California Governor calls for home isolation for seniors, bars to close, etc | Hacker News Reader

California Governor calls for home isolation for seniors, bars to close, etc

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66 pointsjconley87 comments

I wonder if anyone has done a comparison of damage done by the economy grinding to a halt vs quarantine. I don't mean this in a snarky way. I just imagine a world where truck drivers stop making deliveries. At what point do more people die from lack of resources than the current pandemic?

The biggest uncertainty is how many people would die if the virus spreads unchecked. 20,000 Americans? 2 million Americans? Both are possible, but with two orders of magnitude difference in effect, it is nearly impossible to estimate things like net economic impact of doing nothing.

You can definitely argue that stopping all deliveries in the US could have a more drastic effect. No one is self sustaining any more. No one has a farm. If the grocery stores are empty, more will die. I'm sure of it.

That's why neither of these are stopped. In both Wuhan and Italy, the food were and is still available, and deliveries work fine.

I guess I'm speaking from a Los Angeles perspective. Our stores are literally empty for most staples and any reduction in deliveries is going to make this an actual problem.

How long has the panic shopping been going on? In Poland, when it started, it cleared out the basic long shelf life goods (rice, pasta, etc.) and TP from most of the cheaper stores for about two to three days. For some reason, some kinds of meat also disappeared. But it seems to be going back to normal now.

If after couple of days your stores are still empty of most staples, it suggests some serious problems higher up in the supply chain.

But that's not due to delivery disruption - nobody stopped the trucks, and nobody's planning to. It's due to people hoarding (either by panic or greed).

If groceries aren't back to normal in a week, I can easily see state troopers mobilized to guard every supermarket and make sure nobody buys twenty boxes of Bounty. Yes, it would look silly and would grate the nerve of free market enthusiasts, but in an emergency you go for effectiveness, not prettiness.

There's so much food people can reasonably hoard, so unless everyone has really large apartments or are stocking personal fallout shelters, if the disruption lasts longer than a week, it suggests the problem lies elsewhere. Possibilities include local supply chain disruption, or abundance of "entrepreneurs" keen to do arbitrage on staples.

It takes a pretty long time to die from starvation. Doubly so for your average American. :)

haha ya. I'm seeing this as a potential diet. :P

But the weaker people are from starvation, the more likely they are to die from the coronavirus.

No one is suggesting food deliveries should stop. If you deliver food, lockdowns don't apply to you, not even in Wuhan. Same with medical personnel. If you work for the water or electric company, you'll still be going to work.

On the other hand, nobody's gonna die from the lack of a haircut anytime soon. Lots of people (myself included) can work remote.

Anything is possible, but unless this batch has been scientifically engineered for maximum impact, killing 3 times more people than the spanish flu seems unlikely. My 2c.

Yet they close NCAAA and NBA games while an airport like JFK still passes 2 million passengers a month, let alone transit centers such as Amtrak, greyhound, or local subway stations.

Even at a 2 - 4% mortality rate, the sheer panic over this is nonsense

People are now panicking about the panic and subsequent overreaction.

I must say in Seattle it’s a little alarming to go to the store and to literally see no meat, no bread, no milk, no soap. And I’ve already had friends in hospitality lose their jobs.

I think the UK’s keep calm and carry on approach is the right way - but it’s hard to turn back from a panic.

UK approach is suicide, their health care system is going to break down magnificently under the pressure of swarm of sick people, or they are going to ask people to stay at home and pray once sick.

I don't see that works, people will riot.

Honestly, I think the people losing their jobs now are in a much better position than those facing uncertainty or not realizing it could happen to them.

Start getting unemployment now before that system becomes overwhelmed. I am not optimistic for state and local government to implement remote work.

>Even at a 2 - 4% mortality rate, the sheer panic over this is nonsense

The fear is that if the health system collapses the mortality rate could be even higher.

If? Our health care system isn't equipped to handle a large-scale outbreak. People are panicking, and in really dumb ways, but there are two rational fears right now: 1) fear of our health care system not being able to cope; 2) fear of the idiot-panickers hoarding everything for no good reason and leaving others unable to buy even basic necessities.

And somehow there is a very aggressive group trying to stifle any debate on the topic. Making a similar case in a friendly gathering early this week got me labeled as an anti-vaxer and trump fan (I am neither). It is "with us or against us", not a topic for discussion:(.

I mean, if you put it like the guy you replied to then I'm not surprised. The potential for 6+ million deaths over the course of a half a year is beyond horrifying to anyone whose is not a sociopath.

Unchecked, that means 750k - 1.5M people die from just this virus...that doesn't take into account running out of hospital beds for all other patients and seeing a spike in flu deaths, etc. Very serious question...at what number would you be ok letting it go unchecked? Or alternatively, do you think some other approach is better than shutting down sports games, etc.?

In other countries, closedowns and event cancellations were enacted simultaneously with, or quickly followed by, locking down borders - making the airport issue mostly moot.

Beyond that, while it's unrealistic to immediately eliminate all mixing of people, you can vastly reduce it, and it makes a difference. That's the point of #StayTheFuckHome. Much less people on public transit, much less people in stores means much slower spread of the virus.

If 4 percent of the people who got it died that would absolutely be a crisis. That would be somewhere around 2 percent of the us population dying over the next few months. Even disregarding the number of people with irrevocable organ damage that live through lung failure, how can you say that millions of people dying over a short span would be nothing? How would that not cause a huge strain on the hospital system, utilities, and general state of the country?

The mortality rate will be much higher the more overloaded we allow the hospitals to become. CDC's 'worst case' numbers are 1.7 million dead, but CDC is assuming a 1% CFR which is the rate we observe in places where hospitals are not overloaded.

In Italy-- which has more somewhat more ICU beds per capita than the US does and is a about 1.5 weeks ahead of the bay area in progression-- the current CFR is 6.8% (which is likely an underestimate because exponential growth means that most people who are diagnosed haven't been infected long enough to have died yet) and the resolved CFR is 43% (which is likely an overestimate, in part because people are dying faster than they are recovering in Italy now because they're going untreated). [NOTE: CFR is not IFR, and the CDC analysis uses CFR and separately accounts for the fact that only a small portion of infections result in hospitalizations]

The best way to mitigate economic effects is to act stronger earlier, exponential growth means that little improvements earlier are more impactful than vastly more aggressive measures later.

After halting big public events, bars closures have probably some of the best ratios of reduced communicability to economic harm, especially given the data showing that young people are carriers are much higher rates than older populations.

Many people's informal observations that even last night many bars were very busy. I keep hearing from younger people that if it were an issue 'they' would close down and so concern must be over-hyped. This perception makes it more important to take stronger measures.

I can confirm: Since France’s president has closed bars, the psychosis became widespread, people now take real measures. Before that, everyone was keeping business as usual awaiting instructions, which is the worst way to let the epidemic grow, and they were even mocking those who took precautions as either racists, or weaklings. Ensuring the population is in « concerned » state is the first step, and only closing bars allowed people to visualize the emergency.

Example: For the few hours after announcing, the « McDonnalds » hashtag was trending. Which says a lot.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious — why do we need to analyze what happens when truck drivers stop making deliveries, if no one is talking about banning those deliveries?

This is correct. Truck drivers are still working in Italy as far as I can tell. There's food, and TP.

Op might be thinking about drivers voluntarily stopping driving due to flu fears, either of getting it or spreading it? But yeah, even then I doubt many would be willing to put their business/livelihood on the line. They may reason that it's just a flu; most won't die and many won't have any symptoms at all--and it's hard to blame them for that.

I don't understand casual use of the word flu in relation to this pandemic. Even if it was "just a flu" in terms of impact, it would be needlessly confusing.

Understand it or not, that's how a lot of people think of it--those are the facts on the ground. And one of the upsides of that condition is that the economy hasn't yet been completely blown to bits, because not everyone is taking things so seriously.

Pandemic is a big-picture word. The average family will be far more affected by the results of serious people taking things too seriously than they will by the virus itself. The reason my neighbor can't go to the store and buy TP has nothing to do with the specifics of an illness and everything to do with over-serious, poorly-calibrated perceptions. (Downvote away, but that doesn't change the world condition)

By "serious people taking things too seriously" are you referring to people like the WHO, the CDC, and Dr. Anthony Fauci? Are you saying we should all ignore their recommendations, and just go about life as usual? For instance, that we should forget about social distancing and isolating those who have the disease?

Did I say any of that? Are you asking, or accusing? I don't really think such a reply is warranted here.

What facts on the ground does usage of "flu" reflect? It's not influenza and nobody seriously calls it flu. Even those least interested in the specifics know it as as unqualified "coronavirus" or Wuhan virus. To call it flu is to deliberately downplay its significance, make a joke out of it. Whatever the reality of the situation.

> To call it flu is to deliberately downplay its significance, make a joke out of it.

To the contrary, regular non-joking, totally serious people still call it Chinese flu, bird flu, I've even heard bat flu, probably some others. I think you are forgetting common lack of awareness / ignorance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_flu

https://extra.ie/2020/01/18/news/irish-news/new-chinese-flu-...

https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/wuhan-flu-how-to-protect-f...

You can see why--a lot of media sites like the one above still show their original URL even though the titles have been changed.

Delivery drivers (excluding ready to eat food delivery) is actually an interesting job. You would imagine it is social, but typically they just spend so their time in their truck or bringing packages to front doors. There typically is no interaction with people, unless they require a signature.

I would imagine their risk of contracting the disease is much lower than majority of people.

If they would be asked to stop performing their job it would be to be with solidarity with the rest of people. It's not like the air is poisoned.

Remember, the general goal is to flatten the contagion curve, so hospitals can better respond to the demand. It is not a long term pause (hopefully), and the economy will recover - but maybe it will also change somehow...

While I'm absolutely supporting extensive lockdowns (and am happy my government enacted them earlier this week), here's a problem: the lockdowns will realistically have to last many months, and most people in the affected industries don't have enough savings to last that long, if they have any (a lot of people live paycheck-to-paycheck).

Given the sheer amount of disrupted sectors, I wonder if it wouldn't be best if government doing lockdowns simply bit the bullet and enacted UBI.

Long term is entirely relative. A month pause is a long term pause for many many businesses.

Also, people have to remember that any kind of pause will take along time to recover from. Businesses can't just start back up and immediately make up for the lack for production. They might be able to increase their production 10-20% in any given month but that means 5-10 months to make up for a single month of lack of production. And China has been down for 4 months...

China is recovering, but the supply chains are shot. Ocean freight is a mess. Meanwhile, with almost all Europe in lockdown and both the UK and the US about to join them, we have an opposite problem of demand going down, threatening the suppliers. US cutting off the bulk of EU-US cargo transport isn't helping either (passenger planes carried most of the air freight between Europe and North America). It's a mess, and it'll take long time to recover. I expect it will be survivable in terms of basics (food, medicine), but it might be years before trade works as smoothly as it did just few months ago.

Businesses will find they can now get away with stiffing many, many of their creditors.

The creditors will remember after the dust settles?

If a creditor gets stiffed by enough of its clients, it will go bankrupt.

People like truck drivers who perform an essential role have to continue working, but change their behavior so they have as little contact as possible with others. They should also be tested frequently once we're able to expand test capacity, and be given masks if we're ever able to overcome the mask shortage.

This is why it's so important to stay home if you don't have to go out to keep society functioning. No country can enforce a 100% lockdown because many folks have to go out there and do their jobs if we all want to stay alive. Staying home if it's at all possible for you to do so helps to reduce the risk for these people who don't have the option.

Almost 10,000 people died in Wuhan and many more would have died had they not locked it down.

I don't know of any studies but I can't imagine anywhere near that much dieing from the economy slowing down.

If truck drivers stop delivering you'll soon have grocery stores with no food. As people start to get hungry things will get very ugly very fast.

Is there some rule-of-thumb about that? like 3-days or something.

I know our grocery stores only average about 1 day worth of supplies in stock, plus 1 day of food at home, then it all kind of goes to shit?

Welcome to JIT supply chains! You'd better be sure to have a month's worth of food supply at home.

From a country's POV, the stability of food production and delivery to stores is critical. Fortunately, both Italy and Wuhan prove that it can be maintained during lockdown.

no one died of hunger in Wuhan

The estimates place 5-10k people died from suicide alone due to the 2008 recession. Others claim at least 10x that due to lack of health insurance and subsequent health care, so missed cancer diagnoses, treatment, etc.

I would not be surprised if the death toll from the ensuing recession is higher than from covid deaths. That begs the obvious question, since covid kills mostly old people, but the recession kills mostly young, which is better?

> so missed cancer diagnoses, treatment, etc.

Overloaded hospitals due to covid would also cause secondary deaths.

The virus seems to be causing potentially life-long lung damage in many more cases that it kills. On top of that, a saturated healthcare system is not providing treatment for anyone with anything that's less survivable than a Covid-19 in a relatively young and otherwise healthy person.

Italy has stopped providing respirators for 60+ year old people. They let them die. They give priority to the younger. Source in English: https://twitter.com/damienrieu/status/1238759988329418752

This is absolute speculation. How can 100,000 people dying over a course of 3-5 years be linked to the recession?

Ignoring that, the number will be higher than 100,000 if per the CDC nearly all Americans will be exposed

That 10,000 number looks like it was a combined u.s. plus europe. If we let covid-19 run rampant through the u.s. and Europe we're talking about one to several million deaths.

And 100k seems high for 2 some odd million people losing health insurance for a couple of years.

So the question really is, how many deaths are worth preventing an economic collapse.

i.e. if we can prevent collapse and it "only" requires a few tens of thousands of deaths, is that worthwhile?

> So the question really is, how many deaths are worth preventing an economic collapse.

Obviously, as many as would've been caused directly by said economic collapse, minus one.

The reason you can't easily do such math is because it's never a binary choice. It's not a trolley problem with an obvious solution. You can choose to sacrifice the economy to save a thousand lives for each ten thousand predicted lost to the economic downturn, and then do your best to reduce the lives lost due to economic damage. Perhaps you'll reduce that 10 000 to just 500, and then history will say it was worth it.

Mail, truck delivery, etc. can operate with relatively little person to person contact, and it helps the rest of the public maintain lower levels of person to person contact by reducing the need to go to physical stores. I don't believe any country is currently considering halting deliveries. It's a strategic resource, and most people think it's important to keep this engine running.

Bars and restaurants are not necessary, and keeping them open encourages the less cautious members of the public to go out when they really shouldn't be.

What about warehouses or logistics centers, which are just as important as delivery vehicles.

> Mail, truck delivery, etc. can operate with relatively little person to person contact...

Warehouses are huge spaces with lots of stuff and relatively few people. You could have 10 - 20 people running a million square foot warehouse. You could have half that in an emergency situation. These workers can have their own tasks that take them to different parts of the warehouse where they don't need to interact frequently.

That's like two orders of magnitude away from bars and restaurants, where you're deliberately placed single digit ft away from everybody else.

And what about warehouses? How does social distancing work there? What happens if warehouses become very risky sites?

Warehouse employees tend to be quite far apart at almost all points in time except breaks, at all warehouses I've worked at.

On top of this, I believe current science says that covid-19 survives extremely poorly on most surfaces for the periods of time that are involved with storage + shipping.

Unless forced to close, the bars, restaurants, and businesses will stay open. Very few will voluntarily do the right thing.

In Belgium some even held lockdown parties before the ban went into effect.

Some people crossed borders to go shopping this weekend because only pharmacies and super markets were open.

Those who aren't taking it seriously yet are really visible.

My manager's manager changed her Facebook's profile pic with a #stayhome slogan but she expects us to come tomorrow monday morning.

So, yes, we need a strong government in those trying times.

It would be beneficial for the government to define how it was going to support the businesses it was forcing to close, given forcing them to close has the potential to put them out of business.

Why would they ?

I was surprised President Macron said something along those lines in his latest TV declaration.

I would be a bit more sympathetic here. The people who are running these business are also thinking about their employees and others. It's a hard pill to swallow, it's not purely motivated out of greed.

You lose your health insurance if you get fired. You can't pay rent. I do think you're right though the only way this will work in the US is by forced Order.

If you use the government to force people to stay home, when they economically cannot sustain it, what happens?

Suicide or destitution maybe.

> Suicide or destitution maybe.

Well, that's a relief. I was concerned they might leave their homes!

They could be paid to close.

They could be, but since we live in a capitalist dystopia it's unlikely.

Not enough to make a difference. The government can't afford it.

If the government taxed the rich and corporations it could afford it.

Oh I don't know. They could stop spending trillions on wars around the world and spend it on looking after their own citizens instead.

Seattle Hospitals don't have enough ECMO machines. One of the criteria they use for deciding who gets access is BMI. People with BMI > 25 don't get it. (Mine is 23. Phew!)

https://twitter.com/scott_mintzer/status/1239290389963714562

(unrolled) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239290389963714562.html

thx for sharing!

If you read the whole thread he himself says in the end that the situation is not portrayed accurately. So take this with a grain of salt to say the least.

If this is all true why isn't it in the mainstream media?

Why hasn't Canada closed the borders yet?

I can see why he wants restaurants and bars to close. But why breweries?

Because they're likely brewpubs, effectively a bar that serves that brewery's beer.

They could probably just close the tasting rooms and sell beer to-go, and if they have distribution, to retailers.

I went to every grocery store in town yesterday just to get the basics, and still came up short.

It was massive crowds of elderly people.

In California?

In Silicon Valley, no less.

I have noticed that in every online discussion on this topic in recent weeks, there is a group that continues to insist that the virus is a minor problem, no worse than the annual flu. I assume they are all fervent Trump supporters.

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