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phakding

You should know that this is not a grass root movement rather someone astroturfing.

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.

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It's only "astroturfing" insofar as at least some of these protests are part of an organized drive to protest. I think you'll find that most protests entail some level of organization. Do you think black lives matter protests or women's march protests are "grassroots?" Would you be surprised to learn they are also backed by organizers?

I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were also backed by the same organizers. It would match the push-pull dynamic I imagine I see with online controversy. Not to mention the reported activity on Facebook and elsewhere around the 2016 elections.

This is not astroturfing. I saw the protest in Austin this weekend. 22 million people have been laid off in the last 4 weeks. I've seen the footage of tens of thousands lining up at food banks across the country. This is just getting started.

Valid point. Millions are being affected by this shut-in. So what do you suggest? Re-open the country and have a free for all?

I don't see the link here. Yes there are 22 million laid off. But given a choice between being alive and being jobless, I think people would choose being jobless. The people protesting are not the same people lining up at food banks.

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.

The disease does not affect age groups equally. From what I've seen, most victims are in the 60+ age groups. From NYC fatality report [0]:

    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%

Think of people having a "vitality score" that decreases with age, and of disease as a stressor that kills people with the "vitality score" under a certain threshold. That's how the yearly flu works, by culling people under the threshold. We attribute the death to "the flu", but we could easily also call it "death by old age".

Most working age people will be just fine. Except they are jobless. Terrible times.

[0] https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Track...

The choice between being alive and being jobless is a false dichotomy.

May be for healthy, but not for the people with certain underlying conditions like diabetes, high BP, obesity etc. Also even if you are not vulnerable to the disease, you could be spreading this to the others who are even without showing symptoms.

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.

Sweden has about the same per-capita death rate as the US and Switzerland, and lower than the UK, Spain, and Belgium. (See https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/). It's certainly possible that they'd be doing better with more restrictions, but if their strategy is as disastrous as many people seem to think then they'd be at the top of the charts, and they're not.

That sort of proves my point. UK didn't even want to restrict anything. Netherlands, Italy and Spain acted too late. Sweden decides to selectively restrict. In US people are willing to sacrifice human life for economic activity and no wonder all these countries are worse off as far as fatality rate goes compared some other countries like Germany or India.

It's just odd that I constantly hear how horribly Sweden is doing, and not a peep about Switzerland.

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.

The "choice between being alive and being jobless" is a matter of probabilities, which people are not great at. If you are not elderly, you likely have a higher chance of being unemployed than dying of COVID-19. So the choice is not between being alive and being jobless, it is an abstract unknown person getting sick and dying vs. you personally losing your income.

> But given a choice between being alive and being jobless

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.

It's not just a personal calculation though. People that are infected spread the disease and consume medical resources. Those things both impact the rest of society.

> But given a choice between being alive and being jobless,

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.

Is that so universally true?

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.

Sure, if the government replaces your livelihood, it becomes much less of an issue.

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.

I don't think these measures were ever intended to be in effect in perpetuity. They're widely understood to be a stop-gap. It seems like a good strategy to me because it appears to be working. It's not perfect, but it's definitely helping. It's even making me believe in good government. Not perfect, but good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_governm...

> But given a choice between being alive and being jobless

Is that actually the choice being made here?

> But given a choice between being alive and being jobless, I think people would choose being jobless.

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.

What makes it astroturfing is that the organizers are being paid by GOP donors. You can agree with their objective or oppose it but it meets the definition of astroturfing.

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...

Oh wow, the "COVID-19 IS A LIE" sign being held by someone wearing a protective mask. Charitably, maybe it's just to disguise themselves?

I don't see how that's astroturfing though, unless they're being paid to show up? Seems unlikely?

Are you implying that the "other side", insofar as it exists, is a grassroots movement? That seems to be the implication of pointing out that people who want to reopen the economy aren't grassroots.

No, it's a guy in Florida who went through and parked a bunch of domains with the same pattern. Maybe because he believed in the cause, and maybe because he wanted to make a few quick bucks.

"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.

Did you even read the links I posted?

Your reddit link includes photos of real people at a demonstration. Astro-turfing wouldn't produce that, unless they were paid actors.

Astroturfing influences other peoples behaviour - that's the whole point.

In that case, it seems a little trickier to distinguish astroturfing vs. something I just personally do not agree with.

Read the Krebs link. Follow the Florida guy's phone number...

It's astroturfing, but astroturfing organizations have the same free speech rights as any other party: unions, NGOs, nonprofits, and evil corporations.

"this is not a grass root movement "

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.

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