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

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

#211
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you commit to some success metric, you're going to be stuck with it even it proves to be a bad metric. Let's say we all agree the "2 weeks with decreasing number of deaths" is a good target. Then we go back to work, and we discover that going back triggers a rapid spread and kills a bunch of people and starts to overwhelm hospitals. Now we need a new metric. This is a novel scientific problem. Caution and study…

People's lives are always at stake. That's how public policy works. Like 100% of the time. Try painting lines on the highway or administering a school lunch program without putting people's lives at stake. The only thing novel here is completely abandoning the concept of public policy goals. There's nothing scientific about setting your public policy without any metrics at all. This is kind of the opposite of a scien…

I'm not suggesting having no metrics, I'm talking about hard targets. Acknowledging that there are things we don't know about the problem and that we're not overcommitting to a course of action based on some specific target is reasonable.

At the same time, to your point, I would like to see clear explanations of "these are the aspects of the disease we are trying to understand (virality, mortality, etc)," these are the constraints on our healthcare system, these are the economic effects, here are the tradeoffs we're trying to make. All of that stuff is good, but it's a complex problem and assuming that we know enough at this point to set a clear numerical goal seems wrong to me. Describing general parameters for our data gathering and decision-making is good, though, and I agree that I'd like to see more of it.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In New Zealand, South Korea and Australia coronaplague is on the way out thanks to testing and contact tracing. Why can't the US muster the political will to do the same? We are already seeing the damage because a number of meatpacking plants had to go off-line when a substantial part of their workforce was ill and could not report to work, yet many citizens advocate for even lighter restrictions. Nothing of this mak…

> In New Zealand, South Korea and Australia coronaplague is on the way out thanks to testing and contact tracing. Why can't the US muster the political will to do the same? When it comes to complete elimination, you leave out the most important ingredient: all three countries have fantastic border control, thanks to geography in two cases, and an extremist neighbor in the third.

Compared to some Western European countries, the US are looking pitiful. Italy went from 5000 cases/day in early April to 2000 now and Germany from 7000 cases/day to 1500 now. The US continues with 25000 new cases every day and no downward trajectory in sight. This is community transmission, not imported cases.

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential growth also means that 10% utilization isn't a ridiculous amount of headroom: it's new patients. An R0 of 2 is towards the low end of estimates without social distancing. Zhang et al. estimate it as [2.06, 2.52] from the Diamond Princess data; Sanche et al. reported [3.8, 8.9] from data from Wuhan.

Without social distancing or contact tracing. The Bay Area's r is probably around 0.8 at this point with Santa Clara even lower (EDITED - see notes below). Some restrictions can be relaxed.

Rt of .88 according to https://rt.live I agree some restrictions could be relaxed. Hospitals were a good first step. More of the outdoors could be a good next one.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only choose to self isolate if you have the means to give up income. Needing to come up with necessary expenses like food and utilities would be understandable, but the largest bill is rent which is a mostly product of our financial system rather than an intrinsic requirement of existence. I could be in favor of lifting shutdown orders if there were a corresponding federal push to either halt such payments or…

People aren't going to be able to pay their bills regardless of whether they're locked down by mandate or by choice. However, if we allow the low-risk population to continue working, they will generate tax revenue that can be used to provide for the high-risk population. From that perspective, lifting the lockdown for low-risk persons is strictly better for the high-risk population than maintaining a blanket lockdown…

The difference is that with a shutdown mandate, many people are in the same boat, which necessitates a solution. It's not uniform ("essential" and remote workers), but it's better than putting even more people in the position of having to choose their health or eventual homelessness. Especially say, to just work in nearly-empty movie theaters.

The tax revenue is a red herring. Print the money, as was quickly done for the corporate bond bailout. Or better yet, do the sustainable thing and just suspend rent payments and mortgage interest, so that the debt black hole actually unwinds a bit.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are rational goals to quarantines beyond keeping the hospitals occupied at an optimal level None of the counties in the San Francisco Bay Area have been willing to outline any specific goals, nor has our Governor. If you can point me to anything more specific from the above than 'if we only save one life', I'd be shocked.

What's your point? Is there a statute you're thinking of that requires San Francisco to spell out specifically what their goals are? You said upthread that the lockdown is a violation of people's constitutional rights, but it seems clear that it isn't, at least not in our jurisprudence. You can find legal scholars debating the constitutionality of quarantine, but only in the context of hypothetical orders that haven'…

I require San Francisco to spell out what their goals are! I fundamentally reject the idea that it's our duty as citizens to shut up and do whatever London Breed thinks is best. If she's not willing to explain why these emergency restrictions are necessary and how we'll know when they aren't necessary, we shouldn't comply.

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

#216

When I was younger I could never understand why anyone would vote republican. Today I understand.

Both parties are corrupt, and both advocate for reasonable and unreasonable policies. Part of their power derives from convincing much of their base to despise the "other side", to never properly listen to the other side, and never fairly consider the other side's position. Politicians on both sides benefit from inflaming this dynamic.

A very apt and unfortunately true characterization.

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

#217
post #165

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…

It's a class divide, unfortunately. The people who are getting hit hardest are the people who were already getting hit hardest. Most of those don't frequent the same internet forums we do.

Any suggestions on which they do frequent?

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not the time for egocentric defiance of the recommendations from our leaders. This is not a fair representation of the alternative and contrary viewpoints.

I understand you feel my characterization is unfair. But the focus on our own personal interaction with the virus without acknowledging how ignoring shelter at home orders can spread the virus to others, is selfish and egocentric. I do not believe there is room for an alternative viewpoint to that.

Your focus on the virus spread while ignoring the tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs because of this is selfish and egocentric.

I do not believe there is room for an alternative viewpoint to that.

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

#219
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen you say similar things in a few other threads, and myself and others have said, every time: the risk to everyone is that the hospitals become overwhelmed. They are not right now because of stay-at-home orders. What you think of as failure - hospitals currently low utilization - is in fact success .

What is your reaction to Sweden's COVID track? They didn't shut down daily life, and their hospitals are doing just fine. In fact, COVID cases and deaths have plateaued. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866

Educated, rule-following population that values science and logic.

Here we have “Tiger King”

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

#220
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen you say similar things in a few other threads, and myself and others have said, every time: the risk to everyone is that the hospitals become overwhelmed. They are not right now because of stay-at-home orders. What you think of as failure - hospitals currently low utilization - is in fact success .

There are a couple of flaws with this reply. 1. This doesn't appear to be a falsifiable position with respect to being overly conservative. Any action that results in the hospitals not being overwhelmed will be taken as somehow likely causing the hospitals not to be overwhelmed. It's not clear by this logic how hospital capacities are ever chosen given various uncertainties in the environment. 2. It commits a status…

> with fairly well understood vulnerabilities to various parts of the population.

I don't think the virus is as well understood as you believe, which is why opening back up now may be premature.

Regardless, the riskiest pre-existing conditions appear to be obesity and hypertension. 57-75% of Americans are obese according to the dedicated Wikipedia page. Also bear in mind there is considerable variance among obesity rates per locale. What's the CFR in obese patients?

Edit: if you can't tell me the CFR in obese patients, you shouldn't be rushing to open everything back up. I don't know why people are silently downvoting but there is nothing incorrect or inconsistent about my comment and I'm just making a suggestion based on what little evidence exists.

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