[HN Gopher] Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will ...
___________________________________________________________________
Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April
11th
Author : polar8
Score : 185 points
Date : 2022-03-04 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Thanks, Tim. I sure love inflation, don't you?
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Love that all the companies (see also Google, Twitter) are
| utilizing the WW3-panic to sweep these announcements under the
| rug. How thoughtful!
|
| And props to Apple for adding that Friday PR synergy to the mix!
|
| Edit: my best attempt at a good faith argument here is this: it
| was a move that was _supposed to be_ in sync with Biden 's SOFU
| comments on returning to the office, but other breaking news
| affected the plan.
| thisiscorrect wrote:
| It's interesting to consider the group psychology aspect.
| During the 2020 summer protests, many also said that the huge
| crowds were not spreading covid. Maybe this is similar. When
| there is a larger issue people are focusing on, concerns about
| covid get pushed to the backburner. The real test will come
| when the Ukraine-Russia war subsides.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| I'm sure the fact that protests are outside with the majority
| participants likely being mask wearers based on their
| affiliations also added to the risk calc.
| batekush wrote:
| large crowds of people who do not take covid seriously, who
| socially disincentivize transmission precautions (e.g.
| sturgis) seem to spread covid.
|
| on the other hand, large crowds that do take covid seriously,
| and socially encourage those precautions, appear to not
| spread covid as much.
|
| where's the group psychology aspect?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| "huge crowds were not spreading covid OUTDOORS" is the right
| take. Indoors is a recycled hellscape of germs. Viral load is
| a real thing. I went to several outdoor concerts and didn't
| catch covid however I'm going to continue to work remote.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| It's easier to believe the singular "COVID isn't real" than
| it is to understand the plurality of viral load, HVAC,
| particulate sizes, mask ratings...
|
| That's the challenge.
| giarc wrote:
| You can look at any announcement and say "utilizing mid-term
| elections to sweep these announcements under the rug... swap
| out mid-terms with holidays, COVID, hurricanes, natural
| disasters, oil price swings, etc etc etc.
|
| If you go looking for it, you will find it. Doesn't make it
| true though.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Fast followers? Or do you think the decision was synchronized
| at the top?
| n42 wrote:
| are you suggesting they wait for the conflict in Ukraine to
| resolve before making announcements? your comment sounds
| paranoid.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| What a straw man. And thanks for the mental eval!
| engineeringwoke wrote:
| Love your attitude towards the odd comments. Keep it up
| dude
| draw_down wrote:
| SkinTaco wrote:
| I work at a company you've heard of that did something similar
| (their announcement was on HN) and, at least in my case, the
| announcements had been made internally a few weeks beforehand.
|
| It is always possible for there to be multiple plausible
| reasons for something, and the least generous assumptions can
| be frequently incorrect
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| It's not about current employees as much as future
| recruiting.
|
| PR requires internal employees. That leads me to the logic
| that, for most companies, PR is targeted at non-employees.
| [deleted]
| jmull wrote:
| Doesn't it seem more likely this is related to changing covid
| conditions than war in Ukraine?
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| There's "no COVID" in my state, so I don't feel qualified to
| comment on that.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I forgot what Google's RTO policy is, but Twitter still allows
| fully remote work, it's more of an optional RTO.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| I've added that Twitter caveat IRL convos. It's an important
| distinction and one that I applied them for.
|
| That said, I still think all 3 PR departments subscribed to
| the same strategy, even though Twitter missed an opportunity
| to build positive PR b/c their policy is good.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| Why is it Mon,Tue,Thu? Weird to have flexible Wednesday in the
| middle.
|
| Why not Tue,Wed,Thu with Monday and Friday flexible?
| windows2020 wrote:
| Maybe it's me, but I have yet to experience 'innovation' result
| from a conversation held over coffee or a chance encounter. I've
| had better luck creating connections with other parts of the
| business and exchanging ideas over the infrequent cocktail party
| where it's a mission of the night. Say all you want about open
| floorplans and irrelevant quiet encounters.
|
| Having said that, every situation is unique.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Really, do most employees contribute to innovation at all? Can
| they?
|
| I certainly never have except in an explicit innovation job.
| The rest of the time I am an implementer. So keep me away from
| connections with the other parts of the business as that just
| becomes a sideways way to ask for feature requests I have no
| say in or other info/support requests.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| The far majority of people do grunt work. Only a small group
| actually does anything both innovative _and_ non-obvious,
| which is the "use case" presented for these small talks.
| Most devs who are not part of that small group and find
| something non-obvious have to fight through many layers of
| bureaucracy to even get their voice heard, let alone be given
| time to prove their idea without having to invest their own
| time. This also doesn't take into account the far majority of
| those select people have dedicated times where they research
| potential innovations, and getting into that small group is
| also difficult.
|
| Even supposing FAANG, fortune 100s or whatever top percentile
| is likely to desire more innovation, the idea spontaneous
| talks one supposedly only could have in the office
| significantly impacting the rates of innovation is pretty
| far-fetched and mostly just an assumption.
| song wrote:
| I have worked in remote companies and companies that had butt
| in chair requirements, so far all the remote companies have
| been more innovative and had more cross talk between teams than
| the companies that required people to be in an office all day,
| every day.
|
| Of course, that's just my experience but I do have a feeling
| that certain type of people feel that there's more innovation
| around coffee and chance encounter because it's a nice story to
| tell oneself but it doesn't really happen.
| angryasian wrote:
| I'm interested in how you accomplish this. Everything has to
| be scheduled in a meeting these days, and meeting burn out
| over zoom is real.
|
| Where as in the office it was just walking around and seeing
| someone in an elevator, the hall, "hey lets catch up" or "you
| have a minute" or "lets get lunch"
|
| these types of interactions just don't happen anymore
| onion2k wrote:
| _these types of interactions just don 't happen anymore_
|
| I frequently DM people on Slack with a "How was your
| weekend?", "Did you see <url> on HN?" or just "We haven't
| chatted in a while, fancy a catchup?" That works just as
| well, except it's much easier for people to say they're
| busy when they're busy than it is face to face.
| asd88 wrote:
| In true remote companies everything happens on Slack
| channels and meetings are minimal. If you want to see what
| a team is up to, you just have to lurk their Slack channel.
| Basically almost everything becomes more visible because of
| Slack.
| angryasian wrote:
| even slack is too much these days, I'm in so many
| channels. theres so much noise and if you're not part of
| the conversation you may miss it completely depending on
| if people are using threads or not.
| heyitsanewacco wrote:
| I go to meetings for a living. Its been a huge productivity
| boost to not have to walk 15 minutes across campus to meet
| my clients. Plus I never have to worry about not having a
| projector.
|
| Although you're right, I did go back to the office the
| other day and spent a good hour talking to a co-worker
| about their Caribbean vacation. I hadn't had one of those
| in years. Not sure how that boosted innovation and
| productivity tho.
| angryasian wrote:
| >Not sure how that boosted innovation and productivity
| tho.
|
| I think positive interactions with co workers is a
| productivity boost, it makes you not hate work so much.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| > Everything has to be scheduled in a meeting these days,
| and meeting burn out over zoom is real.
|
| At my company, we obviously have to chat over zoom or meet,
| but it doesn't have to be scheduled. The way we do it is we
| might be chatting on slack, spitballing ideas, doing stuff
| in lucidchart or some other charting software, then if it
| seems good we talk about it over zoom. It doesn't have to
| be so robotic
| unsui wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Pre-scheduling is ONE way of getting people in sync, but
| not the only way.
|
| For me and my team, there is a LOT of ad-hoc
| communication, preferrably in public slack channels,
| which leads to extremely productive conversations.
|
| Furthermore, these are SEARCHABLE, which is a godsend; if
| an issue comes up once, it's very likely to come up
| again.
|
| And, of course, there are times when we just jump on a
| zoom call quickly to review something that may be quicker
| than a bunch of slack back-and-forth.
|
| There has never been a time where I felt "damn, it would
| be easier if I were there in person". If anything, in-
| person communication has always been hampered by the very
| need for co-location (including arranging meeting rooms
| or whiteboard, etc), and it's always been difficult to
| view someone else's screen unless they connect to a
| projector or large TV, whereas zoom has made pair-and
| -group programming almost inevitable.
|
| I understand the social side of people wanting to be co-
| located, but from a pure productivity perspective, my
| team has been significantly more productive since WFH.
| sytelus wrote:
| Your anecdata doesn't back up large scale data:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4
|
| A lot depends on culture and process. Usually companies which
| had remote on day 1 do better because they get to fine tune and
| evolve the process over time.
| steeve wrote:
| My experience is the exact opposite: most innovation I came
| across was the result of a in-person informal discussion.
|
| So yeah, YMMV
| mattwad wrote:
| I feel like not everyone works well remotely. Meanwhile if you
| can work well remote, you can probably work well at a desk. So
| the rest of us must suffer especially at these larger firms.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Meanwhile if you can work well remote, you can probably
| work well at a desk.
|
| This is sadly not universal. I'd wagger there's a decent
| number of people who could only barely work in an office.
|
| I've memories of people who had issues keeping themselves
| and/or desk clean, and it wasn't some cute story to laugh at,
| it had a direct impact on their performance and if their
| managers found any good excuse they'd be out pretty quick.
|
| Then all the IRL office harrasment stuff, the one that looms
| at a level HR doesn't give a fuck but you still deal with it
| every fucking day. Going remote makes it weirdly easier on
| both sides, I guess some people just couldn't help it and now
| they have a private space where they can do what they need to
| calm down.
|
| I'd say there's a infinite number of circumstances, up until
| now we'd just think these people are just not fitted to work
| at any place. Working remote changes a lot of these pre-
| requisites.
| nso95 wrote:
| tbf I think it would be an additive effect, not just a single
| encounter that leads to innovation
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Apple has always been the more stringent about remote work, in
| terms of maintaining secrecy by keeping its workers on-premises,
| so this is the least surprising move.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I don't work for Apple, but it seems they've managed to get
| this far without any leaks so I guess whatever they did
| regarding their WFH policy worked out for them?
|
| I had to go into the office a few times over the pandemic to
| use some testing equipment, but that was 7 or 8 days in the
| last 2 years?
| temp_praneshp wrote:
| My friend who works at apple (hardware/wireless stuff?) has
| been to the office every day, except for a brief period in
| March-May 2020
| xxpor wrote:
| I have to imagine a lot of that has to do with the HW work they
| do, as a percentage of their business?
|
| Even regardless of the confidentiality aspect (and we all know
| how Apple feels about that), for a decent number of folks, they
| might need some decently expensive equipment that wouldn't make
| sense to buy for everyone individually.
|
| At least according to how I perceive the company, the folks
| coming from that side of the business really run things, and so
| they bring the in office culture with them even to the pure
| software businesses.
|
| Obviously this is a lot of speculation, but it seems like a
| reasonable way to explain why they are the way they are.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I think it is safe to say that most people do not have access
| to any expensive equipment.
|
| I worked for Samsung for a little bit. And even there with
| operating system basically borrowed from Google, only very
| small portion of people ever needed to use any special tools.
| We got some prototypes but the one time we needed to do
| anything was to desolder and solder again a battery for a
| prototype watch. And that because a mistake (charging
| controller circuit badly designed, not powering properly from
| external power when battery drained). We had one guy do this
| for the rest of the team and everybody else was just working
| on software.
| silisili wrote:
| That's my guess. And not just equipment, but prototypes and
| such.
|
| Imagine trying to make something intuitive and comfortable.
| How can you even judge that remotely? First you have to ship
| it around(or else make tons more units), then hope video
| quality suffices to see everything.
|
| In person you can get 20 people in a room and let them
| interact with widget x. See how they behave, hear feedback,
| etc.
| adenozine wrote:
| Tasty hiring for remote firms! Flee from Apple's iron clutches!!
|
| Mostly /s
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Is it /s though? This may be the only time in the next 20 years
| that remote-progressive companies have a unbeatable advantage
| over Apple and Google. If I'm a top-tier firm, I'm poaching as
| many Apple and Google remote employees that I can possibly
| take.
| mrfusion wrote:
| This is a great opportunity for start ups to eat the lunch of big
| companies by hiring all the talent that doesn't want to commute.
| hackerbob wrote:
| Do they share HR offices too!
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/02/google-tells-employees-to-re...
| bombcar wrote:
| There's no need to collude when you can just notice how the
| wind is flowing; expect a flood of these announcements over the
| next weeks.
|
| Apple didn't just decide to do it because Google did, they'd
| already decided it was coming, and perhaps moved up the
| announcement now that someone (Putin? Google?) took the news
| cycle.
| ghaff wrote:
| I certainly expect the HR heads of the big tech companies know
| each other and talk now and then. Even if they're not colluding
| in some illegal way, I'd actually be a bit surprised if they
| weren't discussing COVID-related matters.
| sokoloff wrote:
| To be honest, I'd be way more pissed if my HR and Facilities
| teams _weren't_ talking to their peers in the industry and
| sharing learning /best practices throughout all this.
| ecf wrote:
| Not HR, but their finance teams got together and decided what
| needed to be done to protect their real estate investments.
| michaelt wrote:
| An office doesn't cost less just because there are people
| using it.
| [deleted]
| xienze wrote:
| No, but it certainly means they're getting at least some
| use out of the money they're spending versus what is
| effectively just lighting money on fire.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| That is just the sunk-cost fallacy.
| 8bitben wrote:
| Hard to see it going any other way given the massive real estate
| investments they have made.
| bch wrote:
| If "real estate" were the real reason, that'd just be an
| example of throwing good money after bad.
| teeray wrote:
| Nobody is immune from the Sunk Cost Fallacy
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Just look at the butterfly keyboard or removing all the
| ports but usb-c.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| Personal investments in Bay Area housing by senior execs.
| brimble wrote:
| Bingo!
|
| Wanna bet upper management and board members spend some of
| their money buying up nearby or distant-but-commute-
| friendly property just before a new "campus" is announced?
| Not the actual land the campus will be built on, of course.
| _That_ would be a conflict of interest.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The concept of an exec being the landlord of a new grad
| hire or owning intern housing is truly techno-feudalism.
| heyitsanewacco wrote:
| This is exactly it. We've been spending money in our
| suburbs for too long and it's killing the restaurant
| businesses that they own.
|
| The Gov of New York has basically come out and said exactly
| that.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Yes, they need to prove that commercial real estate still holds
| any value at all, though I'm not convinced seeing this
| incredible shift towards remote economy. I think they just
| burned a bunch of money to be honest. Maybe in 15 years we will
| see the Apple campus converted to high quality free public
| housing, which would be a good outcome for all and certainly
| would create more value for society than it does now.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > need to prove that commercial real estate still holds any
| value at all
|
| You've hit the nail on the had, the entire human civilisation
| could reorganise around smaller cities without the commute to
| be more healthy, less polluting and more environmentally
| friendly
|
| Instead we are witnessing whole COVID-is-gone theater only to
| protect parasite investors that 'invested' in assets that
| don't produce anything
| jordanpg wrote:
| I suspect that at the root of all of these companies with
| massive office investments insisting that everyone gets back to
| the office as soon as possible is something to do with taxes.
|
| Something like deductions that cannot be taken when those
| facilities are not used or not used enough in the development
| of income.
| brimble wrote:
| Having X employees _in_ a given city /county/state is often
| part of agreements for skipping taxes or even attaining
| grants for new office development, that's true.
| olliej wrote:
| I'm so glad that Covid cares about the economy.
|
| I also hate the obsession with in office work. I know for many
| people there's a social aspect to being in the office, but
| honestly I don't consider 4 hours of commuting each day to be
| worth the socializing aspect of in office work.
| dnathi493 wrote:
| I left Apple after years of lack of any flexibility on the remote
| work process. They wouldn't allow transferring to any alternative
| office for most teams. From what I understood, VPs could protect
| a small minority of some of their employees if a senior leader
| made a case to them.
|
| Unfortunately, this just seemed to lead to the most politically
| connected folks going remote and directors friends and favorite
| hires getting the perk.
|
| At three trillion market cap, I guess they just realized it
| doesn't really matter if attrition shoots up and they'll always
| have enough people to fill the trenches. Lots and lots of people
| left around the same time.
|
| Having left, I forgot what it was like to be able to focus on
| something other than Apple. Incredibly toxic atmosphere on the
| inside. I work at a fast-paced startup and still work on average
| 10/hours a week less than at Apple.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Fair warning: my experience has been very different than yours
| or tombert's in most respects and some things have changed over
| time (some OSS contributions are now much easier, a very recent
| change). It is also the first company I've worked for that
| backed up appreciation for my efforts with compensation to
| match, and where my management chain cared about burnout and
| mental health with actions rather than empty words.
|
| It is still primarily an on-site company. That might mean on-
| site an an office in San Diego, Austin, Philadelphia, NYC, etc.
| But in-office nonetheless.
|
| Every team does things differently, even down to the department
| or individual manager level. Compared to the other FAANGs it is
| far more varied in most respects. Just because someone didn't
| like (or loves) their role doesn't mean you will feel the same
| way about it. If possible I recommend talking to people who
| work in the department you are interested in.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > It is still primarily an on-site company.
|
| At some point I would like people to quit vilifying a
| completely legitimate business setup because it doesn't fit
| _their_ world view.
|
| I _want_ to be in the office, and I prefer it when my
| coworkers are there too. I respect that not everyone feels
| the same - but I do think it is up to the employer to decide.
| So I will be picking companies that suit my preferences.
| abledon wrote:
| also, isn't their new campus built atop a toxic waste site?
| dymk wrote:
| It's an empathy building exercise for the Foxconn employees
| 30367286 wrote:
| That term could fit most of the Santa Clara Valley if you're
| operating on the definition provided by the person you heard
| that from. I won't link their name here, since I do not
| believe it is worthwhile to give them attention.
| roastytoasty wrote:
| no_one_ever wrote:
| lol having a HN account isn't a pre-requisite to being in
| tech
| krapp wrote:
| Most people "in tech" don't even know Hacker News exists.
| It's a bubble within a bubble.
| eunoia wrote:
| I don't think you understand how deep the Apple
| secrecy/paranoia culture rabbit hole goes.
|
| Another example: Have you ever noticed how comparatively
| infrequently Apple is even mentioned in FAANG working
| condition threads?
|
| Source: I am a former Apple employee.
| bmarquez wrote:
| It's likely a throwaway account and I understand the
| reasoning behind creating one. Apple has a very secretive,
| almost paranoid, workplace culture. If I were in the parent
| poster's shoes I'd make one too to avoid blowback.
| tombert wrote:
| COVID made my situation worse at Apple. I worked in a satellite
| office (NYC), and while in the office, most folks in California
| were reluctant to schedule meetings later than ~2pm california
| time because they didn't want to keep people in the office
| late. When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any
| compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until
| 9pm 3 nights a week, I guess because the managers figured that
| we were already home.
|
| > Having left, I forgot what it was like to be able to focus on
| something other than Apple
|
| Definitely sympathize there; we weren't even allowed to leave
| _Github issues_ without Legal 's approval, and when I wanted to
| open source something (basically an HLS server I wrote to
| handle my home security system), I was told that a) it was too
| competitive with Apple because my project had to do with video,
| and b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since
| I was salaried and well-compensated.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any
| compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until
| 9pm 3 nights a week
|
| This is why there is a decline button next to the accept
| button. An outage or something disastrous, sure I'll stay
| online till midnight to help in anyway I can; a regular
| status update type meeting, no way.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Woz to HP management: "Hey, I know we already sell computers,
| want to have a look at this one? If not, can I sell it
| myself?"
|
| HP to Woz: "Sure, go for it, good luck."
|
| Apple to their own employees: "Uh, let's see here.... how
| about 'No.' Does 'No' work? Good, then we'll go with 'No.'"
|
| Gotta love the Valley. You either flame out early, or you
| live long enough to become the face on the telescreen.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| To be fair, the modern Apple is all Steve Jobs and Jobs
| always had this mentality that you are bashing. Seems like
| any Wozniak related mentality left the building when they
| dumped Apple II. And well can you really argue with the
| results? Apple was near bankruptcy trying to compete on the
| same plane as other personal computers.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I don't understand what this is supposed to mean.
| neuralspark wrote:
| It's a reference to Apple's 1984 commercial
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| They have not only become exactly what they fought
| against, they've refined it to perfection.
| driverdan wrote:
| Put your work hours in your calendar and auto decline
| everything outside those hours. Refuse that nonsense.
| abledon wrote:
| > b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since
| I was salaried and well-compensated.
|
| Is there 1 FAANG company that is the most
| friendly/accomodating to someone who wants to develop their
| own software/indiegames on the side?
| shoulderfake wrote:
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't currently work there, so take this with a grain of
| salt, that said, it would seem Google is a lot more relaxed
| about this sort of thing than any other large company I've
| seen. Lots of ex-Google employees end up doing all sorts of
| things and lots of Googlers participate in open source
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Not FAANG, but GitHub explicitly allows employees to work
| on side-projects while retaining the IP rights, and you get
| paid Microsoft stock.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Whats hilarious is that this is definitely not the case
| for regular MS employees
| brianwawok wrote:
| Which means it will eventually be the law.
| mochomocha wrote:
| Netflix. As long as you don't compete directly with the
| business, the company doesn't care (at least that's how I
| interpreted my contract when I joined a while ago).
| ModernMech wrote:
| > As long as you don't compete directly with the
| business, the company doesn't care
|
| I've found, as long as you're not making money no one
| cares what you're doing. As soon as money starts coming
| in, a lot of people are very interested in what you're
| doing. My totally uninformed guess would be that one of
| the first questions Netflix (or really any company) has
| about your off-company-time product is 1) does it make
| money and 2) how much. The answers to those questions
| will determine how the conversation goes from there, and
| how many lawyers are involved.
| dijit wrote:
| Bingo. Not FAANG but it definitely works like that in
| Ubisoft.
| blcknight wrote:
| Not FAANG but Red Hat employees can contribute to open
| source on their own time -- even if it competes with
| something that Red Hat makes.
| sdoering wrote:
| Wow. Thanks for the insights.
|
| > work at a fast-paced startup and still work on average
| 10/hours a week less than at Apple.
|
| I am always floored by statements like this. I work as a
| principal data analyst and everything above 40 hours/week is
| overtime. While I have overtime included in my contract I still
| am able to reduce overtime (it is still being tracked to ensure
| compliance with local workers protection laws) if the project
| situation allows. On average I do something like 41 hours a
| week over the last few years. Including high profile client
| engagement or pitch situations.
|
| I find myself having enough time to also work on my side
| business and do work for animal protection charities. While
| still being able to work in the garden and shop to relax.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" While I have overtime included in my contract I still am
| able to reduce overtime (it is still being tracked to ensure
| compliance with local workers protection laws) if the project
| situation allows."_
|
| The people talking about working long hours at Apple are
| getting paid commensurately. There's a reason why people work
| at FAANG companies despite the constant complaints.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > The people talking about working long hours at Apple are
| getting paid commensurately.
|
| Not really. Most divisions in SWE do stack ranking
| (unofficially). The top quintile (decile in some groups)
| gets a majority of compensation at review time. The bottom
| _half_ is lucky to get a cost of living adjustment to their
| base pay. They likely will get no RSUs and little if any
| cash bonus.
|
| Despite the disparity in compensation everyone on a team is
| expected to put in overtime. Anyone that doesn't is guilted
| over not being a "team player", put on a PIP, outright
| threatened with firing. If you get put on a PIP there is
| zero guidance to get off.
| CSSer wrote:
| They seem very rooted in the past for lots of ideas, which is
| ironic given the image and culture they try to project. For
| example, I've heard at least one story of someone being asked
| lots of irrelevant CS questions for a front-end role when they
| interviewed there. He did fine, but he said he felt like the
| interview somehow felt fifteen years out of date, which really
| stuck with me.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| What CS questions would be irrelevant for front end? I don't
| quite follow.
| Qub3d wrote:
| I imagine they're complaining about the technical
| interview. For the record, when I did the technical
| interview I didn't find it too onerous -- mostly a more
| advanced sort of FizzBuzz to check you could do some
| intermediate math and handle basic data structures and
| logic flow.
|
| My understanding is that at Apple this can vary quite a lot
| in difficulty or depth depending on what team you're
| looking at, and who is interviewing you.
| CSSer wrote:
| Deep questions about data structures and sorting algorithms
| that are perfectly addressed by the standard library in JS
| iirc. I understand that virtually anything in CS is or can
| be relevant, especially for such a competitive role. I
| don't think one should limit their knowledge wholly to a
| specific domain, but it seemed like there was so much
| emphasis put on these kinds of concepts that there was very
| little time left to put emphasis on things that actually
| might be relevant in the day to day. Beyond that though, I
| can't say. That's all I got out of it.
| tombert wrote:
| There were times at Apple that people were given a "no" on
| the interview because, despite knowing the solution to the
| problem, had compilation errors in there code. I thought (and
| still think) that was idiotic.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If the role was to do front-end development for internal
| tools, that might have not been all that irrelevant.
| CSSer wrote:
| Maybe, that's true. There were more details that led to the
| impression but it's been too long ago now for me to
| remember them all.
| ModernMech wrote:
| This is true, Apple is so secretive they try to get people
| into interviews without telling them the role they're
| interviewing for. They're so cagey and they expect you to
| say "yes" because they're Apple. The guy might not even
| have known what role he was interviewing for! It's a great
| way to waste everyone's time.
| danceparty wrote:
| From the article, in office is 3 days per week -
|
| > We will then begin the hybrid pilot in full on May 23, with
| people coming to the office three days a week -- on Monday,
| Tuesday, and Thursday -- and working flexibly on Wednesday and
| Friday if you wish.
| ghaff wrote:
| Though personally I'm fully remote, everything I've read and
| seen suggests something like this is going to be extremely
| common. Most employees seem to want to come into an office on a
| semi-regular basis but not 5 days a week. And, if you're going
| to do that, you probably want some level of coordination
| whether it's at a company, facility, or team level.
| CSSer wrote:
| Can confirm. We do something like this (2 days in, 3 days
| remote). We have one mandatory day and then each team has a
| designated day where their whole team is present. I never
| minded going into the office anyway because I live in a
| fairly small apartment, so it's nice to have dedicated space
| away from home. The only downside I've experienced so far is
| that the all-teams day can be very chaotic, with more
| disruptions than ever before because everyone tries to plan
| everything that is more than a little involved for that day.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Like I've said before, they need to justify their multi-billion
| dollar campus. Barring that, I think we'd be seeing quite a
| different situation.
| favorited wrote:
| Apple Park doesn't even house the majority of Apple employees
| in the Bay Area. They could easily keep that campus at 100%
| occupancy if it was just about justifying that investment.
| whiddershins wrote:
| The original headline is different from this one and more
| nuanced.
| twa999 wrote:
| midterms soon. new marching orders out.
| fartcannon wrote:
| No.
|
| I don't know how else to say this, but... No.
| paxys wrote:
| I suspect we are going to see some turmoil in the tech hiring
| space with stock prices taking a beating in recent months. Large
| companies have gotten away with paying under market price for
| talent because employees have seen massive gains from stock
| appreciation over the last decade. If total comp starts going
| down year over year, suddenly the more traditional, no-frills
| system at places like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon isn't going to
| look nearly as attractive.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Can confirm, Google was really stingy with their RSUs compared
| to Apple, but the perks really aren't that good with the
| exception of the food, which, when speaking to current
| Googlers, they say the food quality has fallen precipitously.
| Google at the time I worked there seemed to lean heavily on its
| reputation to reduce total comp.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| An open season on Apple employees starts now. Recruiters, take
| notice...
| LightG wrote:
| You may be wrong.
|
| I'm staunch in favour of remote. I like it, it works. But I
| recognise the benefits of in-person. I would wager that what
| most people like me want is a bit of control of their schedule
| and to be able to work in a hybrid manner. The end.
|
| I know as that's what I was going to ask my boss, before he
| dragged us all back in to the office and stopped remote
| completely in Nov-21. Most of our team have left and I'm just
| about to leave.
|
| Hybrid is a reasonable way forward. 100% on-site isn't given
| everything that's happened, and those are the companies who
| will lose their employees.
| twoheadedboy wrote:
| Anyone who has moved or bought a house outside of commuting
| distance in the past 2 years is never going back. I know I'm
| not.
| dymk wrote:
| Hybrid work solutions are good only for those who _want_ to
| do them. For everyone else, they're a compromise, also known
| as "the worst of both worlds".
|
| Telling employees that they _need_ to be in the office on
| days X, Y, and Z destroys most of the utility of remote
| working. They even chose Monday, Tuesday Thursday so people
| couldn't have a four day long block for working or traveling
| elsewhere.
|
| If Apple cared about flexibility, they'd do this, in order of
| "how much do they care":
|
| - Employees choose if they want to come into an office at
| all, figuring out their work dynamics on a per-team basis
|
| - If a number of days per week in-office is required,
| employees gets to choose those days
|
| - The company chooses the days the employee comes in (which
| is what Apple chose)
| mnem wrote:
| I think your second paragraph there is the critical point
| that large companies (including the one I work at) miss or
| purposefully ignore: let the employee control when (and how
| many) days they are in. Cohesive teams will self organise
| something suitable for their productivity, non-cohesive teams
| won't get any better by frustrating x % of the members. But,
| fundamentally, large companies simply lack trust in their
| employees so do not want to allow this.
|
| Also, they have a lot of real estate costs to justify.
| Nothing like physical tech debt for anchoring your company in
| the past.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| Back to the office? No thank you.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I really hope this date sticks. As a single person, along with
| many of my single colleagues, we don't get much social
| interaction and being stuck inside for the past two years has
| really hurt our mental health. I am all for heads of families
| working from home to be with their families, this is beautiful,
| but I can't do that.
| nostromo wrote:
| More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the
| previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves.
|
| I'm happy we're returning to normalcy, but it just makes me
| wonder "why now?" It's like the government and big business just
| decided overnight to declare "mission accomplished" when nothing
| substantial has changed. Last summer, for example, could have
| been the reopening, and we'd have better data and "science" to
| support it.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Politics plain and simple. COVID protocols are very unpopular
| at this point and not every effective. Florida and Texas are
| having big inflows, california and New York huge outflows.
| Whatever your viewpoint this is the fact politicians see. And
| yes taxes and cost of living are a huge driving force not only
| COVID, but as long as remote work goes on people will keep
| moving to low cost of living and low tax states.
| dpweb wrote:
| People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in the
| salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in FL TX
| and NY.
|
| Add in weather and TX and FL are actually nice places to live
| for the most part.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Texas weather is awful I have no idea where you are getting
| this from. I lived in multiple Texas cities and they are
| bad for their own reasons.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| ...aside from the flooding in both places that will
| decrease property values dramatically over the next few
| decades, I guess. Less of a concern if renting and if you
| don't mind the prospect of potentially getting all your
| belongings destroyed at some point in the future.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in
| the salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in
| FL TX and NY._
|
| Why hasn't the Biden administration fixed this, by the way?
| Anyone know?
|
| Frankly it's astonishing how few Trump-era policies have
| been reversed by this administration. When the GOP-
| dominated Congress acted to remove the SALT deduction, I
| always assumed it was just a bit of petty electoral revenge
| that would be reverted almost immediately. That appears to
| have been wrong. There's no shortage of similar examples,
| from immigration policy to idiotic "easy to win" trade wars
| to USPS governance, where Trump policies have survived so
| long that it's hard to believe that the Democrats don't
| agree with them.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I think it's helpful to think of elections as not
| replacing governments entirely, but swapping out a very
| small publicly facing segment.
| atlantas wrote:
| Yes, the polling changed and they follow the polls:
|
| The message is backed by advice from Biden's polling firm,
| Impact Research, which studied voter attitudes to Covid and
| found that most Americans are "worn out" by the restrictions
| and "have personally moved out of crisis mode."
|
| In a Feb. 16 memo, the firm told Democrats to take "the win"
| on Covid, warning that by 49 percent to 24 percent, Americans
| are more concerned about it causing economic harm than
| infecting them or a family member, and that far more parents
| and teachers worry about learning loss than illness for their
| kids.
|
| "The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously
| restrict people's lives because of it, the more we turn them
| against us and show them we're out of touch with their daily
| realities," Impact Research's Molly Murphy and Brian Stryker
| wrote in the memo, which was viewed by NBC News. They warned
| that if Democrats continue to emphasize Covid precautions
| over learning to live in a world with the virus, "they risk
| paying dearly for it in November."
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-
| tur...
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| gedy wrote:
| Elections coming up as well
| tharne wrote:
| > Elections coming up as well
|
| This is the big one. Ever since the upset in the Virginia
| governor's race, the Democrats have been very eager to end
| COVID restrictions no matter what. The Republicans have
| never cared about COVID so, at the moment there's a rare
| bipartisan unity on this issue.
| birken wrote:
| So for example, you consider the 3 Democratic Governors
| of California, Oregon and Washington ending their state's
| various mask mandates _4+ months_ after the VA election
| to be "eager to end COVID restrictions no matter what".
|
| Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do
| with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race?
| tharne wrote:
| > Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do
| with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race?
|
| I don't.
|
| The case numbers in many, if not most areas, are still
| higher than they were during the delta wave in the Summer
| and Fall that led to the lockdowns and restrictions being
| implemented in the first place.
|
| If this were truly just about the data then you'd expect
| the restrictions to lift once the case counts returned to
| pre-delta numbers.
|
| Edit/Clarification: I say this as someone is/was
| generally been in favor of a very cautious response to
| COVID.
| gdulli wrote:
| The current case numbers come with a lower fatality rate
| so the same case numbers don't suggest the same level of
| action as before.
|
| Also the context of the numbers matters. They're trending
| down now, not up, and the variant spikes are over. In the
| middle of delta/omicron we didn't know what was going to
| happen.
|
| And yes, there's fatigue on everyone's part. The relative
| lower danger of omicron, plus being past the delta spike
| then the omicron spike, means we're just kind of
| collectively over it. Citizens have fatigue, they're just
| not built to stay on guard for a third year. Policy
| makers are fatigued, they can't force people to stay home
| for another year to save lives from covid just like they
| can't force people to stop driving to save lives from car
| crashes.
|
| So admitting there's a political aspect is fine, but it's
| a lot more nuanced than the election cycle, which is a
| much more contrived explanation than everyone's response
| to a dramatic drop in the numbers.
| birken wrote:
| The peak of the delta wave was 160k cases/day, and the
| current case levels are ~52k/day. So given that, you
| think most areas are having higher case loads than the
| peak of the delta wave? You just aren't look at the data.
| There is also strong reason to believe that right after a
| huge wave is over you can expect a relatively smooth
| period of time to follow since so many people will have
| extra immunity from having recovered from covid.
|
| The people making these decisions are not idiots, they
| can look at the data and make sane and rational
| predictions about what might happen in the future, and
| then adapt if necessary.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| a source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-
| tracker/#trends_dailycases_...
| birken wrote:
| You don't think the fact that this country just had the
| largest ever COVID wave (in terms of cases), which is in the
| process of ending, is at all related to the decisions?
|
| Also of the scant 40 million people remaining in California,
| who haven't yet moved to Texas or Florida, public support for
| at least some "COVID protocols" are very high [1]. I'm not
| sure you are giving an impartial assessment of the facts.
|
| 1: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/califo
| rn...
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| I don't see that where I am. Most people have stopped
| wearing masks in public. 2 months ago everyone was wearing
| one.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| When I visited Ohio last summer, no one was wearing masks
| inside anywhere
| [deleted]
| calculatte wrote:
| The PR Firm Impact Research sent a report to the Democrats
| on Feb 22, 2022 urging them to lift all restrictions &
| claim victory for political points. Immediately after,
| restrictions lifted. Do your own assessment of the facts.
|
| Leaked memo https://punchbowl.news/impact-covid-
| positioning-strategy-mem...
| birken wrote:
| So you contend that "the Democrats" (who obviously are a
| fully united entity who never disagree) should have kept
| all the restrictions even though the Omicron wave is
| ending?
|
| What should they have done?
| nostromo wrote:
| It's just exposing the lie that "following the data"
| meant "following the polling data."
|
| That's fine, that's how democracy works. But it erodes
| trust in the political bodies that made all these rules
| and then just overturn them on a whim.
| birken wrote:
| If the public are also "following the data", then the
| polling data and scientific consensus are likely to be
| highly correlated. I don't think it is nefarious at all
| that the general public and political leaders come to the
| same conclusions at about the same time when both are
| reacting same set of factors.
| calculatte wrote:
| "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when
| everything the American public believes is false." -
| William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
| gdulli wrote:
| With covid numbers falling from the inevitable January
| spike after the holidays, lifting omicron restrictions
| was always going to happen sometime this spring. (Barring
| some new deadly hypothetical variant.)
|
| But I don't doubt that both parties factor PR into all of
| their decisions, down to how they dress.
|
| The implication that a PR firm could dictate that the
| country would remain shut down until November despite
| covid numbers this low is silly. But I'm sure timing and
| messaging and other details are informed by PR studies.
|
| Whether from fear of losing their jobs or wanting to
| carry out the will of their constituents, lawmakers have
| to pay attention to what we think either way.
| calculatte wrote:
| And arguably the covid numbers were only high was because
| of dishonest and inflated counting. Now they are "low"
| because the risk policy was changed.
| https://fee.org/articles/the-cdc-changed-its-covid-risk-
| form...
|
| Thinking PR doesn't dictate politics is what is really
| silly. If PR didn't matter, we wouldn't be inundated with
| ridiculous propaganda 24/7. They aren't "paying
| attention" to us, they are manufacturing consent and
| telling you what to think through all forms of media.
|
| Now, how long until this gets censored?
| yalogin wrote:
| I get people are skeptical but let's be objective here. Not
| everything needs to be a conspiracy and an evil scheme.
| California and NY followed CDC guidance. We are past the
| Omicron phase and may be the data shows we are in the clear.
| If losing out people was the issue then did NY just
| participate in this "scheme" out of solidarity to California?
| majormajor wrote:
| The not-just-poll-driven view of this is that you also should
| take into account:
|
| - for many - not all, but many - of the more vulnerable to
| hospitalization and death, it's now a matter of choice.
|
| - As a result, a bigger spike in cases caused much fewer
| hospitalizations and deaths than previous spikes, meaning
| less impact on the rest of the health system.
|
| - behavior has changed dramatically in terms of things like
| event attendance even in areas with more cautious government
| policy. Compare how many people went to movie theaters in
| late summer 2020 when they reopened in limited capacity in
| California with now. The limited capacity isn't the biggest
| difference, it's the behavior.
|
| - we can see that, say, California has fewer cumulative
| deaths per capita than Texas or Florida despite the urban
| areas being somewhat denser[0] (which itself seems to play a
| big role), and Arizona has more than NY or Massachusets
| despite being far less dense and with much milder winters...
| but the differences aren't orders of magnitudes.
|
| - masks are cheaper and more available than they were
| earlier, and treatments are becoming more widely available
| too
|
| So this is a reasonable point to say "we aren't able to
| eliminate this thing, but fortunately, it's much less
| dangerous to most of us than it used to be."
|
| But make no mistakes: the biggest factor there in terms of
| danger is the vaccines, which have now been available over a
| year.
|
| [0] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-
| covid-1...
| icedchai wrote:
| Yes, deaths are higher than they were the same time a year ago.
| Cases are still very high. Things only look better relative to
| the January peak. Everyone just decided they had enough.
| s9w wrote:
| GoodJokes wrote:
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| agree; when I look at
| https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/03/friday-february-e...
| I don't come to the conclusion that now is the best time.
| 8note wrote:
| Deaths lag hospitalizations which lag infections. Policy is
| operating on what the expected amount of deaths in 3+weeks will
| be, not the current amount
|
| There are also differences now in how many people are either
| vaccinated, or have recovered from covid vs a year ago
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of
| the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves.
|
| I'm not disagreeing with your point, however IIRC this is
| heavily concentrated among unvaccinated individuals, and I
| _believe_ that Apple /Google/etc employees are overwhelmingly
| vaccinated. I would be _shocked_ if these companies didn 't
| have accommodation processes in place for individuals who are
| still at high risk.
|
| I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, but there's no
| guarantee that the same trends/statistics exist in this sub-
| population.
| basisword wrote:
| >> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of
| the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves.
|
| You can't just exclude the data that disproves your point. The
| peaks were the original variant, Alpha(?), Delta and now
| Omicron. Deaths in this wave are extremely lower than in any
| other wave due to severity, immunity and vaccinations. Hospital
| stays are reduced and shorter. The original point of avoiding
| covid en masse was to prevent the healthcare system from being
| overwhelmed. Although it varies from place to place the
| healthcare systems in highly vaccinated countries are no longer
| seeing that kind of pressure even with high case numbers (still
| lots of pressure but not enough to risk overwhelming the system
| entirely).
| katabatic wrote:
| Deaths are currently at around 2,000 _PER DAY_ in the United
| States. That is not in any way, shape, or form "extremely
| lower" than earlier waves. The Omicron wave was equal to the
| initial wave in severity, and we're still not out of it.
| basisword wrote:
| Interesting. Deaths in the US are still a lot higher than I
| realised. I was basing my thoughts on UK data which I'm
| more familiar with and I thought would be relatively
| similar to the US but surprisingly not.
| nojito wrote:
| Deaths from COVID is different from Deaths with COVID.
| jb1991 wrote:
| kemayo wrote:
| I think you're both right, but sort-of arguing different
| issues. Here's two points:
|
| * Covid deaths per-day are at-or-near their highest ever
| levels
|
| * the current wave is less dangerous
|
| These sound contradictory, but aren't: deaths are high, death
| _rates_ aren 't -- if you catch Covid you're more likely to
| survive than ever before, but you're also more likely to
| catch Covid. This is because we're (currently) in a wave of a
| high-infection low-mortality variant.
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of
| the previous two years_
|
| That's surprising. Do you have a source?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Deaths this week in California are higher than at any time in
| 2020, when every office and school was closed.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/corona.
| ..
| gdulli wrote:
| I don't understand that trend happening in California since
| it doesn't match the rest of the country and doesn't line
| up with a spike in cases a few weeks prior.
|
| But what's different between 2020 and now:
|
| - We understand covid risk, treatment, etc. better now.
| There's a box around it. In 2020 we didn't know what would
| happen, if there would ever be a vaccine, or what variants
| might do. We don't know what the next variant will be,
| we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but "variant"
| is a less scary word if only due to having been through two
| of them and come out.
|
| - In 2022 the deaths are more voluntary than in 2020. Of
| course some people can't get a vaccine or remain at higher
| risk despite a vaccine. And it's a tragedy that the world
| will remain more dangerous for some, maybe permanently. But
| after 2 years of on and off measures we know we can't keep
| it up forever.
|
| I'd be all for making it a social convention to wear masks
| (at certain times) going forward every flu season, which
| some cultures already did before covid. While wearing a
| mask I didn't get my annual cold last winter, which was
| awesome. If you de-politicize it and think of it as a piece
| of cloth, it stops being a big deal. But keeping stuff
| closed needs to stop.
| nostromo wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/aO5zJwL.png
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Is a random image on imgur really a _source_? Really?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| It's from
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-
| cases.html
| [deleted]
| jb1991 wrote:
| That stat has been widely reported, in the U.S. at least.
| There are more deaths from Covid occurring currently in the
| U.S. on an average daily basis that at any prior time in the
| pandemic.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/24/health/covid-deaths-
| now-y...
|
| NY Times, Washington Post, and other media have similar
| stories.
| jjulius wrote:
| From your article:
|
| >The people dying from Covid-19 now tend to be younger than
| before, and they're overwhelmingly unvaccinated, experts
| say.
|
| To be honest, I'm at the point now where the vaccine has
| been available for a year. Everyone who was going to get it
| has had it, and you're not likely to change the minds of
| those who won't get it. As heartless as this sounds, I'm
| tired of waiting for those people to come around. They are
| making the choice to not get it, let them live with
| whatever the consequences may be instead of keeping shit
| closed/restricted just because that group is making poor
| choices.
|
| Edit: I realize that some people _can 't_ get it for
| various medical reasons, and I empathize with them. It's
| everyone else I'm referring to.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| That's one approach. Another is to pay attention to what
| they're saying and try a different approach to
| persuasion. It turns out it's not actually that hard to
| convince a lot of them if you just treat them like human
| beings. Perhaps even enough to achieve herd immunity and
| moot the rest.
|
| A good recent video on the subject with something
| resembling science:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va0RCgbywGc
| gdulli wrote:
| "More than 2,000 Covid-19 deaths have been reported in the
| United States each day for the past month"
|
| This is 2 weeks old and already out of date. Numbers are in
| freefall. It's now at 1,357. And cases have dropped sharply
| and consistently for a few weeks which means the (lagging)
| drop in deaths will continue for a few weeks.
| robertoandred wrote:
| What? The daily average is still at 1,800.
| gdulli wrote:
| Worldometers says 1,357 for the 7-day average. But
| regardless of differences in sources and collections, the
| trends are the same.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's still about four airplanes worth of people crashing
| daily, to put it into perspective.
|
| Not to mention people under immunosuppression or
| legitimately unable to get vaccinated (e.g. allergies or
| immunodeficient) - these poor souls are effectively
| locked into their homes as a permanent jail.
| heyitsanewacco wrote:
| Yeah its only World Trade Center tower 1 every day. Its
| not like we'd go to war over those numbers.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Must we then have vaccinated people join them out of some
| sense of solidarity?
|
| There are people confined to wheelchairs yet we allow
| others to walk.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> _these poor souls are effectively locked into their
| homes as a permanent jail._
|
| Why do you believe this to be true? Seems exaggerated to
| me.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| From Covid != With Covid
| nightski wrote:
| CNN is basically a tabloid at this point.
| heyitsanewacco wrote:
| Everything is a tabloid, including government reporting.
| We won't know how many people have died of COVID unitl
| the academics start studying excess deaths and get into
| years long fights over the minutiae of "with" and "of."
| We still don't have exact numbers on any modern genocides
| and likely won't ever.
|
| I never expected a "free democracy" to run into basic
| stalinist subversion of facts, but here we are.
| jb1991 wrote:
| If you don't like the source, there are plenty of other
| sources saying the same thing.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I'm confused, the graph they show in the article refutes
| the headline.
| nradov wrote:
| That is misinformation. The current US daily death rate is
| significantly lower than the January 2021 peak.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph
| -...
| jeffbee wrote:
| The CDC excess deaths count shows the Omicron peak was
| about the same as any prior peak. Note that the CDC
| excess deaths data has a tendency to rise until it is at
| least 12 weeks old, due to state bureaucracy, as
| explained on their page.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.
| htm
| miked85 wrote:
| The midterm elections is the only reason.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Something I read[1] that resonated a few months ago:
|
| > Dying from Covid is more or less optional at this point. If
| you want to remove the risk of dying, get the vaccine. If you
| want to take the risk, don't.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29561158
|
| This is a bit reductive -- people in some countries may not
| have easy access to the vaccine, people whose immune systems
| don't respond to the vaccine may need still-scarce antiviral
| treatment to maintain a mortality rate on par with the
| vaccinated, and in the US there may still be people who
| genuinely cannot logistically manage getting the vaccine.
|
| But this is something I've been thinking about a bit lately:
| when will be the "tipping point" after which more than 50% of
| all US covid deaths will have been a personal choice?
|
| We're at about 950k deaths now. The "everyone will be eligible
| to schedule an appointment" date was in April 2021 (at about
| 570k deaths). So maybe another 3 months?
| lamontcg wrote:
| Every wave now is also very likely to be less of a strain on
| the health care system than the last.
|
| The virulence of the virus isn't changing that much, the
| biggest effect is that most people have gained immunity.
|
| The fact that 90% of the people in hospitals are unvaccinated
| though while vaccination rates are at least >60% everywhere
| is a sign though that the unvaccinated population still has
| failed to achieve a level of immunity equal to vaccination.
|
| They're going to just accumulate immunity the hard way though
| with more human casualties and death. There isn't a lot to be
| done about that though.
|
| Eventually the rates of unvaccinated in the hospital with
| each wave will start reflecting the population rate of
| unvaccinated and we'll be at pretty much 100% seroprevalence
| finally.
| aimor wrote:
| I have the same questions. We've seen government and businesses
| try to be aggressive on relaxing lockdown policy in the past,
| and then quickly re-implement restrictions when the next wave
| of infections hit. Multiple times I've seen schools,
| government, offices set terms that had to be met before moving
| to the next 'phase' and every time those terms avoided their
| expectations they just declared that it was a bad plan to begin
| with, scrapped it, and moved on to implement whatever policy
| they wanted regardless of the current status.
|
| I check https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-
| cases.html to track how things are going. I don't like that,
| with ~2,000 people dying each day and Spring Break around the
| corner, the strongest push to reopen is happening now.
|
| "Why now?" Just speculation, but: Because midterm elections are
| this year, because consumer spending is up and inflation is
| rising and the government wants to encourage the economy to
| remain strong, because businesses are seeing lower performance
| from employees especially regarding sensitive work, because
| ICUs have capacity and vaccines are readily available.
| jjulius wrote:
| >More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of
| the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves.
|
| And these people are overwhelmingly unvaccinated. At this
| point, it's been a year that vaccines have been available.
| You're not going to change their minds, and the rest of us -
| heartless as this sounds - shouldn't continue to be held back
| just because of other people's stubbornness. They made the
| decision not to get it, they should live with whatever
| consequences may result from that choice.
|
| Edit: I realize that some people _can 't_ get it for various
| medical reasons, and I empathize with them. It's everyone else
| I'm referring to.
| giarc wrote:
| Likely vaccination rate.
| [deleted]
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| The only thing that matters is death rate for those that are
| vaccinated.
| lokar wrote:
| What about the death rate for people who can't be vaccinated?
| tomp wrote:
| They're free to lock down indefinitely, if they want.
|
| Also, the flu!
| Lascaille wrote:
| Not everyone survives. That's life. You can't expect
| society to shut down to protect the tiny percentage of
| people who can't be vaccinated or are immunocompromised.
| That's never been an expectation of society before so why
| would it be one now?
| lokar wrote:
| It has been. The reason these people survive is because
| vaccines are required for everyone as a child (in the
| US). Without that they would catch mumps, measles, polio,
| etc.
|
| And wearing a mask inside public spaces is not shutting
| down society.
| Lascaille wrote:
| >vaccines are required for everyone as a child (in the
| US)
|
| Do continue please
| kaczordon wrote:
| I remember when we used to care about hospitals overflowing.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| nradov wrote:
| We didn't care about hospitals being overwhelmed by
| influenza in 2018.
|
| https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-
| patie...
| standardUser wrote:
| There is hardly any threat of that at this point. At least
| not in areas with high vaccination rates.
| sharken wrote:
| Some numbers to back up that claim would be nice. Make sure to
| discern between cases where COVID is the primary reason for
| dying and where it is not.
|
| As a data point, Denmark have been without restrictions since
| first of February 2022. There are still 20.000 infections
| daily, but most with very mild symptoms.
|
| There are 1.600 hospitalized, which is considerable more than
| December, where there were about 600.
|
| So number wise it doesn't make a lot of sense to remove
| restrictions, but I'm personally very happy having the old
| normal back.
| mylons wrote:
| not in the united states. the early 2021 was the peak, and was
| never surpassed in the recent uptick.
| jmull wrote:
| The death rate is a _trailing indicator_ so it 's not the right
| thing to look at when considering what you should do in the
| future.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I find the 'cases going up' and 'cases going down' indicators
| quite compelling.
| gdulli wrote:
| Deaths and cases are both dropping sharply, and since deaths
| lag cases, the deaths should be expected to continue to drop
| steadily for a few more weeks.
|
| Something substantial has definitely changed. That's not the
| same as knowing there won't be future variants or spikes. But
| if there's ever a time to get back to normal, now would be it.
| It's not total victory and may never be, but at some point we
| either declare that we can live with this while having normal
| lives, or we're tacitly declaring that we never intend to.
| xienze wrote:
| > Something substantial has definitely changed.
|
| Yeah, it's called midterm elections are coming up and the
| Democrats are staring down the barrel of getting absolutely
| crushed if they continue on with mask and vaccine mandate
| policies.
| gdulli wrote:
| That's nonsense. Mandates are going away because (1) mid-
| January was the predictable post-holiday travel and
| gathering spike, (2) several weeks later the numbers were
| predictably down, and then (3) lawmakers needed several
| more weeks to feel safe enough about the trend to act on
| it.
|
| Lifting mandates now leaves enough time for another spike
| (followed by more restrictions) to arise before the
| elections. By your thinking that timing would be a
| disaster.
|
| Lifting mandates 6-7 months from now would maximize the
| impact on the election and minimize the risk that
| restrictions will have to be rolled back before the
| election.
|
| Everything is obviously political, but the conclusion that
| lifting mandates right now is strategically tied to
| elections in 8 months is so far from logical that I can't
| imagine arriving at it, only starting with it. The covid
| numbers provide a simple, logical explanation.
| infamouscow wrote:
| What peer-reviewed research is being used to inform
| policymakers on this recent shift? And I'm referring to
| COVID-19 reports, not political ones.
| criddell wrote:
| That's how it should be, no? If constituents want to end a
| policy then their representative should work to do exactly
| that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Lots of constituents don't want to wear a seatbelt.
|
| Lots of constituents want to drink before the age of 21.
|
| Lots of constituents want to buy alcohol after midnight
| and on a Sunday before noon.
|
| Lots of constituents want lots of things that the reps
| clearly ignore. Where do you draw the line of "as it
| should be" and "those damn gov't bastards!!"?
| standardUser wrote:
| And arguably each and every one of those things should be
| legal.
| ghaff wrote:
| The evidence probably supports that if the _majority_ of
| constituents support something that isn 't clearly
| unconstitutional it does tend to happen. See weed
| legalization in many states which at least in
| Massachusetts passed in a ballot question with the
| legislature kicking and screaming through the whole
| process.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Yet in Mississippi when we had a ballot initiative for
| medicinal marijuana supported by 2/3rds of everyone, not
| only did they not pass legislation then (it's tepidly
| being addressed now, over a year later), but the
| Mississippi Supreme Court stripped us of our citizen's
| ballot initiatives because of poorly written legislation
| in the 90s, which also hasn't been corrected over a year
| later. But I don't claim to live in a representative
| democracy these days anyway.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| To say nothing of the fact that a great deal of behavior
| is driven by individuals and individual businesses
| whatever government mandates and recommendations are.
| There are exceptions like airplanes/airports but in a lot
| of places, including places that aren't Texas or Florida,
| people are doing what they want to.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If you look around the world, many countries are lifting
| all measures. And they definitely are not affected by US
| elections. They are affected by hospitalization, ICU and
| death numbers that are falling as infections are rising.
| briandear wrote:
| They are affected by their own elections though.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Everything is, that's hardly a conspiracy.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| No one in the thread (except for you) has used the word
| 'conspiracy.'
| tinus_hn wrote:
| No, the claim was that mandates were being abandoned not
| because it was scientifically prudent, but because of a
| nearing election.
| WithinReason wrote:
| > More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of
| the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves.
|
| There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and
| "dying from COVID".
| lazide wrote:
| Covid sucks. My toddler (for various shitty reasons I was
| unable to prevent) got it three times in the last 12 months.
|
| Even vaccinated (and never testing positive), the immune
| response I got from taking care of a highly infectious
| toddler screaming in my face was terrible and really brutal.
| I'm not old, fully functional immune system, etc. and it had
| me out for weeks, brain fog, exhaustion, off and on high
| fever, you name it. I suspect I still am suffering side
| effects from the last infection in Jan.
|
| If I hadn't been fully vaccinated just before the first time
| he got it, I'd probably be dead.
|
| Pretending that someone who was not as strong or healthy,
| gets it, then dies didn't 'die from Covid' is probably
| disingenuous at least 90% of the time.
|
| We all die eventually, it's the norm for whatever obvious
| change occurred to be blamed for it, not 'inevitable entropic
| reality' or whatever.
|
| At the end of the day, someone has to made a judgement call
| about the appropriate factor in a complex system.
| briandear wrote:
| > If I hadn't been fully vaccinated just before the first
| time he got it, I'd probably be dead.
|
| Statistically speaking, that isn't true.
| lazide wrote:
| Statistically, people don't have a screaming peak
| infectious toddler in their face without a mask let alone
| proper PPE for an hour+ (before I could even attempt
| basic precautions).
|
| Statistically, Li Wenliang shouldn't be dead either.
|
| The statistical results reflect the range and
| distribution of the entire populations exposure and
| immune responses, which by their nature have outlier
| situations and responses.
|
| Most diseases, the more exposure you get, the more chance
| it has to take hold before the immune system can fight
| it, and the worse it gets.
|
| I'm pretty confident, but I guess the only way we could
| know for sure is find a statistically significant
| population of infected toddlers and unvaccinated
| otherwise healthy middle aged adults to hold them for an
| hour.
| colinplamondon wrote:
| That was true from the beginning. Legacy bureaucracies like
| the CDC are just recognizing what was clear in 2020.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Well, excess mortality was high earlier and is now low. The
| current Covid strain is both more infectious and less
| deadly so we should expect this change
| majormajor wrote:
| It's quantitatively much different now.[0] There's been a
| crowd pushing the idea that the hospitalization numbers are
| highly misleading for two years now, and they're trying to
| claim that they were right all along _based on numbers that
| are only happening after a year or vaccination campaigns
| and a less-lung-oriented strain emerging_.
|
| "About 7% of L.A. County's total staffed ICU beds are taken
| up by COVID-19 patients, compared with 15% during the
| summer Delta wave and more than 50% last winter. "
|
| "In early November -- before Omicron swept around the
| world, and Delta was still dominant -- 75% of coronavirus-
| positive patients countywide were in the hospital for
| COVID-related medical issues, Ferrer said.
|
| By late December, the same was true for 45% of coronavirus-
| positive hospitalized patients, Ferrer estimated."
|
| "During last winter's COVID-19 surge, about 80% of
| coronavirus-positive patients in the emergency department
| at L.A. County-USC Medical Center were being admitted to
| the hospital, and nearly half of those went to the ICU,
| Spellberg said. Now, about a third of coronavirus-positive
| patients are admitted, and 20% to 25% are going to the
| ICU."
|
| [0]
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-07/fewer-
| co...
| WithinReason wrote:
| The last wave amplified the difference. In the UK for
| example the last wave doesn't show up in the ICU patients
| chart [1], while it's clearly seen in the death chart [2].
| The last wave seems to simultaneously correspond to a
| sudden spike in death statistics [2] and a sudden drop in
| excess mortality [3]. Point being, "deaths with COVID"
| doesn't mean a causal relationship any more, you need to
| look at other statistics to see how many people are dying
| as a result of COVID.
|
| [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
|
| [2]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
|
| [3]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
| infamouscow wrote:
| > There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and
| "dying from COVID".
|
| The distinction you're making isn't new - it's literally
| years old at this point.
| theptip wrote:
| A very under-appreciated point.
|
| Given how hard "with vs. from" is to tease apart, excess
| mortality is a good way to look at things, eg
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/17/us-excess-
| deat...
|
| You also need to take into account the fact that that most of
| the deaths in the US are amongst the unvaccinated (something
| like 20:1 last I checked) so your personal risk of death, if
| vaccinated, is very different from the overall death rate.
| saturdaysaint wrote:
| This line of argument doesn't hold up to the slightest
| scrutiny. First of all, it's quite pedantic and naive to
| assume that governments and medical bodies in the richest and
| most advanced countries haven't worked through similar issues
| of causality with innumerable other diseases. More to the
| point, the peaks in COVID deaths magically align with
| proportionately large spikes in all cause mortality not seen
| in prior years that have yet to be explained by anything
| else.
| WithinReason wrote:
| > More to the point, the peaks in COVID deaths magically
| align with proportionately large spikes in all cause
| mortality not seen in prior years that have yet to be
| explained by anything else.
|
| In the UK they are in fact inversely correlated for
| Omicron. See my comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30558089
| mdoms wrote:
| Here in New Zealand a gang member was shot to death and was
| recorded as a covid death because he tested positive
| posthumously. This is apparently in line with international
| practices. If you don't see the absurdity in that then I
| don't know what to say.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I assume it's this story
| https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/11/11/new-lynn-shooting-
| victim-...
|
| It's not really true if you read further into it. Think
| about it - if you get nasty infection while under surgery
| - was cause of death surgery or infection.
| mdoms wrote:
| I have looked into it, and what I said is absolutely
| true. From your linked article,
|
| > "The clinical criteria will continue to be guided by
| WHO definition which is basically to report any death
| where the person had an acute Covid-19 infection
| regardless of what the cause of death might be,"
| Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told RNZ.
|
| The death was reported as a "death with covid" in
| accordance with WHO guidelines. Again, if you don't see
| the absurdity then you can't be helped.
|
| > Think about it - if you get nasty infection while under
| surgery - was cause of death surgery or infection.
|
| How on earth is this relevant? The victim was not showing
| symptoms and did not undergo surgery.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| As I said - read further - they confirmed later by a
| coroner.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Covid helping to do the job our police and military
| can't.
| nojito wrote:
| Very few states record COVID deaths properly.
|
| How do you remove people who die in the hospital for other
| reasons but have a mandatory COVID swab done and are
| positive?
| pmarreck wrote:
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-
| excess-...
|
| If you just look at the all-cause mortality increase, it
| neatly works around this problem, and looking at it that
| way gives a staggeringly higher number than the official
| tolls
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| The person you responded to mentioned all-cause
| mortality. Remove the base rate, then you're left with
| excess deaths. How do you explain excess deaths if they
| are not covid?
|
| And that's not to say an explanation other than covid is
| impossible, but it would need to be compelling.
| briandear wrote:
| > How do you explain excess deaths if they are not covid?
|
| Delayed medical care because of Covid fear. I missed my
| annual physical two years ago and ended up with a heart
| attack I barely survived last October. People were
| delaying routine screenings such as mammograms,
| physicals, and other preventative care.
|
| There are also increases in suicide, deaths of despair,
| especially in younger people. Addiction especially.
|
| Nobody wants to talk about vaccine injuries and related
| deaths. But that is non-zero.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Suicide rate was lower in 2020 and 2021 than it was prior
| to the pandemic.
| robertoandred wrote:
| So how many people are currently dying because of covid?
| WithinReason wrote:
| For the UK see my comment here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30558089
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Probably whatever you want the number to be. If somebody
| dies while Covid-19 positive you can either blame it on
| COVID or you can blame it on other conditions or somewhere
| in between.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Doctors already have a protocol for this since senior
| citizens often die of multiple causes. Turns out there is
| usually one "proximal" cause (the "killing blow") and
| multiple "distal" causes. Presumably, they use the same
| evaluation protocol here to determine primary cause of
| death.
|
| This great tiktok doc broke it down a year and a half
| ago.
|
| https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdAAjux1/
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| lasereyes136 wrote:
| The pandemic is over because we as a society have decided it is
| over and most people accept the number of covid deaths as part
| of being in society. Numbers and science matter less than what
| we are willing to live with. People that don't agree will
| continue to protect themselves as much as possible.
| kemayo wrote:
| My understanding (which could be wrong!) is that the current
| _absolute_ death amounts are high, but the actual _rate_ of
| deaths per-infection is low. This is because the trend in
| variants has (so far) been towards more-infectious but less-
| fatal, along with improved knowledge of treatments... so we
| have a vast number of people infected but they 're mostly-
| surviving.
|
| Said deaths are also _extremely_ focused in unvaccinated
| people, meaning that outside of the immunocompromised (whose
| situation _sucks_ here), it 's at least mostly people who chose
| the risk.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It's not "mission accomplished." It's more like our withdraw
| from Afghanistan--admission of defeat. Omicron was like the
| Taliban taking Kabul in 2 weeks. We just lost to Covid--at
| least for now.
|
| Essentially everyone has an immune response to covid now--
| either by vaccination or because you already had. That is why
| case number are cratering. The immune response effectiveness
| will fade, but all evidence points to long lasting protection
| against severe infections.
|
| Last summer was the re-opening a la "mission accomplished."
| Then omicron evaded previous immune responses. Why won't that
| happen again? It might, but less of the population is
| vulnerable b/c Omicron spread to more of the population. There
| was a big group of unvaccined protected by heard immunity.
|
| Post Omicron how many people haven't gotten a vaccine or covid?
| Probably less than 10% of the public.
| [deleted]
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Who knows if the next variant will be milder (common talking
| point about how viruses evolve to be more contagious/less
| deadly) or worst (the unknown and media fear mongering... not
| to mean theyre equivalent), but if the trend points to anything
| it's that things peak twice a year. Around January/February and
| August/September. Not to mention, America is in an election
| year and the economy is tetering, so everything is about optics
| and giving people some feeling of autonomy over their lives at
| the very least :/
| fundad wrote:
| It seems like a crucial thing to deal with surges is to
| dramatically increase hospital capacity. Making health care
| universal would fund it.
|
| What blocks any expensive investments in US standard of living
| is the cost. The costs is so high, it's almost as much as the
| cost of inaction and that's too damn much.
|
| See also climate change.
| closeparen wrote:
| The difference is now almost everyone dying is unvaccinated,
| and almost everyone unvaccinated (in the Western industrialized
| world) is that way by choice.
|
| We cannot force these people to vaccinate for their own good,
| but neither can we be held hostage by them.
| nradov wrote:
| Why not now? We have to return to normalcy eventually so what
| do we gain by waiting? Everyone is going to be exposed to the
| virus occasionally so whether that happens in an office or
| somewhere else hardly matters.
| guelo wrote:
| I refuse to get infected no matter how much political people
| seem to want me to
| gdulli wrote:
| I could refuse to get into any car accidents. But refusing
| to drive or be a passenger or pedestrian near cars isn't a
| way I can live my life. So, ultimately, I've decided that I
| don't refuse to get into any car accidents.
| Lascaille wrote:
| >I refuse to get infected
|
| Avoiding COVID just isn't possible unless you're prepared
| to curtail social interactions to the point at which you're
| barely living. I leave my apartment about once a week (yay
| depression) yet I still got Omicron. You're deluding
| yourself if you think it's avoidable.
| gfodor wrote:
| It's not like they just decided - they did, they actually just
| decided. The change in cloth mask guidance proves it: no new
| data, we always knew they were ineffective.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| There are a few cloth masks in this data set showing around
| 50% filtration of test particles smaller than Sars-Cov-2:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M0mdNLpTWEGcluK6hh5L.
| ..
|
| N95s and similar are obviously better but cloth masks do ok.
| Also remember they changed guidance to recommend
| cloth+surgical masks, which everyone laughed at. Lo and
| behold that combination tests in the 80% filtration range.
|
| So cloth masks work, the guidance for double masking was
| valid, and the N95 recommendations more valid still.
| veilrap wrote:
| Cloth masks are estimated to be in the 50-60% effectiveness
| range. To me, that's quite effective, not ineffective.
| Especially when applied across an entire population.
| krona wrote:
| I think you're off by an order of magnitude (5-6%) if
| you're referring to the risk of infection vs not wearing a
| basic, correctly worn surgical mask. And this is pre-
| omicron; omicron is far more transmissible.
|
| Happy to be corrected.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Estimated effectiveness is not empirical evidence. There's
| nothing scientific about just guessing random numbers.
| m0llusk wrote:
| That 50% plus number is highly contested. The study cited
| for that does not necessarily support that conclusion.
| gfodor wrote:
| No. Cloth masks are understudied and probably don't do
| much. What _does_ do a lot, probably, is a dynamic where
| millions of people wearing ineffective masks thinking they
| are effective, and making bad choices entirely due to that
| bad assumption, like _not_ wearing an N95, closing distance
| with people, or going indoors when it could have been
| avoided.
|
| https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/mask-studies-
| reach-a...
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Well there's new data it's just not health related.
|
| "In fact, support for mask mandates has reached its lowest
| level since we began asking in August 2021. Now, a narrow
| majority (51%) support their state or local government
| requiring masks in public places compared to the roughly 63%
| that had over the last 6 months."
|
| https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/axios-ipsos-
| coronavir...
| codingdave wrote:
| > "no new data"
|
| There is literally new data every day. Case counts change,
| hospital usage changes, etc. The change in mask guidance is
| also not universal - it is dependent on that exact data. The
| CDC maintains a county-by-county map of the data so you know
| exactly what the guidance is each day based on the latest
| data.
|
| If you want to keep up with the data, the map is not a bad
| place to start:
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-
| health/covid-...
| gfodor wrote:
| There was no new data to support a change in guidance on
| cloth masks. The argument made is that omicron was the
| factor which warranted the updated guidance on cloth masks.
| There is no data to support the idea that cloth masks were
| suddenly uniquely unsuited as countermeasures.
|
| Edit: The CDC is so infuriating. They still link the term
| "masks" to this page, that shows a picture of some useless
| facial decorations on the same page discussing N95
| respirators. If we had a sane CDC, _all_ imagery and
| messaging would be around N95s. They have killed thousands
| of people with the implicit lie strewn across all their
| messaging that there some kind of meaningful equivalency to
| be made between all masks. The unqualified term "mask"
| should have been struck from the messaging two years ago.
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-
| si...
| standardUser wrote:
| The threat to hospitals is essentially gone now that immunity
| is widespread thanks to vaccines and recoveries. All that most
| restrictions were ever intended to do was to stop everyone
| getting sick at once, which would have resulted in mass
| casualties from lack of healthcare resources.
| furyofantares wrote:
| A lot has changed in the last year? Loads of people have been
| vaccinated that weren't a year ago (even if they were eligible
| then).
|
| Kids became eligible to be vaccinated only a few months ago,
| which even if it wasn't actually risky to them it was a major
| concern for many parents.
|
| Right about that time, the omicron wave hit, and ever since
| late december we've known it was very likely we'd peak and then
| crash on cases.
|
| So we didn't return to normal last summer because loads of
| people weren't vaccinated yet, and kids weren't eligible. We
| didn't return once kids became eligible because omicron was
| looming. And we didn't return during omicron peak because
| hospitals were overwhelmed.
| theoldlove wrote:
| Under 5s still aren't eligible.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > Last summer, for example, could have been the reopening, and
| we'd have better data and "science" to support it.
|
| Things trended well last summer, but 1) everybody expects a
| lull in warm weather and 2) vaccination numbers were still low.
| It was reasonable at the time to hold onto precautions hoping
| the unvaccinated people would come around before fall. And good
| thing too, because delta proved to be a real pickle before
| being displaced by omicron.
|
| At some point, it becomes obvious that a large number of people
| just won't bother getting vaccinated, and you can't
| realistically keep asking the entire country to go out of their
| way to protect the people who won't protect themselves.
|
| We'll see another wave in the fall, either omicron or some new
| variant, and hopefully our vaccines will stay ahead of it.
| waah wrote:
| As hospital occupancy goes down, the major public health reason
| for restrictions goes down as well.
| lazide wrote:
| chadash wrote:
| Deaths tend to lag behind peaks of cases and we recently passed
| the peak of our biggest wave by far (official numbers for this
| peak are around 800k/day in the US, vs 250k for previous peak
| in jan 2021, but this doesn't account for the likelihood that
| many cases didn't get reported due to widely available at-home
| testing and other factors). Deaths going forward for people who
| catch it now will probably be far lower.
| pmarreck wrote:
| but it's all rural Trumpist counties at this point; ostensibly,
| the people lying in the bed they made for themselves don't
| typically work for Apple
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> _it's all rural Trumpist counties at this point_
|
| Do you have any idea how parochial you sound when you make
| generalizations in this manner?
| m0llusk wrote:
| Numbers of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are all way
| down and still dropping. Vaccinations have turned out to be
| highly effective both against severe disease and long COVID.
| The Omicron variant is far less deadly than the Delta variant
| and has almost completely replaced the Delta variant.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I didn't use death rate for supporting closing and I won't use
| death rate for supporting opening.
|
| Covid's main threats for most people are:
|
| * Filling up hospitals to the point they stop functioning
| (that's been true here in Canada).
|
| * Putting 10% ~ 20% of workers everywhere, including hospitals,
| out of commission for weeks at a time while they're acutely
| sick with Covid or infectious to others.
|
| * Disabling some large % of people temporarily or permanently
| due to lingering symptoms of the virus.
|
| The death rate for covid is significant but not substantial
| enough in itself to cause the world to lock down. The points
| above though, are.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > The death rate for covid is significant but not substantial
| enough in itself to cause the world to lock down. The points
| above though, are.
|
| For USA the death rate is still higher than times when we
| were not RTO.
| 30367286 wrote:
| The people dying of COVID and the people working from home
| are different cohorts. We have a vaccine, anti-virals, and
| natural immunity. Will the WFH cohort see an increase in
| deaths due to RTO? Certainly. We'll also see more car
| accidents. The world has never been free of risk, and we
| are now emerging from the pandemic with a newly integrated
| risk model for this disease. It's going to be touch and go
| for a while -- years -- but it's important to remember that
| flattening the curve was always the goal. COVID Zero was
| never in play.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > The people dying of COVID and the people working from
| home are different cohorts. We have a vaccine, anti-
| virals, and natural immunity
|
| Well, yes. The people dying were always generally
| unvaccinated.
| majormajor wrote:
| > * Putting 10% ~ 20% of workers everywhere, including
| hospitals, out of commission for weeks at a time while
| they're acutely sick with Covid or infectious to others.
|
| This one seems like a dubious point to me, services during
| the early-2020 lockdowns were much more impacted than they
| were during the Omicron spike which saw much less enforced
| lockdown but much more "shit, all our employees are sick"
| closures.
|
| Completely agree with the hospitalization concerns, and I
| would add that the calculations also changed a lot re:
| protecting others after widespread vaccine availability.
| freyr wrote:
| The underlying assumption seems to be that future waves
| will be mild because Omicron was mild, either intrinsically
| or due to improved immunity. I hope it's the case, but time
| will tell if this is true.
|
| Alternatively, they're planning to more reactively bring us
| into the office when we're in a lull and have us WFH when
| we're in a wave.
| endisneigh wrote:
| RTO should've begun the minute it was shown that vaccines stop
| deaths.
|
| given that you have to be vaccines to rto at Apple it didn't
| really make sense to wait this long anyway
| lokar wrote:
| And do you have to RTO if you have an immunocompromised
| family member at home?
| mikestew wrote:
| You should probably ask your employer rather than some
| random on the internet.
| briandear wrote:
| Midterm elections coming up. The (political) science has
| changed.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| jdrc wrote:
| I think the cat is out of the bag for remote work and most
| companies are going to have to settle differently
| Wiseacre wrote:
| I recall hearing about the Slack channel Apple employees were
| using to push for long-term remote work.
|
| I wonder if Apple will try to retain remaining employees with a
| cost of living wage increase.
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