[d1zzy]

I'm curious how this "state of emergency" declaration works when everyone is doing it. AFAIK a lot of "state of emergency" declarations are about fund allocations from central sources (state, federal) and that works fine when it's used for exceptional cases/natural disasters but I doubt this will scale well when the entire country enters a state of emergency. I guess we shall see.

[Retric]

Local governments in disaster prone areas tend to have significant emergency funds they can tap into. Doing so now to do an inventory of supplies, run some disaster planning, and possibly fill in any gaps is completely reasonable.

They are unusually likely to see a small scale outbreak and effective early responses could make a huge difference.

[AstralStorm]

Most importantly this allows using the emergency funds to boost local healthcare in case of an epidemic. Without the declaration the local government is unable to do so, just use it to bolster standard plans.

[rolph]

its not just fund allocations but there is a change in operational stance for local governments and service providers its a different machine state than default mode

if theres not enough money around the emergency rules will still be in effect

[dahfizz]

Maybe that's why SF is declaring emergency so early