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> The Bay Area health officials have formed a cabal to move the entire region in concert

The word "cabal" generally has a very sinister undertone. I can't tell if it was intentional here. "Coordination between public health officials in adjacent locales" is generally not something that merits painting in sinister tones.

Definitely not coordination.

Came together on their own. Decide what to do together. Enforce each other's powers by acting in concert.

That sounds like a coalition, maybe? Cabals tend towards secrecy.

I think the name you give it mostly depends on whether you are inside or outside the group or stand to gain or lose from it. So one person calls the same exact thing a cabal and the other calls it a coalition. It’s dependent on the biases of the observer.

People live in one County and work in another. They may even transit through another.

Public health, like viruses, is about more than arbitrary lines on a map.

> Enforce each other's powers by acting in concert.

Do you similarly complain that neighboring police departments have agreements in place to do the same thing? Fire/EMS mutual aid?

Perhaps we can go back to the days of the Dukes of Hazzard, and the Sheriff has to stop because they got to the County Line.

You mean like Alameda County and San Joaquin County which are adjacent to each other and which have different rules in place? Arbitrary line on the map.

> Arbitrary line on the map.

Not arbitrary at all. The eastern ridge of the coastal mountain ranges runs along the border, and the border region is far more sparsely populated than the borders between the more urban counties to the west. The closest city to the border, Livermore, has far more commuting traffic in normal times to the Bay Area counties than to San Joaquin county.

What is arbitrary is the border between Alameda and Santa Clara counties, which coincidentally runs right by the Tesla factory.

Arbitrary in terms of flow of people. Many, many people commute from San Joaquin County to Alameda County and beyond. Many goods and services flow between the counties. There are many warehouses located in the flats right over the hills in San Joaquin County. This is because of lower cost.

> Many goods and services flow between the counties.

This virus travels primarily on humans, not goods. The vast majority of human travel is between Alameda and other Bay Area counties, not between Alameda and San Joaquin.

Just because most of the milk, produce, and nuts, and packaged goods come from that direction doesn't mean that it makes sense for Alameda county to be more tightly coordinated in public health policy with San Joaquin county than its Bay Area neighbors.

Provide some facts instead of hearsay. Here are some:

- Did you know that Tesla has a shuttle between San Joaquin valley and the Tesla factory? Did you know that Tesla has factories in the San Joaquin valley?

- Did you know about Tracy being a massive bedroom community into Alameda County and beyond? Those people are providing services for Alameda County and beyond. Do you really think that all your service workers can afford to live in the 'core' Bay Area? I personally knew someone with a family in Tracy who worked in the South Bay and sometimes stayed over at his mother in Dublin because the commute was so bad. He laid carpets.

Go ask your Uber or Lyft driver where they live. Multiple have told me Sacramento.

Go ask a car salesman/saleswoman where they live. I asked. Tracy.

Go ask cancer patients from the Sacramento area where they get treatment. Think Stanford.

- Where do you think those workers at your weekly farmer's market live? Most of them come from San Joaquin valley. Look closely at where they say their farms are. Guess.

- Did you know that there are San Francisco city employees that commute daily from San Joaquin valley?

- Did you know about the massive traffic jam that is I-580 in the mornings? It used to get crowded by 5:30 am from the masses of people commuting in from San Joaquin valley. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/I-580-home-to-3-of-Ba... BTW, the article is from 2005. It's much worse than that.

Did you know about the ACE station in Tracy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Corridor_Express

Do you know about the Amtrak train from Sacramento? I had two coworkers who took that daily into Contra Costa County. They lived in Roseville. Look up where that is located.

Ever wonder where multi-generational Bay Area families live? Do you really think that it is magically limited to the 'core' Bay Area? Think San Joaquin valley. I've got family there and I know several other 'core' Bay Area families who come from there and still have family there.

The entire western side of San Joaquin County is a de facto bedroom community for the 'core' Bay Area. Amazingly it even stretches into the Sacramento/Stockton area.

Yes to all of your "Did you knows". I also have family in the central valley.

If your point is that mega commutes are inversely correlated with income, I agree, but not sure what that has to do with the public health policy coordination by counties during the pandemic.

The epicenter of every major outbreak of this disease is in dense urban areas like the Bay Area, so Alameda county is right to coordinate primarily with neighboring high density counties.

It invalidates your point. The whole area is deeply interconnected. You try to nitpick half a sentence and take it out of context. You know nothing.

> It invalidates your point. The whole area is deeply interconnected.

I agree that they are interconnected, but the places with higher population and population density (the 7 Bay Area counties) are even more interconnected on a human basis. The idea that Bay Area counties should compromise their lockdowns for San Joaquin county commuters makes no sense. Their policies should be driven by their shared public health priorities.

> You know nothing.

Vitriol is an ineffective argumentative technique.

I stand by the statement. You again pick and choose parts of statements.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+things+out+of+cont...

Do you really think there is less movement of people between San Joaquin County and these counties versus Marin County and these counties? Marin County is one of this group. Do you really think that Marin County is a densely populated urban area?

Marin County has ~250K people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_County%2C_California

San Joaquin County has probably >700K people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Joaquin_County%2C_Californ...

Furthermore, San Joaquin County has a higher population density than Marin County.

I-580 has ~300K per day in the Tri-Valley area connecting San Joaquin and Alameda counties. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-year-later-I-580-pa...

The Golden Gate Bridge connecting Marin County to San Francisco County has ~112K a day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Bridge#Usage_and_t...

The Richmond San Rafael Bridge connecting Marin County to Contra Costa County has ~80K a day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond–San_Rafael_Bridge

300 >> (112 + 80).

And don't give me BS about other means of transportation. Those ferries from Marin carry in the low thousands a day. The trains and buses running from San Joaquin Valley in carry far more. It will skew even further on the side of San Joaquin County.

Your argument is repeatedly repudiated by the facts, your logic is weak, you try to score points on irrelevancies, and yet you continue to try to argue. e.g. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

Who said anything about Marin? Oh right, it's just you cherry picking the least dense Bay Area county.

Here are the 2010 commute flows between the counties from the state of CA metropolitan transport commission itself.

http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/commute-patterns

Alameda county sees the greatest flow of commuters in the Bay Area. San Joaquin counties commuters are a fraction of those in and out of Alameda county. They are dwarfed by the flow from to/from SF, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara counties. If you have an issue with that study, take it up with the state MTA. I'm sure they'd love to hear your criticisms.

> Your argument is repeatedly repudiated by the facts, your logic is weak, you try to score points on irrelevancies, and yet you continue to try to argue. e.g. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

Right back at ya boss...

Marin County is one of the six counties in the group that form the lockdown group. If you don’t know that then you really have problems. Based on your criteria San Joaquin is a better candidate to be in the group than Marin County. Good bye, I am tired with arguing with you. Waste of time.

That sounds like coordination to me...

It also sounds like cabal, cartel, union, ring, tribe, oligopoly, etc... You can't join. You aren't invited. You have no say.

Holy shit. My parents were a cabal when I was a kid.

You mean they weren't coordinating?

C'mon it's insulting to cabals to say they don't coordinate. How can they cabalize effectively without that?

I've repeatedly tried to get tested. All in the bay area continue to require that you certify that you have chills, cough, fever etc.

SUPER annoying. Sometimes you are just under the weather, sore throat etc and want to do your part - you cannot do that in the bay area. LA area I hear has removed the gatekeeping.

You also have to have a doctors order.

However, you can pay for antibody tests out of pocket around here - that part seems to have escaped the lock down on testing they have going.

There's going to have to be a point at which they allow you to at least pay for your own test if you want - no certification or doctor referral needed. I don't know how we can take the idea that testing is a priority when they make it so hard to get tested.

How would you be doing your part by getting tested? Shouldn't you quarantine either way to "do your part"?

There's a difference between the kind of quarantine expected with a positive test vs not knowing. Once you test positive, you're not supposed to leave the house at all for 14 days, and only then with clearance from the local health department (or physician depending where you are). If you don't know for sure that you had COVID, it would be reasonable to go back out after your "cold" symptoms alleviated.

Part of the trouble is that there seems to be a lot of variation in symptoms in people who test positive.

Right. You can walk out of the testing facility and get infected on the way home.

Too many people have said "I was tested, I don't have it", completely treating it as a continuum, not a point in time.

It helps you know how strict you need to be within your household to prevent members of your household from becoming infected. It's difficult to sustain the level of vigilance needed to protect someone living with you in the next room if you're having extremely mild symptoms and you're not sure you're positive. If you know you're positive you could do something like get a hotel room for 2 weeks to protect your family.

There's two components to tests: - random testing to discover new infections and to gauge how effective your measures are - targeted testing done as part of contact tracing - this is limited by how many people you have doing the legwork tracking down people and testing them - then quarantining anyone who's found to be positive

Here in NZ we've reached the point where random tests are finding nothing, we're contact tracing at least 3-4 deep (a friend's family was tested who's spouse worked with someone who had a contact who had tested positive). At this point we're getting a couple of new cases per day for a couple of weeks, all from known sources already locked down - we started opening up (from a much deeper lock down than California) about 10 days ago, in 2 days we'll be opening restaurants, schools, most stores (but not bars for a week) crowds will be limited to ~10 for a while

NZ has an advantage over the US and Germany: it's small and it hasn't gutted its public health system.

The real reason why the push for "tracing apps" is so massive is that many countries have "saved" money in public health for decades - not just the healthcare systems themselves but also the pandemic/epidemic response teams and other admin staff. Now, Corona bites our collective butts.

> The issue doesn't seem to be insufficient tests. It seems to be mostly that people aren't going in to get tested since the positivity rate is actually going down.

I don't think this is true, at all. Would love to see a source that testing right now is constrained by people unwilling to get tested and not by capacity to test.

Here is an anecdote.

My ex works at an urgent care clinic where they literally put a big banner up saying that they do COVID-19 tests.

They have not run out of tests.

This strongly suggests that in Orange County, CA, the bottleneck is not enough people asking for tests.

> the bottleneck is not enough people asking for tests

the bottleneck is not enough people with adequate health insurance asking for tests

Pretty much every health insurance plan in the country covers COVID-19 tests for free. Some states even require it.

Millions of Americans do not have health insurance.

I thought they passed a law saying insurances had to cover this test?

In my case, I couldn't get a test despite my wife getting one. I guess they only wanted me to test if she tested positive. Thankfully the test was negative.

Rightly or wrongly, many people are avoiding testing due to stories of health officials removing children or other people from homes where someone tests positive.

> the bottleneck is not enough people asking for tests.

the bottleneck is people not being able to access tests. you can't just "ask" for one and get one and if you think you can, you clearly haven't tried getting tested.

Until recently you couldn't. My ex was constantly complaining that she knew people probably had it and couldn't get them tested.

That reversed in the last week. She now has enough tests to give them to anyone who asks. Which is why they put the banner up.

https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-testing-locations-near-me-w...

You mostly can't get tested unless you have symptoms.

This is just one state but the testing blitz in Arizona has fallen short. For the last two Saturdays, tests were open to anyone including no pre-registration at some locations...

>Last Saturday was the first day of the testing blitz. The goal was to perform 10,000 to 20,000 tests statewide. But, as of Thursday, Arizona Department of Health Services data shows only around 5,000 tests were collected that day.

Maready Medical in Mesa had capacity to perform 500 tests last weekend, said business director Sonny Hastings but only around 200 people showed up. Most appointment slots at that site are still open for this weekend, he said.

https://kjzz.org/content/1560116/some-covid-19-testing-sites...

A few things, Sarah Cody has been wretched in both her handling with the crisis as well as transparency on where cases are coming from. For almost two months us stuck in the south bay area have had no idea where cases are located, it was all tied to santa clara county, which in the bay area is gigantic(the county has ~2 million people and is 1328 sq. miles) County officials refused to say where cases were based in cities, which created absolute panic in the south bay in the late Feb/March time frame[1]. This somewhat blew up in their face when a outbreak occurred at valley medical in San Jose with unsuspecting staff getting infected with covid-19 [2]

When the lockdown happened which btw was only 4 days earlier than NYC's lockdown (late on March 16 vs. NYC's March 20th) everyone tries to capture how well prepared the bay area was but it was a total joke, there were no tests available, local stores were almost all closed and the ones that were open were sold out of all PPE(hand sanitizer masks etc). Store staff mostly did not have masks or were not asked to wear masks. Finally we were given out case numbers by cities but once again if you live in San Jose which is huge you have no idea where the cluster of cases are(should I walk my dog in this area of the city? etc) by zip code would have been preferable.

When the lockdown ends who will know? We have only vague ideas when things are opening up despite dropping covid-19 cases in the area[3] and measures we can see like workers taking down the tents for patients(never used) in the local hospital parking lots. I feel really had for people who have a physical job to go to as who can say when this ends.

Lastly its extremely frustrating that given months have passed testing is still non-existent, after a tele-chat with my health provider he says the tests he received were terrible (this was a 2 weeks ago) and he threw them all away. Also the county or cities have no large scale antibody testing in smaller cities to ascertain the true death rate of this virus given that it presents asymptomatic in a sizable % of patients.

[1] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/14684

[2] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/14687

[3] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/14689

The focusing of wealth and power and mob insanity on ordinary people like this is one of the most frightening things about today's society, and it would sure feel like catharsis if a billionaire instigator or two or three got their comeuppance. I dunno, maybe that's what we're all being goaded towards demanding?

This might be the best analysis that I've seen of the present situation and really puts the May 18th date into context. I had wondered how that was bandied about and why it seemed to come from someone else than the shutdown order.

It sounds pretty clear that it was far less firm than the articles implied and this situation is every bit as messy and murky as has been implied by all implied parties.

Ironically, Santa Clara county was the one that permitted Broadcom to open up 2 weeks and require that workers who could perfectly well work from home come in weekly shifts.

The tests that are out there are very inaccurate. The a president of Tanzania sent in samples from a goat and paypaya and they came back "positive" for covid19.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/tanzanian-president-bla...

Good thing the Bay Area is not located in Tanzania.