
‘We Are Not Essential. We Are Sacrificial.’ - rbanffy
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/opinion/coronavirus-nyc-subway.html
======
spamizbad
This is part of why I am not confident about any economic upside of us opening
up.

We've had numerous meat processing plants close down or run at reduced
capacity due to workforce illness and people refusing to work due to the
concentration of COVID-19 cases.

And I think about how in the restaurant business how a rumor of someone
catching food poisoning can kill your business... what's going to happen when
a review lands on your Yelp/Google page that a customer took grandma to eat at
your restaurant and 2 weeks later she died from COVID-19? Your reputation will
be absolutely trashed.

Just seems like everyone is getting set up to fail... except for those who are
already able to work comfortably from home.

~~~
crispyambulance
> Just seems like everyone is getting set up to fail.

It does. We are seeing a dithering half-assed response to the pandemic in the
USA.

If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is
manageable. The way things are going now, it's like we're letting up just
enough to keep the damn thing circulating, killing more people needlessly and
probably necessitating more lockdowns and prolonging economic consequences in
the future.

This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership.

~~~
mikem170
>If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is
manageable.

I thought the purpose of the lockdown was to keep hospitals from being
overwhelmed? Maybe that is what you meant by manageable?

My two cents:

Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without
overwhelming hospitals?

We have been locked down and covid still circulates through the population,
and appears that it will do so until we reach herd immunity and/or have a
vaccine, with the likely/hopeful outcome, based on how these types of
coronaviruses often behave, being a decrease in the danger posed by this
specific virus over time.

Playing devils advocate: How much of a difference do mandated lockdowns even
make? Sweden doesn't have a lockdown and they are doing better than a number
of other western countries, worse than some others, but pretty much well
within the same bell curve given the fuzzy data we have at the moment.

When does it become selfish to tell tens of millions of people they can't
provide for themselves because you are scared of the coronavirus. They might
not be. The risk profile can be very different for different people.

As long as the hospitals are not overwhelmed why not self-isolate, and let
other people do what they want? That was the justification when we started
these lockdowns, to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed, right?

~~~
sethammons
You are getting down voted, and I'm not sure why. I've grown the opinion that
you cannot have any discussion around any measured approach related to COVID.

It seems some people view COVID as guaranteed death and any questioning of
lock downs ending means that you are or are about to be a mass murderer.

~~~
cfmcdonald
One reason could be that GP seems to assume that spread to herd immunity is
inevitable, ignoring the countries that have had great success in containing
the virus.

~~~
mikem170
What countries are you thinking of?

New Zealand has been able to pretty much eradicate the virus through lockdowns
and contact tracing, but they only had 1000 cases.

There is no precedent for doing that in a country with millions of cases, like
the U.S. It may be too late for that.

So is the purpose of continued lockdowns in the U.S. to eradicate the virus?
That is what I am skeptical about, I don't see the evidence that such a thing
is possible.

------
hprotagonist
_Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers
stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream
and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity
and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is
a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

...

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries!
blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses!
granite cocks! monstrous bombs!_

~~~
philangist
Howl by Allen Ginsberg for anyone else who didn't know the reference -
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl)

~~~
csense
This is poetry? It doesn't rhyme.

~~~
Balgair
Poetry hasn't been structured in rhyming stricture for ~150 years or so. In
English, Walt Whitman was kinda the first 'famous' person to abandon rhyming
and meter [0], and dive into 'free verse'. His _Leaves of Grass_ , revised
over his entire life, has numerous examples. Some of his best work is here:

[https://interestingliterature.com/2017/06/10-of-the-best-
wal...](https://interestingliterature.com/2017/06/10-of-the-best-walt-whitman-
poems-everyone-should-read/)

Even centuries after his death, I find his poetry to be some pretty wild
stuff.

 _Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your
soul._

Fun Fact: Whitman, a staunch anti-authoritarian and overall structure hater,
is one of the few English Poets taught in Chinese schools, as he is considered
'a man of the people'.

[0] Super crazy debate on who was 'first' here, if that can even be a thing
that can be measured.

~~~
hprotagonist
anglo-saxon poetry is also not interested in end-rhymes. The metric stress and
alliteration are the repetitive linguistic features that shape those works,
which are the direct ancestors of modern english.

 _Listen! We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes

in the old days, the kings of tribes—how noble princes

showed great courage!_

------
overgard
This is why I'm so sick of all the "we're in this together" stuff coming from
celebrities/rich people/brands. We are very clearly NOT in this together,
socioeconomic factors are huge in your potential survival of this and
executive teams are giving themselves bonuses while laying off workers or
asking for permanent pay cuts. This faux positivity helps nobody.

~~~
prox
If the US had a decent social healthcare in place, it would be. You pool
together resources so everyone has a chance. Instead you are either lucky or
rich.

~~~
klmadfejno
Not really. In the event of an untreatable disease, no amount of free
healthcare would make me feel better about being obligated to work in a
factory if I'm vulnerable to the disease; even if factory work were the best
damn job in the world.

------
BLKNSLVR
Why do we even consult economists when it comes to a pandemic response?
Economics is already provably not great at doing its core task.

Don't ask economists how to manage a pandemic. Listen to the epidemiologists.
Consult the economists to determine how much money is needed to keep people
fed and sheltered until the epidemiologists say that the threat will be
passed.

*I'm stereotyping economists here, but they've participated in too many conversations I've witnessed where they wade well out of their bubble of relevance. I read this somewhere on HN once, and it stuck with me: know what you're being asked to be an expert on. Economists aren't experts on infectious diseases. Fuck off, you're killing people.

My humble apologies to the majority of economists that aren't megalomaniacs
like the ones they seem to find for TV interviews and Government advisor
roles.

~~~
koheripbal
> Economics is already provably not great at doing its core task.

Can you cite any proof of this "provable" fact? ...and also a source that
defines Economists "core task"?

~~~
BLKNSLVR
Economics has become the tool of political ideology. It's modus operandi is
language that's impenetrable to the non-economist.

My problem is primarily with politics as opposed to pure economics.
Politicians use arguments provided for them by pet economists that allow them
to hide behind the economy as a reason to avoid making hard decisions. Lo and
behold, the status quo is best path forward ad infinitum.

Political economic decisions are often historically provably wrong and have
the opposite effect to that which was the stated intent (whether or not it was
the actual intent). Australia and the US recent re-implementations of trickle-
down economics, by 30 years of experience, is not effective at doing what the
politicians say it will. More subjectively: climate economics.

It's a complex argument but you're right to call me out on hyperbole. It's
politics staining whatever it touches.

Semi-related interesting article about economics relationship with politics:
[https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/july/1435672800/ric...](https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/july/1435672800/richard-
denniss/clowns-and-treasurers#mtr)

------
helen___keller
Is this another thread where everyone argues for their preferred side of the
lose/lose situation we're encountering (lose income vs risk to health)?

Unfortunately, each state will make it's own decision on how to resolve this
situation, and your state's decision may not line up with your preference. I
can understand the frustration for those in a reopening state who are
terrified of a big outbreak & getting sick, or those in a shut down state that
are terrified of not having the money they need to survive from being out of
work.

~~~
koheripbal
_insert anecdote_

 _insert politics_

------
nogabebop23
What am I missing? I can't view any of the NYT articles posted here; all I get
is a overlay with subscription options. Same goes for most WaPo, Bloomberg and
economist articles.

Is everyone else on HN a subscriber to all these publications or am I missing
something?

~~~
underyx
The paywall of any

    
    
        www.nytimes.com
    

article can be bypassed by changing the hostname to

    
    
        www.nytimes.com.
    

with a dot at the end.

~~~
shanxS
Hmm.. it screws up CORS to get user subscription info. Good find! (and good
lesson)

~~~
lordgrenville
Could you explain that in more detail? I understand that the dot tells the DNS
resolver that it's an absolute domain name rather than relative, but after
that I'm lost.

------
JAlexoid
This is an interesting issue.

RMT Union was absolutely up in arms against automation of their jobs, which
would have made them much less vulnerable today. I wonder what MTA employees
thought about the automation and if automation was even considered by NYC
Subway or rail operations.

Maybe we'll finally get proper automation after this is over.

------
piokoch
"As a conductor, when I stick my head out of the car to perform the required
platform observation"

I can't really believe that the country that managed to send man to the Moon
is not able to put a camera somewhere in the train or on the platform, so
conductor does not need to do something like this...

If camera is too much, maybe a properly installed large mirror would do the
trick.

~~~
jrockway
There are two checks that the conductor does. One is to ensure that all the
doors are "platformed", i.e. won't open into the tunnel. This is done by
pointing at a striped bar hanging from the ceiling. They lean out the window
and point because it's one of those "hacks" that makes compliance with the
procedure more likely. (Kind of like how checklists dramatically increased
aviation safety.) The second thing they do is check that the train isn't
dragging anything when it's leaving the station. People do get caught in the
doors (usually their clothes or bags), and you don't read about them dying
because the conductor is paying close attention and stops the train.

Can you engineer sensors to do this? Absolutely. Machine vision is getting
better every year, but these procedures date from a time when digital cameras
and computers didn't even exist. They work well, don't require maintenance,
and are simple. An engineered sensor-based solution would be expensive, would
break often in the dirty environment of the tunnels, and would be pretty
imperfect.

So I think a pretty good engineering compromise has been made here. Going to
the moon happened because there was an unlimited budget and we only had to do
it a few times. Seeing if your train is platformed correctly and that it's not
dragging any customers to their death has less funding and has to happen
thousands of times a day. Hence, we have a person in the train to do that,
instead of a machine learning sensor network.

~~~
JAlexoid
There are a million approaches to this. Minority of the solutions are CV. Most
are already solved engineering problems.

Elevators manage to not drag you, but multimillion dollar train cars can't?

Your thought process is one of over-engineering. Don't overengineer.

~~~
jrockway
Elevators don't run outdoors at 60 miles an hour in a blizzard. Trains are
taken out of service all the time because the door opening/closing machinery
has stopped working. A sensor that can detect the sleeve of your shirt caught
in the door would have to be more precise than what elevators use, and operate
in significantly harsher conditions.

(In Japan, platform doors are common. Every installation I've seen has
multiple e-stop buttons to press if you get caught in them. Clearly they don't
trust the sensors, if there are even sensors. And those doors are static and
don't move with the train.)

~~~
avianlyric
London Underground operates in the same conditions and have figured it out,
without the emergency stop buttons, or platform side doors.

The Victoria line has been operating semi-automatically with driver only
operation, and not getting out of the trains (because the windows don’t open)
since 1968.

These aren’t insurmountable problems, and they’ve been solved for a very long
time.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_1967_Stoc...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_1967_Stock)

------
mchusma
While pushing for safety is a good thing, ultimately essential workers are the
same as non-essential workers, except with an option to work. This is except
for anyone being forced to work (there are certainly a few categories here,
like the military). So while I am sure some people feel they are being
sacrificed, and there are some individual circumstances that don't make sense,
most essential workers are better off than non essential workers and both
parties know it.

Anecdote: I work a lot with low income people and the vast majority want to be
considered essential with the ability to earn. This is because they, like most
people, are smart and are able to understand the risk and make decisions for
themselves and their families.

So while I think pushing for safety is good and important, and extreme cases
should be addressed, I find it odd that the dominant narrative around
essential workers right now is not how workers are clamoring to be considered
essential. It is the story not being told.

~~~
arkades
> Anecdote: I work a lot with low income people and the vast majority want to
> be considered essential with the ability to earn. This is because they, like
> most people, are smart and are able to understand the risk and make
> decisions for themselves and their families.

Absolute bullshit.

We don't know the true prevalence. We don't know the true incidence rate.
Without that, we don't know the true mortality.

Epidemiologists and infectious disease docs can't give you a reasonable
"understand(ing of) the risk ... for themselves and their families" right now,
only the general bounds of best- and worst-case scenarios.

Anyone else claiming to have that knowledge or understanding is deluding
themselves and/or others. To point to people desperate to not end up
homeless/jobless and say they're making a rational decision with understanding
of risks involved is absolutely ludicrous.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
The general bound of worst-case scenarios is about equal to all-cause
mortality risk over a year. That's bad, but not apocalyptically bad - well
within the range of risks that an individual could rationally decide to
accept.

~~~
DuskStar
Even more so if you're in a low-risk demographic - for instance, "healthy
person under 50".

------
GaryNumanVevo
Small Restaurants will die. There is no way to break even on 50% capacity /
delivery only. The margins are too small to have anything less than 100%
capacity.

Sure, we _can_ reopen, but we can't force people to sit next to one another,
and risk getting Covid-19 to continue to keep small businesses alive.

The only solution is to ensure the workers are paid, rent freeze for both
business and personal leases.

------
noxer
Bad things need to happen for people to realize they are being exploited day
by day. The "good" thing is they will forget about that when bad goes back to
normal - yes normal not good.

------
generalpass
There are a whole bunch of people who do not qualify for any benefits, have
little savings, and are blocked from going to work.

In a recent press conference, New York Governor Cuomo failed to provide any
reasonable response to a reporter when asked about someone in a very similar
situation (the person qualified for benefits, but checks have not arrived).

What is to happen to these people? Is the lockdown to protect them from
something truly worse than not being able to buy food?

Anyone care to address this single point without going off-topic?

~~~
Pfhreak
Enable them to collect benefits: pay for them to buy food, cancel their rent
payments, cover their healthcare.

It's not hard, we just have a weird culture in America that couples all these
basic human essentials to your work.

~~~
generalpass
> Enable them to collect benefits: pay for them to buy food, cancel their rent
> payments, cover their healthcare.

> It's not hard, we just have a weird culture in America that couples all
> these basic human essentials to your work.

The requests for these things have already been made and are not reasonably
being acted on.

~~~
Pfhreak
So make them demands, not requests. Organize collective action like rent
strikes.

------
brenden2
[https://archive.is/jA5jJ](https://archive.is/jA5jJ)

------
stjohnswarts
How are they sacrificial? They can walk away from their job if they think it's
too dangerous. There are plenty medical jobs out there that don't require
front line covid treatment

------
kseifried
To quote Tommy Boy:

Ray Zalinsky: Goin' a little heavy on the pine tree perfume there kid?

Tommy: No, it's an auto air freshener.

Ray Zalinsky: Good, you've pinpointed it, now the next step is washin' it out.

------
gentleman11
> Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake,
> that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that
> the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that
> society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it
> deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

Ayn Rand

I am not a follower of hers but on this particular topic I am reminded of her
quotes a lot

~~~
ebg13
Hers is a perversion from aspect blindness that talks about rights in a vacuum
without concern or care about harm. Right (i.e. morally correct) and the right
(i.e. morally allowed) are often not the same. A person has the right to deny
food to someone who is starving, but it makes the denier repugnant, and I
would rather not have them in my society. Rand starts from the faulty premise
that the two are the same and descends into madness from there.

> _I am not a follower of hers but..._

How are you both not a follower of hers and also driven to conjure quotes?
That looks a lot like when someone says "I'm not racist but <overtly racist
thing>". (I'm not calling you racist. I'm drawing a similarity between "I'm
not X, but").

~~~
tfehring
I'll go further than the parent commenter and say that I think Randian ideals
are absurd and anyone who sincerely supports or buys into them is deranged.
But I think the quote is interesting in this context because it's so obvious
and so relevant that _capitalism_ is resulting in the same dehumanization that
Rand ascribes to socialism.

To put it another way, it would be easy to imagine this variant of the quote
being real (to be completely clear, it isn't):

>> _Capitalism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own
sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to the
capitalists, that the only justification of his existence is his service to
the capitalists, and that the capitalists may dispose of him in any way they
please for the sake of their own profit._

> -Karl Marx

...and that claim, unlike Rand's, would have been both accurate and relevant.

