Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by thrwaway2day 2014 days ago
It also isn't a good look when the restrictions happen to fall on apparent political lines, even if it isn't intentional.

Hollywood productions, Amazon warehouses, protests in line with democratic party values, abortion clinics and pot shops = D leaning voters = Allowed, if not encouraged

Small businesses, churches, protests of lockdown measures, gun ranges, Musk and Tesla = R leaning voters = Forbidden, shun them, they are going to kill grandma

Add to that the many of the people advocating for these policies fail to follow them themselves (Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, London Breed, Dianne Feinstein just to name a few) and you can see how many especially those who are losing their livelihoods see this as a attack and are frustrated. The optics are extremely bad, though that might be the point.

2 comments

Tesla was deemed an essential business and remains open...

Outdoor gun ranges are also still open.

Churches are still open.

Also, most of Amazons warehouses are in conservative areas like San Bernardino and largely white employ right leaning voters.

Simply put, while the latest lockdowns follow the same ineffectual policies of the earlier lockdowns, they're not based on targeting ideological opponents and protecting political allies.

Musk had to fight tooth and nail for months to reopen and he's now moving to Texas because of this.

Chruches are only open because the highest court in the land, the surpreme court, overruled the Gov of Cali executive branches restrictions.

Outdoor gun ranges? Almost everything out door is still open...

Amazon is from Seattle and Bezos owns the WaPo. It's not conservative.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-reported...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/coronavirus-supreme-co...

Simply put, Corona restrictions can easily be viewed as being ideologically based and also be viewed as having been weaponized against opposing political groups in California to hurt them, and its very concerning to see.

No, under the original orders, factories were always going to reopen with social distancing as as soon as practical once appropriate health measures were put into place (filters, fans, etc). Musk's antics actually delayed the reopening of factories in California because health officials hadn't contemplated that a billionaire would care so little about his workers or ad PR that he would try to force his workers back into a factory without even attempting the bare minimum to protect their health.

Chruches are only open because the highest court in the land, the surpreme court, overruled the Gov of Cali executive branches restrictions.

Churches have been reopened for indoor services (with limited capacity) since May. The SCOTUS didn't rule on the CA case for the second time until a week ago. Notably, you are ignoring the first time SCOTUS ruled on CA church restrictions, when it upheld the restrictions on indoor services earlier during the lockdowns.

Amazon is from Seattle and Bezos owns the WaPo. It's not conservative.

I do not claim that Amazon or its CEO are conservative. But the overwhelming majority of Amazon's CA employees, it's warehouse workers and delivery drivers,are conservative and live in areas of CA that still have conservative supermajorities.

Simply put, Corona restrictions can easily be viewed as being ideologically based and also be viewed as having been weaponized against opposing political groups in California to hurt them, and its very concerning to see.

Yes, in the same way that HTML5 can be seen as a supercomputer. Notably, conservative governors have issued the same restrictions in red states, which is overwhelming evidence that these restrictions are not ideologically motivated.

I think we both agree that the new restrictions are problematic. You, for ideological reasons, and me, because they're clearly not based on any sort of scientific or empirical evidence. (There is absolutely no reason for subjecting counties like SLO or the OC to the same restrictions as LA County, which has one of the highest spread rates in the world.)

After seeing the extremes to which you're trying to spin what happened

"Musk antics delayed reopening"

What a hoot.

I have a feeling that you might actually have an extreme ideological bent youre not even aware of.

Whats it going to take for people to freak out and revolt, it's time. It's clearly extremely bad.
It's going to take the people not getting distracted by red herrings. So much outrage has been channeled into destructive memes like denying that Covid is a problem and rebelling against simple measures to stop the spread.

The real problem is the unsustainable structure of the economy. I don't think this woman is being driven to tears because she really wants to be running her restaurant right now, but rather because she's going to lose it completely when she falls off the debt treadmill. Instead of small businesses and individuals getting recurring stimulus and suspended rent/mortgages/taxes, we got peanuts. Meanwhile trillions of dollars were given to Wall St to make sure the magic Line keeps going up. That was a massive theft from the public to the plutocrats. But until the outrage stops getting divided and derailed by distractions, I'm afraid it will only continue.

> So much outrage has been channeled into destructive memes like denying that Covid is a problem and rebelling against simple measures to stop the spread.

Here's the problem, it has been a do as I say not as I do attitude from the leadership in this country and even people who were supposed to remain non-political made moves that were suspect. For example early on when Fauci was asked if we should limit the BLM protests, he refused to make a recommendation. Now keep in mind during that same hearing he made recommendations about all kinds of other things from restaurants to sporting events. If you agree with him it's easy to overlook that, however take a moment and walk a bit in someone elses shoes, someone who has spent the past decade working to build a business or trying to support a family and was impacted by those measures and if you are honest you'll admit that it would probably piss you off to see that.

Leaders need to understand that people react on a emotional level to things and if you are asking for someone to make great personal sacrifices you need to be above reproach when making those requests.

To illustrate it from the other side there is a new anti-vax movement that popped up among progressives due to the fact that these new covid vaccines are being produced under a Trump presidency. When I read about the concerns they tend to have more to due with Trumps personality than the science. Again if Trump conducted himself in a more socially acceptable way and spent more time considering how his words and choices appeared to others, I suspect this new vaccine would encounter less resistance.

In the scheme of history much of the suffering caused by covid can be placed squarely on a lack of leadership. It has been a long time since the United States has had a threat like this to deal with and we have learned that our leadership is woefully unprepared. If we were smart they wouldn't be our leadership for much longer.

> take a moment and walk a bit in someone elses shoes, someone who has spent the past decade working to build a business or trying to support a family and was impacted by those measures and if you are honest you'll admit that it would probably piss you off to see that

Obviously that would piss anybody off. Which is why it was pumped in their face 24/7 to keep them angry at the other group of plebs, and distracted from the professional looting. The proper response was to demand a pause to the finance that was actually responsible for threatening their businesses and families. Instead they fell right into the trap of thinking that being unable to pay rent is a character flaw.

> Leaders need to understand that people react on a emotional level to things and if you are asking for someone to make great personal sacrifices you need to be above reproach when making those requests.

Ends meet should have never been a sacrifice anyone was asked to make. This isn't a failure of leadership, but rather outright corruption by the plutocrats. Continually lowering interest rates over the past two decades to keep The Line going up, and then no relief for people squeezed in the debt vice when a hiccup occurred and the calls came due.

> Again if Trump conducted himself in a more socially acceptable way and spent more time considering how his words and choices appeared to others, I suspect this new vaccine would encounter less resistance.

The problem with Trump isn't just a lack of presentation, but that he's an empty conman. Covid is back with urgency and yet he's focused on his latest con of "stop the steal". Given his constant politicking and general rejection of expertise, being skeptical of corruption at the FDA is completely understandable. The problem runs much deeper than a lack of leadership - it's a failure of institutions.

There's only been around 20,000 Covid deaths this year in the under 55 age group this year. The under 55 age group is 80% of the population. That's less than car accidents. So this is a disease that is very low risk for 80% of the American population.

If the vulnerable 20% of the population can't stay in quarantine, this is not societies problem anymore.. this is that minority 20%'s problem.

And these crushing social restrictions destroying lives, jobs, businesses, enslaving people to debt, and putting people into poverty need to stop.