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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

It'll be interesting to see how this goes in terms of compliance. You miss mother's day, ok, fine, call her and send her something. You miss memorial day, eh, I guess it's for a good cause. You can't have your annual 4th of July BBQ now your kinda annoyed. You can't do anything all summer and you can't send the kids away to summer camp either, well now you're pissed off. The fewer the local number of cases the harder it is to justify obeying the order in people's minds (especially if they see pics on FB and Instagram of their friends/relatives in other states out and about) and the more people are gonna just disregard the order.

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Yeah. Nate Silver has tweeted a few times about disliking beach shutdowns -- a lot of evidence says outdoor transmission is pretty negligible, and you gotta weigh that against the "cost" to public opinion. People wanna go to the beach pretty bad right now.

At some point, people are gonna wanna stop paying the cost, and will simply stop complying with lockdown -- so you gotta ask, where do you trade a little extra risk in return for greater compliance to the rest of the rules?

LA beaches are set to reopen for some activity.

I took a drive up the coast from Monterey northbound and every beach access was lined with cars. If there was a parking space meant for cars it was closed with yellow caution tape and cones, but if there was a space to park on the side of the road near beach access it was full.

It seems they've discovered their authority extends to closing parking lots and not much further, and they don't want to arrest people and get their orders struck down in court.

Those street spots are usually full anyway. Free parking fills up before the lots so that doesn't surprise me.

So much of the reaction to this is emotional/political.

I had a friend tell me he yelled at someone entering a closed park. I said its probably safer in a giant closed park than in my own backyard. He said: well, if I'm not allowed to go to the bar then he can't go to the park.

Very true.

As I was telling a friend of mine, it feels like a collective case of "misery loves company". Any indication on my social media that someone is stepping out their front door to be proactive about their mental health is met with an unfortunate amount of derision and shaming.

And the political aspect to this can be just as depressing. It seems a nuanced conversation on the benefits of reopening is impossible with my friends on the left side of the political spectrum (which is most of them, and includes myself). I have incredibly smart friends on the left, and I'd love to hear a point of view from them that I didn't feel was being driven from an "us vs them" mindset.

It's really unfortunate that advocating for reopening has been cast as the position of the looney right in the national discourse. When to reopen could be the most important question we face in decades, and a reasoned, dispassionate discussion of the pros and cons sure would be wonderful.

Nobody is sure how it transmits. But if it's airborne, moving air and sunlight are certainly going to make gathering at a beach much safer than gathering inside an office building.

Handwashing stations and ULPA filters in HVAC systems set to renew the air x times more often I think will end up being the long term solution, along with a persistent disease which is just a part of life. The masks seem to just be a joke made up by people wanting to do something.

The problem with opening up the beaches.. are the congregation of large groups of people at choke points such as crosswalk intersections and such places.

heres an update on Florida.. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-coronaviru...

That said, Florida had beaches open in many areas that people predicted would cause huge surges and they did not from any of the data I've seen.

Bathrooms & restaurants. You can bring your own food or get takeout - but where are you going to relieve yourself?

How do you socially distance at a beach bathroom? Does everyone hit up the same fast-food bathrooms nearby - concentrating the risk?

Piss in the ocean? Fish do it.

Most of the beaches in LA are open. The beaches that are closed are closed because social distancing is impractical

And the measures don’t make much sense either. In Sonoma County parks are closed but stores are full. If there ever has been a safe place then it would be hiking in a park in my view. Also remind people to keep distance on beaches but don’t just close them.

Indeed. I think compliance will be really interesting to see, especially in comparison to states that allow small relaxations in the coming weeks. At some point, if they don't feel like progress is happening, people will get fed up with the current situation and begin to socialize without precautions. Meanwhile, if you allow people to do a little socializing, they may end up being more compliant overall.

Well, considering 40% of California's daily case load is from LA County, it seems that there are enough cases to justify the order.

25% of California's population is from LA county. Just to put that in context.

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