
Bill Gates: If I were president, this is what I would do to fight coronavirus - ajaviaad
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/what-bill-gates-would-do-to-fight-covid-19-if-he-were-us-president.html
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janpot
You can skip this clickbait:

> he would prioritize keeping people across America in isolation to “flatten
> the curve” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is literally the content of this article

~~~
cjcenizal
Another good one:

“It is really tragic that the economic effects of this are very dramatic.
Nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes,” Gates
said. “But money, you know bringing the economy back and doing money, that’s
more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. And so we’re
going to take the pain in the economic dimension — huge pain — in order to
minimize the pain in the disease and death dimension.”

~~~
smt88
Kind of a meandering way for him to say, essentially: "Revenue can be
replaced. People cannot."

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skookum
Opinion pieces in favor of keeping the lockdowns going are a dime a dozen
right now. Why are none of these smart people extending their opining to cover
exit strategies and timelines? What are the steps being taken to make sure
that an eventual relaxation of lockdown doesn't just put us back at the mid-
February state of the pandemic?

~~~
orev
Because with a sufficiently long and strict lockdown, the disease dies out and
there’s nothing else that would need to be done.

~~~
skookum
For that to work requires not only a strict but a globally coordinated
lockdown, otherwise one infected traveler can get the whole thing started
again.

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henriquez
It's easy to stomach the idea of shutting the U.S. economy down when you're a
multi-billionaire. All of the people famous enough to have op-eds published
about how they would handle the situation are also rich enough where the
economic impact doesn't affect them personally, other than some numbers in
their portfolio.

There are millions of people who just got laid off and still have rent /
mortgage / car payments due and nothing but unemployment insurance _if they
're lucky_ to make ends meet for the duration of this mess.

So what do you do for these people? Sending out checks for $1,200 isn't going
to significantly alter the calculus here. The longer the economy stays shut
down the more of a knock-on effect from halted production, interrupted supply
chains, opportunity loss from unfulfilled manufacturing and shipping capacity,
and ending with severe revenue loss at all levels of the economy, putting
companies out of business.

I've heard the straw man that "companies are just greedy and value profits
over human life," but the reality is that when companies go out of business,
all the people they employed for "scraps" are now unemployed and in a buyer's
market for what few jobs are left.

I think all of this might be esoteric here on HN where a lot of us seem to be
employed in creative or tech positions that can function remotely, but these
types of positions are still the exception rather than the rule in the U.S.

I'm not arguing that we should reopen the economy asap, either, but it would
be nice to read an op-ed from someone whose livelihood was directly impacted
by the shutdown.

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teeray
It’s insane to me that we carry these little GPS trackers around with us
everywhere and there is seemingly no middleground between “total government
pandemic panopticon” and “try to remember every person you’ve been in contact
over the last three weeks.”

If we solve that, then we make it possible for most people to go back about
their business but still maintain the capability to send them a push
notification saying “hey, you may have been exposed. You should monitor your
symptoms and probably stay home”

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Jeema101
One strategy I haven't heard much mention of is for the government to employ
people directly in various capacities to fight the outbreak.

This would both stimulate the economy and boost public confidence in the
government's response.

As it stands right now, having the President set unrealistic timelines when
the outbreak hasn't even been contained seems like it's going to have the
opposite effect in terms of shoring up public confidence.

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nojvek
This is meta.

If CNBC's adblocker-blocker popup really annoys you, do this. Open up browser
devtools. Find the top most div of the adblocker-blocker and delete it.

The adblocker-blocker hijacks scroll events by blocking scrolling. Go to the
top most content div and add this to element style

``` overflow: auto; height: 100vh; ```

This will fix scrolling and allow you to read content, without having to turn
off the adblocker. You can do this with many other sites.

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ykevinator
2 things, why do people want to know what bill gates thinks about viruses, and
why is his take so non innovative?

