a second one without that mod because breathing is much easier.

I'm aware this isn't perfect and I'm not invulnerable - it's not a bunny suit with PAPR. I coast on my glasses taking care of most face droplets (similar to how I coast using many power tools), and admittedly haven't done the work to go beyond that.

It's definitely an impediment to appearance and speaking, and in medium-engagement social situations I do have an N95 I fall back on to not be too obtuse.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by colechristensen on Sunday December 26, 2021 @01:35PM (#29695048)
This is what I did at the beginning, but as the risks became more clear I see no reason to keep it up. I’m happy to take many much more serious risks than catching covid and it’s become clear that covid is never going away and I’m not going to spend my life in a darth vader mask.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by mindslight on Sunday December 26, 2021 @02:01PM (#29695247)
I don't see a reason to stop doing so for errands (eg grocery store) - public places are high fan out, with people that I don't particularly need to socialize with, and keeping defenses up there helps my main goal of being more comfortable within my close circle. Furthermore if the pandemic did disappear tomorrow (I agree it won't), I would still wear something in public to mitigate facial recognition.

Close friends and family I've come around to wearing no face covering (vaxxed) - you're kind of already committed by being in each others' homes - and separating such visits by time. I agree that heavyweight masks don't really work for medium social engagements (like say a hobby group, or incidental conversation when picking something up from someone, etc), which is why I've moved towards the N95 on that front. I hate their small tight bands though. At least it's not a KN95 with the over-the-ear straps.

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by boppo1 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @01:23PM (#29694925)
Neat
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by throwaway75787 on Sunday December 26, 2021 @10:10AM (#29692933)
The problem I have with wearing a mask, is that it is very psychologically disturbing. I don't know how else to describe it. It is a big enough problem for me that I would not describe it as a preference. Maybe it's claustrophobia, or something to do with the touch. I hate to describe it as some kind of autism, because they said they don't like that in the other article's thread, but it feels like it.

I got vaccinated and boosted, but had I known it would have become such a political virtue signalling game, I might have opted out.

[dead]
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by dang on Monday December 27, 2021 @08:37PM (#29709313)
Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Maybe you don't feel you owe unvaccinated truck drivers better, but you certainly owe this community better if you're participating in it. Much better.

No more of this, please—especially since we've already had to ask you this kind of thing multiple times before, and you've been continuing to break the site guidelines in other places too. Not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by gurumeditations on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:05AM (#29692424)
I also was an essential slave. I wasn’t privileged enough to sit at home making twice as much on unemployment than at my job then. I share your resentment. I think the privileged, like those programmers complaining about having to do DoorDash deliveries once in a blue moon, need to start thinking about the growing swell of resentment in all societies towards them. Nothing good will come of it I promise.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by hotpotamus on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:14AM (#29692485)
If your resentment is towards programmers, it's misplaced; though they might not think it, even a programmer making half a million a year is much closer to working class than the C levels.
Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by tyleo on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:11AM (#29692471)
> like those programmers complaining about having to do DoorDash deliveries once in a blue moon

What is this referring to?

Re:Why is U.S. labor supply so low? by cpursley on Sunday December 26, 2021 @04:47AM (#29691002)
I can't upvote this enough; some people live in an alternative universe full of unicorns and bubble wrap but short of a basic understanding of economics and statistics.