
I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas - laura2013
https://blogmaverick.com/2020/05/07/i-hired-a-team-of-secret-shoppers-to-find-out-how-businesses-were-opening-in-dallas-its-not-good/
======
elliekelly
> And bigger picture, I wanted to know if these are places that I would feel
> safe taking my family to.

I think this is the most important metric as far as “re-opening the economy”
goes but it seems to be largely ignored by politicians.

~~~
fastball
Given that your children are unlikely to be at serious risk from COVID-19, I'm
not sure why.

Your child is much more likely to be adversely affected (in the long term) by
sustained economic stagnation than by this virus.

~~~
consp
Considering most countries try to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system,
your child is affected by it though not directly. It should just not get sick,
or have any form of preexisting condition about to pop up, or infect it's
parents to name some possibilities.

~~~
backtracking
Considering many US hospitals are going under for lack patients, this is an
argument that doesn't apply.

------
mark_l_watson
I just sent the URI to a friend with a restaurant. I think Mark Cuban did a
public service here, ignoring some of the horrible comments left on his blog.

Even though I am at risk (old age and damaged lungs from pulmonary embolisms),
I am for reasoned reopening of our economy, but only if we do it with I would
call “smart style”: adopt safety measures and make them mandated by law.

I wish more people would look at the covid-19 crisis as something that is
serious but that we have to adapt to long term. If restaurants limit seating,
use discardable menus, all employees wear masks, disinfect as appropriate,
etc., etc. then we achieve Cuban’s feel safe to take the family criterion.

~~~
JPKab
I agree with you. It's nice to see reasonable people who understand the risk
personally.

I saw a comment the other day where somebody said that we can't open anything
up until a vaccine is developed. That is one extreme. then you have the other
crowd who says just open it up and let me go see football and baseball games.

I think the worst part about all of this has been the fact that it's happened
in a election year. We have a habit in this country of turning every election
into an existential crisis, which is a recipe for creating radicalized
viewpoints. Our media has now turned this into a partisan issue and now it's
being treated as such.

~~~
JamesBarney
The problem is there really isn't a sensible middle ground option.

It's like only spraying enough water on a fire to keep it from spreading out
of control but not enough to put it out. When you're house is on fire there
really is only two sensible options. Let it burn down your house or put it
out.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to get the R down to ~1. This is a partial
lockdown that last until the vaccine comes out and kills 1600 people a day.

It seems better to lock down and test and trace harder until r gets to .5 then
wait for it to mostly extinguish then cautiously open up. Or let it rip
through the populous until we have herd immunity.

------
torgian
Wow, comment section there is a true dumpster fire.

That said, it seems that America is just flailing about and hoping for the
best. and not even expecting the worst if the comment section is to be
believed.

~~~
ashtonkem
For those curious, a significant percentage of the commenters seem to think
that this is exactly equivalent to the Stasi.

~~~
tom_
I wonder if this is due to a team hired by a competing billionaire?

------
itronitron
This is a nice example of private business picking up the mantle of what is
ordinarily thought of as a government function. All the hostile comments (on
the blog) are probably being made by people that favor small government and
therefore theoretically in favor of a private company doing the survey. But
apparently they don't want anyone telling them what to do.

~~~
eru
Not sure people there have such a coherent ideology?

Restaurants NOT opening when the restrictions were lifted is actually a good
sign if you are interested in small government: it tells that the restrictions
were most probably non-binding as a constraint.

Ie they were telling people to do stuff that they would have done anyway.

(Compare to eg a 0.1 dollar/h minimum wage: almost no-one would actually be at
that minimum wage, so it's 'non-binding' in the same sense.)

Government constraints that are non-binding or almost non-binding aren't too
bad. Since they don't change market outcomes (too much).

~~~
hippich
I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners
said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be
unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to
that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).

~~~
albntomat0
I'm not sure they would be anywhere near full occupancy even without
government restriction. I can imagine a significant portion of the population
self-limiting to essential activities only, regardless of the level of
government restrictions.

~~~
jonfw
if that was true- why bother with regulation in the first place?

~~~
smileysteve
Because a significant portion does not imply that majority of the population
will exercise prudence.

~~~
jonfw
If a majority of the population doesn't exercise prudence, then it sounds like
there is a very good chance for a restaurant to get back to full occupancy.

------
kube-system
Wow, the comments on that blog are a dumpster fire.

~~~
evmar
I know it's probably not "Russian bots", but...

Two of the comments post the same CDC 2017 list, and both come from twitter
accounts with 0 posts (one is 100% retweets of anti-"liberal" content). I'm
never sure how plausible it is for someone to have the time to sit on twitter
all day just to RT these things and then jump onto rando blogs to leave long
comments like these.

~~~
hckr_news
Edit

~~~
itronitron
I think the OP is referring to the commenters on Mark Cuban's blog (and not
the ones on HN)

------
Nbox9
> Media coverage, showcasing owner sentiment and infection statistics, paint a
> picture of a large degree of latent fear in the marketplace.

Imagine how traumatic it will be if the death toll spikes up. We have fear
because the virus is still active and deadly. If those fears are found to be
justified than I suspect even smaller more sane opening up steps will be
unpopular.

~~~
ashtonkem
And that’s not even touching the civil litigation risk.

------
disease
The bigger story here is the comment section. Why are Americans so enamored
with conspiracy theories and hate?

~~~
dawnerd
It’s not just America... You have anti-5G/anti vaccine nuts in Canada and
Europe too. We just seem to be louder.

~~~
economicslol
Is it really on the same scale though? It's quite hard getting a sense of
what's normal from Social Media sites since they are so US-centric. It
certainly seems like a large portion of the population here misunderstand
basic science, statistics, biology, economics, etc. Having been educated in
the US public school system it's not that surprising that people are so poorly
informed.

~~~
dawnerd
I'm not sure, like you said it's kind of hard to tell with the US bias social
media and the media in general.

From recently memory though, I don't think there was cases of this in the
States
[https://apnews.com/4ac3679b6f39e8bd2561c1c8eeafd855](https://apnews.com/4ac3679b6f39e8bd2561c1c8eeafd855)

(But we're definitely more radical in other areas like protesters with guns).

------
notyourday
I have to say I feel really sad how out of touch with life outside most of HN
posters are. It must be nice to wax about theoretical problems and theoretical
solutions when one thinks he is secure about where his or her check is coming
from.

Let me tell you about what is happening in New York. On Saturday I saw a line
three blocks long. Not tiny blocks. New York sized long blocks. That was a
line filled with mostly blacks and latinos, some with children. It was barely
moving. At the end of the line there was national guard giving out small
shopping bags on onions, carrots and potatoes. Based on me timing it I
estimate it took ~3 hours for someone joining at the end of the line to get
what is, objectively, $10 worth of vegetables if bought in one of the
supermarkets targeting poor Hispanic community. The only reason why they are
standing in that line for three hours is because that $10 to them is money. Oh
and if your state unemployment claim is "pending" then you do not get the fed
$600/week unemployment either.

There's a very popular Bar/restaurant in Bushwick ran by a great but rather
odd dude. 191 Knickerbocker. I guess he is relatively well off or he is good
enterprising guy who manages to raise a lot of money. It provides free meals a
couple of times a week. No questions asked. They are not much but they would
certainly get you through the day. It has a half a block long line, split
relatively evenly between latinos and whites. Initially the latter group did
not want to be seen in the line, hiding their faces when others whom they
thought were in the same socio-economic demographics went by. Occasionally you
would see people crying. By now they don't care -- just avoid eye contact.

About a week ago on Saturday one of the chefy driven relief trucks showed up.
The went around the _entire block_ by the middle of the day. When the people
got there, they got two small paper bags of vegetables. The lines was mostly
latinos. From talking to a couple of people who were volunteering they
estimated about 4 hour wait between the time one joined the line and the time
to get those bags.

My wife, who worked a white collar medicine related field was laid off and
filed for unemployment in mid-march. Her unemployment claim is still pending.
She's not alone. There are people who lost their jobs around beginning of
March who are in the same boat. The NYS unemployment system does not have real
time status. It does not have messaging. Its call system does not support
queuing! People redial hundreds of times a day through the maze of prompts
just to be disconnected because there are too many people calling. She
legitimately lost it a couple of times. If I was not still making money, we
would have been eating through the savings to cover rent. We rent our
apartment from a family who lives in the same building. Both of them have been
laid off. Neither of them have been able to get unemployment -- their claims
are "pending". Every week they look more and more terrified as the only thing
that lets them to put food on a table is me paying rent. And there's an
eviction moratorium now until August, which means I can , at the cost of
ruining a relationship with the landlord to whom I'm paying market rent, stop
paying them. Oh and NYS unemployment fund is running out of money.

Last week the first of my wife's friends who used to only worry about when
they would be able to go out to do "girl's brunch" have been laid off. The
laid off person is shell shocked. At the end of April their company was
absolutely convinced there were no layoffs coming.

We are only in the first act. This economic showdown only started at the end
of March. Unless you own your own company and you can cut 90% of your expenses
and still get enough revenue to pay yourself your white collar job is not
safe. People working for companies in layoffs.fyi are the example.

~~~
ardy42
> Its call system does not support queuing! People redial hundreds of times a
> day through the maze of prompts just to be disconnected because there are
> too many people calling.

If that's the case, can you script out the needed phone tree selections to
make it less frustrating? This still works on android:

[https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/05/10/how-to-add-hard-
wai...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/05/10/how-to-add-hard-wait-and-
soft-2-3-sec-pauses-to-your-android-contacts/)

People used to do this when calling cards were more frequently used. You could
setup a speed dial with all the pauses to dial the calling card, wait, enter
the account number, wait, and dial your contact number. I think it'd probably
work to repeatedly navigate a phone tree menu.

~~~
notyourday
Unfortunately, it is not that easy because one can get dropped into different
IVR trees for no rhyme or reason where the same sequence of key presses sends
one into _at least_ one of the two different paths. One path at least
theoretically leads to an agent while another path leads to a hangup. If she
does not get approved this week I will have to resort to scripting Asterisk.

------
mindslight
What the fuck is up with those comments? I mean the answer is obvious, but
still. At that point, just shut them off.

As for the actual topic, it's almost as if "closed" or "open" isn't the
entirety of the subject? It seems like we could be dealing with some kind of
underlying meatspace problem that needs to be addressed before things can go
back to "normal". Who knew?! (/s)

Months ago it was apparent that this virus was going to cause an absolute
clusterfuck in the US due to decrepit infrastructure and a failed society
ethos. What I couldn't imagine was just how slow the train wreck would be. I
guess we're all stuck generally inside and washing groceries for the next year
while the idiots cheerlead their simplistic ignorance, and expendable
employees are put through the meat grinder to keep the economy simulating.

~~~
nradov
There is no evidence that washing groceries actually reduces infection risk.

~~~
mindslight
Just as there was "no evidence" that wearing a respirator reduces infection
risk...

The way I see it, everything coming into the house gets disinfected. This way,
home can remain home, without eg needing to constantly over-worry about
touching my face.

I agree it's likely overboard, which is why I threw it out as an example of
ridiculous things we are doing. But the advice on TV is, at best, meant to
probabilistically keep most people from spreading the infection. I'm aiming to
definitively keep myself clear for the sake of my older family.

~~~
notyourday
There's still no evidence that wearing masks reduces infection risk to the
wearer. There is evidence that wearing masks reduces infection risk to those
around the infectious wearer of the mask. It is, incidentally, the exact
reasons surgeons wear masks -- not to protect themselves from a patient but to
protect a patient from themselves.

~~~
malandrew
While it may not prevent you from catching the disease, it's pretty much a
certainty that it will help mitigate the initial infectious dose you
experience if you are exposed. A low initial infectious dose buys your immune
system more time to learn to produce antibodies.

~~~
notyourday
There's no evidence for this to be the case. If we are going to go into "It is
common sense to do X" then why stop at "it is a common sense, wear a mask" and
not include "It is common sense, if you have co-morbidity then it is you job
to self-isolate and let the others to continue to function"

------
timbigman
Of everyone doing this, I think that he should have more sympathy for those
struggling during this time. Don't hire people to find violations. Help out
people that are starving

~~~
will_walker
He’s not posting any identifying information. This is incredibly valuable
service for those in reopening states to make an informed decision on whether
to continue to take precautions.

~~~
timbigman
Many people in tech all speak from an incredible place of privilege, being
able to work from home.

There are many that are depressed and sitting at home.

These are the people we need to help.

Instead of trying to find violations, look for people that are hurting and
help them out

~~~
ModernMech
I'm sorry, but until I see some proposals from politicians to help depressed
people beyond "open up businesses", I'm going to remain very skeptical this is
actually a legitimate thing they are concerned about rather than a cynical
appeal to emotion. The very people who claim to be _so_ concerned with
depression right now are the ones where were and are advocating to slash
social support systems. Sure, let's help people who are depressed and sitting
at home. This begins with listening to public health experts, who have been
begging for politicians to listen to their proposals to combat depression. If
the first and only proposal to combat depression is "open up businesses and
get people back to work" then how can we be sure these people will still be
serious about depression _after_ people get back to work?

