Yeah, this seems to be about the right direction. California as a whole (I don't have access to Bay Area data specifically) is clearly at a relatively stable peak, but the new infection rate hasn't dropped much and there's comparatively little room for error.
Other states are looking better[1]. Vermont, Alaska, Montana and Hawaii are all well below their peak infection rates and still dropping. Those are the places that should start relaxing rules earlier.
[1] Some are looking much worse, of course. Watch Nebraska in particular: their new infection rate has been growing at close to 10% per day for almost three weeks, and at that rate they'll be at a New York scale outbreak in just two more. I haven't seen any coverage of what's going on there (i.e. whether it's a specific local outbreak like the Smithfield one in SD).
Santa Clara has dropped even more significantly: https://covid-19.direct/county/CA/Santa%20Clara. It's at 10 cases/day/million now (3% test positive rate), below even Germany who is opening schools.
People give too much weight to overall sparsity/density, discounting how much human behavior has a role in creating personal density even in seemingly sparse areas. You can see massive infections in very sparse rural areas so long as people are congregating and not taking precautions. That seems to be what's happening in Nebraska.
Behavior matters more. Here in Manhattan we're past the peak solely because of changes in behavior. It doesn't matter how sense the built environment is when most people are barely leaving their homes.
New arrivals including domestic flights to Hawaii are being subject to heavy quarantine with follow-up, requirements of full documentation of where you will be staying, etc.
Preaching to the choir. I guess what I mean is that as a small island state far from anywhere else, if it gets bad, it gets _much worse_ than on the mainland.
Indicator 1 (cases) and 2 (hospitalization) are clearly met.
Indicator 3 (test capacity) has a very aggressive target. 200 tests a day per 100k? Why must it be this high? (Germany by comparison, opening schools now, is at 80 per 100k). Santa Clara County is already at a 3% positive rate week to date (Korea level during their Feb epidemic)
Indicator 4 (case investigation) status is not disclosed but I would guess is met or close to met in Santa Clara county given how steep the drop-off has been in cases and confirmation by other counties (Contra Costa). Of course, it gets harder to contact trace as you ease restrictions.
Indicator 5 is a bit fuzzy - supply under what hospitalization assumptions?
If it can give you a comparison point, France wants to be able to do 700k tests per week in less than 2 weeks time to have test and trace capability and start lifting the lockdown. That comes out to approximately 150 tests a day per 100k. The following reason was given.
The models predict 1000-3000 new cases a day around the time lockdown would be lifted. Each new case will imply 20-25 other persons in contact in the preceding days. 3000 x 25 = 75k tests per day, ie ~115 per day per 100k. Going to 150 allow an extra margin to also set up testing campaigns in sensitive places, eg nursing homes.
Interestingly, LA county is nearly at that target. The public health system (excluding internal test capabilities at hospitals etc) can do 16K tests/ day for a population of 10 million. So about 160 tests a day/ 100 K.
The Bay Area counties included here are all pretty dense, so it makes sense that they'd want to have more test coverage per capita than a full country might need.
> Indicator 3 (test capacity) has a very aggressive target. 200 tests a day per 100k? Why must it be this high? (Germany by comparison, opening schools now, is at 80 per 100k). Santa Clara County is already at a 3% positive rate week to date (Korea level during their Feb epidemic)
To actually be able to control the outbreak while people are out and about you need to be able to test lots of people whenever a new case is discovered to see if they actually passed it on to anyone. Each new case will trigger many cases especially if they're showing up sick at the hospital/doctor which means they've potentially been spreading the disease for 2 weeks.
I suspect 5 isn't fuzzy in practice. My guess is that they delegate the details to each hospital, which will have very detailed notions of what they need. Especially given that their supply people will have been sweating this question for the last six weeks.
3% week to date might change (in either direction). SCC reports tests by date of specimen collection, so the last 2 days are definitely not complete data, and a significant portion of the last 5 days are not either.
Regarding #4, with the ubiquity of call blocking, I don't see how it is possible for them to reach 90% of the people that may have been exposed, especially once people find out that picking up that phone call means you will be in quarantine. To make matters worse, the authorities likely won't be able to tell you where/when you were exposed and to whom (medical privacy). This target is basically unreachable IMHO.
A round number repeated for 4 metrics in a row is never really meant to be taken seriously. If it turns out that they can only reach 80% of contacts, they'll adjust the plan to account for that - nobody's going to let it be the one factor that keeps restrictions from being loosened.
3) might be linked to cases per million and relative growth rates. Germany has roughly 400 active cases per million, California has about 1,000, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bay Area is well above CA as a whole given its density.
Bay Area is well below CA as a whole. Cases have grown by ~375/million in last 14 days to proxy for "active" cases. Santa Clara County's growth is only ~235/million
I also like that there are numerical targets for these indicators. It's also great that the entire Bay Area is coordinating a regional response. What I'd like to see is some alignment at the state level, as well, but it doesn't look like the state has actually published specific benchmarks yet.
"Other activities that can resume under the new order include residential moves and the use of certain shared outdoor recreational facilities that were previously ordered closed, like skate parks, but not others that involve shared equipment or physical contact." -- I believe this means they will open up parks that were previously closed and allow people to visit again.
As mentioned in the daily governor's briefing, there is some kind of 2D matrix (or map) of places vs. types of activities or businesses that can be incrementally allowed to open or get to different levels of restrictions lifted. (or I hope this is the case, and not just a talking point)
How are people to know / track this? Is there some visual dashboard that everyone can refer to daily and hopefully have consistent definitions to know whether their business is covered? Press conferences (and press releases in inevitable text form) are an inefficient method having to speak the words of each change in circumstance as this continues to evolve. New Zealand seems to have a clear system of Level 1/2/3/4 that everyone has the definitions of.
This is going to have to go on for months, remember.
Even in New Zealand the definitions of each level aren't entirely clear. To the point that our Health minister has been caught out multiple times breeching our lockdown conditions.
A few days ago we reduced alert level and many people and businesses have been witnessed breaking the conditions. Some people were always going to do whatever they want, but there are many other that have been confused by rules that change day to day.
> Whether we have the capacity to investigate all COVID-19 cases and trace all of their contacts, isolating those who test positive and quarantining the people who may have been exposed.
You are touching upon a real problem here. America hasn't had excess labor for decades now, and so there are no systems in place to rapidly mobilize it. Governments in countries like China and India can scale from zero to millions of temporary employees for any project or effort in a matter of days. Even if San Francisco wants to pay people to stand at every intersection of the city and conduct tests, it will be months before they can even fill out the employment forms and finalize the logistics.
I have no issue with UI benefits, or equivalents thereof. I have no issue with the current extension of UI benefits.
But I do have issue with the claim that we could never hire enough contact tracers...
1. In the middle of a massive surge of unemployment.
2. When we are already paying millions of people to... Sit around, and do nothing.
The need for workers exists, the money to pay them exists, the workers exist, and some of them actually want to work. Why can't we put those four things together?
Surely, in a country with over four thousand state, county, and major city governments, there have to be a few who are competent.
Voters across so many different regions, across so many different levels of government, can't be so consistently incapable of electing competent officials. There has to be more to this.
We also need to focus on what this pandemic had meant to us and what we can consider essential and non essential in the long run and use the lessons learnt to our benefit. Certainly the nature of work for a large number of people in Silicon Valley is such that it can be absolutely done remotely. I seriously hope and wish that unless it is absolutely necessary companies like FANG or Intel or NVIDIA or all other tech companies continue to honestly (not just on paper) encourage their employees to work from home. I am sure there are many roles that can continue to work from home in the foreseeable future :
It is entirely possible for all these categories of people to WFH with the help of VPN, FaceTime/zoom or other Video and chat/messaging software.
Companies should also stop new constructions or building new office spaces. It is time that tech companies understand that new office spaces are not a tool to increase productivity.
Also in the long run having people work from home as much as possible will significantly improve Bay Area traffic and reduce pollution.
I understand that some folks does not have the space in their home to WFH peacefully , but with childcare facilities opening up and eventually schools ... it can be easily worked out where members of such households establish a rotating schedule and WFH on a partial basis (ie 2-4 days a week).
I certainly like how empty the roads are whenever I go out ... having said that I certainly can’t wait to go back to office but I just dread sitting in the morning and afternoon traffic. What we need is for managers to accept that workers have absolute right to decide when they want to work from home and when they don’t. As long as someone is accountable and is meeting their goals it should be fine to wfh.
If these companies want to take climate change seriously, they in fact should make any role that can be worked remotely, well remote. After apple/facebook/google put in their company wide wfh policy during the initial covid outbreak it was so refreshing to see unclogged freeways and clear air in the sfbay area. I'd hate for california resorting to taxing these companies due to climate change but having a job that can be done anywhere and forcing a brutal commute on employees is bad for the environment, bad for the employees mental and physical health and just doesn't make any sense in a post-covid world.
NVIDIA has already communicated to many of their employees that they will be expected to return to the office once they are legally permitted to do so.
NVIDIA's employees seemed to largely be using desktop computers rather than laptops, and many of their roles require lab equipment, it seems. They were one of the slowest to WFH, and it doesn't surprise me they'd want people to return faster.
Yes I guess chip designers and h/w engineers cannot wfh. That’s why I did not include them specifically in the list. Only reason I mentioned Nvidia is because it falls on the way of my commute and there is a big traffic snarl always right there :D
You might be surprised. Pretty much all of the pre silicon work at the semi companies I have worked at (besides maybe emulation) is done “remotely” from a server farm to begin with. Even with post silicon work, with careful lab set up, you can do a surprising amount of work remotely, or with minimal lab time.
But you’re right, the light at San Tomas and Walsh is a pain.
Collaboration increases productivity and building new offices continuously is not the only way to increase collaboration, specially for the kind of work that SV companies does. I think from that perspective the OPs post bears merit. However it is also a matter of job security and if you don’t have to go to an office physically you may feel insecure inside ....
That's true, I think a lot more can be done for the WFH perspective. If companies offered all employees a good home setup, good desk, chair, screen, keyboard, mouse, headphones, good mic, good webcam, a good whiteboarding solution as well like maybe an iPad + pencil. And there was an app allowing remote share, remote control, remote whiteboard, and subsidize cost of a good internet. I feel I'd be even more productive at home with all that in place.
We've been looking into this lately, and settled on iPad Pro + Pencil + Explain Everything as a remote meeting and whiteboarding solution. It seems promising so far. Miro is another software option that seems pretty polished, although we haven't tried it yet.
Hopefully someone with more experience can share more tips on what has worked well for them.
I guess it depends on your role and how you execute it to a large extent. The OP mentioned certain roles that are to a large extent possible to wfh. Maybe 3 out of 5 days one can wfh.
Also in respect to Bay Area it certainly hurts productivity if you have to spend 2 hours everyday in commute. Unless your role means constantly blabbering on the phone you just can’t work while commuting. And I would argue if you do spend most of the time yapping on the phone then it shouldn’t matter if you are doing it remotely except for few cases where face to face is absolutely necessary.
> Overall, face-to-face time decreased by around 70 per cent across the participating employees, on average, with email use increasing by between 22 per cent and 50 per cent (depending on the estimation method used).
From Harvard study in 2018 comparing pre/post open-office.
THere'sno denying the importance of child care, but it seems just about guaranteed that if there is a case in one family it will spread to the other (up to) 11 families in the child's "stable group"
That's always going to be the risk until we have a working vaccine though and it's really hard to reopen without childcare in place. Without it a lot of people will have to choose between losing their jobs when their employer reopens or getting adhoc in home childcare.
If we're adapting anyway, one change could be gradually leaving kids home alone for longer times.
"Kids always need supervision" is a US thing. Leaving kids alone for some time works just fine in other countries. Of course there would have to be law/regulation/policy changes (to keep CPS away) but so what.
Some are already open, but with strict limitations. It won't be the same as re-opening as it was before; there are restrictions on capacity (12 max per teacher), sanitizing procedures, PPE for staff, guidelines around child health and reasons for exclusion, drop-off/pick-up procedures, and so forth. It's also not a carte-blanche reopening for all; the focus is still on essential workers.
I have never seen this scale of sacrifice for this scale of Quality Adjusted Life Years. Just the impact on the kids missing school will be worse than the impact from the virus.
Just because you've not seen something doesn't mean its not happened. The sad reality is that people all over the world have lived like this forever. Warzones, undeveloped countries, etc.
Afghanistan hasn't been safe or stable enough for literally decades. Syria has had a civil war for many years. Much of Mali has been under the grip of religious extremists for years.
I don’t think you and I are talking about the same thing. I’m talking about a societal/governmental decision to sacrifice the quality of life of the entire society for the benefit of some vulnerable group. Not civil wars or ethnic cleansing or other atrocities.
There's a large gap between "let run out of control" and "stay locked indoors when the disease has been controlled." A gradual reopening starting now can find the place on the spectrum that works.
Rebellion for the sake of rebellion helps nobody. The virus is a test of capacity for social cooperation, and California is passing with flying colors so far.
Only with total cooperation can you reasonably contain the virus - some countries have succeeded at this already, and California is not far behind.
It looks like the actions taken by the CA government were legal, reasonable, and had a very positive impact. What is the point of the pushback you're describing- proving a point while risking a worse outbreak?
I'll take the bait.
Whilst I'm confused on what rights are being violated that need to be fought for. I'm more confused as to your comment about doing what the government says to do. Your comment paints following orders from the government for the sake of safety as an unheard of concept. Why do you think driver licenses are required to operate a motorized vehicle? To collect fees from license applications? Or to ensure that drivers on the road and pedestrians safety isn't in danger due to reckless drivers?
If an assembly or class of assemblies pose a significant threat to public safety, then it does not violate the right to peaceable assembly for government to limit or prohibit them (if the targeting is discriminatory on religious or other content grounds, there may be issues with religious freedom or free speech aspects of the first amendment, but that's not an issue here.)
That's why the right to peaceably assemble doesn't mean you can, e.g., freely blockade hospital entrances. Public health quarantines have been recognized as a legitimate state power by the US Supreme Court consistently, in cases running back to 1824 (Gibbons v. Ogden.)
You're basically claiming that if somebody made a well-organized lawsuit, they could bring this to the supreme court and the SC would say "yes, in the case of emergency/pandemic, people can continue to assemble against direct orders from the executive office of the state/federal government". I think instead, the SC would find that the first amendment has limitations in the case of large-scale health situations.
It's not even remotely productive to start from the "I have absolute rights due to the constitution" arguments.
And for the sake of us all, i hope that if the case were to be brought in front of SCOTUS, they'd correctly write that "yes pandemics suck and compliance is important, but constitution is more so. Local gvmnts are free to find other ways to do this, but a virus is no excuse for constitutional transgressions"
The first amendment has no limitations, except those outlined in it itself or in caselaw. None that applies to this situation, so for now, luckily, you are wrong.
> It's not even remotely productive to start from the "I have absolute rights due to the constitution" arguments.
WHAT? It saddens me to see views like these. Mostly I see them in people who never fought for their rights, and never lived in places lacking them. You may amend the constitution if you disagree with it, via a proper process, but discarding it as "not productive" is insulting
>And for the sake of us all, i hope that if the case were to be brought in front of SCOTUS, they'd correctly write that
And you would be wrong, as this is the quintessential "shouting fire in a crowded theater" analogy. Free Speech is conditional, since at least 1969 when it last went to the SCOTUS. The reason it's unproductive to start from that space, is because today, the Constitution does not grant you unconditional rights. You don't have an unconditional right to own a gun either.
There are more than a few decisions that would appear to bear at least indirectly on this situation which can help us guess what the outcome would be. In particular, the "clear and present danger" standard would probably apply; since one could tie assembly to disease transmission, a highly infectious disease would seem to qualify.
Another area that speech has been restricted has been around espionage and wartime; it's clear that during wartime, our ability to speak becomes much more restricted, at least partially for security reasons. Again, the practical reason for this is that war can be an existential risk for a country, and generally, people are more than willing to give up their rights temporarily to avoid the risk of their entire nation being wiped out.
So, while I agree (to my limited knowledge; I'm just a speculating engineer) that there is no direct case law that bears on this, I do feel that my predictions on which side the SC would fall (unless the court was packed with Scalias) are reasonable.
There is little more for me to add so I think I will terminate my participation in this subthread.
This is what you stated, and now you are agreeing that there are conditions. If you now agree that there are conditions that these rights can be applied, I believe an actual pandemic would be reasonable as a condition to the first amendment.
All rights are balanced against other rights. If your right to assemble interferes with the right of other people to not die from your actions, something has to give.
The reason that talking with you doesn't look productive is that you're behaving like a fundamentalist here. You've got a very basic understanding of one document, and you've decided that your take is the perfect truth.
People who actually devote their lives to studying and practicing the law, on the other hand, have a much more nuanced perspective. Freedom of speech is indeed a right, but it's not absolute. Courts have found "time, place, and manner" restrictions perfectly constitutional, and have for as long as America has existed: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1023/time-place...
The problem is that you're basically countering what is well-established fact over the history of our nation. The SC has been faced with First Amendment cases before and made it pretty clear there are limitations (rights are conditional).
It seems very likely that the Supreme Court would side with "governments can restrict the movement of people during health emergencies especially if there is reasonable science supporting that". I guess we don't know unless they take up such a case.
My statements are purely practical; I've never "fought for my rights" or "lived in a place lacking them", but my ancestors did, and in ever sense, the conditions of my rights seem to be as unrestricted as is possible within a large nation that follows the rule of law.
The area's residents are generally treating the order as a strong suggestion, which I think is the right model. I don't know anyone who hesitates to go visit family or a close friend when they feel they really need to. I was a lot more concerned about overreach before reading the linked post; if the government has specific goals they're working towards, and they're willing to loosen things up for safer businesses in the meantime, I'm pretty okay with the status quo for another month.
Because I am not some selfish asshole that will put the lives of vulnerable people at risk to exercise some imagined muh rights that are supposedly being violated
Maybe it's because of the general levels of education, the telecommute-ability of many of the jobs and the plethora of delivery apps (including some for WEED, bro!) that make many of us in the Bay Area agreeable to a Shelter-In-Place order?
Or maybe we learned from the mistakes of our forebears [0] and don't want more people to die if we all chip in?
Take your pick.
The government lies about absolutely everything but _this time_ they are being honest, so let's all stay at home for 17 months and play pikachu or whatever the hell is on the nintendo. baby yoda!
The local government is doing what the majority of its citizens want it to do. This is exactly the purpose of having a government.
Every libertarian I know believes governments should provide intervention in these kinds of situations. If you don't, that makes you an anarchist (or whatever).
then you do not know any libertarians, or you have massively overstated their acceptance of these measures.
Having vested power in a single person to literally close the entirety of the economy, and arrest people for exercising basic rights is a violation of all things that should America Stands for. No libertarian would stand for arresting people out for a walk, threatening to arrest people for posting on Instagram, arresting people enjoying activity outside alone in ocean, arresting people if they sit in chair on the beach, but sitting in the same spot in the sand is ok, etc etc etc...
While some libertarians may accept the basic social distancing orders, even closing some events and gather thing, there is a mile long list of massive government overreach in every region and state including CA.
Everyone likes to hold America and other First world nations as "free" in contrast to Authoritarian States like China, but the line gets less defined every year, and every crisis
I am sure I will get zero support for my thoughts here, but if rights end when a crisis begins we have no rights at all. Today it is a pandemic that they have used to justify their authoritarian action, What will it be next, and how far will they push their power after seeing how well fear will enable them to cease control.
Too many people during this time are shortsighted, failing to see the bigger threat to liberty this precedent will bring.
You have a point - the state's authority to arrest people is a huge hammer that should never be brought out unless absolutely necessary. That's why Bay Area officials aren't using it. Nobody in my county has been arrested for not staying at home, and last I heard only a single person outside of Santa Cruz has been.
It is a huge hammer and this is a huge problem. We normally arrest people for endangering the public. People not abiding by the lock down are clearly endangering the public. They should be arrested.
I don't see any slippery slope or danger of totalitarian take over. The virus is inherently time-limited.
The Patriot Act was time-limited too, until we found more reasons to keep it around after the limit. We should be skeptical of this kind of thing, although I'm not so absolutist that I'd say it's never worth it.
The Patriot Act was not inherently time-limited. A virus will have an end at some point through a vaccine or therapies. Terrorism does not have any end. In fact it is timeless.
I do not claim to have all the answers, but in the equation of Liberty vs Safety, I will come down on the side of liberty every time, for a life with out liberty is not a life worth living at all.
Personally I would like to see some check put on governor and mayor emergency powers, limit them to 30-45 days then require a committee, judicial or legislature approval to continue to the orders. There also needs to be some kind of Due process or appeals process for individuals and business impacted by the orders, and IMO if the government is going to mandate a business close that should be considered a 5th amendment taking and the governments assumes liability for all lost revenue for the business.
I am not an big proponent of allowing a single office to have unlimited unchecked power even in a pandemic
The way that Emergency powers are written today is terrifying or rather should be terrifying to anyone that believes in individual liberty
While I agree that yes, we probably should have systems in place a system to formalize these sorts of powers, that right now at this moment is not the time. We should be focused on solving the current crisis over debating over constitutional law. You (probably) disagree, but I'm not really interested in debating over differing core philosophy.
>>You (probably) disagree, but I'm not really interested in debating over differing core philosophy.
I do, rights and liberty are easy to protect, defend and discuss in times of peace, prosperity and normalcy. However it is in times of crisis were protecting rights and liberty is most crucial
When it comes to rights, we always have to ask "what are the reasonable trade-offs?". There are no absolute rights, even in the U.S.
Most people believe it's clearly reasonable that we lock down our cities to prevent mass death. The economic pain is great, and it's very inconvenient for all, but it's much better than mass death.
You're entirely free to read/watch/do anything you want in your home, you can exercise, talk to anyone about anything you want, get food, take care of essential things.
You're not free to risk killing many people just so you can enjoy leisure activities. That would be privileging your personal liberty over the lives of your fellow citizens. And, incidentally, you would be depriving some of them of their personal liberty by virtue of killing them...
Does it bother you that you can't own significant quantities of radioactive material and carry them around while you're in public? Clearly laws forbidding this are an infringement of personal liberty. But they're an incredibly reasonable infringement so it doesn't bother you, I'd assume.
A democratic society should be governed by the people. We, The People, have decided that the lock downs are good. We have in effect demanded and endorsed them. So you're disagreeing with the majority of your fellow citizens, not some dictator.
For some unknown reason you believe these lock downs are unreasonable, without any clear rationale.
Your entire post is a series of logical fallacies, first economic decline and extreme unemployment in itself causes increase death and at the ever decreasing lethality of COVID as more and more data comes in there is an increasing probability that the economic impact will cause more death in the long term than COVID itself. Further we are now seeing supply change issues in food production and other markets critical to daily life not just "leisure activities" as you seem to believe.
There seems to me to be an overreaction to this virus over other known health crisis, and for that matter other emergencies simply do to the unknown / novel nature of this event.
The other problem with your response is the pure assumption that a total lockdown of all citizens was the only option, and that anyone daring to suggest there may have been another more measured way is simply wanting to put "leisure activities" over peoples lives, the fact remains that several people have suggested alternative measures that could have been used, including isolated only those of the vulnerable population where more than 80% of the deaths are accounted for, and where outside of that vernable population COVID is less deadly than the normal flu. Do you propose these same lockdowns every flu season? after all the flu does cause "mass death" as you seem to define it every year so it must be a reasonable response to shut down the economy every flu season right?
You do understand that the lockdowns where never to prevent the transmission of the virus, but rather simply slow the rate of transmission to allow the health system to sick and not be overwhelmed.
I will not bother to address your reductio ad absurdum on radio active material as it holds no bearing on this conversation, but I will say my position on that would not be what you expect :)
>>For some unknown reason you believe these lock downs are unreasonable, without any clear rationale.
Well allow me to provide some Rationale then
1. There were / are viable less extreme measures that could have been taken
2. It is yet to be seen if the Lock Downs actually were effective, there is some data to suggest they were not, and simply stating "it would have been worse" is not evidence based. Some data suggests that COVID was already widely spread before the lockdowns even went into effect and a large part of the population was asymptotic or suffers very mild symptoms
3. There is no section of the federal or any state constitution I am aware of that reads "These rights can be suspended in a time of emergency" while I am aware that the courts have played mental gymnastics to carve out these exceptions, the fact remains these acts prove the constitution is powerless to prevent infringement of basic rights by government
4. The precedent set by these unprecedented orders will be used to infringe on rights of the population using thinner and thinner justifications for an "emergency", I can see a flu season being used to trigger a draconian response in a few years.
5. One of the bigger problems I have with the lock downs is the open ended nature of them, and the power to extend or lift them is in a single person, in a single branch of government with out limit, oversight or control. It may be needed for a governor to act quickly to get process started, but that should then need to be follow up with some other branch of government oversight no less than 30 days after a governor acts. This is not a dictatorship and we should not devolve into one in a crisis
1. That the lock downs were unnecessary/ineffective.
And since the evidence and experts disagree with you, it seems incredibly dubious that you're right. As with climate change denial, there is always some minority taking the contrarian view, but the scientific consensus should still rule the day.
And even if it does turn out to be true, it was still the scientific consensus during an emergency, so it made sense to do it as the best available option. We can't undo the lock downs and we're already working to phase them out. So there's really no cogent argument here.
Also, the comparisons to the flu are a sign you don't have your facts straight. Expert models predicted the potential for millions of dead Americans without intervention. And it seems entirely backed up by the actual data we got from New York.
You also don't seem to understand that flattening the curve reduces death, it doesn't just spread it out over time.
2. That the lock downs are bad for freedom.
This is entirely based on the slippery slope argument. You can't actually point to any governmental abuse, at all. Every government official seems to be acting entirely in good faith across a massive country. Which is why no reasonable person is worried about this. The people protesting the lock downs are a tiny minority of extremists and contrarians.
You have to ask yourself "am I being too extreme in my views, or is every educated/informed person blind to the danger?" and it's pretty obvious which of these is the case.
There is simply no justified cause for concern that lock downs are going to become a tool of oppression. The lock downs are happening with the consent of the people and the courts.
And it's extremely time-limited, not open-ended. There is absolutely no way the lock downs will go on indefinitely. And there is no way they will happen again without the consent of the people. There is simply no reasonable cause for alarm.
P.S.
I would expect your position on allowing people to poison their fellow citizens with radioactive material might be similar to your position on poisoning people with a deadly virus. That would be consistent with the extremist views you're espousing.
>>And since the evidence and experts disagree with you, it seems incredibly dubious that you're right.
The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation
The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.
...
If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.
>>We can't undo the lock downs and we're already working to phase them out. So there's really no cogent argument here.
This is simply not true, there are lots of people claiming we should remained locked down for alot longer with many many governors continuing the lock downs when they should be phasing them now, this main link in this thread is about extending the lockdown and several people pointed out the unrealistic "targets" of the Bay area for them to "phase out" the lockdowns
>You can't actually point to any governmental abuse, at all
I guess that depends on your definition of abuse. Lets go through some of the items I am aware of in the US that has occured by the government that I consider abuse
1. CA Police arresting a man in the middle of the ocean by him self
2. police harassing old people on the beach because they dared sit in a chair instead of directly on the sand
3. WI Police threatening a teen child with arrest over a instagram post
4. RI Police stopping all people with a NY Plate for questioning at the border "Papers Please" style
5. RI Governor sending the national guard door to door to question people about their movements, and activities
6. MI Governor banning the sale of gardening supplies while still allowing lottery sales because she need to protect state revenue
7. CT police using drones to monitor people activities to ensure they are conforming to social distancing
8. KY CPS investigating people with large numbers of children for child abuse for failing to "social distance" with each other
9. TX creating a COVID Task force to go undercover to crack down on home based businesses during the lock down
10. Many States banning the sale of Self Protection Tools as "non-essential"
I could probably list dozens or hundreds more abuses by state and local authorities, that is with out getting in the arbitrary definitions of "essential business" many states have come up with, which many of them seem to be purposefully to aid political supporters and ensure the business owned by those supporters were essential, or hypocritical actions like the Chicago Mayor claiming her getting a hair cut was "essential activity" since she is a public figure but it was non-essential for everyone else, the rules for thee but not for me position has been rampant through out this event
>>Every government official seems to be acting entirely in good faith across a massive country.
If you believe that then our definition of "good faith" is very different or you are not paying attention
> I am utterly impressed ##
this is a person's point of view; they want to be heard, and perhaps as an influencer
> For your safety you will do what you are told ##
it is true, that safety line is common to talk to civilians by enforcers, even when that is not at all what is happening.. and also when it is partially involved, such as evacuation orders due to fire danger
> I thought the brainiacs in silicon valley could do math ##
the person is not a math person, and is somewhat embarassed by that, as Silicon Valley math people are clearly a big deal for the society right now
> forgot how to stand up for your rights ##
the person is trying to emphasize your own volition here, not following orders blindly
> I expect all you young sheltering in place ##
this person feels older than most readers here
> do exactly what your government says ##
this warning is central to the emotion and appeal to individuality
> says next time ##
this is not an isolated thing, it will come up again and perhaps a lot, over the next years+
> do something for your safety ##
safety is an excuse for removing liberty
--
It is not well-written or even good judgement necessarily, but I took the time to annotate it because these are serious things over time, from a legal rights point of view, and also huge landmines emotionally for those that deeply value self-determintation.
This reply does not support or reject the post content -- it is more to say, look at this, do not dismiss it quickly.
All construction activities...will be allowed to resume...
This seems so arbitrary. Construction noise that you can hear and feel from home will be twice as maddening if you are stuck there. Speaking as someone whose apartment backs a sub basement deep-dig project. After a few days of quarantine one of my neighbors shouted some choice words from his balcony at the workers starting their banging and whistling at seven in the morning.
Construction is a massive sector that supports a lot of working class families. It is/can be performed with maximum adherence to social distancing and use of respiratory masks/PPE is already standard practice. I can see how the additional noise will be an inconvenience to some, but not allowing construction would be, IMO, much more devastating to an already hammered economy/work-force.
Disclaimer: I work in the construction industry.
I feel you on the noise, but it makes sense to me. Construction is one kind of work where worker density is low and people are already used to wearing PPE when needed.
yah, easy call on construction reopening but no sympathy for whining about (legitimate construction) noise, which is often used by curmudgeons to adversely control all sorts of others’ behaviors.
but 7am is a bit of an issue. the ordinance in LA for instance specifies construction noise can’t begin before 8am but that’s routinely broken here too.
It doesn't seem arbitrary to me, the thrust of these changes seems to be "if its done entirely outdoors, its OK, as long as there isn't an obvious, large transmission path."
Living in a half-finished renovation, I have to disagree. The permitting and inspection process needs to resume so that I no longer have to shelter-at-a-construction-site.
Construction is important. They're literally building future homes, offices, and infrastructure. This has a massive outsized economic impact going forwards.
If anything, this is a unique, massive opportunity to get caught up on stuff like road construction - it's much easier to close off lanes and institute detours when traffic is well below normal levels.
That was only one of the many exceptions. Public works projects, anything supporting an essential business/service like healthcare, food production, schools etc. have all been allowed throughout the shutdown. And up here in Sonoma county, the construction of fire-rebuilds from the 2017 fires have also been allowed - none are affordable but all essential.
I like that they have clear numerical targets for all of them.