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

sfmayor.org

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

#771

Post by lotsofpulp »

tehjoker wrote: post #701
hombre_fatal wrote: post #4

I'm lucky enough to have remote work. And I'm sure many HNers have a nice buffer of savings from their tech jobs to weather the storm or are getting paid time off. But can anyone share what it's like to not be in either of these situations? How are your rent lords handling things? I live abroad in a cheap country so I can handle zero income, but I wouldn't be able to last long if rent was $2000+/mo instead of the Yet…

There's another political solution that would maintain the lockdown while preventing thousands of people from dying by reopening the economy: cancel rent. In NJ, they canceled mortgages but not rent, so the landlords get a free ride. In theory rents are "frozen" but they'll become due in September with back rent owed. No free ride for the landlord class. Cancel rent!

>In NJ, they canceled mortgages but not rent

This is not true:

https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/covid/mortgagerelief.html

>Do I still need to pay my mortgage?

>Yes.

>Will I have to make up the mortgage payments at the end of the 90-day grace period?

>Yes, these mortgage payments will need to be made up by consumers. The Department has requested that forbearance payments be added to and made at the end of the life of the loan. However, consumers should contact the institution that services their home loan to understand the specific programs and terms available to them.

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

#772

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

pinkfoot wrote: post #717
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the implementation was still absurdly bad. For example, by imposing a harsh lockdown on cities with no plan for migrant workers, the only thing they could do was head home to their villages, ensuring the virus would be distributed widely across the country.

Where do the migrant workers normally sleep? Answer: In the cities they chose to leave.

"Chose"? Most of them live a hand to mouth existence: if they can't work, they don't eat.

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

#773

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

tehjoker wrote: post #701
hombre_fatal wrote: post #4

I'm lucky enough to have remote work. And I'm sure many HNers have a nice buffer of savings from their tech jobs to weather the storm or are getting paid time off. But can anyone share what it's like to not be in either of these situations? How are your rent lords handling things? I live abroad in a cheap country so I can handle zero income, but I wouldn't be able to last long if rent was $2000+/mo instead of the Yet…

There's another political solution that would maintain the lockdown while preventing thousands of people from dying by reopening the economy: cancel rent. In NJ, they canceled mortgages but not rent, so the landlords get a free ride. In theory rents are "frozen" but they'll become due in September with back rent owed. No free ride for the landlord class. Cancel rent!

I don't know the NJ specifics, but if they are like anywhere else on the world, mortgages weren't cancelled, just the time not paid added to the end of the term. Sure if you have 20 years left, 20 years + 4 months isn't a big change, but you still have to pay the amount owned. For landlords is the same, except it is in a shorter time period (but then again, not a lot of people rent the same place for 20+ years)

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

#774

Post by user5994461 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #603
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Al Jazeera is always a good source for news ignored by the rest of the world. Here's social distancing in a prison in El Salvador -- not sure those masks will help much. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/el-salvador-inmates-c... In India in particular, the lockdown has so far caused more misery than the virus itself: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/india-covid-19-lockdo... ...although it's an impossible e…

> In India in particular, the lockdown has so far caused more misery than the virus itself... I mean, that's the point, right? Heart surgery hurts more than chest pain, but it's intended to prevent the heart attack.

If that's your comparison, the lockdown has been an outstanding failure because the virus is still spreading widely and pending to go exponential any day the lockdown is slightly relaxed. Heart surgery that can't prevent the heart attack.

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

#775

Post by user5994461 »

illumin8 wrote: post #712
collectedparts wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be pedantic but "Silicon Valley janitor" (at least if it's for a big enough tech co) _might_ be doing OK. Various tech companies have publicly committed to paying their own hourly staff and subcontracted workers like food service / janitorial at full standard pre-shutdown rates: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/big-tech-commits-to-paying... (Though I have no insight into whether or not they've actually follow…

This is true. I work for a unicorn and we've committed to paying all of our contract staff until the office reopens. This includes making special payments to the caterer, even though we've cancelled regular lunch and dinner meal service, just to pass through to their employees so that they can shelter in place and not have to be at risk of either getting sick or not being employed. It also includes all reception and…

How much do you trust the contracting companies to forward the payments to their workers? Bet they've all been furlough a while ago.

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

#776

Post by makomk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #748
toasterlovin wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the rates stay the same, then all we're accomplishing is slowing the rate at which we reach herd immunity. If herd immunity is the strategy we're pursuing, then we should lift restrictions enough to meet hospital capacity, so we can get to herd immunity as quickly as possible and get the economy back to something approaching normal levels of activity. If the strategy is actually suppression and elimination, th…

> But if the rates stay the same, then all we're accomplishing is slowing the rate at which we reach herd immunity. No, we're still avoiding surging past healthcare capacity, which shoots the fatality rate for both the disease itself and anything else that competes for resources with it way up. That's the point. It's true that on some places we may not need SIP to remain in the safe zone, but one of the big problems…

That's the trouble - there's evidence the main reason that the fatality rate shot up massively in places like Lombardy and Wuhan with overwhelmed healthcare systems is because the shortage of healthcare resources meant they massively undertested mild cases compared to elsewhere. It's a statistical artifact that was presented as a real thing by the useless media. Also, people aren't getting healthcare right now because of the lockdown and the fear. All over the Western world, cancer screening and treatment is getting skipped, people with strokes and heart attacks are seeking medical care far too late, kids are missing vaccinations...

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

#777

Post by makomk »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #573
treis wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barring a miracle, mass production of a vaccine is at least 9 months away. Likely more like a year+ There's no better treatments coming. We've been fighting viral pneumonia since the dawn of medicine and the tool kit is pretty sparse. Finding anything nearing a cure or even a 20% improvement is wishful thinking. Our health care capacity is adequate. NYC got to ~30% infected and while I'm sure none of the medical work…

We can't control the spread until we can test people for the disease. As multiple leaders have stated, the lockdowns need to continue until we build up testing capabilities. For instance in WA, the governor said they are waiting for "widely-available testing, quick isolation for those who may have the virus, identifying people who came into contact with a positive case and getting them into quarantine."

The only country where this seems to have even vaguely worked is South Korea, and the US is already testing much more people for coronavirus than South Korea even in per-capita terms. Has been for a while. Now, the New York Times editorial board has been pushing the idea that you're behind South Korea because more of your tests are coming back positive - but the way they dropped that number is by using stricter social distancing measures to drop transmission rates, not increasing the number of tests. That doesn't seem to be happening in the US even with a full lockdown, and we don't really know why.

Basically, all of the US media reporting around testing has been terrible, misleading, partisan nonsense designed to create an imaginary testing gap that can be blamed on the current president to try and kick him out of office in November. Publications like the Times are quite open about why they're doing it. The UK isn't much better though.

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

#778

Post by kharak »

dragonwriter wrote: post #742
blast wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. Another issue is the age divide. Younger people: harder hit economically, less so by the virus; older people: harder hit by the virus, less so economically. This can only worsen the class fissure which had already developed along generational lines.

Younger people are less likely to die as quickly from acute respiratory failure from the virus, but if the indications of various delayed and lasting effects are at all accurate, probably are, on average, losing more QALYs to the virus, and so are arguably harder, if less obviously so, hit.

Could you link to some studies or articles about this? I've heard speculations, but haven't seen evidence to back it up.

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

#779

Post by BaronSamedi »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #765
favorited wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that you're afraid of this being "split down political party lines," but OK with the fact that "Republicans have come out as pro-reopening?" If the science supports shelter-in-place for now, it's automatically bad that Democrats support that to avoid splitting from Republicans?

No, the science doesn't "support shelter-in-place", because science in itself doesn't support any particular policy. Instead, the science is simply predicting a certain number of deaths or burden on the healthcare system, and certain public-health officials are recommending policy to minimize number of deaths, because their sole priority is to save human lives. However, someone else could look at that same science pr…

Good point. I've seen this mistaken notion of science a lot recently. Scientists can describe the world and make predications about how it might behave, they don't have anything to say (as scientists) about what one ought to do.

Also, it appears that by "science" commenters here really mean epidemiologists or medical scientists, not economists, psychologists, political scientists, etc. Scientists from each of these fields have a limited perspective, a good leader tries to balance these perspectives when choosing a course of action. Of course, the medical view matter a lot now but its not the only view that matters.

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

#780

Post by dragonwriter »

makomk wrote: post #776
dragonwriter wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if the rates stay the same, then all we're accomplishing is slowing the rate at which we reach herd immunity. No, we're still avoiding surging past healthcare capacity, which shoots the fatality rate for both the disease itself and anything else that competes for resources with it way up. That's the point. It's true that on some places we may not need SIP to remain in the safe zone, but one of the big problems…

That's the trouble - there's evidence the main reason that the fatality rate shot up massively in places like Lombardy and Wuhan with overwhelmed healthcare systems is because the shortage of healthcare resources meant they massively undertested mild cases compared to elsewhere. It's a statistical artifact that was presented as a real thing by the useless media. Also, people aren't getting healthcare right now becaus…

> That's the trouble - there's evidence the main reason that the fatality rate shot up massively in places like Lombardy and Wuhan with overwhelmed healthcare systems is because the shortage of healthcare resources meant they massively undertested mild cases compared to elsewhere.

No,the death rate among those requiring ICU care shot up, too; and there is no question that the reason is that the systems were so overwhelmed that things like ventilators were rationed on criteria beyond medical need, because medical need exceeded supply. (That's also why other conditions became more dangerous, because it didn't matter why you needed, e.g., a ventilator, whether Covid or not, the supply shortage meant you might not get one.)

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