[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.

[edmundsauto]

What makes you think this is a belief held by a large number of people, rather than a vocal minority?

[babesh]

I am not so much looking at what people are saying rather I am looking at how people are behaving. People are much more relaxed and take time to shop. Some downtowns are quite busy with foot traffic. Those areas have people walking around without masks (supposedly eating or drinking). It is hard to socially distance in those areas.

[jacobolus]

So we should give up and let the hospitals collapse and an extra few tens of thousands of California residents die?

[babesh]

I was not expressing an opinion as to what to do. Rather I was expressing how I thought people will behave.

[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.