[HN Gopher] The state of the restaurant industry
___________________________________________________________________
The state of the restaurant industry
Author : enraged_camel
Score : 414 points
Date : 2020-03-17 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.opentable.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.opentable.com)
| rosybox wrote:
| I feel for the industry, but I'm having a hard time seeing myself
| buying gift cards at a moment when I'm wondering if I will have a
| job or food for my family.
| hammock wrote:
| At this point, what good is "seated diners" data when every
| restaurant is takeout and delivery only?
| corford wrote:
| It's true. Would be great if JustEat and others posted similar
| data.
| cj wrote:
| Agree.
|
| I have 2 cousins who manage a restaurant in upstate New York.
| Everyone was told to apply for unemployment (which has had its
| waiting period waived), except for the manager and assistant
| manager.
|
| The game plan is to trial take-out only dinners, but since less
| than 5% of their previous business was take out, their hopes
| aren't high.
|
| I'm really interested to see how many small businesses like
| this pull through.
| nemonemo wrote:
| Though some of the major ones may have the restriction, not all
| US metros have the regulation yet. It would be good to have a
| data on how much of the number is under the regulation.
| brewdad wrote:
| I would expect these restrictions to be nationwide by this
| weekend, if not sooner.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Curious if this 40-70% drop in seated diners has been offset by
| takeout/delivery.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Good data here. I would love to see Square publish something.
| [deleted]
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| As I was reading this I got a notification that Uber Eats would
| be providing $0 fee delivery for food in our area.
| csolorio wrote:
| I run an online mobile ordering app for restaurants as a side
| project and have never seen this many sign ups in one day. I have
| a full time job so had to bring my gf on to help with customer
| support.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > I run an online mobile ordering app for restaurants as a side
| project and have never seen this many sign ups in one day. I
| have a full time job so had to bring my gf on to help with
| customer support.
|
| Interesting, I'd like to see how the indie apps compete against
| the big guys like Doordash and Uber Eats, especially now during
| this shutdown. What is your biggest bottleneck, background
| checks and driver license verification? Bank accounts?
|
| Let me know if you want an extra hand from a remote worker, I
| used to have to do tech support/emails for my startup, too. All
| while having a day job so I can understand how overwhelming
| coming home to 77 unread emails while staring at a backlog of
| unresolved tickets can be.
| himinlomax wrote:
| In France it's -100% by law, except for takeaway.
|
| Thanks a bunch, Xi Jinping!
| vkou wrote:
| Why do you think any other country would have been able to
| contain this outbreak?
| netsharc wrote:
| Original GP went on "they're filthy" rant. If he had said the
| authoritarian state obsessed with wanting to always look good
| lead to failure in containing the infection and let it spread
| from Wuhan, making things much worse all over the world, I
| would've nodded in agreement.
| himinlomax wrote:
| The wet markets are filthy. Not an unspecified "they". The
| wet markets. No hygiene standards, live animals shitting
| and pissing next to slaughtered meat, no health inspection.
|
| Trying to make this factually true statement look like
| bigotry is just reprehensible.
| reddit_clone wrote:
| There _is_ this doctor who sounded early warning and he was
| ignored and hassled (Guy is dead now :-( ).
|
| Not sure how other countries would have handled it. But it
| still is a history-changing decision point that could have
| gone better.
| fma wrote:
| Even with Dr. Li's silencing...we (USA) still had 2 months
| to prepare...but didn't. Trump bought us time with blocking
| flights to/from China, but travel from Italy and Korea were
| still happening...Korea STILL is happening.
|
| The first cases in my city (Atlanta) were all from Italy.
|
| I suspect banning flights from China was also motivated by
| politics.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Other countries don't have those filthy wet markets. They ARE
| absolutely filthy. They're on the same hygiene levels as the
| bushmeat markets in the poorest African countries. You know,
| Ebola?
|
| Isn't it amazing that poorer, even denser countries like
| India or Bangladesh haven't originated the same deadly
| pandemics?
|
| The PRC deserves the blame for this. Scientists have known
| about the issues with those markets for a long time, at least
| since SARS. They only just prohibited the trade of wild
| animals. Why not before?
|
| (Of course some people will call this racism, but other
| ethnic Chinese countries like HK, Taiwan or Singapore have
| world-leading hygiene standards. This one is on the Chinese
| dictatorship, not the Chinese people.)
| [deleted]
| pinkfoot wrote:
| Whilst I would love to join you in your racist-freebie rant
| on the Chinese, I am reminded that 170 odd people died from
| Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, caused by feeding hitherto vegan
| cows the brains of other dead cows.
|
| In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
| Ireland. In 2012.
|
| Twit
| baq wrote:
| Can somebody explain to me how saying 'generic bad thing'
| and 'China' in the same sentence is racist? Is this
| question racist? Serious answers only because I'm in EU.
|
| Bonus question - is Spanish Flu racist?
| koliber wrote:
| There is believable evidence that the Spanish flu
| originated in the US.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-
| year-1...
|
| https://www.livescience.com/spanish-flu.html
|
| Was the name racist? Not sure, considering that likely it
| was incorrect. What do you think?
| vonmoltke wrote:
| As I understand it, "Spanish Flu" was so named because it
| started during WWI. Spain was the first non-belligerent
| to be hit by the disease. Since news media in all of the
| belligerent nations was highly censored, it was Spanish
| media that was first to report heavily on the effects.
| Thus, the belief at the time that the disease originated
| there.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| It's most likely CPC brigading. The only group on earth
| who sees anti-CPC rehtoric as being synonymous with
| racism against the chinease are the CPC themselves.
|
| It's like when someone calls you an anti-semite for
| supporting BDS movements. I just assume they're isreali
| Nationals or shills when they say that crap. It's all dog
| whistling because the alternative is that evil
| organizations would have to admit that they do bad
| things.
| danenania wrote:
| Industrial farming practices in the US and many other
| countries could easily lead to similarly dangerous animal-
| to-human transmissions.
| fock wrote:
| fortunately in industrial farming, the infection risk the
| other way round (human-animal) is such a business risk,
| that adequate precautions are taken!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Industrial farming practices in the US and many other
| countries could easily lead to similarly dangerous
| animal-to-human transmissions_
|
| SARS-CoV-2 appears to have originated in bats, been
| passed to Malayan pangolins, and then made its jump to
| humans [1].
|
| That is likely in a wet market. It is not likely on a
| single-animal industrial farm.
|
| [1] https://www.cell.com/pb-
| assets/journals/research/current-bio...
| danenania wrote:
| Past black swan events are not necessarily good
| indicators for future black swan events. This time it was
| (probably) bats and pangolins--next time it could be
| chickens and pigs.
|
| I don't dispute that the wet markets are higher risk, but
| there is certainly _some_ risk in industrial farming too.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Past black swan events are not necessarily good
| indicators for future black swan events_
|
| SARS also originated from Chinese wet markets [1]. If
| you're trying to engineer a plague, crowding different
| species with one another's effluence is the traditional
| way to do it.
|
| > _there is certainly some risk in industrial farming
| too_
|
| Some. But not comparable to wet markets. The latter's
| only comparison is with medieval European cities, where
| people, sewage and livestock had constant and close
| proximity to one another.
|
| The tragic thing is, the products of these wet markets
| are unaffordable for most Chinese. The entire world is
| put at risk because a narrow sliver of Beijing's elite
| want exotic wild game.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14738798
| himinlomax wrote:
| The point is, industrial farming HASN'T.
|
| (There is plenty to say about industrial farming; the use
| of antibiotics in it is probably largely responsible for
| MRSA and the likes. But it has not resulted in a wartime-
| like conditions in the whole world.)
| pinkfoot wrote:
| > The point is, industrial farming HASN'T.
|
| Except for the wee Mad Cow Disease thingie that jumped to
| people.
| himinlomax wrote:
| How many victims?
| senderista wrote:
| Clearly you've never had delicious raw bat, fresh from the
| market.
| aresant wrote:
| I have a friend that owns a restaurant, doesn't sell gift cards
| online and no idea how to do.
|
| What's the fastest way to set up a Gift Card program?
| CodeCube wrote:
| I truly hope your friend can figure out a way through this ...
| however isn't selling gift cards just kind of punting the
| problem down the road? If their customers buy gift cards now,
| and then return to use then in X weeks/months, wouldn't they
| just be working for "free" at that point (assuming all the
| funds from the gift cards were used to get them through the
| customer-less time)?
| koheripbal wrote:
| It effectively acts as an interest free loan to the business.
| synack wrote:
| https://twitter.com/mulligan/status/1239774408173969413
| cromulent wrote:
| https://stripe.com/partners/gift-up
| notacoward wrote:
| Could you do something with Venmo plus a manual ledger? Send
| money, write down the person's name etc., if they come in later
| you can look it up and give the credit.
| ajay1215 wrote:
| Do they use square? https://squareup.com/us/en/gift-cards
| Shermanium wrote:
| We could turn all these empty hotel rooms into ICU beds if we
| upgrade to negative pressure ventilation, and we could turn all
| these empty restaurants into community testing and supply
| distribution centers staffed by the laid off employees paid for
| with federal helicopter-drop funds. Think New Deal-level changes.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Good plan. Restaurants are almost like like hospitals if you
| discount for training, facilities and ability to deal with ill
| people.
|
| ICU === eating pizza
|
| With fries.
| Shermanium wrote:
| i said restaurants for supply sites. whats your idea?
| [deleted]
| fimbulvetr wrote:
| I'd like to see similar data for real estate, though I recognize
| that the data is much more proprietary and there's a much longer
| lead time for some events (like closings) but for things like
| showings, open houses, etc. it would be nice to see.
| cs702 wrote:
| Wow, 50-70% drop in online reservations, phone reservations, and
| walk-in diners, compared to last year, in every country measured
| by OpenTable.
|
| The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales
| worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of
| individuals.[a]
|
| Absent government intervention, the cascading economic impact
| from just this one sector will be enormous.
|
| [a] https://medium.com/@CravyHQ/the-restaurant-industry-a-
| global...
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| We're feeling it baaaad here in New Orleans. Roughly 8% of our
| workforce is in the service sector and our film/television
| industry has ground to a halt. I work in video production. My
| friends/colleagues and I are basically just sitting around now
| hoping productions can get back up again in a safe but still
| somewhat timely manner. It's going to be rough for a while.
| ape4 wrote:
| Opentable could help their "restaurant partners" by charging them
| smaller amount.
| koolba wrote:
| Losing 30% of retirement savings likely caused a chunk of this as
| well. Maybe not the bulk but I'd bet it's a factor in people
| pulling back on all spending.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Technically speaking, nobody should have lost 30% of their
| retirement savings. Young people should have much more saving
| to do, so it will be a smaller fraction of their overall
| retirement savings. Older folks should have been pivoting into
| less risky assets already.
| [deleted]
| koheripbal wrote:
| Even losing 15% will cause you to cut spending.
| tkdkop wrote:
| 7shifts also posted yesterday about the effects they're seeing
| from COVID-19. Their Seattle customers were hit extremely hard
| https://www.7shifts.com/blog/covid-19-for-restaurants/
| [deleted]
| chintan wrote:
| Nice viz. the 102% increase in New Orleans on feb 25 could be
| explained due to the ball game between Pelicans vs Lakers
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Far more likely that it's due to Mardi Gras (Feb 25, 2020)
| brenden2 wrote:
| Presumably it should be -100% in cities like NYC where
| restaurants have been ordered to shut down for in-restaurant
| dining.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Perhaps US eat-out culture will die, and those who worked those
| jobs will just have to find some other means by which to
| negotiate value from the economy.
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| Not if I can help it. I'm ordering delivery constantly, and as
| soon as restaurants reopen my ass will be in a seat every night
| of the week to support what is personally my favorite industry.
| And I'll be tipping extra.
| threatofrain wrote:
| I would argue that an interesting intervention has to come
| from something more, because the restaurant industry has been
| suffering terribly and consolidating already, perhaps due to
| an increasingly unhealthy middle class.
| standardUser wrote:
| How exactly has the industry been "suffering terribly"? In
| places I frequent (SF Bay Area, NYC) I see hundreds of
| long-term restaurants persisting, plus a constant stream of
| brand new places, all in the face of increasing minimum
| wages and other employer mandates/regulations. I'd also
| argue that the quality of both food and service have never
| been better. I'm not saying you're wrong (I have no clue),
| but it feels to me like I've been living in a golden age of
| eating out (expensive though it may be).
| lemax wrote:
| Expensive as they may be, restaurants have terrible
| margins. James Beard nominated, objectively successful
| places with >$1M gross are netting the annual income of
| someone who washes dishes [1]. They are operating on a
| fine line and I would imagine most of these places do not
| have the cash to weather through even a minor hitch in
| business.
|
| https://www.eater.com/2020/3/9/21166993/how-much-to-run-
| a-re...
| bowmessage wrote:
| That's not exactly a realistic outlook on what will ultimately
| be a temporary situation.
| coliveira wrote:
| It all depends on how long it is temporary. Current
| predictions are 2-3 months, which I think it is already too
| much time for most restaurants.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| NYT opinion piece talks in terms of 3 or 4 "waves" of
| social distancing spread over 1-2 years.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-
| socia...
| fhars wrote:
| Germany's Robert Koch Institute just spoke of "up to two
| years" today...
|
| (Near the bottom of the page if you can read German:
| https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/coronavirus-deutschland-
| rki... )
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| That "up to two years" applies to how long it would take
| for 60-70% of people to get the virus if you are aiming
| for a "herd immunity" scenario. It doesn't claim that the
| present lockdown will last two years.
| fhars wrote:
| Oh, the first version of the text read differently, there
| is a correction at the bottom.
| bowmessage wrote:
| As always, new restaurants will take the place of shuttered
| ones. It won't be easy, but "eating out" as a practice will
| not disappear!
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > find some other means by which to negotiate value from the
| economy
|
| Do people actually talk like this about the livelihood of
| millions of people in real life, or is an affectation for HN?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Sure, plenty of people do. Head down to the local bow tie
| store, or visit your nearest seasteading ship and you'll find
| that almost everyone talks this way. Just be careful not to
| violate the NAP or you'll be blown away by someone's rocket
| launcher.
| true_religion wrote:
| It's simple emotional distancing. For many, talking about sad
| things makes them irrational or depressed, so if it has to be
| discussed it will be done so in academic terms.
|
| The less conversant you are with the actual academia, the
| more contrived the terms you invent will be. I doubt many did
| more than undergrad business or economic here.
| trianglem wrote:
| But there's just so many of them. Between the hotel and
| restaurant industry we're talking about more than 20 million
| people.
| mml wrote:
| Having seen it first hand, the vast majority of those 20
| million people are living check to check. even missing a few
| shifts puts them on the brink of homelessness. this is going
| to be very, very bad.
| ericd wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the police departments and judges aren't
| going to be allowing evictions right now.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| People don't realise that many of these business will be dead
| and wont come back after. The knock on effect will go up the
| supply chain. For example lobster trappers, fishers,
| ranchers, farmers bulk of their income comes from supplying
| to restaurants if restaurants are not buying prices will come
| down which will affect them further.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Maybe, given the financial shock, no other means are readily
| available. Maybe, given the lack of means to negotiate value
| from the economy the lose the ability to buy food or pay for
| their shelter. Maybe in that case they either band with other
| people unable to negotiate this value, abandon respect for the
| law, and take that value by force. Maybe they do not do this,
| and are forced into situations that put them in greater contact
| with other people and makes the pandemic worse.
| aniro wrote:
| Remarkable how quickly you were able to dehumanize the economic
| impact on millions of lives and yet simultaneously
| anthropomorphize the "economy". A single sentence.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I don't see any evidence of anthropomorphizing the economy or
| dehumanizing the individual here in the comment you are
| replying to.
|
| Maybe you need to reread what you commented on
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a bad comment with another bad
| comment. That only makes the thread even worse. This is in
| the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| threatofrain wrote:
| The restaurant industry is brittle and consolidating, and the
| the American middle class might not be strong enough to
| support it anymore. Recent events just magnify the weaknesses
| of the existing system.
|
| We could talk about things like the expansion of government
| programs, or we could talk about your theory of how I'm
| stripping people's humanities away. You would also presume
| quite poorly if you thought I haven't worked in the food
| industry.
|
| If you have something interesting to offer to the scenario of
| collapsing American restaurants, go ahead. Such as more
| discussion on dehumanization.
| aniro wrote:
| I simply responded to what you wrote, without assumption or
| prejudice.
|
| This is a far more interesting statement: "The restaurant
| industry is brittle and consolidating, and the the American
| middle class might not be strong enough to support it
| anymore. Recent events just magnify the weaknesses of the
| existing system."
|
| If that is what you intended to communicate, then maybe
| that is what you should have written.
|
| I would conjecture that it describes much of the US
| economy, not just the food service industry.
| sgrove wrote:
| I'd recommend keeping your first two sentences (which are
| interesting), and deleting the rest of the comment (which
| just continues an inflammatory line).
| mattsfrey wrote:
| The assertion that restaurants failing in the wake of the
| government mandating them to close in response to a once in
| a lifetime pandemic is evidence of them being unviable as
| an industry is utterly laughable.
| [deleted]
| wozniacki wrote:
| Whats more remarkable is that no one has made a peep about
| RENTAL PAYMENT DEFERRALS or SUSPENSIONS to even COMMERCIAL
| LANDLORDS of APARTMENTS / SINGLE FAMILY HOMES yet somehow
| sit-down restaurants and their health are a top concern.
|
| These priorities are lop-sided at best.
|
| Restaurants are not a critical component of your basic
| sustenance. They never were, in the course of human
| history. Heavy dependence on them for ones immediate
| sustenance needs is a very recent development.
|
| On the other hand, shelter is.
| [deleted]
| milesskorpen wrote:
| Probably because the buildings aren't going anywhere.
| Landlords will lose money, but they're less likely to lay
| off tons of people.
|
| Restaurants employ ~10% of working Americans. A lot of
| people are going to lose jobs.
| wozniacki wrote:
| Restaurants employ ~10% of working Americans. A lot of
| people are going to lose jobs.
|
| No one disputes that. Although that 10% figure needs
| corroboration. As other comments have pointed out
| restaurants have switched to take-out and delivery and
| will need ample workers for those operations.
|
| But meanwhile what happens to the other 90% Americans who
| are working who face uncertain futures - some even in
| underrepresented sectors or even non-union sectors? How
| do they make rent or their mortgage payments?
|
| All I'm asking is why are restaurant workers deserving of
| such singular attention and their concerns need such
| elevation over the rest of the entire working classes of
| America including other blue & white collar workers?
| milesskorpen wrote:
| It's a SINGLE INDUSTRY that represents 10% of our
| workforce; I think that's more than any other.
| Overwhelmingly they are non-unionized. Profit margins for
| restaurants are very slim (avg. around 5%). Take-
| out/delivery is not going to come close to replacing the
| lost business. Many restaurants will close - many already
| have.
|
| This is not to say other industries (like hotels) won't
| also be badly hurt. But restaurants are probably the
| single largest highly effected sector.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Shelter is a human right. Landlords aren't.
| robocat wrote:
| "No one" in the US perhaps?
|
| Some other countries already have programs. NZ just
| introduced a program where everyone who's job is locked-
| out will still get paid (so they can continue to pay
| bills). Other countries have different programs.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| I don't understand how a program like that, paying just
| the workers, is going to help when the business they work
| for still goes out of business. It needs to be suspended
| payments for everybody: the renters, the landlords and
| homeowners paying their mortgages, the businesses paying
| their rent, and so on. You can't just target one group
| and forget the rest or everything collapses.
| throwaway_Bees wrote:
| >If you have something interesting to offer to the scenario
| of collapsing American restaurants, go ahead.
|
| You didn't quite offer anything interesting, just stated
| the industry is collapsing and workers should get other
| jobs...that isn't interesting or helpful.
|
| Curious how many people you employ and if your business is
| immune from the economic impact of this pandemic, maybe
| some of these workers would like you to hire them.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| What happened in Nebraska in feb 22nd?
| Jim- wrote:
| The Wilder vs Fury fight? :p
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Most restaurants moved to take out and delivery mode. Obv no one
| is doing online reservations these days. I don't understand
| what's OpenTable trying to say here.
| dlandis wrote:
| Does that data indicate that seated reservations are only
| presently down 56% YOY in the US ? That's pretty discouraging if
| that many people are still ignoring standard guidance.
| nck4222 wrote:
| There are a lot of people who don't really understand the
| importance of social distancing yet.
|
| When we told in-laws that the state (MA) had just banned
| dining-in starting the next day their response was "wow good
| thing we went out for dinner tonight then."
| logicalmind wrote:
| I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had to question the
| intelligence of family and acquaintances whom I used to hold
| in high regard. I've been asked to participate in "measle
| parties" with my kids. And to do a community stationary bike
| ride a the local gym to support them.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| A friend of mine spoke to someone today who _was not aware of
| COVID-19 at all_. Literally had not heard the term.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1053/
|
| Probably don't even need to click to know which one it is...
| slg wrote:
| Movie theater box office numbers[1] are another good indication
| of the same thing. You see a similar large drop-off, but still
| a sizable amount of people gathering in these businesses. This
| is why it is crucial for the government to force these
| businesses to close. As long as they are open, people will
| gather in them.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.boxofficemojo.com/date/?ref_=bo_nb_wey_secondary...
| paulmd wrote:
| Just saw an email from Cinemark (big theater chain) that
| they're closing starting tomorrow.
| bertil wrote:
| Can someone give money to OpenTable to support restaurant in
| difficult time?
|
| I wanted to help a couple of local business but there's nothing
| on-line: Google Maps says that they are open (and my city in in
| lock-down).
| autarch wrote:
| If your favorite places offer gift certificates, that's a
| good way to support them. You're basically giving them an
| interest-free loan for the amount that you purchase. I've
| already done this with a bunch of my favorite local
| restaurants.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Sadly OT no longer has their old gift card program, which
| was my baby when I worked there :<
| Terretta wrote:
| The cognitive dissonance is real, it's a sort of inverse
| 'tragedy of the commons', or akin to years of climate change
| behavior played out in days.
| bluedino wrote:
| In my state it's over 70%
|
| All the drive-throughs only had 1-2 cars in them today at
| lunch, instead of the line being wrapped around the building
| like usual.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Is it even possible to get covid-19 waiting in your car for
| auto-food?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Houston, like many cities, banned dine-in, though takeout and
| delivery are still options. Obviously Open Table's data won't
| reflect those sales.
| justinmares wrote:
| Crazy. Over the weekend my friend Brent and I built something to
| help - https://givelocal.co/
|
| Basically, a site that helps you buy gift cards and support your
| favorite local restaurant through the COVID pandemic.
|
| Would love community feedback!
| runevault wrote:
| I would love to see similar data for other industries as well.
| Any form of retail is going to get hit by this. Those that don't
| have online ordering setup are in for a world of hurt, and those
| that have it but don't advertise it well may not change the
| message fast enough.
|
| The long term impact for a lot of people is terrifying, but I
| don't see a way to avoid it without instead badly damaging our
| healthcare system and potentially killing a lot of people.
| throwaway7291 wrote:
| We have built a dashboard to do this sort of tracking
| https://www.econdb.com/covid/Italy/ which will be improved
| gradually. Obtaining good proxies for economic activity can be
| hard on some sectors.
| Touche wrote:
| Can anyone explain how you are supposed to pick up food (or have
| it delivered) while still maintaining the 6-foot distance from
| other individuals?
| yeswecatan wrote:
| Leave it on a table?
| Touche wrote:
| Many restaurants are advertising curbside service. I assume
| this means they bring it to your car. I'm just trying to
| understand how this all works.
| wmeredith wrote:
| That's about to completely crater. My city issued guidance just
| yesterday (3/16) that all dining room service is to stop. Drive
| through, delivery, and curbside only.
| the_economist wrote:
| What city?
| gooseus wrote:
| All of Oregon just started today as well
| qes wrote:
| Minnesota too
| mNovak wrote:
| Illinois and Ohio, I know at least
| artimaeis wrote:
| This is happening across all of North Carolina tonight.
|
| https://governor.nc.gov/news/north-carolina-close-
| restaurant...
| chaoticmass wrote:
| Not sure about above poster, but I can confirm Dallas did
| this yesterday.
| bnjms wrote:
| Ft. Worth cut capacity in half. No ones coming in anyway.
| The city is probably just trying to buy a couple weeks
| before going all in.
| sixothree wrote:
| Louisiana closed all bars and limited restaurants to takeout,
| delivery, or drive-thru service only.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The jurisdictions I'm aware of that have banned dining room
| service include:
|
| Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, several
| places in the Bay Area, New York, New Jersey, Washington,
| Illinois, Ohio.
|
| Basically, at this point, whenever a few large jurisdictions
| announce their intentions to take some coronavirus measures
| (such as closing schools or closing restaurants), everyone
| else follows through within 48 hours.
| prkr wrote:
| And Colorado as well.
| jonperl wrote:
| Even Bozeman, MT has closed its restaurants, cafes, and bars.
| autarch wrote:
| And Minnesota as of 5pm today (2020-03-17).
| jedberg wrote:
| Not sure what city OP is in, but every Bay Area county did
| that today.
| overcast wrote:
| New York, New Jersey and Connecticut shutdown all Restaurants,
| Bars and Movie Theaters yesterday afternoon. Only takeout is
| allowed.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Same in Michigan.
| coldcode wrote:
| In Orlando its 50% capacity, but no sales of booze except to go.
| slg wrote:
| The government has talked about bailouts for various industries
| from airlines, to cruise ships, to shale companies. But almost
| every sector of the US economy is going to be hit by this and I
| have no idea how we are going to react. Will there be a
| restaurant bailout? What would that even look like? It is much
| easier to work on bailing out a handful of airlines but how do
| you handle it for literally thousands of small businesses?
| lordnacho wrote:
| What they need to do is provide everyone with restaurant
| vouchers paid for by the government. Then we can all have a big
| meal after this is over and keep our favourite eateries alive.
| robocat wrote:
| And how do the restaurant staff pay for food and shelter in
| the meantime?
| lordnacho wrote:
| If it's known that restaurants will get paid eventually, it
| makes it easier to finance. I guess it's still not gonna be
| easy to stay afloat. The staff will need a handout. Either
| special law or they get unemployment. Not sure.
| gwd wrote:
| > Will there be a restaurant bailout?
|
| Maybe it could be like farm subsidies, but we pay restaurants
| to close for a certain amount of time / certain days of the
| week, on the condition that they pay employees normal wages for
| those days.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _on the condition that they pay employees normal wages for
| those days._
|
| "Normal wages" for many restaurant workers in the U.S.
| exclude tips. Without tips, "normal wages" is below the
| minimum wage.
|
| While it might better than nothing, it's not liveable.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > "Normal wages" for many restaurant workers in the U.S.
| exclude tips. Without tips, "normal wages" is below the
| minimum wage.
|
| Restaurants are required to bump tipped employees up to the
| non-tipped minimum wage if the tips don't put them over it.
| Thus, "normal wages" in this case would be the non-tipped
| minimum wage.
| beeforpork wrote:
| What a bizarre interpretation of 'minimum wage' and
| 'tip'! This means that the restaurant owner essentially
| collects (part of) the tips?
|
| So you could employ a restaurant worker at $0/h and then
| bump them to minimum wage, because the tips will never
| cut it? Basically, you'd be collecting all the tips? This
| cannot seriously be legal!?
| rosybox wrote:
| The WSJ Editorial Board has suggested that the Fed create a new
| facility that gives very cheap loans to businesses that need
| them. These loans will not need to be repaid right away and
| should sustain any business that needs it during this period.
| It sounded workable.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/financing-an-economic-shutdown-...
| bjourne wrote:
| How would loans help? A lot of employees aren't currently
| needed so they will be laid off regardless of whether the
| business owner can take out cheap loans. I don't see how
| loans can make up for the much reduced economic activity.
| rosybox wrote:
| I imagine the WSJ Editorial Board is focusing on a solution
| to keep businesses surviving, not employment. They may have
| other ideas to help with that later. Without businesses,
| there will be no employment.
| charwalker wrote:
| Loans may already be super cheap and expanding that option
| further will extend the current run but lead to a bigger
| crash once those loans come due given the economy continues
| to flat line after the pandemic ends.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Not an economist (just trying to understand all this) but
| wouldn't this just be kicking the can down the road? I
| understand how loans and credit works in healthy
| markets/seasons but to me this feels like making a bet that
| these businesses would be able to take this infusion, weather
| out the storm, and then raise profits enough above what they
| were before to pay it all back.
|
| It's fundamentally different from me starting a small
| business and going to Chase saying, look here's a healthy
| prospect and I'll be able to pay it back within x years.
| chapium wrote:
| This would introduce liquidity to a struggling category.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If you can kick the can down the road until the virus goes
| away, you just saved the whole economy. The ability of my
| local Chinese place to serve customers is undiminished, my
| desire to eat Chinese food is undiminished, and all that's
| in the way is an ultimately temporary law.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| > The ability of my local Chinese place to serve
| customers is undiminished, my desire to eat Chinese food
| is undiminished, and all that's in the way is an
| ultimately temporary law.
|
| Agreed on this. But the rent paid out during the period
| of reduced revenue coming in creates a delta that this
| loan is filling in. The loan still needs to be paid back
| (even assuming 0% interest). That extra money needs to
| come from somewhere: increased prices, increased traffic,
| or decreased expenditures.
| markdown wrote:
| A better way would be to suspend all debt collection and
| rent collection for x months. That will keep lots of
| small businesses alive, and employees on reduced salaries
| will still be able to feed their families if they don't
| have to worry about rent.
|
| Throw in food stamps for the unemployed and you're most
| of the way to keeping a nation going.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| Far, far, far better. In fact, it's the only thing that
| might actually _work_. All this talk of loans is just
| people refusing to admit that a capitalist system (I hate
| saying that word) simply doesn 't function under these
| conditions. The economy needs to be paused.
| fraudsyndrome wrote:
| > A better way would be to suspend all debt collection
| and rent collection for x months.
|
| I know this would help for people I personally know in
| this industry.
|
| Dine in has been reduced almost entirely but takeaway
| orders hasn't deviated too much from the standard.
|
| The reality here is that a lot of small hospitality
| businesses don't actually make much profit at all so it's
| unlikely that they'd survive too long with this forced
| reduced business. And it's always unhelpful to hear (in
| general not from you) comments like "maybe they should
| have saved up more earlier" or "they shouldn't be opening
| up a restaurant then" because a lot of times they can't
| work in any other industry - this is all they know.
|
| Imagine having reduced business through no fault of your
| own yet you're still liable for paying the commercial
| rent of $1.2k per week. You can't sell the business
| because no one is buying. You can't sell it because you
| lose all the goodwill which is bad especially if you've
| spent any money renovating the place up to standard.
| thedogeye wrote:
| SBA just announced a program for loans up to $2M at 3.75% to
| make payroll
| Ensorceled wrote:
| For restaurant owner running on 3-5% margins, when salaries
| are a significant expense, it would be suicide to take a loan
| to make payroll; your business would probably never be
| profitable again. Better to let the business die and reinvent
| yourself in June/July.
| acid__ wrote:
| Yes, better from a personal standpoint, but jeez, from a
| humanitarian perspective, can you really blame any
| restaurant owner from wanting to make payroll at any cost
| so that their employees can continue to feed themselves,
| pay rent, and take care of their loved ones?
| vharuck wrote:
| The employees should be able to apply for unemployment
| payments from the state. Which can a problem on its own,
| to be sure, but an employer doesn't have to bear the
| weight of lives all by him or herself.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| The problem with loans are you have to repay them. Giving out
| loans as a social safety net is a cruel joke. It just makes
| people worse off in the long run.
| jfim wrote:
| Zero percent interest loans over a long enough repayment
| period (eg. ten years) would work though. It allows
| spreading the immediate loss in sales over a much longer
| period.
|
| Not that it would happen though.
| slg wrote:
| Loans don't solve this. It isn't like once this is over
| restaurant patronage will jump up to 200% of normal. This is
| business these companies will never get back. Giving them a
| loan that they can't repay is just delaying the problem.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| probably with compounding interest if they allow deferred
| payments lol
| ghouse wrote:
| Doesn't "delay" the problem -- it exacerbates the problem.
| linuxftw wrote:
| I'm assuming the loans are to make payroll for work already
| done. Many businesses don't have the cash on hand to pay
| for the work that was already done, they're relying on
| revenue from that work or past work that is now being paid
| to pay their employees.
|
| Frankly, I think the restaurant industry is over built and
| many of them deserve to close. The margins are non
| existent, most of the food is terrible, it's the ultimate
| bubble economy business.
| mech1234 wrote:
| Spreading the problem out over a long period of time keeps
| the company in business. It's a no-brainer good idea for
| the SBA to do this. Not sure what you would prefer instead.
| slg wrote:
| It is like CPR. It is better than doing absolutely
| nothing and gives extra time for more extreme measures,
| but on its own it is just delaying the inevitable.
| mech1234 wrote:
| It is not delaying the inevitable. There will be many
| profitable restaurant businesses who find their business
| lacking liquid cash over the next few months. Being
| thrown a credit lifeline means that they can make it
| through this period of time and come out on the other
| side as a profitable business again. Paying down the debt
| is a common business practice that people do all the
| time.
|
| Throwing out a credit lifeline can be a practice that
| benefits everyone in times of crisis.
| slg wrote:
| >There will be many profitable restaurant businesses who
| find their business lacking liquid cash over the next few
| months
|
| Like I said in my earlier comment, the best hope for
| these businesses is to return to normal revenue numbers.
| They aren't going to make up for the business they are
| currently losing. They don't have a liquidity problem.
| They have a lost revenue problem. They are still accruing
| costs without accruing revenue. Delaying those costs
| doesn't fix that disconnect.
|
| >Paying down the debt is a common business practice that
| people do all the time.
|
| Taking on debt to allow you to make investments and
| improve future outlook is a smart business decision.
| Taking on debt in order to meet recurring operating costs
| rarely works out when there is no hope of future growth.
| HammockTester wrote:
| I'll take a crack at it. I would prefer commercial rent
| abatements combined with commercial property tax
| abatements. The same would make sense for residential as
| well. Unemployment payments should be increased and
| restaurants should temporarily lay off staff as needed.
| baby wrote:
| UBI is honestly the only solution here.
| citilife wrote:
| Printing money and giving it to everyone essentially taxes
| every dollar by the same amount. That's not necessarily the
| best solution here.
| pavas wrote:
| In the end the money for UBI comes from taxes one way or
| another. Even if every dollar is taxed the same amount, not
| everyone makes the same amount of dollars.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| How about something a bit more targeted? Do we really need to
| give software engineers working from home extra cash?
| fma wrote:
| That software engineer would spend it elsewhere in the
| industry, likely some non-essential.
|
| That hourly worker w/o a job will pay rent and food.
| Software engineer...a carwash, new lawn equiment, or hell
| even a vacation.
|
| Giving an airline a tax break won't drive them more
| customers. Giving their customers more money will give them
| customers.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| What? Nobody is going to be flying anywhere soon,
| regardless of whether you give everybody $1000.
| nimih wrote:
| Software engineers are a tiny fraction of the population,
| and any money given to them can always be recouped via
| taxes anyways. The added bureaucratic/administrative
| complexity on such a time-sensitive measure just doesn't
| seem worth it.
| bjourne wrote:
| Shorter working hours is another solution. I think that makes
| a lot of sense now that the global economy is contracting.
| More fair that jobs are "shared fairly" rather than that some
| gets to keep theirs and others don't.
| 76543210 wrote:
| It has not worked for every test city that tried it. Why is
| this different?
| abvdasker wrote:
| I think targeted redistribution will work better. If you want
| to protect the economy, take the people with excess wealth --
| providing no utility right now -- and give some of their
| wealth to those who cannot earn income during this crisis. It
| avoids the inflationary effects of printing money. You could
| accomplish this by raising taxes on the wealthy and sending
| the revenues directly to those who will lose their
| livelihoods and the small businesses which need to make rent
| to stay afloat. Obviously the political appetite to do this
| doesn't exist in the US, but I think it is easily the best
| solution.
| ghouse wrote:
| That's why we (US, and much of the world) have progressive
| tax rates for earned income. Though in the US, we then give
| lower tax rates for unearned income...
| abvdasker wrote:
| You alluded to this, but in reality effective tax rates
| in the US are actually flat or even regressive due to the
| favorable tax treatment of investment income as well as
| the massive deductions for property ownership:
|
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w20625
| markdown wrote:
| Nah, you could never pay enough (in the short term) to keep
| everyone going.
|
| Suspend loan repayments and rent collection for 6 months, and
| print food stamps for the unemployed.
| omegaworks wrote:
| They need a moratorium on rent, mortgage and property taxes.
| Temporarily suspend base operating costs, and provide direct
| assistance for employees.
|
| Loans will help them bounce back when the crisis is over. Makes
| no sense right now.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| If this lasts more than two or three weeks, at least with out a
| crisp well articulated end game, things are going to go downhill
| very fast.
| ma2rten wrote:
| I don't see how this can be over in less than 3 months.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Based on what data?
|
| If you think society will tolerate this kind of lockdown for
| more than a few weeks, you need to rethink your stance.
|
| If we are locked up for 3 months like this you _will_ have
| your doomsday scenario. Our entire supply chain will fall
| apart. People won't get food, medicine, things that make them
| happy. Sporting events, social gatherings, etc. People will
| become depressed and kill themselves. People will go nuts and
| kill everybody around them.
|
| You'll have a situation on your hands much, much worse than
| this virus. Much worse.
|
| People have lost their damn minds and stopped thinking
| rationally. Snap out it. Go on a damn walk. Nobody is gonna
| be locked down for three fucking months. If we actually are,
| I suggest stocking up on guns and ammo now because that
| _will_ devolve into a doomsday scenario. One much worse than
| anything this virus can possibly dish out.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Based on what I'm seeing, it seems like that's exactly the
| path we're on in the US unfortunately.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Based on what data?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The fact that schools are currently closed in a growing
| number of districts for 4 weeks at minimum. That alone is
| going to cause wild downstream effects. There are a few
| reports of supply chains starting to slow down because of
| workers being sent home and people taking off to be with
| their kids.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
| college/medicine/s...
|
| August
| evo_9 wrote:
| As a business owner I hope you are right, that this
| clears up in weeks not months; However it would be pretty
| irresponsible of me to take that line of thinking, no?
|
| The facts appear to be supporting the 3 month shutdown,
| they include:
|
| - The US Government has said, including the President,
| that this could last until August. Some expert think
| that's conservative.
|
| - A vaccine isn't likely for 12+ months.
|
| - Testing facilities are limited and will likely take 3-4
| weeks for widespread roll-out.
|
| - We don't fully understand the dynamics of how the virus
| is spread.
|
| - Congress/Senate are readying a staggeringly large help
| package (800 BILLION); that relief is at least 2-3 weeks
| away and I would argue suggests the lock down is going to
| last well past 3-4 weeks
| (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/17/white-house-
| senate-...).
| [deleted]
| 2019-nCoV wrote:
| People in Hubei are closing in on 3 months of lockdown.
| Other provinces not far behind. Are Americans really that
| uncivilised they cannot bear the thought of several months
| locked down in the comfort of their own homes?
| koyote wrote:
| I am sure all the waiters, cooks, restaurant owners, shop
| owners, shop staff, cleaning crew, construction workers,
| gardners, pilots, cabin crew, airport staff, taxi
| drivers, dentists, haidressers and business operators
| staff for all these businesses will be more than happy to
| stay at home for 3+ months without pay.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| For sure dude. They can just play video games and order
| from Uber eats for all their meals! They totally won't
| riot out in the streets....
|
| (/s)
| 2019-nCoV wrote:
| Such is the reality when a large percentage of the
| workforce are in dispensable jobs that are over-exposed
| to Black Swan events like this.
|
| Countries with an adequate social security net in place
| have a (temporary) answer at least.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| There is so much doomsday nonsense like your post I don't
| know where to start. People have lost their god damn
| minds on the internet. Go outside and go on a walk. If
| you don't understand why a 3 month country wide lockdown
| would be orders of magnitude more dangerous than this
| virus, you need to snap yourself out of the trance you
| are in.
|
| People have lost their minds around here.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Perhaps you have lost your cool a little? I am quite
| content to work from home, go hiking on the weekends and
| meet up with friends in open spaces as allowed by the
| lock down rules. I can arguably go skating, surfing,
| walking and much more.
|
| Its not ideal, but if it's required, I'll do it. We are
| not going to fall apart. Except for twitchy individuals
| like you, it seems...
| [deleted]
| scruple wrote:
| You say that, but at the white house task force press
| conferences they're setting the signal pretty clearly.
|
| Reporter: "How long?"
|
| Trump: "July, August, maybe longer."
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Better go get guns if you believe that 'cause a 3 month
| lockdown will be much, much, much, much worse than the
| virus.
|
| This ain't gonna be more than a few weeks tops. People
| have lost their damn minds. Go outside and get some fresh
| air.
| truculent wrote:
| Maybe this data? https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
| college/medicine/s...
| thom wrote:
| I realise this is an entirely irrelevant point, but any ideas why
| Germany was doing so well up until this crisis?
| jedberg wrote:
| My guess is that the have very few restaurants in Germany, so
| it's just noise.
| tastroder wrote:
| It also seems to be year over year data and February last
| year was pretty warm, potentially driving more people outside
| instead of into restaurants compared to the relatively rainy
| month we just had.
| netsharc wrote:
| Opened opentable.de, they say they have 1744 restaurants in
| Berlin alone, 624 in Hamburg, and 1122 in Munich, plus many
| other cities/regions. I wonder why only Munich and Hamburg
| are in the Cities table, and why there's e.g a jump of 19% in
| Munich for Sunday March 1.
|
| This year it was warm (for winter) and dry on that Sunday,
| and last year it was presumably wet and dreary.
| baby wrote:
| have you eaten German food before?
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I can't understand why would somebody think that putting latest
| data on the left is a good idea.
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| Often cohort tables start with the most recent date on the
| left.
| miguelmota wrote:
| People read from left to right so it makes sense that the
| latest information would be on the left side for a time series
| table that keeps on growing.
| daRealDodo wrote:
| ...what?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| People (in this language) read from left to right, so they're
| used to what is on the left coming before what is on the
| right. If you have a time series that keeps growing, trim or
| scale it to the display size, or change the sample rate, or
| give some UI options to let them vary those parameters. _Don
| 't_ ask people to invert their expectation of "before" and
| "after". Those are too fundamental.
| 7777fps wrote:
| If it becomes very long then the data you lose to the scrollbar
| is the least relevant.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Start with it scrolled to the right?
| overcast wrote:
| Then don't put long data in a horizontal scrollbar. It's the
| worst possible UX ever.
| tylerchilds wrote:
| What's your suggestion for improvement?
| overcast wrote:
| How about a neat line graph? There's only 8 data sources.
| Most of the space on their table is wasted by large
| left/right padding.
| vxNsr wrote:
| You can switch to City view and State view... those have
| a lot more than 8 data sources. This is pretty good UX if
| you're paying any attention at all.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| We did it because we've got quite a few days in there, and
| would prefer not to have people scroll when we update the data
| on a daily basis.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Thanks, I always open this on my mobile phone or vertical
| monitor, and on the previous version (the google sheet direct
| link), always had to scroll right, which was annoying.
| starpilot wrote:
| Have it by default show the rightmost portion, so that people
| can scroll to the left if they want? This is how Yahoo
| Finance shows a stock chart.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| Could do that. Took less time to change the ordering so we
| could get this out.
| jcims wrote:
| I saw it before and like it this way better.
|
| Anyway graphs would be nice eventually but the heatmap works
| pretty well.
|
| Thanks for doing this. It's a very interesting perspective
| into the impact this is having.
| markdown wrote:
| That's bad enough, but they also put the month on the left
| (3/16 instead of 16/3). Odd for an international app to treat a
| date like that when only one country of note records dates in
| that silly way.
| pp19dd wrote:
| Thought the same thing, and came to a conclusion it was
| intended so it shows angry red first on smaller screens, the
| very punchline it was meant to show.
|
| The page is obviously not responsive optimized (vertical table
| for narrow layouts maybe?) but the importance of the data makes
| me overlook hastiness in which it was put together.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| I thought the same thing. More than anything, having the data
| in a table without a basic time series graph makes it harder to
| visualize the impact (for me).
| jcranmer wrote:
| The use of saturation of the background of the cell to
| indicate the severity makes it a combination of heatmap and
| table. Given the number of series in the data, this is
| actually probably a superior view of the data than trying to
| plot all the time series in a single line graph (it's
| dangerous to push beyond 6, IMHO), or devoting a single line
| graph to each comparison point.
|
| Tables are a vastly underrated means of conveying data.
| kinkrtyavimoodh wrote:
| Maybe they're from an Arabic speaking country :P
| Mtinie wrote:
| It's a very good idea for time-series data which has a
| "freshness" aspect. If you started with the beginning of the
| dataset, February 18, you'd be adding significant weight to
| values which are comparative to, but no longer representative
| of, the current state of things on March 16.
|
| Not to mention, if it was first-to-last displayed left to
| right, you may miss the scroll bar and not understand the value
| of the data being displayed.
| koliber wrote:
| You can still put the most recent data on the right, and zoom
| in to show the rightmost data points. This is an established
| practice in stock charts and works well.
| Mtinie wrote:
| For charting, absolutely. If OpenTable had visualized this
| as a two-axis line chart I would have not have complained.
|
| My comment was addressing the OP's criticism regarding how
| tabular data was displayed in the article.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| I like that it shows the latest data without having to scroll.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >the cascading economic impact from just this one sector will be
| enormous.
|
| The entire hospitality industry is going to take a huge hit. I do
| work in the convention, corporate travel/event space, and my
| calendar up until June has been wiped out. Cascading is the key
| thing people seem to gloss over. Sure, servers and kitchen staff
| are obvious. The food delivery people will not be needed.
| Companies like Aramark that provide cleaning services for floor
| mats/uniforms/etc are not needed. Down the line it goes.
| rosybox wrote:
| It's going to be wiped out far beyond June. Based on the recent
| models run by UK, the same models that prompted the White House
| to warn against gatherings of greater than 10 people, the curve
| doesn't end even without intervention until August. With
| intervention what we are going through right now could last
| well into 2021.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Stop with the doomsday panic. This lockdown thing isn't going
| to last more than a few weeks at most--at least without
| massive social upheaval.
|
| Source: my ill informed opinion, same as yours. same source
| as yours.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Stop with the doomsday panic. This lockdown thing isn't
| going to last more than a few weeks at most--at least
| without massive social upheaval._
|
| Social upheaval against a "lockdown" becomes a moot point
| if people you know keep dropping dead.
| markkanof wrote:
| How long do young healthy people, who have been put out
| of work by shutdowns put up with this? Some number of
| weeks seems workable, but until 2021?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| People will start dropping dead from social unrest,
| addiction, substance abuse, suicide, etc. this "lockdown"
| isn't free. It has massive health impacts that could
| easily outweight any lives saved by the lockdown.
|
| People need to put on their critical thinking caps around
| here. What is the end game of this lockdown? What data is
| it based on? How will we know when to end it--given _all_
| factors, which include vastly more than slowing the
| spread of the virus.
|
| Also stop downvoting people asking questions. Asking
| questions and thinking critically and rationally is what
| this forum is supposed to be about.
| dylan604 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdf5EXo6I68
|
| Until this happens, I won't really think it was a "big
| deal" at all, and more along the lines of being merely a
| flesh wound.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yeah, give it a month and come back to this comment
| section
| rosybox wrote:
| Doomsday panic? Ill informed opinion? I'm literally looking
| at the chart used by the White House that comes from the
| data generated by the UK government. Look for yourself:
|
| https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
| college/medicine/s...
| spookthesunset wrote:
| For that one paper you showed me you'll find another
| dozen research papers that say something entirely
| different.
|
| Until we know how many people have this or had it,
| suggesting multi-month lockdowns is ill informed,
| dangerous doomsday nonsense.
|
| PS: while bitching about downvotes is lame, it is quite
| disappointing to see HN devolve into yet another panic
| fueled echo chamber where only "rooting for" the worst
| case scenario is tolerated.
|
| Don't let this place turn into an echo chamber people.
| There are plenty of subreddits and social media groups
| where you can get your fill of doomsday scenarios. This
| place bills itself as full of rational thinking people,
| let's put on our critical thinking caps and consider the
| problem from all angles.
|
| Ps: /r/corvid19 seems to be one of the few places on the
| internet where people are discussing this stuff
| rationally and not immediately jumping to the worst case
| scenario.
| coronapanicthrw wrote:
| FYI You're not alone in observing the echo chamber
| effect. Those of us who agree with you that some
| skepticism of the cost/benefit of the intervention is
| merited have largely avoided posting on our main accounts
| because of the massive backlash against anything counter-
| panic-dogma, or our posts have been flagged/deaded with
| worrying rapidity.
|
| There were posts threatening _physical harm_ to
| individuals questioning the level of intervention (I
| believe the words were "I want to throttle the next
| person who says this isn't a catastrophe") and from
| typically well-respected users as well.
|
| It's stunning to me to watch this community devolve in
| this fashion. I take it as a sign of the times, in terms
| of groupthink and fear-as-contagion, downvote-if-you-
| don't-agree behavior on the internet, and a broader
| eternal september effect on this forum.
|
| I only wish individuals showed this much concern
| surrounding the massive cost in human life we incurred
| far more willfully via the opioid epidemic, the wars in
| the middle east, our prison system, etc; I'd go so far as
| to say I would be more willing to go along with the
| current overreaction if we didn't seem so hypocritical
| and self-serving in where and how we assign value to
| human life.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Makes you wonder if the real "virus" is a mental one?
| Society got infected with one hell of a meme.
|
| It is like everybody has that X-Files "I want to believe"
| poster on their wall when they repeat some of this
| doomsday stuff.
|
| We are all stuck inside all day, bouncing around with
| nothing better to do than read doomsday porn. And around
| and around that stuff goes into people's head until you
| get where we are now.
|
| People should be much less concerned about this virus and
| way more concerned about social unrest. Humans are social
| creatures. You can't just "lock" people in their homes
| for an indeterminate amount of time and expect good
| things to happen.
|
| Those toilet paper memes and work from home memes are
| funny at first, but once the novelty wears off over the
| next week or so, shit is going to get very real. It ain't
| funny to see empty shelves of toilet paper or baby wipes
| when you actually need them.... it ain't funny to have
| absolutely nothing to do but sit around and obsess about
| this virus.
| ericd wrote:
| Video calling is a thing... not like it's solitary
| confinement.
|
| Also, grocery shelves will be full again as the stores
| limit per-customer amounts.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| You live a very sheltered life if you think all humans
| need is video conferencing and stocked grocery shelves.
|
| There is a huge world of stuff that cannot be done
| remote. Sporting events, construction, weddings,
| restaurants, building maintenance, manufacturing, and
| millions of other stuff. Stuff that is critical to
| keeping our global economy happy. Healthy economy ==
| healthy people.
|
| Ps: have any of the doomsayers spouting nonsense stoped
| to consider what bullshit it is that all the white collar
| people can remain "safe" at home while all the blue
| collar grocery workers and the entire supply chain that
| feeds it gets to go out each day and expose themselves to
| a virus so deadly we took these extreme measures? Kind of
| bullshit, ain't it?
| tempestn wrote:
| People staying home don't just protect themselves; the
| more distancing is done by everyone, the better the
| outlook. I do agree with you that it's _possible_ extreme
| lockdown measures won 't have to last more than a month
| or two, but we really don't know at this point. Over the
| coming weeks we will continue to learn more about the
| virus and how it spreads, and testing infrastructure will
| continue to scale up. If the distancing measures work to
| get control of the outbreaks, and this can be confirmed
| through more extensive testing, then it should be
| possible to ease up and to try to find a balance between
| minimizing risk of spread and maintaining daily
| activities. Until an effective treatment/vaccine is found
| though, there is likely to be some level of continuing
| disruption.
| ericd wrote:
| Thanks a lot. My point was that you're being hyperbolic
| and panicky, and that doesn't help at all. Being stuck at
| home sucks, but it isn't as bad as you're saying. Talking
| with friends and family helps a lot.
| rosybox wrote:
| What research papers have you seen with more optimistic
| projections? You're calling the projections that two
| governments are relying on as ill informed based on what
| credentials?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| We don't have enough data or understanding to project
| anything. Many countries stupidly aren't doing pervasive
| testing.
|
| Places that do have pervasive testing (some town in
| Italy, South Korea, and Singapore) suggest this virus is
| widespread and has a >1% death rate. But this data is
| early and subject to change.
|
| Suggesting we are going to be locked for months or
| _years_ is irresponsible fear mongering at best.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A few times in my career, I have been in a meeting that I
| didn't want to be in. One of the meeting-runners hinted
| that the meeting could be shorter than scheduled. Failure
| to deliver on that was _not_ well received.
|
| If you're going to say anything, you're better off
| overestimate how long it's going to be.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| This is what I think too. Way easier to put a date far
| out there and yank it back than underestimate and have to
| extend it.
| ericd wrote:
| Good. Expect to be quarantined for the next 3 months.
| Then you can be pleasantly surprised when it's 2.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| 2 weeks tops. Calling it now. 2 months of this will
| result in rioting and all kinds of crazy shit. And for
| what? The data based in SK and Singapore doesn't suggest
| this virus is worth risking compete societal collapse.
| Testing there is showing a >1% death rate and because of
| how those tests work, it is provably about a half to a
| full order of magnitude lower.
|
| Sorry doomsayers, you better have some good evidence to
| suggest a 2 month lockup is worth the massive damage to
| our society. Better also outline what "lockup" means. Is
| that in big cities? The whole country? The planet?
|
| What is your exit criteria? Who will have to go out into
| the world to keep shelves stocked and your Uber eats
| meals delivered? Who is going to be manufacturing your
| heart medicine? Who will clean that plugged drain? Who
| will repair that drain unplugger persons tool when it
| breaks?
|
| 2 weeks tops. Perhaps slightly longer for very small
| isolated hotspot areas. Any more than that and shit is
| gonna go down.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| FWIW studies have seen 0-24 days incubation period
| (though typically 2-7 days, still long) -
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-
| incuba....
|
| This study
| (https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200370,
| small cohort of 21) had a symptoms-to-discharge period of
| 19+/-4 days (17+/-4 days in hospital).
|
| Assuming you have a perfect lock down now. People will
| continue for 7 days to get infected from asymptomatic
| cases (much longer for some). At the end of that week it
| will be one week until most symptoms have appeared (but
| again much longer for some). Now you have
| hospitalisations of the infected, or home care (as
| hospitals won't be able to cope). In UK you have to test
| negative from 3 tests on two subsequent days in order to
| be cleared for release (report on BBC Radio 4 from an
| infected patient); assuming a similar standard then we're
| looking at 7+7+17 days, 31 days until people are starting
| to be safe to associate with ...
|
| I don't share your "2 weeks top" blind faith.
|
| >Testing there is showing a >1% death rate and because of
| how those tests work, it is provably about a half to a
| full order of magnitude lower.
|
| Could you source the proof of this please?
| ericd wrote:
| You seem like you're panicking. If you need evidence for
| the necessity, go read literally anything about what
| Italy is facing. China locked down cities with 0
| infections pretty completely for ~4 weeks, and they still
| have isolation measures going. I believe the heavily hit
| cities are still totally locked down. This is what it
| took to get numbers under control once it had spread, and
| because of the US' late reaction, it's what's necessary
| now.
| [deleted]
| tempestn wrote:
| And because China reacted with extreme measures, they got
| the virus under control, and are now starting to reduce
| the restrictions, and commerce is starting back up. It's
| nowhere near normal, but by reacting quickly and
| decisively you reduce the likelihood of longer lockdowns
| being required in the future (as well as the likelihood
| of significant loss of life).
|
| This video gives a sense of the measures taken in cities
| outside of Wuhan:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM
| spookthesunset wrote:
| America is not even close to Italy. Not demographically,
| not density, not medically. Nothing is the same between
| us. And it isn't "Italy" it is a region in Italy with the
| problem. Same with china. China isn't locking down
| "China". Just a small part of it. You cannot take those
| two datapoints and apply them to the rest of the world.
| Not even close.
|
| And I'm not panicking, I'm just tired of people running
| around doomsaying. There is so much trash information out
| there and people have completely shut down their ability
| to think rationally. It kinda ticks me off.
| rosybox wrote:
| I never said "years", 2021 is in less than a year. I
| think you're contrarian, misinformed and in deep denial.
| Anyway, facts are what they are and we'll see in due
| time.
| ajiang wrote:
| This comment will not age well. I'll remind you in 14 days.
| zamfi wrote:
| This is not clear. Right now we need lockdown because:
|
| a) We have a large number of infected people (> 10,000) and
| have no idea who or where they are, because testing sucks.
|
| b) If exponential growth continues (and it would, because we
| can't isolate all the people who are sick _right now_ ),
| we'll overwhelm hospital facilities and the fatality rate
| will hit 5% instead of <1%.
|
| _BUT_
|
| As soon as we clear out a), that kills b) too -- in South
| Korea they're doing effective contact tracing, testing, and
| isolation because they have few enough cases. Once we bend
| the knee of the growth curve, once we get get R0 below 1,
| we'll have exponential drop-off instead of growth. In 8
| weeks, with few enough active cases and robust testing
| infrastructure, we'll be able to do what China has started
| doing, and what SK has been doing all along.
|
| Of course, that's assuming we get our act together on
| lockdown & testing infrastructure. But if we do, we could be
| out of lockdown by June.
|
| All these folks saying "we need to flatten the curve so that
| everyone gets it over 41 years!" are extrapolating the wrong
| data points...
| vincentmarle wrote:
| If this approach works (and it's a big if) you'll still be
| vulnerable as a society for any flare-ups of the virus. The
| only long-term solution is to build up herd-immunity and
| spread it out enough to 50-60% of the population until we
| have developed a vaccin.
| wwweston wrote:
| > "we need to flatten the curve so that everyone gets it
| over 41 years!"
|
| Is this hyperbole, or is anyone actually saying 41 years?
|
| I haven't done careful math, but eyeballing it, roughly a
| year (give or take some months) is the longest I'd come up
| with to keep peak simultaneous cases under 1.5mil.
| zamfi wrote:
| 5% of cases need hospitalization for ~2-3 weeks; 2%
| require an ICU; 1% a ventilator. We have 96k ICU beds
| (and 160k ventilators) in the USA. Most constrained means
| we can't have more than 4.8 million sick at a given time
| -- but that's over 2-3 weeks, which yields ~2-3 years for
| 200 million people.
|
| I assume the "41 years" people are using some other
| constraint.
| wwweston wrote:
| Thanks, it's the 2-3 weeks factor I was missing (and I
| don't even know if that's optimistic I suppose).
| [deleted]
| zzzeek wrote:
| food delivery will boom. all the restaurants in the NY tri
| state area are closed but all are allowed to do take out and
| delivery so that's going to be a big thing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Great time to own Netflix stock. I would be interested in
| hearing the new sign-up numbers for any of the streaming
| platforms.
| 51Cards wrote:
| I also work in the conventions/trade shows/consumer shows
| space... we're also 100% cancelled for awhile. Had to lay off a
| bunch of staff this week, some who live paycheck to paycheck.
| Going to be a rough ride for a lot of people for awhile.
| tomrod wrote:
| Distribution networks and key service providers seem like the
| best place to intervene. Actual restaurants already float on
| bare margins, so if we are triaging...
| dang wrote:
| (This subthread was originally a child of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22606894)
| mcv wrote:
| Food delivery to homes will probably boom. That's going to be
| the replacement for visiting a restaurant in the coming weeks
| or months.
|
| But every luxury industry that involves going outside and
| meeting people will be wiped out. The tourist industry is going
| to be completely dead for a while. Hopefully it can be revived
| afterward. Hopefully the people involved can find other jobs in
| the mean time. But it's going to be a harsh year for a lot of
| people.
|
| It's unbelievable how lucky I am that I can do my work from
| home.
| ArtDev wrote:
| I wrote my favorite restaurants on social media asking them
| where I can purchase myself gift cards.
|
| It not a lot, but if enough people do it, it could help them
| actually reopen.
| rimliu wrote:
| Here we have full-blown quarantine, so all restaurants,
| cafes, and bars are closed. Those offering take-outs cintinue
| to operate. The report yesterday (first day of the
| quarantine) said "despite empty tables kitchen staff is busy
| as never before". Of course, far from every dining place
| offers take-outs.
| viraptor wrote:
| > far from every dining place offers take-outs.
|
| I suspect this is going to start changing soon. High end
| takeaways will have to happen where restaurants would fail
| otherwise.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Not for long. Restaurants won't be able to make rent to do
| takeout.
| celticninja wrote:
| a landlord is not going to find a new tenant for that site,
| so their best bet is to not charge rent or charge a lesser
| amount and defer it. that way when things get back to
| normal he has a tenant who can get back into business a lot
| quicker otherwise he has to find a new tenant.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Land/property prices have boomed in the UK, usually the
| tenant is rich and can wait for the profits, years,
| perhaps decades. This in part is why our high-street is
| empty but shop rental prices are not deflated seemingly
| at all; the rent is gravy, they've doubled their
| investments already.
|
| How about any property left vacant for 1 month gets a
| windfall tax of 10% the market valuation [this is
| obviously not a fleshed out proposal] ... that should
| incentivise landlord's to act to prevent losing tenants.
| ttul wrote:
| Landlords will have to adjust rents. This happens in
| downturns.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| if you're home all day long one of the main spurs for going
| out to eat is gone, at the end of the day you're no longer
| too tired to make food, you're not getting home too late to
| make it at a good time, you don't need to save time. Thus the
| only spur left to wanting to order food is eating something
| tasty you can't make at home easily - I admit that is good
| but given that the delivery is also a potential virus
| delivery I expect that it won't be the replacement.
| corbet wrote:
| I've worked at home for many years. I also really enjoy
| cooking, and put a fair amount of effort into it. But that
| doesn't mean I don't like to go out to eat as well. I'm not
| going to be doing that for a while (Colorado has shut down
| all restaurants) but I'm looking forward to when it will be
| possible again.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| There are a lot of us tech yuppies that either can't cook
| or won't cook. We will continue to order in all our meals.
|
| Of course that depends on the variety remaining. It may
| not. It's been 3 weeks and I'm already starting to tire of
| my local options.
|
| Maybe I might end up learning to cook after all...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| regarding all the other suggestions to learn, it might
| also be a really good time to start saving some money.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| If you like the technical aspects of "tech", you could
| learn to love the technical aspects of cooking. You can
| treat cooking as a chore, an art, or a science. Your
| choice!
| [deleted]
| mcv wrote:
| Even if you love cooking as an art, it can still be a
| chore sometimes. It's hard to deliver art when tired,
| picky children are screaming.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Just like it's hard to deliver good code when tired,
| picky managers are screaming.
| hkmurakami wrote:
| I don't get why you're being down voted for this. Frankly
| you'd be helping out your local restaurants that are
| trying to minimize their red ink.
| SamPatt wrote:
| It's cheaper and better for you, and you can cook for
| your own preferences once you understand the basics.
|
| It's a great time to learn!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not to mention the resulting product is far superior than
| what is available at 95% of restaurants.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| I mean, not really, unless you are comparing to
| McDonald's.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Even on the coasts, most restaurants focus on salt,
| sugar, and oil. I find there's often just no spice used
| (not just heat).
|
| Also, due to the low margins of the restaurant business,
| I assume they're using subpar ingredients.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I want to agree with you, but I think we might both be
| underestimating the extent to which Americans don't know
| how to cook food at home. At a certain level of income, I
| know people who eat every meal out other than _maybe_
| breakfast. I can only guess that they 're going to be
| having most meals delivered now.
| hkmurakami wrote:
| Some younger googlers have never cooked for themselves in
| years, so this will be an interesting challenge for them.
| (Source: 2nd year googler friend)
| mcv wrote:
| > _" if you're home all day long one of the main spurs for
| going out to eat is gone, at the end of the day you're no
| longer too tired to make food"_
|
| You clearly don't have children. I need to work from home
| while also getting primary school children to do their
| schoolwork and not kill each other.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| sorry but I do, although my experience is perhaps clouded
| by having a spouse who does not need to work from home
| while I do.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >if you're home all day long one of the main spurs for
| going out to eat is gone,
|
| Actually, if I'm home all day long, I like to go out to
| socialize. The normal daily interactions with co-
| workers/clients/etc is now removed by working from home.
| While I don't eat out that much, Happy Hour has become a
| thing for me. Now, I guess I'm going to have to start
| labeling myself an alcoholic since I've resorted to
| drinking alone at home.
| irrational wrote:
| I'd like to believe this is true, but I once was at my
| boss's house and saw inside his fridge. All it has was a
| few beers. I asked him where his food was and he said he
| ate out for every meal. He was a single guy in a 5000
| square foot home on an acre of land. I suppose he could
| afford to buy every meal out. I kind of doubt he will
| magically start using his kitchen.
| bentcorner wrote:
| It's a spectrum. We normally eat out a lot and usually
| had a reasonably full fridge but ever since this all
| started I made sure our pantry and fridge were full, and
| we've been cooking at home ever since.
| nxc18 wrote:
| Have you thought about keeping your pantry full as a
| reserve and still eating out / getting delivery a lot?
| It's what I've been doing since I want my favorite
| restaurants to still be around when this is all over.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| every statistic has its outliers. If I was rich enough I
| suppose I would have a catering deal to have food
| delivered to me from a few restaurants, but I'm not rich
| enough. Probably most people aren't rich enough and only
| eat out for the reasons I do, I'm just too tired to make
| the food once again and want something I like the taste
| of quick. Probably the people rich enough to eat out
| every meal have a 5000 square foot home on an acre of
| land - at least.
| sharadov wrote:
| Are you kidding me, how many people do you know who can put
| together a decent meal, let alone a tasty meal. Combined
| with the fact that people will stress-eat and stress-drink
| delivery food and liquor sales will experience a big-time
| boom.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| maybe it's because I live in Denmark and my wife's family
| is Italian, but I guess the answer to how many people I
| know is essentially everyone I know (even the younger 20
| year olds at my work) and the answer to am I kidding you
| is no.
|
| I admit when I lived in the U.S the answer might have
| been less but it was probably still "lots of people", I
| have generally been the worst cook I know and I can still
| put together about a dozen decent meals.
|
| on edit: but note that I did say the spur left was the
| tastiness of delivered food so actually I am confused as
| to are you kidding me based on inability to produce tasty
| food?
| sharadov wrote:
| You and I probably move in different circles. I love
| cooking and am pretty serious about good food, so my bar
| must be high. But I know less than 10% people who can
| make good meals.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Quite a few actually. Cooking isn't that difficult.
| dylan604 wrote:
| While cooking isn't that difficult, that biggest thing I
| think people will run into is just not being equipped. I
| have known several people that enjoyed eating out all of
| the time and never spent time equipping the kitchen.
| Sure, your basic pots and pans, but not measuring cups or
| spoons, mixing bowls, etc. Forks, spoons, butter knives
| on hand, but not a decent paring knife or chef's knife.
| I'm not talking stand mixers and food processors, but
| basic equipment that makes cooking easier and not
| frustrating. It's no wonder wedding registries are full
| of kitchen items.
| ArtDev wrote:
| The only reason I eat out is for the environment and to get
| me out of the house. I never did understand paying full
| price for takeout.
|
| I genuinely enjoy cooking, it is what I do with the extra
| time I would otherwise be spent commuting.
|
| Luckily, lots of people are not like me and cannot cook if
| their life depended on it. I am hoping they can keep the
| local restaurants in business!
|
| I like the idea of buying myself gift cards at local
| restaurants. Its one way to help them.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| Well, except there is a new spur right now: empty grocery
| store shelves.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I'm always a little surprised that so many people never picked up
| the ability to even do basic cooking.
|
| Of course, as recently as Sunday people like Nunes were telling
| people it was important to support their local businesses by
| eating out as if it were their patriotic duty. It might be
| different now that even Fox and Trump are saying the same thing
| as the CDC finally.
|
| Maybe not if people literally cannot feed themselves without
| eating out, though I think that's pretty embarrassing.
| mcv wrote:
| It's not about knowing how to cook, it's about not always
| wanting to, and maybe trying something different.
|
| My wife is an excellent cook (I'm crap, but I can cook enough
| to survive), but she also loves going to restaurants or
| ordering delivery. Just because you can do something, doesn't
| mean you always have to.
| sneak wrote:
| Many grocery stores have major shortages, short-term grocery
| deliveries are fully booked, and where I am, normally 1-2 day
| Amazon food/medicine mail-order deliveries are presently at 5+
| days.
|
| I stocked up a month ago when everything was still running to
| ensure my household has food 12 weeks (I always have 30 days,
| but wanted to be on the safe side), but I know many people did
| not, and it's going to be a while before all of those people
| can be properly supplied.
| pc86 wrote:
| Especially when you have people who already have 4 weeks of
| food going out and buying another 2 months worth.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| The store I went to last night definitely had issues with
| the standard nonperishable foods. Canned goods and boxed
| dinners were sold out, and people had bought up all the
| medium- and long-grain rice and the standard three or 4
| kinds of beans(navy, black, pinto, and chickpeas). However
| I was able to find several pounds of millet and quinoa as
| well as several kinds of beans that most people don't have
| any experience eating. Also nobody had bought any of the
| textured vegetable protein or any of the other non-
| perishable foods that most people don't normally cook.
| There was also tons of non-wheat flour, several kinds of
| short-grain rice, and a lot of breakfast cereal and
| granola.
|
| Suddenly all the years I've spent buying and learning to
| cook "strange" foods is paying off. Also the people buying
| "non-perishable" foods are going to suddenly discover how
| important sauce and spice is when they're eating their
| unseasoned white rice and beans every night for the next
| year.
| sneak wrote:
| There were no stock or supply issues when I stocked up;
| plenty for everyone who wished to buy at that time and for
| some weeks after. Stores had multiple restockings following
| when I did so. I flattened the curve in a different way: I
| have not been to the store at all in the last 2 weeks of
| peak demand.
|
| You will also note that I was following the guidance that
| the national military provides to its own staff under these
| circumstances:
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/nsa-
| corona...
| JCharante wrote:
| Maybe the demand is also caused by people who have returned
| from traveling in the past two weeks and are self quarantining
| somewhere where they have no cooking equipment?
| neltnerb wrote:
| Could be, and obviously some people can't cook for reasons
| other than lack of willingness to learn. I get that, I'm also
| disabled and cooking is sometimes too hard. But I bet it
| looks a lot different next Saturday than it did last Saturday
| just from 46% of the country suddenly hearing from the only
| source they trust that this is, indeed, a big deal.
|
| I'm thankful for this, though I wish we hadn't spent the last
| month trying to convince that same 46% of the country (who
| trend significantly towards the elderly end of the spectrum)
| that it was an overblown conspiracy against the incumbent
| president.
| true_religion wrote:
| I can do basic cooking, but when I checked the grocers there
| isn't any food to buy. So if I hadn't already had a stock to
| last at least a week or two more, it would be eating restaurant
| food (delivery) or starve.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| As someone who can somewhat cook, and has been holed up for a
| week plus with another person who used to be a chef: ordering
| delivery once every few days definitely breaks things up nicely
| and gives us something to look forward to with everything else
| being both monotonous + stressful.
| save_ferris wrote:
| > I'm always a little surprised that so many people never
| picked up the ability to even do basic cooking.
|
| I'm not, unfortunately. For years now, cooking has been
| marketed as a waste of time and effort like hand-washing
| clothes (think fast food advertising).
|
| Just like anything else, cooking takes time, patience and
| structure to learn, which many people don't ever have
| naturally. I was lucky to grow up in a household that enjoyed
| cooking and I learned when I was kid and boy does it pay off in
| adulthood, but I also see why so many of my peers don't do it.
| Everything in our world is optimized for time now, and cooking
| takes time.
| elihu wrote:
| Cooking also requires proper cooking facilities and access to
| ingredients. There are a lot of people in living situations
| that don't involve a kitchen, and many who don't have decent
| grocery stores nearby but they do have restaurants.
|
| Still, you're right that many people have access to all those
| things and choose not to cook for whatever reason.
| jmkb wrote:
| > For years now, cooking has been marketed as a waste of time
| and effort like hand-washing clothes (think fast food
| advertising).
|
| Maybe that's the marketing message that hits some
| demographics, but there's also plenty of marketing push in
| the other direction: All the food channels on cable &
| youtube, amateur cooking competitions, prosumer kitchen
| renovations, gourmet grocery stores, dozens of cooking
| magazines and thousands of cookbooks. Not to mention emphasis
| that cooking skills are desirable for those in the dating
| scene.
|
| (Now I'm looking forward to a competitive clothes-washing
| show... no, that's too absurd. Maybe competitive tailoring.)
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _Maybe competitive tailoring_
|
| That exists (kind of). I'm familiar with Project Runway,
| although that's more fashion oriented but has a strong
| technical tailoring aspect to it. I'm sure there's more Bob
| Ross-style shows around sewing/tailoring too.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I cook a fair amount, but enjoy a variety of foods whose
| ingredients I don't use often enough, and lack sufficient
| storage space for, to make on my own. Eating out / take out
| foods are a great way to get a little something different now
| and then, especially if a dish requires long prep times to be
| done "properly".
|
| That being said, I am also not in a position where i would go
| hungry or eat poorly if restaurants near me completely closed
| down... I do recall someone in college asking me how to boil
| water for spaghetti noodles, so I have no doubt plenty will be
| learning how to cook the hard way soon enough
| stronglikedan wrote:
| On the bright side, I've never received better dine-in service
| than I have in the past few days.
| yalogin wrote:
| These will be the lingering repurcussions from this crisis.
| Restaurants might bounce back but the people working in those
| places will have a tough time.
| save_ferris wrote:
| Is this really that surprising given that states and countries
| are now explicitly prohibiting dine-in options and mandating
| restaurants to be takeout only? I'd love to see this data
| overlaid against the changes in takeout orders.
| SlowRobotAhead wrote:
| Absolutely. My town shut down restaurant eat in this week, but
| when I went my favorite Thai place for pickup the owner said
| they had one of their busiest Saturdays ever. Despite fear,
| rational or not, people still need to eat.
| mcv wrote:
| I heard of at least one fancy restaurant that announced
| they're going to offer take-out and delivery soon. It's going
| to be the only way to survive.
| acq_question wrote:
| This is probably a good proxy of adherence to social distancing
| zaroth wrote:
| Siting at a table with your family that is wiped down just before
| you sit seems to me like an incredibly low risk activity.
|
| As in, less risky than picking up food from a grocery store where
| infected people are shopping and touching things on a daily
| basis.
| jedberg wrote:
| Unless you go to the bathroom and touch the door handle. Or sit
| in the waiting area next to a sick person. Or one of the chefs
| is sick and doesn't have perfect cleanliness.
|
| There are a lot more places where things can go wrong
| transmission-wise in a restaurant than a grocery store.
| Presumably you will not be touching your face during your
| shopping experience. But to eat in a restaurant sort of
| dictates putting things in your face.
| zaroth wrote:
| > Touch the handle going to the bathroom.
|
| Wash your hands and use a paper towel on the way out, like
| you should always do.
|
| > Sit in the waiting area next to a sick person.
|
| No queuing.
|
| > One of the chefs is sick.
|
| But takeout and delivery is allowed. So this isn't any
| different.
|
| The point isn't that it's "zero risk" (there's no such
| thing).
|
| We're going to have to live with _some_ element of risk in
| our lives as long as COVID exists without a vaccine. This is
| totally normal and to be expected.
|
| We lived with Measles for _decades_ and it is much more
| virulent and about equally as deadly as SARS-CoV-2. In the
| 1980s there were still about 2 million people a year dying
| from Measles.
|
| EDIT: You're right, we've been living with Measles for
| _millennia_ in fact. And as recently as the 1800s there are
| populations that have been decimated by it. Measles
| absolutely did consume a massive percentage of hospital
| resources, although it's fair to say that hospitals were
| acclimated to the demand.
|
| The "flatten the curve" graphic is extremely misleading. The
| axis have no scale and the two curves themselves are not to
| any scale. The actual ICU capacity is like 4 pixels off the
| y-axis.
|
| But that's besides the point. We should absolutely be taking
| common sense and appropriate actions to reduce the spread of
| this virus (and several other diseases come to mind which are
| more deadly). When possible we should do this in a way that
| doesn't destroy people's livelihood.
|
| That means a rational and scientific approach, not the
| emotional reaction which is so prevalent and actually
| damaging. Restaurants cannot stay closed indefinitely,
| particularly when we have reasonable approaches which can
| make them safe.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Sure wish this stuff wouldn't get buried. It should be fine
| to question and criticize the course we are all taking.
| Humans can be panicy creatures that love to imagine
| doomsday scenarios. We live in an age where feeding our
| imaginations with crap on the internet is a trivial
| operation.
|
| We owe it to all of us to put on our critical thinking caps
| rather than downvote anything that says something other
| than "lockdown more, harder, faster, longer".
| jedberg wrote:
| > We lived with Measles for decades and it is much more
| virulent and about equally as deadly as SARS-CoV-2.
|
| We lived with measles for more than just decades, but it
| wasn't a sudden outbreak that was overwhelming medical
| facilities.
|
| The key here is hospital beds. We need to flatten the
| infective curve _right now_ so that the medical system isn
| 't overwhelmed. Then we can go back to "just being
| cautious."
|
| https://medium.com/@yishan/its-the-rate-of-
| hospitalizations-...
|
| > In the 1980s there were still about 2 million people a
| year dying from Measles.
|
| Again, irrelevant. It wasn't overwhelming the medical
| system because the infections were spread out. Also we had
| a vaccine by then.
| timr wrote:
| Repeatedly saying "flatten the curve" isn't a response to
| someone saying "flatten the curve _without destroying the
| economy when you can avoid it_ ".
|
| Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore...all
| have managed to contain this virus without kneecapping
| their economies. We should be following their examples.
|
| Most of the US is nowhere near a crisis point, and
| locking down an entire city (or worse, country) over a
| small number of cases is like killing a fly with a
| nuclear weapon. Other, effective tactics exist to manage
| this kind of a threat.
| jedberg wrote:
| I agree, we should be following their examples. But since
| we aren't doing extensive free testing, and don't have a
| culture of sick people wearing masks and self isolating,
| this is the best we can do for now.
|
| Once testing becomes readily available we can look at
| loosening the restrictions.
|
| As the Governor of Colorado put it, saving the economy
| doesn't do a lot of good if everyone is dead.
| magduf wrote:
| I don't see how it's low-risk to have an infected person
| preparing your food in the kitchen.
|
| At least with a grocery store, you can wash off the produce
| before you use it. With a restaurant, there's nothing covering
| the food at all.
|
| And remember, the chefs in the kitchen are paid peanuts, and
| have no safety net whatsoever, so there's zero incentive for
| them to get tested or to stay out of work if they get sick.
| This is also the case during normal times. Eating out is a good
| way to catch something in a country where we think it's a great
| idea to fire cooks and other low-wage workers when they call in
| sick.
| zaroth wrote:
| Take out and delivery is still allowed. So I don't see how
| this is a valid critique of why dining rooms are closed.
| magduf wrote:
| Where did I critique why dining rooms are closed? I didn't
| address that at all; I only addressed eating food prepared
| in a restaurant by low-wage cooks who could be infected.
| mdavidn wrote:
| A large number of unknown people from the general public have
| been in contact with the dine-in table. Only a handful of
| kitchen staff are in contact with surfaces involved in
| preparing takeout.
|
| Eating at home is still a better idea for the reasons you
| state, but takeout is an acceptable if less-ideal
| alternative.
| magduf wrote:
| I'm not disputing the fact about unknown people from the
| general public being in contact with the table. That's
| enough of a reason to not dine-in. I'm just pointing out
| that I have no trust at all that the cooks aren't infected,
| and they're coming into intimate contact with your food.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| low risk? Being in a public place with a lot of other people
| with a airborne virus? Do you sincerely believe that wiping
| down tables will protect you and your family?
| atom-morgan wrote:
| Have you ever actually watched a busboy wipe down your table?
| Sometimes I swear they just use a wet rag dumped into soapy
| water that's been reused over and over.
| zaroth wrote:
| Right, so this is a good time for the health department to
| provide specific instructions on what is required (e.g. the
| type of disinfectant spray, how long it sits, and drying with
| paper towels not rags)
|
| EDIT: HN is preventing me from replying to you so I'll edit
| it in here...
|
| Yes, of course, all of it...
|
| - They of course should remove the salt & paper shakers.
| Single use packets can be provided.
|
| - They need disposable or wiped down menus.
|
| - There can be no self-serve dispensers for napkins or
| utensils, those have to be distributed one by one.
|
| - Seating must be reorganized to keep reasonable distances.
|
| - Chefs and waitstaff all must check temperature before their
| shifts and record in a logbook
|
| These are all reasonable common sense measures we can take to
| keep a massive segment of the economy alive.
|
| Restaurants can add a $10 COVID cleaning surcharge if they
| want to.
|
| I mean, it's only worth like $1 trillion dollars to the
| economy. There are ~15 million jobs at stake, and that's not
| counting secondary effects. And the problem isn't going away
| in a few days or even a couple weeks.
|
| I saw a video of the Tesla Factory in China and the changes
| they've made to protect workers. For example, the cafeteria
| tables have been converted into single-person cubbies
| enclosed on 3 sides.
|
| https://youtu.be/9l_4ZH3iXbw
| function_seven wrote:
| The surface of the table is just one thing out of dozens:
|
| Are they going to spray down the salt and pepper shakers,
| the menus, the hot sauce, the napkin dispenser, the chair
| seat and back? For self-serve places, how often are the
| trash cans disinfected, or the ketchup and mustard
| dispensers (or packet piles)?
|
| All that not to mention the other patrons in close
| proximity while you dine.
|
| We don't realize how many communal surfaces we touch in a
| normal day.
| sixothree wrote:
| There sure does seem to be a vacuum of guidance.
| dhosek wrote:
| Except that you're surrounded by potentially infected people on
| all sides. Delivery or pick up is probably the least risky
| option for eating.
| zdw wrote:
| Looking at this data, prior to asking people to isolate, I wonder
| if the day to day variation is based on a weekly pattern - people
| culturally may eat out more on weekends or weekdays, so the same
| calendar day may not be directly comparable to the one in the
| previous year.
| TylerE wrote:
| Getting ready to nose dive totally.
|
| Here in NC we just joined the list of states that have banned
| dine-in service entirely. Curbside or delivery only, after 5PM
| today.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| In Utah it was 11 PM yesterday. Or at least in Salt Lake City.
| radmarshallb wrote:
| The governor made it statewide earlier today
| bigsassy wrote:
| Same here in Maryland (since yesterday).
| mark-r wrote:
| Same here in Minnesota.
| welfare wrote:
| Same in PA
| kshannon wrote:
| Iowa is carry-out or drive thru only as of noon Tuesday.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Same here in Austin!
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| And Ontario.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Same here in NYC since this morning.
| fbonetti wrote:
| Same in Illinois and Michigan.
| smallgovt wrote:
| Not to trivialize the numbers, but people still have to eat, so
| these dollars are largely being re-allocated elsewhere, primarily
| to takeout, food delivery, and grocery stores. Other sectors that
| are service-based represent real net loss in GDP.
| AgloeDreams wrote:
| For sure but don't forget that many people cannot work right
| now and are not getting paid so many people and spending far
| fewer dollars in whole so their spending may be far far less as
| a result, for example, buying some bags of rice, beans etc.
| creato wrote:
| Even delivered groceries are _significantly_ cheaper than
| eating out. That difference is mostly the income of restaurant
| workers.
| sk5t wrote:
| Yep. Food cost is usually about 1/3 of the bill; 1/3 to rent
| and overhead, 1/3 to staff. If a few percent can be squeezed
| from any of those areas, there's the restaurant's profit.
| smallgovt wrote:
| If there's a silver lining, it's that takeout is higher
| margin for restaurants and I'm sure takeout revenue is
| spiking during city shutdowns.
| selectodude wrote:
| No it's not. The margin on one beer is more than two
| entrees put together.
| whatshisface wrote:
| But a takeout beer would be higher margin than a sit-in
| beer.
| zackbloom wrote:
| How many people order takeout beer at restaurants?
| Depending on the city it's often not even legal.
| wincy wrote:
| Who would order a takeout beer? If I was going to get
| takeout and wanted a beer I'd stop at a liquor store or
| gas station on my way home.
| pc86 wrote:
| In Pennsylvania at least liquor stores are state run and
| closed at the moment. You can get beer or wine at some
| gas stations but that's about it. Anything less popular
| than huge international brands or very, very popular
| micro-brews you typically have to go to a beer
| distributor for and most of those are closed, too (the
| only ones open are those defying the Governor's strong
| recommendation to close).
|
| Basically if you want anything less popular than Sam
| Adams-level of popularity, you have to get it from a
| restaurant.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| You can get to-go beer (6-packs, growlers, etc.) at any
| restaurant with a liquor license (provided they sell it
| that way). You can also get beer AND wine from a large
| number of grocery stores (Giant, Wegmans, etc.). Only
| liquor is sold by the state-run stores.
|
| There are also all the local micro-breweries...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| A lot of people are just gonna hit the liquor store on
| their way.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| That's probably only possible in places like New Orleans.
| I was surprised to learn about the notion of the "to-go
| cup" a few years back. It has significant explanatory
| power in some parts of the city.
| akavi wrote:
| To-go cups are legal in NYC as of Tuesday, so long as
| they're sold with food[0].
|
| [0] https://ny.eater.com/2020/3/17/21182052/new-york-
| state-liquo...
| _delirium wrote:
| It's not legal in most places, but being temporarily
| legalized in some. Washington, DC is passing a bill this
| afternoon [1] allowing takeout places to deliver
| beer/wine if ordered with at least one food item. I'm
| guessing other cities will pass something similar.
|
| [1] edit: See section 203 photographed here:
| https://twitter.com/mitchryals/status/1239938801839099905
| sambroner wrote:
| I couldn't find this by googling. Can you post a link?
| v64 wrote:
| It's part of the COVID-19 Emergency Amendment Act of 2020
| [1] that was passed today.
|
| [1] http://www.icontact-
| archive.com/archive?c=653228&f=109&s=277...
| enjo wrote:
| In today's world Uber eats, Grubhub, etc take 30% of the
| gross on an order. No way it's more profitable than having
| people in house buying alcohol.
| karatestomp wrote:
| The one time I bought on Grubhub I had trouble getting
| the price to something reasonable even with the coupon I
| had (only reason I was trying it) because all the menu
| prices were way higher than at the actual restaurants.
| Even with (IIRC) the delivery fee waived and a
| significant % off (I wanna say 20 or 30?) it was about
| the same as going in. Does Grubhub do the menu-price
| adjusting part, or do the restaurants?
|
| Unlike your average delivery joint the numbers kept
| getting worse the more you added, too--no "two large two-
| topping pizzas and breadsticks at 70% menu price" deals
| or anything like that.
| manigandham wrote:
| All of the delivery apps have much higher prices than
| what you can get at the place yourself. I suggest take-
| out or drive-thru if you're able.
| karatestomp wrote:
| The pricing was a big turn-off for me. The way it added
| more to the delivery cost per-item rather than being some
| kind of flat delivery fee, which didn't make much sense,
| and how it seemed like they were trying to hide the cost
| of delivery.
| frgotmylogin wrote:
| I noticed the same thing a while back with DoorDash when
| trying to order some Cracker Barrel breakfast. It was
| something like a 30-40% hike across the board. I emailed
| DoorDash to ask what was going on with the prices and got
| a super misleading response along the lines of "our
| partner restaurants set their own prices" [1]- basically
| deflecting the blame back at the restaurant. So I emailed
| Cracker Barrel, and they are not (or were not at the
| time) partnered with any delivery service.
|
| [1] actual text from email: "As stated in our Terms and
| Conditions, the prices for menu items on DoorDash may
| differ from the prices on the restaurant's own menu. For
| example, our restaurant partners are responsible for
| setting the price of their menu items on DoorDash, and
| some restaurant partners choose to set different prices
| than they offer for in-store diners."
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| _I noticed the same thing a while back with DoorDash when
| trying to order some Cracker Barrel breakfast. It was
| something like a 30-40% hike across the board._
|
| If DoorDash or Uber Eats charges 30% (which is fucking
| insane if they do), where do you think that comes from?
| Restaurants aren't making 30% profit.
|
| Compounding the problem GrubHub, and presumably other,
| preemptively adds non-partner restaurants against their
| will:
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-
| star-SF...
| karatestomp wrote:
| Actually, it may have been DoorDash I used, now that you
| mention it. Seemed like a really gross way to price
| delivery, giving fake, higher prices on every single menu
| item. And then still a delivery fee on top of that! I
| seriously had to shop around several of their restaurants
| and several menu combos to find one where I wasn't still
| paying above-menu even with the fairly "generous" coupon.
| joshvm wrote:
| This is US-specific. Some companies like Just Eat (UK,
| Canada, Mexico and others) specifically say that the
| price has to be the same. To avoid the situation where
| you use their service as a convenient menu/opening time
| check, and then call the restaurant directly.
|
| Restaurants lose margin on those orders with the
| expectation that it's made up by more people ordering.
|
| https://www.just-eat.co.uk/pricepromise
| losteric wrote:
| Previous poster said take out, not delivery. Some
| restaurants bump up take-out item price or add a
| surcharge, factor in no need for waiting/cleaning staff
| and the profit is substantial.
|
| Protip: call in your orders, those take-out apps often
| take a cut that's just added to the restaurant's list
| price (last night I saw a $12 half-duck = $16 phone-in
| takeout or $25 Caviar take-out)
| _jal wrote:
| I know the owner of a restaurant who stopped delivery
| after the apps took over.
|
| It literally wasn't worth it, and his drivers all
| switched over. He tried to find other folks to deliver,
| but, well, delivery folks aren't exactly known for being
| long-term employees and most of them deliver for the
| apps.
|
| I still don't understand what a multinational adds to
| local pizza delivery. Prices went up, pizza doesn't taste
| any better or get here faster, and my local restaurant
| makes less. Do not want.
| pc86 wrote:
| Your local restaurant might make less (I'm not sure I buy
| that), but the delivery driver likely makes more per
| hour.
|
| If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber,
| it wouldn't exist.
| _jal wrote:
| > Your local restaurant might make less (I'm not sure I
| buy that), but the delivery driver likely makes more per
| hour.
|
| I don't know what Uber pays their drivers, but I happen
| to know the place in question pays a good wage,
| comparably. I seriously doubt it driving Uber beats it.
|
| >If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or
| Uber, it wouldn't exist.
|
| And yet, here we are. Econ 101 only takes you so far; why
| do you choose to ignore the other pressures? Once the
| econ brain worms take hold, people stop thinking.
| detaro wrote:
| So Econ 101 asks: If the drivers were better paid by the
| restaurant, why did they switch to delivery apps?
| pc86 wrote:
| You say "and yet, here we are" as if you've proven
| something, when you have no evidence to back up your
| statement and rely on passive aggressive pseudo-insults
| to imply that I don't know what I'm talking about.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| _I don 't know what I'm talking about. _
|
| And where's your evidence that restaurants are profiting
| off of Uber Eats / GrubHub / Door Dash / whatever?
| Restaurants are suing to be removed from these services.
| Presumably it's not profitable for the restaurant.
|
| Let's not forget that in most states these "gig" jobs
| hire people as contractors who are then ineligible for
| unemployment and social security and are not guaranteed a
| minimum wage. Restaurants typically hire folks as
| employees.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Sounds like you've never been to Albertsons. That's why we
| usually drive to TJs, a few items are approx 40% cheaper.
| cm2187 wrote:
| This is still businesses that are going bust and will not
| reopen when the these lockdowns are lifted (which could take
| many months).
| azinman2 wrote:
| Restaurants will shutter, and hourly workers dependent on tips
| will majorly suffer. Even the economic stimulus mentioned today
| won't go to all the immigrant labor that runs many (most?)
| kitchens.
| ck2 wrote:
| It's not about industry, it's about the people.
|
| We handle this like any other shuttered or suffering business
| though no fault of their own, with safety nets for the people.
|
| Problem is those safety nets have been destroyed in this country
| and people voted for that to happen on purpose because darn if
| they are going to let one single migrant get assistance. This is
| the result. People feeling they must go into work sick because
| "no other choice".
| jedberg wrote:
| I noticed that the global line and the US line are pretty much
| within 1% of each other the entire time.
|
| So really this is US data, since it looks like almost all of
| their restaurants are in the US. I wouldn't put much stock in the
| other countries.
|
| That being said, this data certainly shows a devastating trend
| for the restaurant industry.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| OT is majority US, but UK/JP/MX/CA are also big markets for
| them and I wouldn't discount that data.
|
| Source: I'm a former OT employee :]
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Not sure about the rest of Canada, but they have a significant
| share of restaurants in the GTA and most of Ontario.
| j88439h84 wrote:
| 'trend' doesn't seem like the right word
| jedberg wrote:
| Devastating collapse?
| drpgq wrote:
| I own a small share of a bar and we closed yesterday. Definitely
| hurts financially before St. Patrick's Day. We're lucky that our
| rent is low and we're a pretty small operation with limited food
| service. I can imagine for places in downtowns where rent is
| bigger percentage of sales, that's going to be tough.
| mNovak wrote:
| SBA will be distributing low-interest, long term loans, if it
| helps any.
|
| https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/disaster-assistance
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Restaurants typically run at 3-5% margins, how low are these
| interest rates?
| vxNsr wrote:
| apparently 3.75%
| evo_9 wrote:
| My wife an I opened a nail and wax salon 6 months ago. Really
| don't know what to do, so far they haven't asked us to shutdown.
| Business had been steadily growing and we are about break-even.
| No idea how this will play-out, what if anything the building
| owner can do to help out, or how the federal help might work for
| a small business like ours.
|
| The rent and payroll are our biggest expenses naturally, we can
| of course cut hours and even close entirely; no idea what our
| staff will do with no income.
|
| If this lasts more than 3-4 weeks (which is likely), yeah it's
| hard to say how any business is going to survive.
|
| Only good thing is I have a full time job for a major health
| company and our mobile app usage this week has sky rocketed... so
| my day job is quite secure at least.
| joering2 wrote:
| What's your mobile app please? :)
| evo_9 wrote:
| Davita Care Connect. Def. not 'my app', I just work on it.
| linuxftw wrote:
| > Really don't know what to do
|
| People are trapped at home, itching to get out. You run
| aggressive promotions right now to drive up your customer base
| since everyone is sitting at home bored with nothing to do.
| mft_ wrote:
| Would that be a socially appropriate action to take?
|
| Encourage people out of their homes at a time when it seems
| that the exact opposite is needed to start controlling the
| spread of the virus?
| mttyng wrote:
| Doesn't this fly counter to the recommendation of "staying
| home"?
| charwalker wrote:
| IF you are i the US employees may be eligible for unemployment
| immediately even if employed with full/cut/zero hours. Not
| super helpful to you as the owner unless you can also apply but
| could make a shutdown easier on staff.
| 76543210 wrote:
| It's a useless industry, it's a disposable luxury. I feel for the
| workers, but as a whole, less disposable luxuries sounds good for
| fiscal responsibility and productivity.
| blazespin wrote:
| That's unnecessarily harsh, but I do agree we might want to
| consider developing an economy less based on such types of
| consumer spending. If a particularly bad flu can take us out
| like these, we are very fragile indeed.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-03-17 23:00 UTC)