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

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

smchealth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 292 posts

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

#201

Post by roenxi »

remote_phone wrote: post #106
heleninboodler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly with all three of your points. I disagree strongly with one of his positions (I don't think we should be opening schools while the rest of us are locked down), but I too find it very, very encouraging to have a public official obviously using his brain and being honest about the fact that nobody really knows the right answer. And especially in the context about the use of power, the acknowledge…

Places like UK did a hard lockdown for 6 weeks and kept schools open. It completely worked. Yes, kids can transmit the virus, but it appears that as long as the ADULTS limit their interaction with other adults, kids have only a limited way of encountering infections.

'Works' is what happened to Ebola - near total containment outside of a rather poor part of the world.

There is a major complaint here against the lockdowns. They have positive and negative outcomes and there is very little evidence that the two sides have been weighed against each other. The scale of the damage done by our response is too great to accept best effort attempts to control the disease. The standard of the response needs to be excellence, not competence.

We also can't discount the possibility that there were easier, less invasive measures than lockdowns that captured a lot of the benefit without the costs. It has been a chaotic year but there is no natural law that says every time there is a pandemic the only option is to scuttle the economic ship.

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

#202

Post by trhway »

jeffbee wrote: post #171
txsoftwaredev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Roughly 30,000 restaurants have already closed for good across the country, with more than 110,000 expected to shutter in the next month, according to estimates by the National Restaurant Association. ". How did a virus cause businesses to close permanently? This doesn't happen during flu season or even with the h1n1 pandemic.

H1N1 2009 only killed 12000 Americans. COVID-19 killed 12000 Americans last week . People are avoiding restaurants because their own self-interest keeps them away. They don't want to get a fatal disease that's already killed 1‰ of the country. This aversion has little or nothing to do with government directives.

>People are avoiding restaurants

not in Bay Area. These new nice outdoor areas with heaters etc. have been packed all these months.

> This aversion has little or nothing to do with government directives.

the businesses closure is direct result of the government orders. It is evidenced by how people flocked back to businesses when they [partially] opened. A well beyond middle age neighbor drove to San Mateo county for a gym and only 1 hour long line prevented her from going there more.

In Russia they came up with a new word - Coronoia, ie. "Corona + Paranoia", and your post is typical Coronoia style in that it ignores the straight reality and facts which are staring right into the face.

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

sdoering wrote: post #200
heleninboodler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly with all three of your points. I disagree strongly with one of his positions (I don't think we should be opening schools while the rest of us are locked down), but I too find it very, very encouraging to have a public official obviously using his brain and being honest about the fact that nobody really knows the right answer. And especially in the context about the use of power, the acknowledge…

Yesterday there were some interesting stats shown for Germany. Before the 2nd soft lockdown in November the age bracket of 20 - 35 was the 2nd highest in terms of infections per 100k (within the last 7 days). Only topped by the age bracket 80+. During our second lockdown the increase in cases did slow down a bit, but only a bit. One could argue, that the soft lockdown didn't really work that well, as it didn't turn t…

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

kiwidrew wrote: post #189
dehrmann wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Apparently New Zealand still has single digit cases most days. NZ hasn't had any new cases in the general population for quite some time. The cases that NZ has been reporting are all recent arrivals undergoing the mandatory 14-day quarantine in an isolation facility. Both Australia and New Zealand have shown (multiple times) that it is entirely possible to completely eradicate this virus using nothing more sophisti…

Australia and New Zealand are islands where the borders can be closed much more tightly than elsewhere and imported goods arrive mainly through container shipping. In the EU, the need to ensure regular freight truck traffic and move hundreds of thousands of seasonal agricultural workers from east to west means that a comparable lockdown could not have been achieved.

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

#205

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

jeffbee wrote: post #171
txsoftwaredev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Roughly 30,000 restaurants have already closed for good across the country, with more than 110,000 expected to shutter in the next month, according to estimates by the National Restaurant Association. ". How did a virus cause businesses to close permanently? This doesn't happen during flu season or even with the h1n1 pandemic.

H1N1 2009 only killed 12000 Americans. COVID-19 killed 12000 Americans last week . People are avoiding restaurants because their own self-interest keeps them away. They don't want to get a fatal disease that's already killed 1‰ of the country. This aversion has little or nothing to do with government directives.

People are not avoiding restaurants. After each temporary lockdown has been lifted in my country, restaurants and pubs immediately went back to full capacity. Also, this summer I found that overlander hotspots -- the places where elderly Europeans go in their camping cars -- were as packed as in any other year with little distancing observed. Certainly some are worried about the virus, but many others are not.

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

#206

Post by yorwba »

sdoering wrote: post #200
heleninboodler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly with all three of your points. I disagree strongly with one of his positions (I don't think we should be opening schools while the rest of us are locked down), but I too find it very, very encouraging to have a public official obviously using his brain and being honest about the fact that nobody really knows the right answer. And especially in the context about the use of power, the acknowledge…

Yesterday there were some interesting stats shown for Germany. Before the 2nd soft lockdown in November the age bracket of 20 - 35 was the 2nd highest in terms of infections per 100k (within the last 7 days). Only topped by the age bracket 80+. During our second lockdown the increase in cases did slow down a bit, but only a bit. One could argue, that the soft lockdown didn't really work that well, as it didn't turn t…

At least in Berlin, it was the same during the first lockdown: infections among younger people peaked one or two weeks earlier than among older people.

You can see this very well in the heatmap of cases by age group here: https://www.berlin.de/corona/lagebericht/desktop/corona.html...

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

#208

Post by trhway »

paganel wrote: post #123
sidibe wrote: 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…

The Czech Republic and Bulgaria had harder/more restrictive lockdowns during the entire year compared to my country (Romania) and yet they have a death-rate higher than ours. Indeed, they managed to ride the first wave pretty much unscathed, but the second one looks like it hit both of them comparatively harder than it hit us.

it may as well happen that lockdowns put selective pressure on the virus for higher virulence.

Anyway, the government bureaucrats are naturally go for simple short-term game like lockdowns without doing any complex long-term thinking (which for example would be the things like efficient preparation for the second wave and achieving herd immunity with minimal losses and minimizing the total losses).

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

#209

Post by michaelt »

remote_phone wrote: post #106
heleninboodler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly with all three of your points. I disagree strongly with one of his positions (I don't think we should be opening schools while the rest of us are locked down), but I too find it very, very encouraging to have a public official obviously using his brain and being honest about the fact that nobody really knows the right answer. And especially in the context about the use of power, the acknowledge…

Places like UK did a hard lockdown for 6 weeks and kept schools open. It completely worked. Yes, kids can transmit the virus, but it appears that as long as the ADULTS limit their interaction with other adults, kids have only a limited way of encountering infections.

Take a look at the data here: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare - for example, the "Patients in hospital" data.

The UK's number of COVID-19 patients in hospital peaked at 19,500 in mid-April and fell to 800 by the start of September.

That's despite things like the 'eat out to help out' scheme that ran until the end of August.

Schools and colleges re-opened in September [1] and the government started "encouraging" workers back to offices [2] - and admittedly, by the end of September patients in hospital had only risen to 2,400.

But by mid-November we see the second wave peaking at 16,500 hospitalised. Today, as we come out of the second lockdown, there are still 15,000 patients in hospital.

The UK has not demonstrated that schools can safely be kept open.

Unfortunately, as the geniuses in government decided to reopen schools and universities and offices all at the same time, it's difficult to directly attribute the second wave to any single policy decision.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/schools-and-colleges-to-r... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53942542

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

#210

Post by makomk »

dehrmann wrote: post #127
sidibe wrote: 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…

Also, by current US and European standards South Korea is carrying out very few Covid-19 tests, which makes it hard to make a meaningful comparison of case numbers. Well over an order of magnitude less in per-capita terms. I believe they're still not routinely offering testing to people with mild potential symptoms unless they've had recent contact with a known case, and there's evidence that it's in increasingly widespread circulation outside of the network of cases known to contact tracing.

Plus, you've got to remember that disease outbreaks grows exponentially, and exponential growth always has low numbers at the start until it doesn't.

Post reply on HN