[mlyle]

Right now in the SF Bay Area, ICUs are below typical seasonal usage and the usage has been declining slowly for 3 weeks. I'm not saying we should "relax", but I think we have evidence that the slightly looser controls employed from mid-March to early April were effective-- that would be a good first step to go to now. Odds are that results in continued reduction, but if it results in slow growth instead we'd be OK in the time it takes to notice, react, and have the effect of our reaction seen.

Frequent, small changes are good. Not big steps and milestones.

Population behavior has further changed in beneficial ways, too-- e.g. mask wearing. Step back to the initial health order -now-. In a couple weeks, consider opening a slightly larger chunk of retail. After each step, watch what happens.

[amalter]

ICUs are below occupancy, but hospitals even in the Midwest are declining to do elective procedures because they can’t get enough PPE to handle run of the mill stuff.

The US had been losing actual Hospital capacity every week, even with empty beds.

When those beds fill in wave 2, get ready to donate your rain ponchos and industrial garbage bags.

[mlyle]

Here's an interesting article. There's significant health care underutilization in the SF Bay Area due to preemptive cuts of elective procedures to prepare for a surge that didn't happen, and now health care workers are being cut:

https://abc7news.com/health/the-surge-that-never-came-leads-...

[mlyle]

PPE is a real issue-- I'm not arguing with that. I've been manufacturing a number of things at moderate quantity on my printer farm and cutting lasers.

On the other hand, a whole lot of measures seem to be consuming PPE at a fixed rate-- per personnel-day when COVID is present. That is, PPE usage is not strictly proportional with disease load, because the virus imposes a large fixed load.

[hackeraccount]

* everyone likes a disaster * you're doing a service by making everyone worried about what might happen - so you're helping that not happen * when it doesn't happen no one will call you on it anyway * better safe then sorry