
The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May - tdhoot
https://sfmayor.org/article/joint-statement-seven-bay-area-health-officers-upcoming-extension-and-revisions-current
======
hombre_fatal
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 <$200/mo I currently
pay.

Yet when I read Redditors talk about quarantine, you'd think everyone in the
world was getting paid time off to play Animal Crossing at home or they live
at mom's house rent-free. And it seems like it's this crowd that's likely to
be pushing for staying in lockdown with no end in sight.

~~~
lowpro
My friend who works at the airport in the Galapagos (GPS) was telling me that
no one has gotten paid since the tourism stopped. Luckily she can work on
farm, but many can't. The local animal shelter there is now out of food, and
the dogs will starve if they don't somehow raise money in the next 3 days or
so (@patitasgalapaguenas on instagram, you can donate here [0]).

The US is struggling in many ways, but I can't help but think many other less
fortunate nations are struggling even more. But the US doesn't show
international news so you wouldn't really know unless you go looking for it.

[0]: [https://www.paypal.com/cgi-
bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&busines...](https://www.paypal.com/cgi-
bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=patitas-
galapaguenas%40hotmail.com&item_name=Help+the+Miss+treated+domestic+animals+on+the+galapagos+islands.+The+first+animal+sanctuary+on+galapagos&currency_code=USD&source=url)

~~~
markdown
I'm gonna be _that_ guy... given that people are starving, isn't immoral to
ask that money be donated to keep shelter dogs alive?

Surely they should just be put to sleep, no?

~~~
3solarmasses
It's only immoral to question the validity of a good cause on the pretense
that there's something worse happening out there somewhere...

~~~
edoceo
Hint: there is always something worse somewhere.

~~~
TeMPOraL
There are many bad things happening everywhere. That doesn't mean we shouldn't
try and stack-rank them, in order to allocate funds effectively. There's
diminishing returns to everything[0]. As you throw money at problem #1, it
becomes more and more expensive to make a marginal improvement, so eventually,
it swaps places with some other problem in the ranking.

There are many criteria you could use for making such ranking of problems (a
popular one is minimizing dollars per lives saved, or dollars per QALY added).
Living in a free society means people are free to decide how much (if anything
all) they want to spend on charitable causes, and on which ones. But in one's
individual spending, it's worth to think about how to get maximum "bang for
your buck", in terms of alleviating suffering.

\---

[0] - By coincidence, this is on the front page right now:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993486](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993486).

------
greendave
The problem is that the shelter-in-place rule is already limited in
effectiveness due to a very lengthy list of exceptions plus many people not
observing the spirit of the rule. Compliance will only drop over time as
people see that 1) Their actions are having no obvious impact and 2) There is
no clear end in sight.

If the primary goal of extending the order is to give local governments time
to build out infrastructure, that's fine (though they would do well to
communicate this progress to the public). But if the primary goal is to
further reduce transmission, I can't see it being successful.

~~~
the_watcher
What evidence is there that the SIP is limited in effectiveness? The existing
evidence I am aware of is starkly contra that assertion. Anecdotes of seeing
people too close together in the park are not evidence of an ineffective SIP.

~~~
greendave
It's not that SIP does nothing - it's that past a certain point, the rates are
what they are. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties have seen a slight increase
in the number of cases last week over the previous week. Other Bay Area
counties have seen a slight decrease [1].

I don't see how increased traffic/travel as we're starting to see [2] will do
anything other than increase transmissions.

[1] [https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/coronavirus-
map/](https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/coronavirus-map/) [2]
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Bay-A...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Bay-
Area-stay-at-home-orders-don-t-keep-15225537.php)

~~~
plorkyeran
The rates staying flat rather than going up is already a success, not a sign
that SIP has failed.

~~~
toasterlovin
But if the rates stay the same, then all we're accomplishing is slowing the
rate at which we reach herd immunity. If herd immunity is the strategy we're
pursuing, then we should lift restrictions enough to meet hospital capacity,
so we can get to herd immunity as quickly as possible and get the economy back
to something approaching normal levels of activity.

If the strategy is actually suppression and elimination, then the lockdowns
are not working (at least not here in Oregon, where daily number of new cases
have been flat for about 2 weeks; I'm not sure what things look like in
California).

~~~
Enginerrrd
There's also the goal of slowing down and stalling in hopes of getting a
vaccine, better treatments, production to catch up with supply shortages for
healthcare facilities, and allowing healthcare facilities to increase
capacity, etc.

~~~
treis
Barring a miracle, mass production of a vaccine is at least 9 months away.
Likely more like a year+

There's no better treatments coming. We've been fighting viral pneumonia since
the dawn of medicine and the tool kit is pretty sparse. Finding anything
nearing a cure or even a 20% improvement is wishful thinking.

Our health care capacity is adequate. NYC got to ~30% infected and while I'm
sure none of the medical workers want to repeat the experience the level of
care remained good. Any capacity increase is going to come with only
marginally improved outcomes.

There's no purpose in extending the lockdown. Either we can get back to
something resembling normal life and control the spread or we can't and
everyone gets infected. Extending the lockdown is just delaying that day of
reckoning.

~~~
lazyasciiart
We can't control the spread until we can test people for the disease. As
multiple leaders have stated, the lockdowns need to continue until we build up
testing capabilities. For instance in WA, the governor said they are waiting
for "widely-available testing, quick isolation for those who may have the
virus, identifying people who came into contact with a positive case and
getting them into quarantine."

~~~
makomk
The only country where this seems to have even vaguely worked is South Korea,
and the US is already testing much more people for coronavirus than South
Korea even in per-capita terms. Has been for a while. Now, the New York Times
editorial board has been pushing the idea that you're behind South Korea
because more of your tests are coming back positive - but the way they dropped
that number is by using stricter social distancing measures to drop
transmission rates, not increasing the number of tests. That doesn't seem to
be happening in the US even with a full lockdown, and we don't really know
why.

Basically, all of the US media reporting around testing has been terrible,
misleading, partisan nonsense designed to create an imaginary testing gap that
can be blamed on the current president to try and kick him out of office in
November. Publications like the Times are quite open about why they're doing
it. The UK isn't much better though.

~~~
lazyasciiart
I don't care what the comparison to South Korea is, and I don't expect other
countries to have already achieved this. I care whether testing is widely
available enough that a person who finds out that they had dinner with someone
last night who has coronavirus can go and get tested immediately, not wait
until they are short of breath and feverish.

Perhaps you would like to read Dr Fauci talking about why we need more testing
capacity before relaxing lockdown rules? [https://time.com/5826161/anthony-
fauci-covid-19-testing-capa...](https://time.com/5826161/anthony-fauci-
covid-19-testing-capabilities/)

Or Gottlieb, Trump's appointee for the FDA?
[https://www.vox.com/2020/4/14/21219021/scott-gottlieb-
corona...](https://www.vox.com/2020/4/14/21219021/scott-gottlieb-coronavirus-
covid-19-social-distancing-economy-recession)

If you are dismissing "all of the US media reporting around testing" as
terrible, misleading, partisan nonsense, then you are either looking for a
particular opinion to be represented that isn't, or, more likely, you aren't
reading all of it.

~~~
makomk
If no country has ever achieved this, what's even the evidence that it's
actually possible? There are some pretty fundamental reasons to think it
wouldn't work, not least of which are asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic and barely
symptomatic spread, and the fairly impressive R0 of this particular disease.
If the person you're having dinner with doesn't have symptoms and you have a
slight sniffle, how do you even know to get tested?

Also, how the amount of coronavirus testing the US is doing stacks up to other
countries isn't an "particular opinion" \- it's a fact, and it's a fact that
pretty much the entire US press seems to have managed to misinform everyone
about, including the fact check columns.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Thats what contact tracing is. Your dinner companion finds out they are sick
two days later, and everyone they were in contact with gets found and tested.

The amount of testing the US is doing is indeed a fact, and it's widely
reported in US press.

------
Uhhrrr
San Francisco has only had 18 COVID-19 deaths in the last 30 days, and only 2
in the last week. [0] That seems amazingly low to me.

I'm leaning towards thinking non-essential businesses should be opened up
there, provided they function under the same restrictions as grocery stores
etc.

[0]
[https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/csse_...](https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_deaths_US.csv)

~~~
wpietri
You could argue it the other way from the same data. Given that public health
officials jumped on it early and got us such a low death rate, maybe we should
keep trusting their judgment and let them decide when it's safe to reopen.

~~~
kvetching
That's insane. If they're hesitant to open up now, they will never feel
comfortable opening up.

~~~
wpietri
Or perhaps they know more about the topic than we random HN readers and have a
plan that they're following.

~~~
kansface
Or perhaps they have radically different values and think one preventable
death is one too many or perhaps they know a lot less about economics than
random HN or perhaps they just don’t want to be blamed when more people die
(even if it’s the right choice). Opening up society is a fundamentally
_political_ decision that I’m not personally willing to cede to unelected
scientists.

~~~
chasd00
don't addicts die all day everyday in the streets of SanFran? I think the
authorities are so timid because they know it can happen to them and they're
terrified.

~~~
shuckles
There were about 320 overdose deaths in San Francisco last year, so close to
one a day.

------
fasteddie31003
I hate how the idea of reopening has split down political party lines. This is
definitely not the time for partisanship. Now that Republicans have come out
as pro-reopening, San Francisco will be the last city to reopen in the
country. 0 COVID-19 infections will be too many.

~~~
aabhay
The new order includes several approved low risk activities and transparent
indicators that will be used to gauge safety to further reopen. Is there
something about this you don’t feel is backed by science?

~~~
nradov
The original order was never based on any sound science to begin with. That
doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad policy. But it was a faith based policy,
not evidence based.

~~~
rtkwe
What’s not sound science about separating people to slow down the spread? It’s
the only real option for anything like a quarantine with such a long
incubation time (and as recently discovered asymptomatic infections) and the
absolute lack of tests we had at the beginning of this outbreak...

It’s simple math that reducing the number of people in contact with each other
would reduce the number of people that got infected.

~~~
clairity
> “ What’s not sound science about separating people to slow down the spread?
> It’s the only real option...”

no, that’s the nuclear option, not a surgical strike, much less the only
option, and based on an insufficiently precise perception of the problem.

the mechanism of spread can be crudely described as spitting into each others’
mouths, not standing nearby, touching, or breathing in the same room. with the
problem sufficiently, if crudely, framed, it should be easier to imagine other
ways of preventing spread besides locking everyone in their abodes. physical
distancing by itself, for instance, is probably sufficient for most folks. for
“essential” workers, you might add a mask.

~~~
rtkwe
In the US they tried the just stay apart message before the stay at home
orders and it wasn't working, people still crowded onto beaches in Florida
over spring break and into concerts and restaurants all over the country.
Ideally yes you'd just say stay apart from people and hand out masks which
were getting sold out in a lot of places.

Without ordering places closed there's too much incentive for businesses to
fudge and force their employees to come to work. Don't forget there were runs
and shortages of masks so service industry employees wouldn't have complete
reliable access to simple masks.

> the mechanism of spread can be crudely described as spitting into each
> others’ mouths

Somewhat true but coughing etc makes loads of the tiny particles that can
carry the virus and they can linger and spread.

There's a lot that could have been done better but it requires a level of
coordination and action the US isn't super great at, both in general and right
now in particular..

~~~
clairity
> "There's a lot that could have been done better but it requires a level of
> coordination and action the US isn't super great at, both in general and
> right now in particular."

the US, by construction, is all-in on decentralized solutions, and one of its
strengths is resisting unwarranted coordinated and centralized action, which
is simply an amassment of power, because that's _inevitably_ destabilizing
(usually over long time periods, which humans have a hard time properly and
understandably rationalizing about).

what's generally warranted, at a national level? defense and international
relations. centralizing power is so threatening to the existence of the state
itself, we limit it to other mortal threats _to the state_ (international
relations are centralized so other nations, say, russians, don't pick apart
the states).

we are obligated by our forebearers to apply our ingenuity and our massive
resources to finding a solution given the few constraints placed on us by the
constitution. we do that by applying our brains, teasing apart the problem,
trying solutions, and generally being good people. we don't go running to the
apron strings of the nanny state.

~~~
rtkwe
I know it’s intentionally made into a diffuse set of states but there’s far
more than just those two issues where federal power makes sense, environmental
regulation in particular since air and water pollution don’t stop at state
lines.

But we’re getting off on a tangent about the fundamental design of the US
government made at a very different point in history. I don’t think either of
us can convince the other here before we both wind up [dead].

On the topic of bungled mismanagement there’s things like states being forced
to bid against each other for various medical supplies on the open market and
then after being paid for the federal government taking those supplies to
redistribute. Instead of those steps just buy them all an do the distribution
based on the need in each state which won’t be tied to how much they have to
spend. We could have started programs earlier this year to increase the supply
of PPE and ventilators knowing that this would inevitably come to the US. We
could have followed through on programs like this [0] to ensure that there
were cheap easy to build options for ventilators instead of allowing the
existing companies to buy out the company contracted and then get out of the
obligation because ‘it wouldn’t be profitable enough.’

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-
us-v...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-
ventilator-shortage.html)

~~~
clairity
ok, but supply of PPE and ventilators to medical workers mainly concerns
treatment rather than transmission.

stay-at-home and physical distancing primarily concern transmission.

we want to control transmission to reduce death and suffering, not eliminate
them. even with dystopian and draconian measures (not to mention economy-
destroying), reducing death and suffering to zero is effectively impossible
(and seasonal recurrence is highly likely). moreover, the US is simply not
designed, for good reason, to willingly tolerate such measures.

life is full of (similarly likely) risks, and we don't generally panic over
them. if this were plague-levels of bad, more draconian measures might be
warranted, but this isn't that.

sub-linear transmission is likely the best we can do.

with that in mind, physical distancing (combined with other carefully targeted
guidelines like quarantining the sick and having workers wear masks) doesn't
need to be perfect to be effective at reducing transmission to sub-linear
levels. people who are likely to cough for any reason are already highly
discouraged from going out, and most people in public are already hyper-aware
of not coughing openly, especially not into each other's mouths.

stay-at-home doesn't meaningfully decrease the risk further, but it's a huge
risk to social order.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its all about the level of risk, which many of us are not so confidently
dismissing. Everything follows from that. To assume its 'probably going to be
ok' is potentially callously condemning a million people to die needlessly.
All for lack of patience.

------
cs702
If many people get very sick simultaneously, they would not only overwhelm
hospitals, they would also inflict a _disorderly, involuntary shutdown of
large swaths of the economy, driven by fear_ \-- instead of the orderly,
voluntary shutdown we have at present, driven by government mandate.

We all want to avoid _that_.

~~~
rootusrootus
On the flip side, NYC just showed us they can suffer through 20% of the
population becoming infected at about the same time without their hospitals
utterly collapsing.

There is probably some happy medium somewhere. For certain, flattening the
curve so much that there are just a few new infections every week is not how
we end the lock down.

~~~
gdilla
And? That was the point. It's better than 40% of the population becoming
infected at the same time AND the hospitals totally collapsing.

~~~
rootusrootus
I'm sorry you misunderstood. ~20% was my upper bound, ~0 the lower bound, and
my opinion that we should find a middle ground.

~~~
throwaway1777
20 isn't actually the upper bound though

------
01100011
I'm surprised we're not seeing plans for some businesses to reopen with
restrictions. I think it will be a while before we allow haircuts and
manicures again, but I see no reason why we can't increase the types of
businesses allowed open. Limiting occupancy, requiring PPE, and enforcing
social distancing appear to be reasonable requirements. I hope the politicians
and government workers are busy trying to find a middle-ground and not just
playing it safe to cover their asses.

~~~
jwlake
The thing I'm confused by is why a costco is open that has like 1000 people
per day and a flower shop that has 20 customers per day isn't open. Is the
flower shop dangerous? Is it less essential on the yearly timeframe? This
lockdown isn't measured in days right now, it's measured in months. What's
"essential" in days is not what's "essential" in months.

~~~
urban_strike
Flowers aren't consumed for survival, i.e. "essential". I'm not sure how
intervals of time has any effect on that.

~~~
in_cahoots
Shouldn’t the metric incorporate the risk each activity entails? A good
example is gardeners. Gardeners work alone or in teams of two, can obey social
distancing, and generally don’t even talk to their clients on a regular basis.
What is the threat here? What is so magical about the word essential? On the
flip side large alcohol stores like Bevmo can stay open and serve hundreds of
customers a day because they sell cheese and crackers and somehow that makes
them ‘essential’.

It doesn’t make any sense, unless the true goal is enforcement through fear
and propaganda. Disrupt people’s lives enough and they’ll start to think that
the alternative must be truly terrible. That’s why you get articles claiming
that even young people are susceptible where the simple math shows that the
risk is low. Cherry-picked stories about the handful of children who died from
the virus, instead of articles about the kids going hungry because they can’t
get two free meals a day. It’s fear-mongering as public policy.

~~~
objectivetruth
1) Liquor stores are kept open because a (surprisingly high) percentage of the
population are severe alcoholics and sudden withdrawal can kill them.

2) No public health professional has time to list and quantify all of the
routine processes of every profession to create a complex matrix of risk. And
99% of the public would ignore that matrix if it was created and published.
The simpler and more effective public health communication is "stay home."

3) Your hypothetical pair of gardeners might not see their clients that day,
but they still get up, get breakfast, get supplies at the store, fuel up their
truck and equipment at the gas station, drop off a check at the bank after
work, etc., and they can interact with other people at each of those stops.

4) Articles about young people that die from the virus are not trying to hide
"simple math that the risk is low." They are trying to convince young people
that the risk is non-zero, to prevent them from spreading the virus while pre-
or asymptomatic.

5) "Children dying from a virus" and "children going hungry because they can't
get two free meals a day" are BOTH public policy issues. Dooming an extra
hundred? thousand? ten thousand? people to severe illness and death to avoid
having to deliver emergency rations and meals to a million people is a false
dilemma. In my medium-sized US city, schools and other community agencies have
been distributing meals and rations for seven weeks now and we have zero cases
of death by starvation.

~~~
in_cahoots
Alcoholics are a pretty resourceful bunch, I’m sure they can find their local
Wal-Mart, Target, or 7/11\. Nobody is going to die because Bevmo is closed.

As to your point about selectively closing businesses being hard, isn’t that a
good thing? We shouldn’t put tens of millions of people out of jobs because
it’s easier than enumerating what can and can’t stay open. The burden should
be on the experts to make their case; after all they have had more than a
month now to figure out a plan of attack.

How many deaths due to coronavirus are too many? Right now it seems like
public health experts are taking the view that any death is one too many. And
they’re willing to present or skew the facts to get that point across. I would
rather them be upfront about the benefits and risks, rather than take a
paternalistic viewpoint. There are real costs to keeping the country closed,
and we shouldn’t discount them.

------
walterbell
People forget that there is no law which can put everyone under house arrest.
This is all done voluntarily.

Why is it ok for people to shop at Walmart and not at their local small
business that sells the same goods and is better equipped to enforce social
distancing, with customers explicitly opting in to visit the smaller store?

If a small business can protect workers and customers, and a comparable large
business is already open, the small business can consider opening and
preparing to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court. With video cameras
ready.

There may be a few hundred bored lawyers who remember the US constitution and
would take their case pro bono. The federal government recently said it is
willing to join lawsuits against states, on constitutional grounds.

Obviously, the business in question should be carefully chosen to maximize
health, legal and business outcomes. But with many businesses shutdown,
there's a large pool of candidates to be triaged.

~~~
Skunkleton
Almost none of what you said is true. This is not voluntary, there are laws
which give these powers, essential businesses can stay open regardless of
their size, recording breaking the law while conducting non essential business
won’t help you in the supreme court, the federal government is saying lots and
doing very little.

~~~
cabaalis
> there are laws which give these powers

IANAL, but I know some of you are so I'm asking here. I've read that
challenges to these orders will not succeed because of emergency declarations.
The emergency declarations are supposedly backed by some law, correct?

Don't we have a document in the national archives that guarantees things like
peaceable assembly and not prohibiting exercise of religion? Yet we have
people being arrested or cited for assembling, and pastors being put under
arrest for holding church? Is it the temporary nature that allows this to be
done?

Regarding the law that allows this kind of stuff, how does that compare to a
constitution which says "congress shall make no law ..."?

~~~
wpietri
If you're really interested in the topic, the podcast "All the President's
Lawyers" discussed that this week. But in short, you can't read a couple of
sentences from the constitution literally and expect that to override a couple
hundred years of judicial interpretation.

Regarding the first amendment in particular, one relevant area of law is
"time, place, and manner". E.g., just because you have free speech doesn't
mean that you can go outside at 3 am with a bullhorn and start ranting; the
cops can rightly cite or arrest you. More here: [https://www.mtsu.edu/first-
amendment/article/1023/time-place...](https://www.mtsu.edu/first-
amendment/article/1023/time-place-and-manner-restrictions)

~~~
cabaalis
Thank you, this was very helpful. Also glad to see a link to my alma mater.

------
killion
We are down 50% from the peak of Covid deaths in California. It seems likely
we will have one or more days of zero Covid deaths before the end of May. That
is the measure I assume they are going for at this point.

Source: [https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-
america/cali...](https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-
america/california)

~~~
cactus2093
This is untrue. We may have plateaued but we haven't yet seen a significant
drop from the peak yet. 4 days ago there were 115 deaths, then 93 the next
day, then 89 the next, that's as high as the peak you're referring to. Source
- daily department of health releases
[https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/New-
Release-2020....](https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/New-
Release-2020.aspx)

The drop you are inferring from your graph appears to be a be a reflection of
a noisy data set, and the graph is a week out of date.

~~~
usaar333
We should separate LA from ex-LA. Bay area has peaked.. if you exclude nursing
homes (which the lockdown relatively failed to protect), it's even sharper of
a drop.

[https://covid-19.direct/metro/BayArea](https://covid-19.direct/metro/BayArea)

~~~
vkou
Unless you intend to setup border checkpoints, with two-week quarantine camps
for people traveling from LA to the Bay area, you have to look holistically at
the region.

It doesn't make one whit of sense to ban flights from Paris, but allow anyone
who feels like it to drive up from LA.

------
Lramseyer
If I am reading the data correctly, considering total number of cases, and
current rates of growth, the Bay Area is doing really well compared to the
rest of the USA in terms of preventing the spread. [1] There will inevitably
be areas that will recover sooner than others, and I could see the Bay Area
being one of those places. How is the Bay Area going to handle that? Are these
places going to station cops on county lines and screen people wanting to come
into a "recovered" region?

[1] [https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-
case...](https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-cases-
tracking-outbreak/)

~~~
greendave
This problem generalizes to state-lines as well.

Moreover, restrictions are not uniform. For example, San Mateo county
restricts movement to within 5 miles of one's residence. Other bay area
counties like Santa Clara do not. So legally somebody from Santa Clara county
can visit San Mateo county (for exercise), but not the other way around.

A well-managed response would include curbs on movement, be it at the state or
county level.

~~~
wpietri
Definitely. A friend had been working in Malaysia and surrounding areas when
all this got going. He had to quarantine 2 weeks in Malaysia before he was
allowed on a plane back to his home in Amsterdam, and now has to self-
quarantine for another 2 weeks there given the airports he passed through. I
could easily see similar restrictions. E.g., anybody wanting to enter a
Western Pact state might be required to quarantine 2 weeks upon arrival.

------
davidw
There's a good quote cited often on Strong Towns: "problems have solutions,
predicaments have outcomes".

We're in a predicament. We blew weeks, maybe months ignoring the problem at
the federal level, so now we don't have the PPE or testing and tracing
infrastructure we could have had at this point that would allow some cautious,
yet safe reopening in places. The stay home orders work, but they're
devastating to the economy. Reopening in an unsafe way would be devastating to
_both_ the economy and public health: smart people are going to stay home
anyway because they don't want to get sick and die.

There are no 'good' options at this point. Something like this plan seems like
the best bet, but we need to get supplies and infrastructure on line as
quickly as possible, and understand that the federal government isn't likely
to be of much help.

[https://www.nga.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/NGA-
Report.pd...](https://www.nga.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/NGA-Report.pdf)

------
killion
I just noticed that it’s 75 days between March 17 and May 31. Wuhan’s lockdown
was 76 days long.

~~~
BurningFrog
The Wuhan lockdown was also far more strict.

~~~
dpau
And measures were not limited to Wuhan. By the time restrictions were lifted
in Wuhan, the Chinese government had implemented quarantines, surveillance,
contact tracing and testing procedures throughout the entire country. While
here in the US we have a hodge-podge of approaches from each state with
varying success, and no restriction of movement. Not saying we should adopt
authoritarian policies, but we'll only have the virus under control when every
US state has it under control.

------
pjdemers
Lockdowns are like rounds of layoffs. Better to have one too big than several
too small.

------
lipbisque
This is bizarre... There is a statewide stay-at-home order in effect until
further notice. Any less-restrictive orders, such as San Francisco's, are null
and void.

~~~
favorited
It does allow them to implement more specific restrictions. For example, with
today's extension, SF is closing more street to cars inside Golden Gate Park
to allow people to exercise outdoors while maintaining a safe distance.

------
mrfusion
Anyone thinking of moving out?

~~~
m463
I can't help but wonder - is the bay area housing crisis being resolved now?

~~~
favorited
Nah, there's enough tech people with $$ in the bank and reliable RSUs that
it's not going to break. Unfortunately.

------
annoyingnoob
Seems like we will need more Fed dollars flowing. Seems like recovery is going
to be slow with more pain to come.

~~~
rootusrootus
If we intend to keep the lockdown going until we reach herd immunity, then
Congress needs to open the taps and let the basic income flow. Trillions upon
trillions of dollars, for as long as it takes. And they might want to get
medicaid eligibility ramped up as well. We don't have to call it single payer.

------
Animats
_" The new order will include limited easing of specific restrictions for a
small number of lower-risk activities."_

Wonder what the details are? Maybe we can get some parks re-opened.

------
redis_mlc
When you wanna run for the Whitehouse, you gotta play it safe.

------
joyceschan
If this continues until fall. I'd live somewhere else where the economy is
open, and take all necessary precautions to protect others and myself.

------
ccktlmazeltov
Is this surprising? I'd expect the shelter-in-place to be extended until at
least the end of the summer.

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

Today I understand.

~~~
jshevek
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.

~~~
rajup
A very apt and unfortunately true characterization.

------
forrestthewoods
Serious question: if restrictions aren’t lifted now then will they be? What
will be meaningfully different June 1st rather than May 1st?

Is it shelter-in-place until we get more testing? Or the AppleGoogle contact
tracing? Or is it shelter-in-place until a vaccine... in 18 months?

What are the conditions required to start slowly relaxing the shutdown?

Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes. I haven’t left my home for two full
months. I started preparing for the worst in early February. There are many
options in between “full lockdown” and “fully open”. We won’t be in full
lockdown for 18 months. So, what are the requirements to start slowly lifting.

~~~
roel_v
Probably downvotes because the answer to your question is the same as to 90%
of all uninformed questions online - "we don't know". There are so many
unknowns, things go day by day or week by week at best. I too get annoyed at
the 1000'd idiot asking 'but will I be able to go on holiday in August?'. Not
saying you're an idiot, just trying to explain why others, like me, would be
annoyed at your post and would want to see less posts like it.

~~~
icelancer
Then it would be best if Gov. Newsom and the other elected officials put hard
data and target metrics out, not platitudes and "we must get better before we
reopen" statements.

~~~
roel_v
Well they don't know, and neither does anyone else. So it's either throw out
an arbitrary goal now, and run the risk of having to change it and people
saying 'you keep moving the goal post', or not doing it and people saying
'there's no target or coherent policy'. There's no winning here.

Every couple of days there is a bitchfest on here about idiot managers
demanding exact prognoses on software development projects, and then we all
agree that because there are unknown unknowns, that's pretty much impossible.
How is this any different, if not an order of magnitude more complicated
still?

I think the main problem is people expecting government to know everything
because - well, they're the government, probably? But they're just a bunch of
people like you and me. The fact of the matter is that _nobody knows that
much_. You can complain about that, but that doesn't change the fact that some
things are just unknowable at the timeframes we're working on.

~~~
icelancer
>> Every couple of days there is a bitchfest on here about idiot managers
demanding exact prognoses on software development projects, and then we all
agree that because there are unknown unknowns, that's pretty much impossible.

That's not what I - or most people - are asking for. We're asking for
something akin to the agile product cycle. Give us blocks of time you are
spending on the problem, tell us what you are doing in that block of time in a
transparent and modular way, and tell us how much time per project you are
spending and what you hope to accomplish in that time period.

It's... pretty simple. No one is asking Gov. Newsom to say "we'll be back in
business in 4 weeks" but he's got to do better than zero data and zero
transparency.

------
marcell
Blanket lockdown has to end.

This policy has outlived its usefulness, and is harming people's quality of
life without a clear goal.

The initial premise of the "flatten the curve" memes was to avoid overwhelming
hospitals. The shelter-in-place has not only had this effect, it's been too
effective. Hospital utilization in the bay area is at around 10% when you
count surge capacity that has been added [1].

Meanwhile, data is coming out to show that coronavirus has a very low fatality
risk to anyone under the age of 50, and to anyone without pre-existing health
conditions. A blanket shutdown does not make any sense when the vulnerable
demographic has been clearly identified. How is it moral to order people to
shelter in place when their risk of death is around 0.01% for 18-45 year olds.

Blanket lockdown doesn't make sense anymore. There is no risk posed to the
majority of the population from covid-19. We need to switch to targeted
approach, and let people get back to their lives.

Our political leaders (in California) are being fearful, afraid to take
leadership and base their decisions on data.

[1] [https://www.smchealth.org/post/san-mateo-county-
covid-19-dat...](https://www.smchealth.org/post/san-mateo-county-
covid-19-data-1)

[2]
[https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#downl...](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#download)
and [https://www.6sqft.com/new-york-covid-antibody-test-
prelimina...](https://www.6sqft.com/new-york-covid-antibody-test-preliminary-
results/)

~~~
scott_s
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_.

~~~
akira2501
> What you think of as failure - hospitals currently low utilization - is in
> fact success.

What bothers me is the contention that my rights are contingent upon reported
capacity of already existing hospitals. If this is truly a concern, and our
rights our primary, then we should be building more hospitals so that we no
longer have to make this Faustian bargain.

It seems impractical and short-sighted to continue these measured based upon
this single metric, especially when there are so many other ways to have a
lasting impact on the problem.

Aside from that, I don't personally believe it's the purpose of the government
to save lives at any cost. Even the Police won't give you that guarantee.

~~~
thethethethe
> What bothers me is the contention that my rights are contingent upon
> reported capacity of already existing hospitals

This is pretty selfish. What about all of the old and immunocompromised people
that could _die_? What about the families of those people? These people
deserve rights too and I’d say their right to _stay alive_ trumps your “right”
to get a hair cut or whatever

~~~
umvi
Let the old and immuno-compromised shelter in place then while the rest of us
build herd immunity. We don't shut down the tobacco or alcohol industry even
though second hand smoke and DUIs kill orders of magnitude more innocents than
covid-19 ever will. Millions of people die every year. That's never going to
change - such is life. You gotta draw a line somewhere and I think the "save
lives at all costs, even the cost of the nation's economy" attitude of
covid-19 is too far. You'll pay for a ruined economy later in suicides and
increased crime (not to mention suicides snuff out way more man-years of life
than old people dying of sickness who were already nearing the end of their
rope).

~~~
thethethethe
You don’t think that covid-19 growing largely unchecked, infecting millions of
Americans and overwhelming our healthcare system won’t crash the economy and
kill young people? We have a lot to lose and betting it all on for the
economy, which would likely be ruined either way, seems foolish to me.

~~~
umvi
I suppose I just don't believe that would happen. You can still practice
social distancing/face masks/hand washing without shelter-in-place. I believe
those three things alone would significantly slow down the spread to
manageable levels. So I simply don't see a scenario where it "grows unchecked"
to millions in the USA. It would hit millions _eventually_ (like swine flu)
but it would be manageable (not "unchecked"). Most of the US is geographically
separated and not densely populated (except for cities like NYC), and we are
only at 3M cases globally and that is with months of growth.

Lastly, even if it grew unchecked, I don't believe overwhelming the healthcare
system would crash the economy. It might devastate the healthcare industry,
but it wouldn't devastate _all_ industries like prolonged, no-end-in-sight
lockdowns are doing. I also don't believe it would "kill [significant amounts
of] young people" because I believe the mortality rate is much lower than
currently estimated.

Suicide is already killing more young people than covid-19 due to lockdown. 2
USAFA cadets committed suicide because of lockdown orders this month, yet 0
cadets have died from covid-19.

------
anm89
The reddit hive mind has become terrifying. It has seriously had a tangible
effect on my faith in humanity.

I never got onto Twitter but I assume it's about the same.

~~~
ultrarunner
I intentionally moved from reddit to HN after this same specific realization.
After a few years it seemed like reddit would be a good place for hyper local
info on covid, but I quickly saw the same effect— misanthropy in the face of
so many people trying to do the best they could for others during hard times.
It’s off topic here, but I seriously wonder what specifically caused reddit to
adopt the largely toxic culture it has.

~~~
filoleg
My guess for the main reason Reddit feels so toxic would be younger
demographic whose primary concern is demonstrating how much "smarter" they are
than an average person. The commenting guidelines are also super lax, and the
topics covered are very diverse.

Which is mostly the opposite of HN, which skews older and actually more
educated, comment guidelines are much stricter, and the topics covered are
much more technical and narrow. Even non-tech topics covered on HN (e.g., in-
depth discussions of particular judicial rulings) aren't really of much
interest to an average teenager or a person in general. Which leads to a few
different potential effects:

a) Older and more educated people have much less reason to "flex" how smart
they are. The also have fewer occurrences of delusions of grandeur/Dunning-
Krueger effect.

b) Niche technical topics have a barrier to entry, which already eliminates a
gigantic portion of the toxic audience. The topics themselves are also largely
uninteresting to an average person.

c) Stricter comment moderation eliminates a lot of potential toxic material,
like every other comment devolving into a shitty attempt at a joke or a
personal attack.

And for me, personally, the biggest difference seems to be that on HN, there
is a way higher prevalence of people trying to figure out _what_ is right,
instead of _who_ is right. I am glad to be proven wrong in an argument here,
because it gets me one step closer to finding the "most correct" answer. And
the arguments themselves (usually) tend to be very polite. While on reddit, it
seems like the vast majority (outside of some specialized and fairly niche
subreddits) is just obsessed with proving that their answer is the "most
correct" one, so they go all out on the means to reach that goal, which tends
to any sort of arguments to become very uncivil very fast.

~~~
koyote
I think the upvoting mechanism is quite a large differentiator as well.

Upvotes should be for 'contributes to discussion' not for 'I agree'. But it's
universally used an agreement/disagreement button on Reddit which amplifies
the hivemind massively.

That plus the fact that downvoting is only granted once you've spent a
considerable amount of time participating in the community can have a huge
impact on the nature of discussions.

~~~
jshevek
Your last point is less impactful recently, as opposed to years ago. Years ago
one needed to making numerous substantive contributions to earn downvoting
power. Recently, a critical mass of users has been rewarding participants in
reddit style humor threads and snarky comments, allowing new users to
accumulate upvotes without substance, and without experiencing the more
measured culture of traditional HN.

------
j79
I told my wife that I've come assumed shelter-in-place IS in place until a
vaccine has been developed. Either that, or herd immunity is to a point where
going outside isn't a game of Russian roulette.

~~~
skellington
As usual, American leaders are choosing OPTION 3 which is the worst option:

OPTION 1. (SWEDEN) Control spread just enough to not overwhelm the health care
system, but no more than that, in order to get to herd immunity as quickly as
possible. This assumes that the area-under-the-curve will be very similar to
any option that spreads the time-frame out. This level of lockdown is possible
to implement for long periods of time because its impact on regular life is
relatively moderate and it doesn't require extreme testing availability or
extreme population compliance.

OPTION 2. (S KOREA) Control with aggressive contact tracing in order to
attempt to eradicate or outlive COVID. This assumes that COVID can be
controlled and that doing so will ultimately reduce the area-under-the-curve
(because if it didn't, spreading the time-frame out would be pointless). This
level of lockdown is possible to implement for long periods of time because
its impact on regular life is relatively moderate but it does require extreme
testing availability and very high population compliance.

We don't yet know what the full impact of 1 vs 2 will be because of
externalities that are hard to model, but both seem like legitimate
approaches.

OPTION 3. (USA) Control spread aggressively so herd immunity won't be reached
for a very long time, do this using a shelter-in-place model that will destroy
the economy so you'll be forced to abandon it at some point, have no post
shelter-in-place plan so resurgence is practically guaranteed since the goal
isn't herd immunity nor aggressive contact tracing.

Option 3 is the most destructive, so let's choose that one.

~~~
Skunkleton
We already missed the boat on options 1 and 2 due to various governmental
incompetencies. Did you not notice that a full third of all cases globally
have been in America?

~~~
skellington
I disagree that we missed the boat on OPTION 1. Option 1 may be the only path
currently available to us by removing restrictions in a controlled way.

OPTION 2 is even still a possibility IF we massively ramped up testing and
contact tracing. This is possible in theory, but we just not hearing ANYTHING
about the real status of mass testing and/or contact tracing procedures
(including things like the apple-google app).

~~~
Skunkleton
It’s frustrating to consider, but if we were capable of the level of testing
we would need to re open in the next few weeks, why haven’t we started doing
it?

------
nickysielicki
Everyone in here is arguing about data and forgetting the context -- we
entered this whole mess in a country that has never been so divided. _Of
course_ that's relevant. _Of course_ that doesn't go away. The only question
that you have to ask is whether you're on Team Fauci or Team Trump.

Why the hell would anyone ever expect the SF local government to ever find
themselves on Team Trump, if given the option?

------
KorematsuFred
This is absolute nuts. There is no data that is being provided for such heavy
handed measures. Virus can kill but that does not mean we should hide indoors
for foreseeable future.

------
microdrum
Absurd. This is illogical. Expect this now to be challenged in court.

------
microdrum
Why does he have the right to do this?

[https://www.smchealth.org/bio/scott-morrow-
md](https://www.smchealth.org/bio/scott-morrow-md)

------
cavisne
States should have let the feds make this decision. The states who hate the
feds (california, washington, new york) are also the ones who have the
trickiest political decision to make, as reopening in dense cities is always
going to be a tradeoff.

The states who like the feds (middle america, texas) have the easiest decision
as their states aren't dense.

Now Democrat politicians, who prefer to make intersectional, empathetic
decisions have to make the toughest political choice imaginable.

