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...
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.
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.
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.
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.