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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

#51
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Other Bay Area counties are seeing numbers skyrocket over the past 6 weeks, and want to act decisively now while they have the best chance to prevent a catastrophic outcome. In SF case counts have been doubling about every 2 weeks; we started from a low baseline (relative to most of the rest of the USA) but another few doublings and we’ll be in huge trouble. The state-level mandates are timed to be reactive instead o…

If doubling every 2 weeks is your standard, everyone in San Mateo County should stay home. Their case count has more than doubled in the last 1 week, from 137 a week ago to 343 most recently. It was their second-highest case count on record, second to yesterday which was 400 cases.

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

#52
post #26

I understand that Dr Morrow is a health professional and not a writing professional. For this reason, I would recommend that San Mateo county hire a public relations / social media expert to do some editing on this and future posts. It lacks the structure and coherent message that a public notice needs. I read it from start to finish and I’m not sure exactly what purpose it served beyond Dr. Morrow justifying his dec…

I appreciated all the detail he put into it. It gave me a lot of insight into everything that he considered. I think the detail proves that it's just not a simple problem. If you want to give a complete explanation, you're going to need more detail.

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

#54
post #16

It takes leadership of government, focus, sacrifice, and understanding of the citizens to fight this virus. I'm based in Australia, Victoria (population of 6m+, exceeding the 800k mentioned in the Bay Area [EDIT: San Mateo county]) and we have now had over 30 days of zero cases of coronavirus, after having a peak of 680+ per day [1]. We went into a tough lockdown, stamped out the virus, and are slowly easing restrict…

> We went into a tough lockdown, stamped out the virus Unfortunately no one here in the USA in a position of power recognizes that this should be the goal. Instead the lockdowns last only long enough for the ICU capacity to free up, then reopening the economy becomes the major goal. We need to stamp this virus out entirely, like you and your neighbors in NZ and TW have done.

It shouldn't be a goal. The virus cannot be stopped with our current medical technology, but you can certainly punish people into poverty and homelessness with draconian lockdowns.

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

East Palo Alto and San Jose could be either from pop-density, or from relative # of poor people.

Probably both

Nine months into this it would be nice if we had good data on the risk factors of transmission. I know it’s a tricky virus to trace but shouldn’t we have better info on which activities demographics, etc are the most risky by now?

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

#56
post #16

It takes leadership of government, focus, sacrifice, and understanding of the citizens to fight this virus. I'm based in Australia, Victoria (population of 6m+, exceeding the 800k mentioned in the Bay Area [EDIT: San Mateo county]) and we have now had over 30 days of zero cases of coronavirus, after having a peak of 680+ per day [1]. We went into a tough lockdown, stamped out the virus, and are slowly easing restrict…

> We went into a tough lockdown, stamped out the virus Unfortunately no one here in the USA in a position of power recognizes that this should be the goal. Instead the lockdowns last only long enough for the ICU capacity to free up, then reopening the economy becomes the major goal. We need to stamp this virus out entirely, like you and your neighbors in NZ and TW have done.

Why should the US have an extremely costly lockdown (which will almost certainly fail) to stamp out a virus for which we will have a vaccine being rolled out in a week? Mask orders and other low-impact restrictions are great but I don't understand why you would try to get rid of the virus with lockdowns at this point.

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

#57

Just alone that the Movie industry in Los Angeles is allowed to continue their operations while small businesses are shut shows exactly what COVID has become. People can make their own decisions whether to go out and how to stay safe.

You would agree that people "making their own decisions" do affect others, though, correct?

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

#58
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…

> Like is missing a year of 4th grade going to be a problem for anyone?

Yah. There's a whole big subset of the population that barely manages to stick with school at baseline. Educational interruption in other circumstances has been shown to have bad outcomes. We're trying to do better this time, but the school system as a whole is overtaxed.

I'm a middle school teacher. Even with best practices for remote education, I've seen all kinds of negative impacts. It's going to take a whole lot of support to get these kids to anywhere near a normal curriculum.

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

#59
post #30
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.

Especially when the party in control of the government spent months claiming that it was a hoax.

Downplayed, yes. Claimed it was an outright hoax, no.

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

#60

I hope when this is all over we can have an apolitcal discussion and learn some lessons for next time. I appreciate the statement, and it's nice to see the reasoning of a health official laid bare. That said, it seems to be an inconsistent message and not something I think a health official should be putting out in the midst of a politicized pandemic rife with misinformation. I really wish we had a functioning centra…

> I really wish we had a functioning central government to help coordinate local responses, assist with data collection and monitoring, disseminate clear information, etc, etc.

Absolutely not. The federal government has no authority to force states to close and this is a good thing.

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