[ivankirigin]

This is a surprisingly coherent. I live in San Mateo County.

One thing I've noticed is that the cases are not evenly distributed.

  California has 600/1M new cases, vs 1000/M in South Dakota.
  LA county has 740/1M. San Mateo County has 313/1M.
  Within San Mateo County, San Carlos is 119/1M, and East Palo Alto is 675/1M.

It's incredibly hard to set policy when everything is so different, down to towns with 30K people a few miles apart.

Links:

https://covidtracking.com/data/state/south-dakota

https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19CasesDashboard_1593...

https://www.smchealth.org/data-dashboard/cases-city

[wwweston]

Aren't the latest California directives attempting to adapt to this at least at the county level by tying restrictions to hospital capacity in each county?

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/12/03/california-health-official...

[teej]

Yes, but the other Bay Area counties have chosen to shut down way in advance of that.

[mike_d]

My county has about ~30 ICU beds left, yet hasn't triggered the magic state threshold. They are one mass causality incident (plane crash, roof collapsing, etc) from people going without care.

Even if things are OK in San Mateo, they don't have to deal with the cases of people who go there because there are less restrictions. That is the whole point of counties working together.

[WalterGR]

The thresholds are by geographic area, not counties.

California’s page about this is an easy read: https://covid19.ca.gov/stay-home-except-for-essential-needs/

[mike_d]

> The thresholds are by geographic area, not counties.

Which is why I highlighted the situation was quite bad in my county, yet the bay area as a whole hasn't triggered the state mandates. It should be both county and region based.

[jacobolus]

Other Bay Area counties are seeing numbers skyrocket over the past 6 weeks, and want to act decisively now while they have the best chance to prevent a catastrophic outcome.

In SF case counts have been doubling about every 2 weeks; we started from a low baseline (relative to most of the rest of the USA) but another few doublings and we’ll be in huge trouble.

The state-level mandates are timed to be reactive instead of proactive; if we assume the restrictions are successful at curbing spread, we should enact them ASAP, before our hospitals are on track to be completely overwhelmed. (For that matter we should have taken strong steps before Thanksgiving weekend.)

It is extremely unfortunate that this is hammering small businesses; if the US had responsible federal leadership (if the Senate & White House hadn’t just sat on their hands for 7 months) we could do something about this (fingers crossed for January), but counties and even states have limited ability to provide large-scale relief of the type required.

But waiting to impose the same restrictions until the state mandates kick in, if inaction results in cases continuing to rise along their current trajectory, will lead to even larger economic devastation than decisive action a few weeks sooner.

[babesh]

Stop putting it all on the federal government. It’s also state government’s fault. California only thinks in terms of lockdowns even after all these months. Also look at people’s personal behaviors. I saw more and more people walking around without masks recently. Downtown Burlingame was shockingly bad.

[jacobolus]

> California only thinks in terms of lockdowns

What are you thinking of? Personally I think we could do much better at hiring contact tracers, getting test sites into vulnerable neighborhoods, doing general community outreach, making sure public-facing workers have sufficient PPE, figuring out how to get infected people places to isolate away from their households, protecting incarcerated people, etc.

But historically the USA has been heavily reliant on the CDC and the federal government more generally to muster resources and coordinate responses. When leadership is entirely absent (and indeed, federal officials are out lying about the pandemic every day), states have a tough time picking up the slack.

> look at people’s personal behaviors. I saw more and more people walking around without masks recently

From what I understand, a major goal of shelter-in-place orders is to convince individual people to act more carefully.

[babesh]

My opinion is that people are tired of the orders and that they will not change people’s behaviors.

[jeffbee]

If doubling every 2 weeks is your standard, everyone in San Mateo County should stay home. Their case count has more than doubled in the last 1 week, from 137 a week ago to 343 most recently. It was their second-highest case count on record, second to yesterday which was 400 cases.

[cromwellian]

East Palo Alto and San Jose could be either from pop-density, or from relative # of poor people.

[ivankirigin]

And age, race, types of jobs, family structure, trust in authority, education, and probably more.

San Carlos is white, rich, and old. East Palo Alto it not.

[an_opabinia]

Of course. The real scandal is how bean counting has failed millions of Californians. Are that many people really eking out an existence so marginal, it has no impact on prices for homes, equities, goods and services? Or is there something wrong with what we’re measuring?

[babesh]

It is dense, multi family housing and having to work at jobs that expose you to other people. It isn’t directly race or age.

[ketzo]

Well, yeah, those are the factors for which race and age (and wealth) serve a pretty direct proxy in the U.S.

[babesh]

It is flawed lens. For instance there are poor Asian subgroups and there are poor in otherwise rich groups.

[jacobolus]

Depends substantially on how many people have to work face to face with strangers, and how large households are.

Everyone living in a multi-generational household with e.g. grocery store clerks is at significantly higher risk than a couple of childless yuppies working from home.

[sujinge9]

Probably both

[spikels]

Nine months into this it would be nice if we had good data on the risk factors of transmission. I know it’s a tricky virus to trace but shouldn’t we have better info on which activities demographics, etc are the most risky by now?

[jeffbee]

We do know the risk factors. It's a respiratory disease that spreads when people who are breathing are near each other. We don't need a random control trial to tell us that practicing with your brass band can spread it. The solution is to stay very far from everyone until the disease is wiped out. Only very intelligent libertarian contrary Americans think we don't have the information we need.

[s1artibartfast]

That is not very helpful advice when you have to manage risk while trying to eat, work, live, and stay healthy. Stats certainly exist on where some of the 16,000+ cases in San Mateo were transmitted.

[jeffbee]

Exactly what information do you lack? If you are hungry eat at home. Work at home if possible. Exercise at home. "Live" is too vague to address.

[nradov]

The virus is now endemic in the worldwide human population, plus some animal reservoirs. Even with widespread vaccination it will never be wiped out.

[shostack]

I wonder how much those differences in close areas matter because of people traveling locally for work, coming into contact with people from other areas, etc.