California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#171

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:43 AM UTC

vanniv wrote: post #160

wbl wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has the power to check temperatures, force people to use a contact tracing app, require masks etc.

It actually largely doesn't have that power. I mean, it does until challenged, and it could impose restrictions on entering government buildings -- but the government really doesn't have an unlimited authority to declare arbitrary restrictions on the right of people to peaceably assemble. Not legally, anyway.

I think we all know each right has its limits when the greater good is at stake. Largely, it's intent that matters.

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#172

Post by mchusma » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #149

mchusma wrote: post #67

A real plan would look like this https://imgur.com/spemOeG specifying the levels of restrictions and the metrics we will use to track the metrics. This allows people to understand what to expect the best possible. We already have huge uncertainty, we don't need to add uncertainty of government response on top of uncertainty of the virus. I think there is huge room to debate the numbers and what goes in what level, bu…

> this is what a real roadmap looks like Sorry, but what's your expertise in what real public health plans look like? And why are you criticizing a slide deck as if it were a carefully considered public health plan? If you want to talk about what you'd like to see, great. We all want things, and communications can always be better. But I don't understand why you're treating your preferences as overriding, especially…

Governor Newsom, the governor of California, is a man (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Newsom). This slide deck was released as a part of his press conference today. If a female staff member created the slides I don't think that changes anything, and is a poor ad-hominum attack, as the governor has presented this as his plan.

This issue (the issue of reopening) is not actually that much of a health discussion. It's a discussion about tradeoffs of a horrific deadly shutdown vs a horrific deadly disease. Health experts can help determine R0 and Rt and IFR, but they can't make these tradeoffs for us, it's ultimately a question for society.

We have to change the conversation from yelling at each other to debating the real details.

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#173

Post by lettergram » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

vanniv wrote: post #156

citilife wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something weird happened in California, where 20% of their tests were coming back positive, then all the sudden 04/04/2020 they started seeing https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysi... They also barely tested at all prior to 04/04/2020: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysi... In generally though, the rate of positive tests is increasing nation wide: https://raw.githubuser…

Those charts look very different from the Worldometer data, which shows the April 4th high water mark in new cases still holding 10 days later. Their graph is linear growth in new cases per day until 4/4, followed by a gradual but spiky decline, even as tests/day keep increasing.

That’s because worldometer data is community reported. This data comes from the states (mostly):

https://covidtracking.com/

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#174

Post by mrfusion » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

pm_me_ur_fullz wrote: post #151

mrfusion wrote: post #84

This doesn’t say anything about when I can see my family again.

You can come into the state and you can leave the state, what state-level circumstance is preventing you? I'm grasping at straws but maybe you are estranged and your family is on the street but they won't let you into the hobo-hotel? Every other circumstance I can think of is a Federal issue closing borders for people that aren't Americans.

Isn’t CA under lockdown? Only supposed to leave your apartment for groceries right?

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#175

Post by enjo » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #139

Gibbon1 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plan ignores that because people working on this are consistently finding infection rates of less than a few percent. Stanford tested 2888 samples that were negative for flu and other respiratory viruses and didn't find any positive for SAR-COV2 until Feb 21st and Feb23.

A source for what you are saying is the linked SF article [1] which indicates that of ~3k evidently sick people with flu symptoms, 0.1-1% were confirmed to have COVID-19. Though note this is not random population sampling, on an interesting scale, so ignores asymptomatic question. Worldwide analysis of death rates [2], indicates #infected-so-far = 700-1600 x #dead so far. And data from Iceland [3], the only country w…

San Miguel county in Colorado has found 0.5% of their population has confirmed antibodies after doing 1600+ tests (out of 8,000 people in the county).

As another data point, the theory of this thing being widespread in the population seems far fetched to me.

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#176

Post by maxsilver » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

maxlamb wrote: post #24

Why is it that hospitalizations are expected to keep increasing indefinitely even with the interventions in place? I assume the graph represents point-in-time hospitalizations and not accumulated # of interventions? If so it would be nice to see some of their assumptions, like average expected duration of hospitalization. I just don't understand why hospitalizations keep going up in this roadmap when every country th…

> why hospitalizations keep going up in this roadmap when every country that has put strict social distancing measures in effect starts to see a leveling-off and decrease in hospitalization after around the 3 week mark

Because that's not a safe assumption. Hospitalizations are still going up in areas across the US, even in areas of US that are now on week 4 or 5 of lockdown.

Michigan, for example, is on week 4 and while the growth of the curve is slowing, hospitalizations still continue to rise every single day - https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan/2020/04/13/mich...

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#177

Post by krustyburger » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #171

vanniv wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually largely doesn't have that power. I mean, it does until challenged, and it could impose restrictions on entering government buildings -- but the government really doesn't have an unlimited authority to declare arbitrary restrictions on the right of people to peaceably assemble. Not legally, anyway.

I think we all know each right has its limits when the greater good is at stake. Largely, it's intent that matters.

The idea of inalienable rights is antithetical to this outlook. No matter how noble the authorities’ intentions may be, certain essential rights are allegedly sacrosanct.

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#178

Post by mchusma » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

pfranz wrote: post #138

charlesju wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why your solution is not good is because it pigeon holes the government into expectations. The government doesn't have a crystal ball as to how this all plays out, they need to have the flexibility to change how they want to respond to each situation without having to defend an ultimatum. For example, even in your own example here are several situations you didn't account: -- The availability of tests for…

The attached spreadsheet is basically I've been waiting to see. I figured from the title of this post that's what this would be. Everyone I talk to is asking, "Now what? Do we just keep doing this until there's a vaccine?" This post is "California's Roadmap" as in California the government, not California the public. They all seem like questions they should have been asking themselves at least a month ago. Sure, keep…

Thanks for chiming in. As I said in another thread I think at least this is the kind of framework for a discussion. Want to add more columns? Great. Want to double a number or halve a number, great.

I personally think there is zero downside to publishing the numeric targets. Of you get more data in to change them, just change them (it's at least better than now where they have dates that they just keep changing). I don't see how having a date that you keep changing is locking political leaders more than metrics that you change.

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#179

Post by macintux » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

0xy wrote: post #166

ravenstine wrote: post #130

It doesn't make any sense that we continue the lockdown in its current state. Hospitals in California aren't overrun. We were insisted upon that the "flattening the curve" was to prevent the medical system from being overwhelmed. With what we've been able to do, we're not even close to having overrun hospitals. By now, we should have ramped up the system to account for greater numbers of severe cases. Given that, we…

Agreed, and it's worth noting that the death rate from economic damage could be significantly higher than the death rate from coronavirus. For each 1% increase in unemployment, several thousand people die. Unemployment substantially increases the risk of mortality.

Let’s say the unemployment jumps to 30%, which is conceivable, but awful.

That would mean 200-300k people die from increased unemployment. Terrible.

The new virus’s worst case is more along the lines of 2-3 million, and at that point we’re probably in health care meltdown which would make it much worse than even those staggering numbers.

So yes, we don’t want to shut down the economy for 6 months, but it’s critical that we don’t swerve too far out of control. We can pay people to stay alive. We can’t wave a financial wand and solve the virus.

Re: California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

#180

Post by apatters » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #129

archgoon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should infections follow a bell curve? Shouldn't it be the derivative of a the logistic curve, which should be approximately exponential on both ends. I don't see how a quadratic should show up in the exponent; either mathematically or epidemiologically.

That's a good question. If control measures are undertaken to "flatten the curve" down to the capacity of the medical system, we'd expect to see new infections per day and deaths per day level out, maybe decline a little, but not decline a lot. Which is what the actuals show for the areas worst off.[1] At some point, there's saturation, and "herd immunity". For this virus, that's somewhere in the 60%-80% range of the…

It seems like both the perception of and response to this pandemic are not reflective of reality. What am I getting wrong here?

- Around 200 million Americans will eventually get it, barring extraordinary events (like a vaccine arriving in 6 months). We cannot change this.

- Around 0.5% will die, overwhelmingly those who had a low remaining life expectancy to begin with. This is a much larger body count than most people seem able to accept, but also much less dangerous to the average American than many believe.

- All we can do is alter the timetable to keep the hospitals functioning, which has been done successfully in many places throughout the world albeit at great cost.

There's both good news and terrible news in those facts but none of it really seems to be in the consciousness of the public or of leaders, whereas "oh no you can maybe get it 8 hours after a guy sneezed in a lobby" is everywhere. Along with "everyone who stays at home is a hero" as we set ourselves up for a second Depression.