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

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

#261

Post by matz1 »

edmundsauto wrote: post #258
matz1 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the healthcare worker is overworked, then the hospital should hire more worker. Its not like there is not enough healthcare worker looking for employment all over the country. The lockdown was needless because it is worse than the risk if covid.

They are paying nurses up to $10k per week to travel and work in covid wards. Let me assure you, in America, we have a great shortage of skilled healthcare workers.

And yet the hospital laying off and furloughing worker

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

#262

Post by sokoloff »

edmundsauto wrote: post #259
sokoloff wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I benefited from my parents’ achievements (scholastic, work ethic, and financial support). My kids will benefit from mine in the same way. It’s not hard to imagine that a year of subpar schooling could cast a multi-generational shadow on the most vulnerable.

Do we really think missing 8% of required schooling is that dramatic? I can’t be the only person who thinks the education being afforded the folks hit hardest is minimally valuable. School sucks fir the vast majority of kids. It’s a warehousing system so parents can both work.

I don't have much doubt that this will increase educational inequality and it being only 8% of compulsory education might understate things, given the "stacking" nature of each year building on the foundations set in prior years.

If you miss learning addition well, subtraction and multiplication is going to be hard. If you can't subtract and multiply, then learning division is going to be hard. If you can't multiply and divide, algebra will be impossible, but many life tasks will also be more difficult.

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

#263

Post by dmode »

I agree with San Mateo County's stance. I am in Contra Costa and we joined the other counties to shut down at 30% ICU capacity. I don't think there is any merit to shutting down outdoor dining. I haven't seen any study showing that outdoor dining leads to significant transmission.

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

#264

Post by buck4roo »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #253
monodeldiablo wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way to get the information you desire without Big Brother level tracing. And even then the error bars are huge. Symptoms set in days after exposure, and transmission is uneven at best. Full disclosure: I've had covid. We assume we were exposed at the clinic, where our kid needed emergency medical treatment. But if so, only one of us was with the child indoors -- in a cleaned room with a doctor in full PPE…

>There's no way to get the information you desire without Big Brother level tracing. As I responded to the sibling comment, I don't think that is accurate. Of course many, if not most cases can not be traced, many certainly can be. Some people know exactly where they got covid, and who they exposed, and where. The US has 50,000 full time contact tracers working to collect this information. Surely there is some data b…

Contract tracing != "gathering evidence of transmission in any particular location/context."

Instead, please think of it as "one of the most powerful, non-medicinal, mechanisms for interrupting disease transmission."

It accomplishes this through its overt actions: attempting to alter the behavior of potential and exposed contacts by encouraging quarantining for an appropriate length of time and to get tested if symptoms develop.

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

#265

Post by s1artibartfast »

buck4roo wrote: post #264
s1artibartfast wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no way to get the information you desire without Big Brother level tracing. As I responded to the sibling comment, I don't think that is accurate. Of course many, if not most cases can not be traced, many certainly can be. Some people know exactly where they got covid, and who they exposed, and where. The US has 50,000 full time contact tracers working to collect this information. Surely there is some data b…

Contract tracing != "gathering evidence of transmission in any particular location/context." Instead, please think of it as "one of the most powerful, non-medicinal, mechanisms for interrupting disease transmission." It accomplishes this through its overt actions: attempting to alter the behavior of potential and exposed contacts by encouraging quarantining for an appropriate length of time and to get tested if sympt…

> Contract tracing != "gathering evidence of transmission in any particular location/context."

I disagree. Understanding how and where COVID spreads has been an essential part of contract tracing in all of the countries that have successfully implemented it. This data is absolutely collected by tracers.

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

#266

Post by s1artibartfast »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #222
s1artibartfast wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are substituting instructions for information. I lack information. For example: Has anyone in San Mateo caught covid eating at a restaurant? How many? Has anyone in San Mateo caught covid grocery shopping? How Many? Has anyone in San Mateo Caught covid exercising outside? How many? Has anyone in San Mateo Caught covid at school? How many?

There's no way to get the information you desire without Big Brother level tracing. And even then the error bars are huge. Symptoms set in days after exposure, and transmission is uneven at best. Full disclosure: I've had covid. We assume we were exposed at the clinic, where our kid needed emergency medical treatment. But if so, only one of us was with the child indoors -- in a cleaned room with a doctor in full PPE…

Here are some examples of data supporting the unanswerable questions, complete with business addresses with known case count.

http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/coronavirus/data/cont...

http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/coronavirus/locations...

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

#267

Post by heleninboodler »

snickms wrote: post #242
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…

As some people are claiming doubt as to the effectiveness of lockdowns, let me point you to the Australian stats: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-dat... It worked particularly well in Victoria, where a second lockdown turned a ~700 case per day nightmare into 38 straight days of no deaths or locally acquired cases. New Zealand also used a lockdown strategy. stats: https://www.health.govt.nz/o…

I think it's fairly clear that lockdowns that actually lock people down are undeniably effective. The question is really whether or not imposing a lockdown in any given population will actually result in people cooperating, which I think is debatable for a lot of parts of the US, where we are taught to take a lot of pride in our inability to be controlled. I think the acknowledgement that a lockdown doesn't necessarily have the effect you think it will is a recognition of that cultural phenomenon.

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

#268

Post by michaelt »

leoedin wrote: post #235
michaelt wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hospitalised cases lag infections by weeks. For some reason you're completely ignoring the positive test results, which show a very clear correlation with lockdowns. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/08/covid-cases-an... We shouldn't expect hospitalised cases to fall immediately - although they have been falling for the past week or so. Lockdowns - even excluding schools - clearly are effective at reducing t…

> For some reason you're completely ignoring the positive test results

For a good reason.

By almost all the statistics, the second wave hasn't been as bad as the first. Comparing peaks, measures like "Deaths within 28 days of positive test" (942 vs 486) and "Weekly deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate" (9,495 vs 3,371) and "Patients in hospital" (19,518 vs 16,421) and "Patients in mechanical ventilation beds" (3,252 vs 1,461) say the second peak was about half the height of the first one.

On the other hand, "Cases by date reported" peaked at 5,113 in the first lockdown and 25,329 in the second lockdown - making the second wave 5x higher than the first. Presumably due to a lack of test capacity.

If I'd chosen the one metric which makes the second wave look 5x the first instead of 0.5x, that'd be a pretty deceptive way of describing the results of government policy (although technically accurate).

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

#269

Post by trhway »

edmundsauto wrote: post #257
trhway wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Do you have any evidence for your first graph, or is it something that you contributed in order to add more zest to your internet comment?

Unfortunately i'm about 160 years too late - the zest was added by Darwin.

Covid itself is a result of such accelerated selection performed in that Wuhan lab - what is called "gain of function" experiments.

A natural example of a global virus evolution phenomenon was observed in the 2nd wave of Spanish flu - that strain was mostly killing by causing hyper-reaction of immune system and especially in the healthy 20-50 years old individuals, as the strains normally killable by immune system were cleaned in the first wave.

While all that is obvious, if you need a reference to authority there is a virus evolution discussion by a Harward guy:

https://myvoice.opindia.com/2020/04/evolution-of-virulence-a...

"Let’s assume that every propagule generated from the quarantined individuals has a very small chance of escaping isolation and infecting someone. Just because the virulent ones can make more propagules, they have a higher chance of surviving than the milder varieties. This means we are giving a selective advantage to the more virulent ones over the milder ones and as a result virus will evolve for increased virulence."

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

#270

Post by curryst »

atweiden wrote: post #216
trhway wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

This is simply illustrative of the fact people are driven by self-interest, and virtually never take group outcomes into consideration when making choices unless forced to under the threat of violence.

Or they simply have a different level of risk tolerance than you. I'm comfortable going out to eat. I live alone, the only people I physically interact with these days are all under the age of 28, anyone in a risk group that I would interact with is back home a thousand or so miles away.

> virtually never take group outcomes into consideration when making choices unless forced to under the threat of violence.

Group outcomes are effectively a moot point. That presumes that the group, as a whole, has an agreed upon preferential outcome, and an agreed upon means of getting there. We do not (and basically never do, when it comes to the group). Some people want more stringent lockdowns, some people just want the lockdowns to be lifted. People who want more stringent lockdowns are averse to the risk of COVID, and are willing to sacrifice some of the joy of life to avoid it. People who want to lift the lockdowns are unperturbed by the risk, or are okay with allowing people to assume that risk to be able to go on with their lives. I don't see a clear winner from a utilitarian perspective; either really bad things happen to a small ratio of people, or mildly bad things happen to everyone. I certainly don't think the gap in net happiness is wide enough to warrant condescension about people ignoring group outcomes.

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