Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

sfmayor.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 893 posts

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#351

Post by walterbell »

op00to wrote: post #321
walterbell wrote: post #162

People forget that there is no law which can put everyone under house arrest. This is all done voluntarily. Why is it ok for people to shop at Walmart and not at their local small business that sells the same goods and is better equipped to enforce social distancing, with customers explicitly opting in to visit the smaller store? If a small business can protect workers and customers, and a comparable large business i…

Uh, there are plenty of laws to keep people in their houses. In my state, anyone outside w/o an excuse can be charged with disorderly persons offense at the very least.

Which state, what are some acceptable excuses?

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#352

Post by the_watcher »

walterbell wrote: post #162

People forget that there is no law which can put everyone under house arrest. This is all done voluntarily. Why is it ok for people to shop at Walmart and not at their local small business that sells the same goods and is better equipped to enforce social distancing, with customers explicitly opting in to visit the smaller store? If a small business can protect workers and customers, and a comparable large business i…

State and local governments have far greater abilities to issue orders like this than the federal government. What, exactly, is unconstitutional about a city issuing an order that revokes the ability of a business to operate due to a health emergency?

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#353

Post by yibg »

guygurari wrote: post #127
tptacek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We in fact know very little about the consequences of serious C19 infections in people under 50, and people in their 40s apparently make up a substantial cohort of ICU C19 patients. We also don't know the long-term health implications of a severe C19 case, and there's some evidence to suggest permanent lung damage is one possible outcome. And, even if we didn't know any of those things, avoiding the deaths of people…

We don’t know enough so let’s stop the economy while we find out? That is not typically how we do things, because it’s not a rational response. For example, we didn’t know whether holding a mobile phone close to our ear for extended periods of time leads to serious health issues, and there was suspicion that it does. But we didn’t prohibit it — we let people decide for themselves, and it does seem the risk was lower…

Like most things it’s a spectrum. Rationally if something posses a non trivial risk, we should try to mitigate it until we can quantify the risk.

If some single digit percentage of cell phone users end up in the ICU I would certainly hope we ban the use of them until we can understand it better.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#354

Post by greendude29 »

greendave wrote: post #144

The problem is that the shelter-in-place rule is already limited in effectiveness due to a very lengthy list of exceptions plus many people not observing the spirit of the rule. Compliance will only drop over time as people see that 1) Their actions are having no obvious impact and 2) There is no clear end in sight. If the primary goal of extending the order is to give local governments time to build out infrastructu…

> The problem is that the shelter-in-place rule is already limited in effectiveness

I've mostly read that the "control" we have over covid-19 now is due to the SIP. Can you source your claim?

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#355

Post by wpietri »

cabaalis wrote: post #300
Skunkleton wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of what you said is true. This is not voluntary, there are laws which give these powers, essential businesses can stay open regardless of their size, recording breaking the law while conducting non essential business won’t help you in the supreme court, the federal government is saying lots and doing very little.

> there are laws which give these powers IANAL, but I know some of you are so I'm asking here. I've read that challenges to these orders will not succeed because of emergency declarations. The emergency declarations are supposedly backed by some law, correct? Don't we have a document in the national archives that guarantees things like peaceable assembly and not prohibiting exercise of religion? Yet we have people be…

If you're really interested in the topic, the podcast "All the President's Lawyers" discussed that this week. But in short, you can't read a couple of sentences from the constitution literally and expect that to override a couple hundred years of judicial interpretation.

Regarding the first amendment in particular, one relevant area of law is "time, place, and manner". E.g., just because you have free speech doesn't mean that you can go outside at 3 am with a bullhorn and start ranting; the cops can rightly cite or arrest you. More here: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1023/time-place...

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#356

Post by the_watcher »

walterbell wrote: post #320
Skunkleton wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of what you said is true. This is not voluntary, there are laws which give these powers, essential businesses can stay open regardless of their size, recording breaking the law while conducting non essential business won’t help you in the supreme court, the federal government is saying lots and doing very little.

Unless there's a state-mandated quota on essential businesses, what's stopping a store from adding some essential goods to their inventory and merchandising? This would reduce the burden on other stores, i.e. increasing social distancing in parking lots and within the story. Laws exist with the consent of the governed. When laws are instituted under premises (e.g models, intelligence) that are later proved wrong (e.g…

> Laws exist with the consent of the governed.

This is goalpost moving. Of course laws exist by the consent of the governed. Your original post claimed that there was no law, and that businesses should consider litigating to the Supreme Court, relying on pro bono lawyers who "remember their Constitution", despite the complete lack of Constitutional support for your argument.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#357

Post by wpietri »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #30

San Francisco has only had 18 COVID-19 deaths in the last 30 days, and only 2 in the last week. [0] That seems amazingly low to me. I'm leaning towards thinking non-essential businesses should be opened up there, provided they function under the same restrictions as grocery stores etc. [0] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/csse_...

You could argue it the other way from the same data. Given that public health officials jumped on it early and got us such a low death rate, maybe we should keep trusting their judgment and let them decide when it's safe to reopen.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#358

Post by geomark »

oppositelock wrote: post #235
bobthepanda wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any lockdowns which are specifically targeted at small retailers while competing large retailers are allowed to be open. Where I am the small coffee shops are closed for walk-in business, but so are the Starbucks; the difference is that small coffee shops are not able to pivot to a centralized delivery platform en masse the way Starbucks is.

I can speak to a few examples specifically. It's planting season now, and high business for nurseries. In Santa Clara County, they're closed by fiat. Lowe's, Home Depot, ACE hardware sell essential things (plumbing supplies, etc), so they get to remain open, in-store nurseries and all. So, if I want tomatoes, I have to brave the crowds at Lowe's instead of hopping out to my local nursery which is rarely densely popul…

Where I live (not the US) the same thing is happening, except that although the big stores are open they cannot sell nonessential items. They have those aisles roped off.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#359

Post by the_watcher »

cabaalis wrote: post #300
Skunkleton wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of what you said is true. This is not voluntary, there are laws which give these powers, essential businesses can stay open regardless of their size, recording breaking the law while conducting non essential business won’t help you in the supreme court, the federal government is saying lots and doing very little.

> there are laws which give these powers IANAL, but I know some of you are so I'm asking here. I've read that challenges to these orders will not succeed because of emergency declarations. The emergency declarations are supposedly backed by some law, correct? Don't we have a document in the national archives that guarantees things like peaceable assembly and not prohibiting exercise of religion? Yet we have people be…

Freedom of assembly (and to a lesser extent, at least by precise Constitutional language, freedom to exercise religion) have Constitutional protections (that may or may not be unlimited, depending on the justice you're asking). There is no Constitutional protection for running a business or being able to patronize a given business. So protests in public and worship may be protected, but your neighborhood bar is not.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#360

Post by roel_v »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #51

Serious question: if restrictions aren’t lifted now then will they be? What will be meaningfully different June 1st rather than May 1st? Is it shelter-in-place until we get more testing? Or the AppleGoogle contact tracing? Or is it shelter-in-place until a vaccine... in 18 months? What are the conditions required to start slowly relaxing the shutdown? Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes. I haven’t left my home for…

Probably downvotes because the answer to your question is the same as to 90% of all uninformed questions online - "we don't know". There are so many unknowns, things go day by day or week by week at best. I too get annoyed at the 1000'd idiot asking 'but will I be able to go on holiday in August?'. Not saying you're an idiot, just trying to explain why others, like me, would be annoyed at your post and would want to see less posts like it.
Post reply on HN