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Comment by samtho | Hacker News Reader

I'm from California and what blows my mind is that places like gyms, bars, and restaurants were allowed to have people indoors before places personal care places like hair and nail salons, barbers, waxing centers, and tattoo parlors because all these professions (for the most part) follow good sanitization practices. And unlike restaurants and bars, these are not places you'd bring large groups as the services rendered are 1-on-1 typically. Liquor stores are still open, why are bars needed? I cannot cut my own hair (well) for example, and tattoo parlors, waxing centers, and salons all have specialty tools and services you simply cannot do at home.

Also, why are we not focused on making sure education is able to start back up in the fall? Why did we prioritize opening restaurants (who already has a revenue stream: togo orders) and bars? I get recreational stuff is needed, but the bars, for example should be among the last to open. It sucks for the business owner, and they need more federal support to stay afloat. How are paying this much in tax and getting nothing when we need it the most?

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I agree with most of your points, but not some of the conclusions.

Re-opening schools is very high priority, and very very difficult (some say not possible until we have a cure, full stop). Re-opening a restaurant is fairly low priority, and very very easy.

This isn't a board game where a player can only make one decision every turn. Opening restaurants and bars now does not mean that schools open earlier, or later, or at all.

("re-opening will cause another spike, which is pushing out the epidemic longer" Re-opening is going fine in NYC, terribly in the sunbelt. It can be done safely or it can be done badly.)

Right, but re-opening badly now means that the schools are less likely to be able to open earlier.

This is what I was getting at. Eventually, we're likely going to give teachers the same treatment as doctors and essential workers.

> You are essential!

> You are a hero!

> You are giving your life to teach these kids!

If it's any repeat of the last few months, teachers would be expected to return with districts refusing to hand out hazard pay or anything else that actually matters. I guess putting one's live on the line is payable via thoughts and prayers?

Sorry, if the people in charge really thought these things, they would be paying them more for danger they're being put in.

>How are we paying this much in tax and getting nothing when we need it the most?

Corruption. Just look at the types of organizations that did get enormous PPP "loans" (actually grants, free money when used spent at least 60% on wages).

The nature of PPP seemed to be "just get it out there" by leveraging the banks but it didn't occur to government how big the influx of applicants would be and smaller business got shafted since they don't have the same resources as bigger businesses.

So, you have situations where mom&pop sized businesses are constantly on the phone trying to get into PPP while trying to keep their business afloat by last minute transitioning to pick-up/delivery models. Meanwhile, bigger institutions can sic a dedicated team to PPP. By the time m&p get the PPP (if ever) it's already been exhausted or the amount was trivial.

What a mess.

This is a classic example of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." The problem congress had was simple: Businesses need help keeping staff and paying bills. The solution was also simple, give the businesses some cash asap.

To implement this solution would prove to be tricky as magically poofing billions of dollars into the hands of these businesses requires a lot more than just handing a check to people who filed taxes and thus were on record. They thought they would leverage an institution that already issues money to their audience here: business loans.

This sounds great, right? Fed says (not a direct quote), "Go ahead and issue money to (almost) any business who asks for it and we will guarantee it" and, "Businesses who qualify will have it forgiven." It uses a system already in place to get cash out fast to people, rather than the law requiring a website to be built out among other bits of infrastructure as by the time this is done, many businesses would have likely gone under when this cash could have helped them prevent that.

The problems, however, present themselves very quickly. First, banks were reluctant to loan money out to organizations with no credit, but the fed guaranteed all of these loans, right? Well, kind of. They guaranteed up to an amount issued but if banks loaned out more, they would be on the hook for servicing that loan to a business that is already struggling. The information as how this would be divided amongst banks was also unclear. In short, banks did not trust that congress would have their backs if something got messed up with the interpretation of the language and delegation of available funds. The second issue was where they favored large businesses who would likely have been able to weather the pandemic and thus they could collect the loan from if Uncle Sam did not end up backing it for technicalities. It's also easier to make 100 large loans of $100,000 than 500 small loans of $20,000.

Small businesses represent more than 2/3 (fig. might be outdated) of all businesses, they are typically among the top employers in rural areas, providing livelihoods to people living in smaller communities and this shit has screwed them big time. Many have closed, and more will close, that will never reopen again.

There was $130 billion available in the PPP fund when scheduled to close on 6/30 (the program was extended).

> Just look at the types of organizations that did get enormous PPP "loans"

Given that the state of California isn't the the entity that's handing out PPP loans, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.

> Corruption

Agree with your broader assessment of what's wrong with California. Ultimately, the people in charge have realized that they can continue their corrupt ways and as long as they keep the NIMBY landowner class happy with low property taxes and the limousine liberal crowd happy with virtue signalling moves, they will get their votes.

I believe part of it has to do with:

1) Helping to make sure business (specifically bars and restaurants) don't keep closing

2) Getting people off unemployment

And just telling restaurants to stay on to go orders doesn't pay the bills. Most of these also sell alcohol. So revenue alone from to go may not pay the rent, not to mention you don't have the same amount of staff on either.

Schools aren't going to close if we keep kids out of them longer, and in theory teachers can still be paid because it comes from property tax money. Unless of course people can't pay their taxes anymore because they're unemployed/broke.

So I think they're two separate problems. The issue with school at this point is most likely a societal one which consists of:

- Parents who will have to go back to work at some point, have to have a place to send their children during the day (this is a whole other WFH conversation where appropriate).

- Parents who do WFH but have no time to do learning during the day with their kids (or being unwilling for whatever reason).

- Parents aren't teachers, so learning/development will probably suffer anyway.

- Not all districts were setup to work like this. Think about underfunded urban schools or rural ones where technology might be a problem.

> 1) Helping to make sure business (specifically bars and restaurants) don't keep closing

I don't disagree with this, but I would like to pose the question: What makes them more valuable (and thus worth saving) than other types of businesses?

The taxation structure is the most likely explanation which show you exactly were priorities are. Officials allowed open a very risky type of business as far as transmission goes (bars) for cash flow.

As vibernum mentioned[1], tax revenue comes into play as well.

My municipality's school budget, as an example, is heavily reliant on a portion of local sales tax proceeds in addition to property taxes. So at a time when they're having an unanticipated spike in immediate expenses (increased sanitation/facilities costs, pppe costs, widescale elearning investments and implementation, drastically increased administrative burden, capital purchases for student technology, etc), they're also seeing an unanticipated drop in revenue.

It really is a shame the federal government isn't stepping up more in this area. Even with the relatively small amount of relief funds allocated to primary education, states are having to sue the Education Department to even keep their hands on what they've been allocated[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23834738

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

Local and state governments didn’t receive any federal aid so they needed the sales tax revenue from business.

https://medium.com/@philrocco/life-and-death-in-the-fiscal-v...

Personal care places involves the employee being in extremely close proximity to the customer for tens of minutes, which is impossible to socially distance. The risk of transfer is going to be much higher than places like gyms and restaurants, where you can separate patrons, and employees are in close proximity only for very brief amounts of time.

It is still (so far as I'm aware) unknown just how effective the masks are versus social distancing, so the comparative risk of a maskless-but-distanced restaurant environment versus a masked-but-not-distanced barber shop is unknown to me. Were we more focused on actually dealing with coronavirus, we'd be aggressively testing and tracing these places to find out the answers, but the US seems to have generally forgotten that testing and tracing matters.

IMO, a big issue is people forgetting or actively eschewing the customary precautions - going into social mode and stopping paying attention to distancing, or wearing their mask on their chin because nobody will call them out. In this regard, restaurants and bars are much worse than service businesses where participants remain specifically focused on the task at hand.

Opening restaurants and bars just seems to be pushing for some forced return to normality, so that the non-risk-adverse can pretend the epidemic is going away on its own. Restaurants themselves, like much of the economy, would be better served by a rent moratorium than this impatient rush to get the treadmill moving again.

As we are discovering with SARS-CoV-2 being transmitted in aerosol form, the limits of masks and social distancing become apparent. If everyone wears a mask (cloth, not n95 grade), they emit X number of aerosols. So the longer you're around someone, even masked, the higher the risk. And aerosols can linger for quite a long time in an enclosed setting.

Social distancing can help, but limiting how many people are emitting, but neither it nor masks are adequate if a significant portion of the population you're around is shedding virus.

Because restaurant and bar owners have a lot more political connections than hair and nail salons, barbers, waxing centers, and tattoo parlors. This isn't particular to California or the US, it is true worldwide.

In Texas, a salon owner basically broke the Governors business shut down order, then became a conservative celebrity, and ended up having the whole thing removed resulting in accelerated re-opening of the state. A lump of the blame for the current spike of COVID cases in the state finds its root in that salon owner's stunt.

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/15/texas-reopening-shel...

School starting is going to be such an unmitigated disaster. With the utterly inept handling of this pandemic (not just Trump, but our entire rotting neoliberal government) it just won't be feasible. Even if they do open, many teachers won't show up, and many parents will keep their kids home.

Talk of social distancing in schools is just ludicrous. It makes one wonder whether these officials have ever stepped foot inside of a school. Resources would be far better spent on trying to do remote learning passably well. For example, making sure that all schoolchildren have access to fast and reliable internet on a real computer, etc.

> trying to do remote learning

My wife actually wondered why they don't just "skip" this year - let everybody stay home and pretend this school year never even happened, and everybody who would have graduated in, say, 2023 will now graduate in 2024. I'm not sure that's such a bad idea - maybe better than remote learning.

Interesting idea - particularly for those that can manage it with their jobs. But then do you just keep paying everyone in public education for a whole year to take the year off, too?

Here in Seattle, the last 3 months of school the kids were enrolled in was a complete and utter joke. I have two kids, one in middle school and the other in elementary. When the kids got online to talk to teachers it was never about actual instruction, course work, etc. It was almost entirely kum-ba-yah sessions where the teachers would ask the kids what they were doing and how they were feeling. School was essentially put on hold. Grades were sent out and based mainly on the 1st half of the year.

The prospect of remote learning is very promising, but at least in 2020 there seems to be an utter lack in leadership or will to implement a quality product. It's a race to the bottom.

Skipping a year? Honestly, I think even if my kids wind up doing remote learning in the Fall they'll be going through the motions but intellectually skipping a year anyway. It's a mess.

> It was almost entirely kum-ba-yah sessions where the teachers would ask the kids what they were doing and how they were feeling.

Maybe in the middle of a pandemic, when you’re trapped at home, away from your friends, with parents who are busy working — what you really need is a little kumbaya?

At some point we need to transition away from “crisis mode” but making sure kids are doing ok, when their worlds have been turned upside-down, seems like a completely reasonable use of time to me.

I understand this. And honestly, a part of me believes in several years we (my wife and I) will look back on this time with fondness as we've never been able to spend this much time together as a family unit.

But what I meant in the OP was how - across 3 months - school was put on hold even though my kids would dial in a few times a week. I could tell some of the teachers _wanted_ to teach but I am certain there were orders from above not to. If there's one child who didn't have access to a laptop or internet across the district, I think the idea was that no one would be taught material as a result. I don't have the right answers - I just know that if that's what school looks like in the Fall, it will only deepen class divides where the well-off pay for private tutors, and the rest of the kids simply drift.

I have one friend who has a daughter here who - across 3 months - only had 2 sessions with her teacher. That was it. Effectively, school _was_ cancelled, if not officially.

Hence why the idea of just lobbing off a whole year's worth sounded intriguing.

But at the end of the day this is really all about economics and why there's a push to get kids back in school no matter what, plan or no plan. The economy won't start to heal until kids are under the in-person daycare of schools. It's just a fact.

This is all going to be very messy for at least another 12-18 months.

EDIT: My dad taught for over 50 years at the high school level. He is now 81. He taught well into his 70s. I imagine there are quite a few teachers who are terrified of being forced back to work in-person unless significant changes are made, and even then... This may force a lot of early retirements.

It's inevitable that the parents that care will still homeschool their kid and those kids will do better than the ones that don't. Humans are a sponge for knowledge when they are young. Eliminating an entire year of education during that period is a lost opportunity.

My son did that for university — he was class of 2021, so now will be class of 2022. He shifted his job from part time to full time.

The university was very resistant (normally you can’t take a break unless you are in academic trouble or have health issues) but he convinced them to cave.

For regular schooling it’s harder as one function of school is to keep the kids busy while the parents are working. Plus the teachers And other school personnel need paychecks as well.

Public school is daycare, the pandemic has made that abundantly clear. We'll be sending our kids to school because even with two parent's working from home distance learning just doesn't work.

All the SF bay area school districts I'm aware of are opening in online-only mode, at least for the first few months.

Palo Alto has a rotating in-person schedule for elementary school, or at least did as of last week when my gf had her kids.

> Liquor stores are still open

One of the massive secondary effects is the huge rise in alcoholism. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) cannot meat in many States during lockdowns. Something like substance abuse accountability cannot be done effectively via video conference. They need to happen in person, without masks, where you can look into each other's eyes and tell people it's going to be alright.

Liquor stores and weed stores (in places where it's legal) are open, but AA is not. Child abuse ER visits have gone up 35%[0], and keep in mind, when a child goes to an ER for child abuse--they've been abused to the point where they have broken bones or critical injuries.

The current death rate for all Americans is 0.0022% if you look at a pure population vs fatality rate, even including the inflated numbers (and they are inflated; people with gunshot wounds who die with CoV-2 are COVID-19 deaths). The idea the lockdowns are stopping the spread just doesn't pan out when you compare countries across the planet with their different methods and levels of lockdowns and how they haven't really done a damn thing. I wrote a post on all the secondary effects recently: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/

I wish our leaders would stop dicking, around, stop making this political, and realize nothing is going to stop this spread, hospitals aren't being overrun and Gates/GAVIs mythical vaccine won't show up before this thing has already burned through the entire population.

[0]: http://adam.curry.com/enc/1593719588.319_scottatlasonschools...

You can do AA over Zoom. It's not perfect but it's possible.

It's not just about the death rate, the long-term/permanent damage being caused (lung damage, senses, brain damage) and the fact that immunity doesn't seem to help much (perhaps a year) are other factors to consider. Long-term damage (months or maybe forever) are, unlike fatal complications, being seen extensively in non-vulnerable populations.

> the long-term/permanent damage being caused (lung damage, senses, brain damage)

Do you have any actual evidence for this? I keep hearing people bringing up 'permanent damage' but it's impossible to say something in 'permanent' when this has been around less than 6 months. Lung damage from pneumonia takes 3~4 months to heal (I had pneumonia in University, as well as one of my good friends. It took me out for over a month and he had to drop out for the semester. My lungs did not fully recover for 3 months, but they've been fine in the 20 years since).

Every article I've seen is either vary vague, or it's talking about elderly people in care homes with other existing conditions. The permanent damage narrative feels like straight up fear-mongering.

You're of course right that it's hard to know (but not impossible to know) the permanent effects of a novel virus (because the damage could be like other diseases/conditions we've seen).

Brain damage is just as concerning to me as lung damage. The lung damage at least seems to be more likely to be long-term rather than permanent (brain damage seems less clear). I've seen some articles also taking about kidney and heart damage.

Some articles discussing research/studies (which you may have already seen): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brains... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/health/coronavirus-recove... https://scroll.in/article/965138/covid-19-patients-may-suffe... https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-som...

Obviously hard to say anything long-term about a novel virus, but studies have been made of its cousins.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7228737/

Your attitude (and people with similar) are the problem. If we isolated for four weeks, wore masks, and focused on contact tracing early on, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. But suddenly, we have a whole crop of arm chair doctors and statisticians who disregard basic instructions by medical experts and attempt to minimize (or dismiss outright) the threat of this disease.

Worse yet, we now have a sizable portion of our population that honestly believes that the economic damage is worse than losing 1% (or more) of our population. Given the unpredictability of how people cope with this virus, you are telling me I should risk my family because we are too stupid and/or lazy to do basic things like wear masks and observe a quarantine?

> https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/

In general, I’m not swayed by blog posts that claim I might not be capable of “critical thinking” because I disagree with your interpretation of data. Who’s your audience here, exactly?

For others who might take your post at face value, I offer the following food for thought:

> The current death rate for all Americans is 0.0022% if you look at a pure population vs fatality rate

Look at NYC instead. Death rate is 0.29% of total population of NYC. Serology testing suggests 25% of NYers were infected. Extrapolate this to the country and you have ~4 million dead, if everyone is infected. That’s the scenario people in public health are trying to avoid.

Yes, there are huge errors bars on all those numbers. It could be just a few hundred thousand dead. It could be 10 million if everyone gets sick at once and hospitals are swamped. We definitely don’t have a lot of certainty — but you have to have a very loose interpretation of the data to say that lockdowns “haven’t really don’t a damn thing”.

But, it’s true that the negative effects of lockdown are very high, and we need to do more — much more — to mitigate the other negative effects, including unemployment compensation, strategies to reduce loneliness, getting kids out of the house, etc.

Claiming that the lockdowns only have costs and not benefits, and citing, for example, the case of Sweden, which didn’t impose a lockdown but has a similar infection / death curve as places that did, ignores that Sweden also didn’t just “stay open” — people stayed home due to fear of the virus, and the economic costs were just as high too. In the USA, many people stayed home long before the official lockdowns were imposed.

The upshot is that this is a humanitarian and an economic disaster whether we impose lockdowns or not, because many people will self-lockdown out of fear. Official lockdowns might help us beat it a little faster, but any kind of lockdown / fear of virus is really hard on people, and as a society we should do more to mitigate that.

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