
San Francisco flattened the curve early. Now, coronavirus cases are surging - mitchbob
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/02/san-francisco-coronavirus-surge/
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foobarbazetc
People stayed inside for 3 months to buy the feds time to do something. And
the state ran out of money.

Clearly, nothing is going to change at the federal level so people have
quarantine fatigue.

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ponsin
the feds provided large quantities of ventilators and are funding multiple
vaccine research. What else should they do? Every state has enough power to
mandate mask wearing, quarantine, school closings without federal intervention

~~~
mindslight
The debt black hole pushing everyone to reopen is a direct product of the
Federal Reserve. A real shut down would involve a moratorium on rent
denominated in USD.

(Never mind all of the little bits of discouragement the federal government
has been feeding down to states, eg threatening to withhold school funding)

~~~
ponsin
1\. I'm pretty sure that states can decide to not evict tenants (thereby
severely hurting landlords who possibly have multiple mortgages to cover the
rentals.

2\. Did any other country uniformly cancel all rent?

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malloryerik
Some like Germany safeguarded salaries instead by ensuring that workers
remained employed. That's to say that they recompensed firms for salaries on
condition workers remained employed during the lockdowns.

The US should have more leeway because it has the world's reserve currency.

I haven't worked it out but I'd like to hear why the Fed or Treasury (let's
just say federal govt) couldn't simply replace lost real estate loan payments
by adding to banks' balance sheets.

~~~
ponsin
how is Germany's solution any different than giving unemployment benefits for
furloughed employees? Regarding the Fed, they _could_ just print gobs of
money, and probably nothing bad will happen in the near future. But if you
want examples of why printing gobs of money is bad, just looks at the many
other countries that tried that. Also, I would think that if the fed decides
to print gobs of money, it would be bad for them to allocate all of it to
repaying bank mortgages. I would much prefer the money gets distributed to the
people (eg. $1,200 per person) or as loans to keep small businesses afloat
until after the pandemic

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anm89
I'm really not being an apologist here but how did Europe avoid this? I mean
let's say Paris did everything right. Isn't this still where you end up once
people venture back out?

Clearly not but I don't understand how.

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opportune
I found this data [0, 1] from the economist which does suggest that Western
European countries really did mitigate the virus and continue to do so. Excess
deaths are a more robust measure of the effects of the virus because they're
unaffected by testing differences and idiosyncrasies between countries.

I have no idea if there are any travel restrictions in place internally to the
Schengen area right now but I wouldn't be surprised if the free movement in
the US between areas with very good control over the virus and area where it
went haywire was a factor in the current spikes.

Hispanic people are greatly over represented in current coronavirus cases in
SF [2], supposedly because they are more likely to be essential first-line
workers, but I think also having to live in very cramped living situations
(e.g. 5 people in a 2 bed apartment) is another factor. So in that case wealth
inequality could be another contributing factor as to why cases are higher in
the US than the rest of the world.

[0] [https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-
covid](https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid) [1]
[https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2020/07/15/tracking...](https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2020/07/15/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries) [2]
[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/health/coronavirus-
hispanic-s...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/health/coronavirus-hispanic-sf-
spread/index.html)

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polygot
[http://archive.is/5kSVB](http://archive.is/5kSVB)

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ocdtrekkie
I definitely worry about this here in the Midwest, where we originally slayed
the curve. But the key difference on these later spikes is testing
infrastructure is better developed, so we _should_ be able to isolate people
more effectively.

