Live data from Hacker News

San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

smchealth.org

131–140 of 292 posts

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#131
post #61

I understand the sentiment, but I think it's pretty clear in retrospect hard lockdowns were the correct way to address this. This half-assed "wear a mask and social distance if you want" stance just made the economy sputter for a whole a year. I've seen this in France twice, where they've oscillated between doing nothing and doing a lot, a couple brief lockdowns can reverse things quickly even after things have gotte…

Europe had hard lockdowns. Not China-hard, but pretty hard. Cases surged again. You mentioned Asia. I saw this headline today: "South Korea's Health Minister Describes Seoul As A 'COVID-19 War Zone'" By US standards, their case count is still incredibly low. The point is they haven't actually been able to contain it, either; they're just acting sooner and more aggressively for the second wave. Apparently New Zealand…

Melbourne in Australia was seeing 600-700 new cases per day in late July/early August.

They went into EXTREMELY hard lockdown for 6-8 weeks, and now they haven't had a single case in four weeks.

https://www.vox.com/2020/12/4/22151242/melbourne-victoria-au...

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#132

> the structure of our economy is, for the most part, if you don’t work, you don’t eat or have a roof over your head I like that this is raised explicitly. There's lots of space for "lockdown with proper support" that the US is extremely unlikely to execute. But I don't think it's mentioned often enough that that's a possible direction.

100% this. There's a huge subtext of "I'd be comfortable with more stringent measures if I knew the welfare of my population would be assured, but sadly it's not."

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#133
post #24

The article says in San Mateo county there are an estimated 8000-15000 contagious people. That’s several times higher than how many positive test results have been logged in the past 14 days. https://thecovidcomplex.com/state/california/san-mateo/summa... Disclosure: this is my website based on data from the New York Times.

Not sure if this is still the case, but in the past multiple people from one household / coming to the drive-through testing place together were not get all checked. It was "one of you has symptoms, you all isolate; one of you with symptoms tests positive, you're all positive". (but not recorded positive) Which means the true cases number is at least tests x avg-people-per-household + asymptomatic people not tested +…

There’s something that should be said about people that are contagious yet should be in quarantine meaning they’re no longer actually infecting people.

Instead we get BS numbers that make it seem like every person that is contagious is still running around.

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#134
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or worse it’s simply not in America’s collective nature to obey authority on the scale you’re hoping for.

Not really in the nature of NZ, either. Our cultural heroes often feature a sense of "bugger them" if they're not inventing something. * Hone Heke, kept cutting down a flagpole to mess with the British * The Southern Man popularised by a beer company, who prefers the company of his horse. * The Good Keen Man popularised by Barry Crump, who prefers the company of the hills and his rifle. * James MacKenzie, a sheep rus…

I'm from Australia, and I've lived in the US, and now live in Canada.

From experience, the difference is entirely in the way our societies are setup, and therefore how we treat each other.

In NZ/Oz/Canada, we have healthcare for all, affordable tertiary education, and we all pay higher taxes to help strangers. Looking out for each other is built into the makeup of our countries, systems and society.

In the US, it is literally "Me vs. You", "Everyman for himself", "Pay your own way", etc. It is simply not in the makeup of their society to help others. While of course there are extremely kind and generous people who do, it's not the way the systems are setup, so it's not the default way people think about things.

Also because tens of millions of people are within a millimetre of bankruptcy/starvation/living on the street, they literally have no head space or ability to do anything other than meet their own basic needs.

Here in Canada tens of millions of people have been getting $2k every month since March. Same in Australia.

In the US they got $1,200. ONCE. That changes a lot.

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#135
post #61

I understand the sentiment, but I think it's pretty clear in retrospect hard lockdowns were the correct way to address this. This half-assed "wear a mask and social distance if you want" stance just made the economy sputter for a whole a year. I've seen this in France twice, where they've oscillated between doing nothing and doing a lot, a couple brief lockdowns can reverse things quickly even after things have gotte…

Europe had hard lockdowns. Not China-hard, but pretty hard. Cases surged again. You mentioned Asia. I saw this headline today: "South Korea's Health Minister Describes Seoul As A 'COVID-19 War Zone'" By US standards, their case count is still incredibly low. The point is they haven't actually been able to contain it, either; they're just acting sooner and more aggressively for the second wave. Apparently New Zealand…

> What's scarier is that the Bay Area, with ubiquitous masks, good-ish weather, partial closures, and lower population wasn't even able to keep new cases down.

I’d contest that characterization of the Bay Area - even in Santa Clara County where I live, I’ve not seen ubiquitous mask wearing.

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#136
post #21

Seems like he's being contrarian at times. > what we have before us is a symbolic gesture, it appears to be style over substance I think the problem with being idealistic is people will see this leader,(especially in liberal mecca that is the sf bay area or how ever those people talk now) will latch on to this as a reason to do keep acting irresponsibly and justify their behavior. > Less overall mobility, means less…

Regarding schooling impact:

My interpretation of the statement is that compounding interest applies to education as much as it does to bank accounts. Missing 5k in contributions to retirement accounts at 25 and then making up for it with extra at 26 is very different than making up with an extra contribution at 46. Same applies to education, and if you're trying to make up missed "contributions" in 6/7th grade, you're already the educational equivalent of a 46 year old.

At risk of stretching a thin metaphor even further, this is to say nothing of Social Security (long-term structural impact of system-wide attempts to catch up half a generation of students on 12+ months of education).

edit: formatting/proofreading

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#137
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the latest California directives attempting to adapt to this at least at the county level by tying restrictions to hospital capacity in each county? https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/12/03/california-health-official...

Yes, but the other Bay Area counties have chosen to shut down way in advance of that.

My county has about ~30 ICU beds left, yet hasn't triggered the magic state threshold. They are one mass causality incident (plane crash, roof collapsing, etc) from people going without care.

Even if things are OK in San Mateo, they don't have to deal with the cases of people who go there because there are less restrictions. That is the whole point of counties working together.

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#138
My fellow humans are idiots. I'm an idiot. This isn't the right way to be a leader. Nuance is not for the masses. They need to be told the right thing to do, especially in a crisis. And then you assume literally everyone will bend the rules as they see fit, because they will.

All this long screed does is mess with people's heads and cause more problems than it solves. The virus doesn't care where the county line is. If everywhere else in the Bay Area is locked down, San Mateo should as well.

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I also believe these greater restrictions will result in more job loss, more hunger, more despair and desperation (...) and more death from causes other than COVID. And I wonder, are these premature deaths any less worrisome than COVID deaths?” There's been a total of 164 registered COVID-19 related deaths in San Francisco county, the vast majority of which had other comorbidities, assuming trend[1]. On the other…

I disagree: overdoses in 2018 killed 259, in 2019 it killed 441, so I don't think it was really surprising to get around 550 for this year.

Do you... expect drug overdose deaths to increase exponentially, as standard practice?

Re: San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders

#140

Reading this I was expecting the same knee-jerk, panic response that has become the "acceptable" public health response to the problem the pandemic places before us. While I detect a hint of futility in this statement, I am nonetheless deeply heartened to know some public health officials are themselves questioning some of the simplistic premises that have been driving policy to this point at all levels of government…

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/coronavirus-san-mateo-...

From March

"The Silicon Valley Doctor Who Doesn’t Mince Words on Coronavirus Threat"

Post reply on HN