SF Bay Area Shelter-in-Place Orders Extended as Some Rules Ease | Hacker News Reader

SF Bay Area Shelter-in-Place Orders Extended as Some Rules Ease

sccgov.org

73 pointshkmurakami122 comments

Down toward the bottom they have a link to 5 indicators that they will be using to evaluate progress: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/bay-area-health-o...

I like that they have clear numerical targets for all of them.

Yeah, this seems to be about the right direction. California as a whole (I don't have access to Bay Area data specifically) is clearly at a relatively stable peak, but the new infection rate hasn't dropped much and there's comparatively little room for error.

Other states are looking better[1]. Vermont, Alaska, Montana and Hawaii are all well below their peak infection rates and still dropping. Those are the places that should start relaxing rules earlier.

[1] Some are looking much worse, of course. Watch Nebraska in particular: their new infection rate has been growing at close to 10% per day for almost three weeks, and at that rate they'll be at a New York scale outbreak in just two more. I haven't seen any coverage of what's going on there (i.e. whether it's a specific local outbreak like the Smithfield one in SD).

Vermont and Montana are sparse states so not surprising. Hawaii - that is interesting. Are those numbers accurate?

People give too much weight to overall sparsity/density, discounting how much human behavior has a role in creating personal density even in seemingly sparse areas. You can see massive infections in very sparse rural areas so long as people are congregating and not taking precautions. That seems to be what's happening in Nebraska.

Behavior matters more. Here in Manhattan we're past the peak solely because of changes in behavior. It doesn't matter how sense the built environment is when most people are barely leaving their homes.

New arrivals including domestic flights to Hawaii are being subject to heavy quarantine with follow-up, requirements of full documentation of where you will be staying, etc.

https://hidot.hawaii.gov/blog/2020/04/24/improved-verificati...

They do not have the hospital capacity for this getting out of control.

No one has the hospital capacity for COVID19 getting out of control. That's the fundamental reason for the quarantines everywhere.

Preaching to the choir. I guess what I mean is that as a small island state far from anywhere else, if it gets bad, it gets _much worse_ than on the mainland.

Bay Area has dropped significantly: https://covid-19.direct/metro/BayArea

Santa Clara has dropped even more significantly: https://covid-19.direct/county/CA/Santa%20Clara. It's at 10 cases/day/million now (3% test positive rate), below even Germany who is opening schools.

Vermont had it's first day today in 7 weeks with 0 new cases:

https://vtdigger.org/2020/04/29/vermont-reports-zero-new-cas...

Interesting metrics.

Indicator 1 (cases) and 2 (hospitalization) are clearly met.

Indicator 3 (test capacity) has a very aggressive target. 200 tests a day per 100k? Why must it be this high? (Germany by comparison, opening schools now, is at 80 per 100k). Santa Clara County is already at a 3% positive rate week to date (Korea level during their Feb epidemic)

Indicator 4 (case investigation) status is not disclosed but I would guess is met or close to met in Santa Clara county given how steep the drop-off has been in cases and confirmation by other counties (Contra Costa). Of course, it gets harder to contact trace as you ease restrictions.

Indicator 5 is a bit fuzzy - supply under what hospitalization assumptions?

Interestingly, LA county is nearly at that target. The public health system (excluding internal test capabilities at hospitals etc) can do 16K tests/ day for a population of 10 million. So about 160 tests a day/ 100 K.

The Bay Area counties included here are all pretty dense, so it makes sense that they'd want to have more test coverage per capita than a full country might need.

3) might be linked to cases per million and relative growth rates. Germany has roughly 400 active cases per million, California has about 1,000, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bay Area is well above CA as a whole given its density.

Bay Area is well below CA as a whole. Cases have grown by ~375/million in last 14 days to proxy for "active" cases. Santa Clara County's growth is only ~235/million

If it can give you a comparison point, France wants to be able to do 700k tests per week in less than 2 weeks time to have test and trace capability and start lifting the lockdown. That comes out to approximately 150 tests a day per 100k. The following reason was given.

The models predict 1000-3000 new cases a day around the time lockdown would be lifted. Each new case will imply 20-25 other persons in contact in the preceding days. 3000 x 25 = 75k tests per day, ie ~115 per day per 100k. Going to 150 allow an extra margin to also set up testing campaigns in sensitive places, eg nursing homes.

I suspect 5 isn't fuzzy in practice. My guess is that they delegate the details to each hospital, which will have very detailed notions of what they need. Especially given that their supply people will have been sweating this question for the last six weeks.

Regarding #4, with the ubiquity of call blocking, I don't see how it is possible for them to reach 90% of the people that may have been exposed, especially once people find out that picking up that phone call means you will be in quarantine. To make matters worse, the authorities likely won't be able to tell you where/when you were exposed and to whom (medical privacy). This target is basically unreachable IMHO.

A round number repeated for 4 metrics in a row is never really meant to be taken seriously. If it turns out that they can only reach 80% of contacts, they'll adjust the plan to account for that - nobody's going to let it be the one factor that keeps restrictions from being loosened.

I guess this is another reason something should have been done about the spam calls. Who answers the phone now for an unknown number?

> Indicator 3 (test capacity) has a very aggressive target. 200 tests a day per 100k? Why must it be this high? (Germany by comparison, opening schools now, is at 80 per 100k). Santa Clara County is already at a 3% positive rate week to date (Korea level during their Feb epidemic)

To actually be able to control the outbreak while people are out and about you need to be able to test lots of people whenever a new case is discovered to see if they actually passed it on to anyone. Each new case will trigger many cases especially if they're showing up sick at the hospital/doctor which means they've potentially been spreading the disease for 2 weeks.

3% week to date might change (in either direction). SCC reports tests by date of specimen collection, so the last 2 days are definitely not complete data, and a significant portion of the last 5 days are not either.

Thanks for highlighting that link.

I also like that there are numerical targets for these indicators. It's also great that the entire Bay Area is coordinating a regional response. What I'd like to see is some alignment at the state level, as well, but it doesn't look like the state has actually published specific benchmarks yet.

Reading between the lines here

"Other activities that can resume under the new order include residential moves and the use of certain shared outdoor recreational facilities that were previously ordered closed, like skate parks, but not others that involve shared equipment or physical contact." -- I believe this means they will open up parks that were previously closed and allow people to visit again.

I guess the longer term question is --

As mentioned in the daily governor's briefing, there is some kind of 2D matrix (or map) of places vs. types of activities or businesses that can be incrementally allowed to open or get to different levels of restrictions lifted. (or I hope this is the case, and not just a talking point)

How are people to know / track this? Is there some visual dashboard that everyone can refer to daily and hopefully have consistent definitions to know whether their business is covered? Press conferences (and press releases in inevitable text form) are an inefficient method having to speak the words of each change in circumstance as this continues to evolve. New Zealand seems to have a clear system of Level 1/2/3/4 that everyone has the definitions of.

This is going to have to go on for months, remember.

Even in New Zealand the definitions of each level aren't entirely clear. To the point that our Health minister has been caught out multiple times breeching our lockdown conditions.

A few days ago we reduced alert level and many people and businesses have been witnessed breaking the conditions. Some people were always going to do whatever they want, but there are many other that have been confused by rules that change day to day.

> Whether we have the capacity to investigate all COVID-19 cases and trace all of their contacts, isolating those who test positive and quarantining the people who may have been exposed.

We're all going to be inside for a long time ...

We have 20 million unemployed Americans, many of whom are currently getting paid to sit at home and play Animal Crossing.

Surely, a well-functioning society would figure out how to employ some of them to be contact tracers. Why hasn't this happened yet?

State incompetence at all levels.

What makes you think that to be the cause?

Surely, in a country with over four thousand state, county, and major city governments, there have to be a few who are competent.

Voters across so many different regions, across so many different levels of government, can't be so consistently incapable of electing competent officials. There has to be more to this.

You are touching upon a real problem here. America hasn't had excess labor for decades now, and so there are no systems in place to rapidly mobilize it. Governments in countries like China and India can scale from zero to millions of temporary employees for any project or effort in a matter of days. Even if San Francisco wants to pay people to stand at every intersection of the city and conduct tests, it will be months before they can even fill out the employment forms and finalize the logistics.

Yes and they scale that way by ignoring safety regulations.

Why do you believe it's necessary for someone to perform labor in order to be allowed to live?

Jesus said so in the Bible.

I have no issue with UI benefits, or equivalents thereof. I have no issue with the current extension of UI benefits.

But I do have issue with the claim that we could never hire enough contact tracers...

1. In the middle of a massive surge of unemployment.

2. When we are already paying millions of people to... Sit around, and do nothing.

The need for workers exists, the money to pay them exists, the workers exist, and some of them actually want to work. Why can't we put those four things together?

We're more or less already there:

https://abc7news.com/bay-area-coronavirus-update-california-...

We also need to focus on what this pandemic had meant to us and what we can consider essential and non essential in the long run and use the lessons learnt to our benefit. Certainly the nature of work for a large number of people in Silicon Valley is such that it can be absolutely done remotely. I seriously hope and wish that unless it is absolutely necessary companies like FANG or Intel or NVIDIA or all other tech companies continue to honestly (not just on paper) encourage their employees to work from home. I am sure there are many roles that can continue to work from home in the foreseeable future :

- Software engineers - Software development Managers - Product Managers - DevOps - SREs - Accountants and Finance - Marketing - Solution ArchitectS

It is entirely possible for all these categories of people to WFH with the help of VPN, FaceTime/zoom or other Video and chat/messaging software.

Companies should also stop new constructions or building new office spaces. It is time that tech companies understand that new office spaces are not a tool to increase productivity.

Also in the long run having people work from home as much as possible will significantly improve Bay Area traffic and reduce pollution.

I understand that some folks does not have the space in their home to WFH peacefully , but with childcare facilities opening up and eventually schools ... it can be easily worked out where members of such households establish a rotating schedule and WFH on a partial basis (ie 2-4 days a week).

But office spaces do increase productivity...

Collaboration increases productivity and building new offices continuously is not the only way to increase collaboration, specially for the kind of work that SV companies does. I think from that perspective the OPs post bears merit. However it is also a matter of job security and if you don’t have to go to an office physically you may feel insecure inside ....

That's true, I think a lot more can be done for the WFH perspective. If companies offered all employees a good home setup, good desk, chair, screen, keyboard, mouse, headphones, good mic, good webcam, a good whiteboarding solution as well like maybe an iPad + pencil. And there was an app allowing remote share, remote control, remote whiteboard, and subsidize cost of a good internet. I feel I'd be even more productive at home with all that in place.

We've been looking into this lately, and settled on iPad Pro + Pencil + Explain Everything as a remote meeting and whiteboarding solution. It seems promising so far. Miro is another software option that seems pretty polished, although we haven't tried it yet.

Hopefully someone with more experience can share more tips on what has worked well for them.

Herding people into open office spaces has already been proven to hurt productivity.

Where has this been proven? Personally I find I am much more productive in an office. And if I have to collaborate with others even more so.

I guess it depends on your role and how you execute it to a large extent. The OP mentioned certain roles that are to a large extent possible to wfh. Maybe 3 out of 5 days one can wfh.

Also in respect to Bay Area it certainly hurts productivity if you have to spend 2 hours everyday in commute. Unless your role means constantly blabbering on the phone you just can’t work while commuting. And I would argue if you do spend most of the time yapping on the phone then it shouldn’t matter if you are doing it remotely except for few cases where face to face is absolutely necessary.

> Overall, face-to-face time decreased by around 70 per cent across the participating employees, on average, with email use increasing by between 22 per cent and 50 per cent (depending on the estimation method used).

From Harvard study in 2018 comparing pre/post open-office.

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/07/05/open-plan-offices-drive...

I certainly like how empty the roads are whenever I go out ... having said that I certainly can’t wait to go back to office but I just dread sitting in the morning and afternoon traffic. What we need is for managers to accept that workers have absolute right to decide when they want to work from home and when they don’t. As long as someone is accountable and is meeting their goals it should be fine to wfh.

NVIDIA has already communicated to many of their employees that they will be expected to return to the office once they are legally permitted to do so.

NVIDIA's employees seemed to largely be using desktop computers rather than laptops, and many of their roles require lab equipment, it seems. They were one of the slowest to WFH, and it doesn't surprise me they'd want people to return faster.

Yes I guess chip designers and h/w engineers cannot wfh. That’s why I did not include them specifically in the list. Only reason I mentioned Nvidia is because it falls on the way of my commute and there is a big traffic snarl always right there :D

You might be surprised. Pretty much all of the pre silicon work at the semi companies I have worked at (besides maybe emulation) is done “remotely” from a server farm to begin with. Even with post silicon work, with careful lab set up, you can do a surprising amount of work remotely, or with minimal lab time.

But you’re right, the light at San Tomas and Walsh is a pain.

If these companies want to take climate change seriously, they in fact should make any role that can be worked remotely, well remote. After apple/facebook/google put in their company wide wfh policy during the initial covid outbreak it was so refreshing to see unclogged freeways and clear air in the sfbay area. I'd hate for california resorting to taxing these companies due to climate change but having a job that can be done anywhere and forcing a brutal commute on employees is bad for the environment, bad for the employees mental and physical health and just doesn't make any sense in a post-covid world.

Read the whole thing... hoping disc golf and dog parks can resume. That'd be nice.

Reopening childcare facilities seems very risky.

Millions of people can't work on reopening other things without reopening those first.

The other method I've noticed people using is to leave the kids with the grandparents.

I wonder if once people go to work/childcare if the kids will ever see their grandparents again.

THere'sno denying the importance of child care, but it seems just about guaranteed that if there is a case in one family it will spread to the other (up to) 11 families in the child's "stable group"

That's always going to be the risk until we have a working vaccine though and it's really hard to reopen without childcare in place. Without it a lot of people will have to choose between losing their jobs when their employer reopens or getting adhoc in home childcare.

If we're adapting anyway, one change could be gradually leaving kids home alone for longer times.

"Kids always need supervision" is a US thing. Leaving kids alone for some time works just fine in other countries. Of course there would have to be law/regulation/policy changes (to keep CPS away) but so what.

Some are already open, but with strict limitations. It won't be the same as re-opening as it was before; there are restrictions on capacity (12 max per teacher), sanitizing procedures, PPE for staff, guidelines around child health and reasons for exclusion, drop-off/pick-up procedures, and so forth. It's also not a carte-blanche reopening for all; the focus is still on essential workers.

They were already open. It's expanded from "essential workers" to "businesses that are allowed to have facilities open". (not much of an increase?)

The most important question : Are Barbershops going to be Open or Not? :)

I don't have an answer, but I'd encourage you to continue paying your barber on whatever schedule you used to get a haircut!

No. Not for a long time in fact

I have never seen this scale of sacrifice for this scale of Quality Adjusted Life Years. Just the impact on the kids missing school will be worse than the impact from the virus.

Just because you've not seen something doesn't mean its not happened. The sad reality is that people all over the world have lived like this forever. Warzones, undeveloped countries, etc.

Afghanistan hasn't been safe or stable enough for literally decades. Syria has had a civil war for many years. Much of Mali has been under the grip of religious extremists for years.

I don’t think you and I are talking about the same thing. I’m talking about a societal/governmental decision to sacrifice the quality of life of the entire society for the benefit of some vulnerable group. Not civil wars or ethnic cleansing or other atrocities.

What, in your expert opinion, would be the total impact of letting the virus run out of control?

There's a large gap between "let run out of control" and "stay locked indoors when the disease has been controlled." A gradual reopening starting now can find the place on the spectrum that works.

Good thing that this very article announces a gradual reopening started now, then.

All construction activities...will be allowed to resume...

This seems so arbitrary. Construction noise that you can hear and feel from home will be twice as maddening if you are stuck there. Speaking as someone whose apartment backs a sub basement deep-dig project. After a few days of quarantine one of my neighbors shouted some choice words from his balcony at the workers starting their banging and whistling at seven in the morning.

I’ve definitely been seeing and hearing construction (mission) the past month...

It's been allowed if there was an affordable housing element.

That was only one of the many exceptions. Public works projects, anything supporting an essential business/service like healthcare, food production, schools etc. have all been allowed throughout the shutdown. And up here in Sonoma county, the construction of fire-rebuilds from the 2017 fires have also been allowed - none are affordable but all essential.

It doesn't seem arbitrary to me, the thrust of these changes seems to be "if its done entirely outdoors, its OK, as long as there isn't an obvious, large transmission path."

I feel you on the noise, but it makes sense to me. Construction is one kind of work where worker density is low and people are already used to wearing PPE when needed.

yah, easy call on construction reopening but no sympathy for whining about (legitimate construction) noise, which is often used by curmudgeons to adversely control all sorts of others’ behaviors.

but 7am is a bit of an issue. the ordinance in LA for instance specifies construction noise can’t begin before 8am but that’s routinely broken here too.

Construction is a massive sector that supports a lot of working class families. It is/can be performed with maximum adherence to social distancing and use of respiratory masks/PPE is already standard practice. I can see how the additional noise will be an inconvenience to some, but not allowing construction would be, IMO, much more devastating to an already hammered economy/work-force. Disclaimer: I work in the construction industry.

Living in a half-finished renovation, I have to disagree. The permitting and inspection process needs to resume so that I no longer have to shelter-at-a-construction-site.

Construction is important. They're literally building future homes, offices, and infrastructure. This has a massive outsized economic impact going forwards.

If anything, this is a unique, massive opportunity to get caught up on stuff like road construction - it's much easier to close off lanes and institute detours when traffic is well below normal levels.

I can almost taste the privilege

At any rate, it's a great time to do road construction! I noticed it pick up a bit here in New Hampshire.

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