Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

The effectiveness of a middle ground strategy is pure conjecture. Canada shut down fast and hard - like California - and is not seeing cases spike. Perhaps because we re-opened slowly and people are still generally cautious - wearing masks in public and maintaining social distance. Or perhaps because we have not been getting wildly mixed messages from local/provincial/national leaders about the severity of the situation or what to do about it.

View on HN

Canada did not act in unison, it was very province-by-province. Ontario locked down quite hard, whereas British Columbia only required shutdowns of service businesses, and suggested everyone stay in.

My mistake. I guess I'm specifically speaking of Ontario.

Outside of Ontario & Quebec on really Vancouver and Calgary have had any notable cases. The infection rate country-wide is minor compared to California and almost all deaths are clustered in retirement and extended care facilities. Most importantly the health care system was never even close to overwhelmed. It's been a very different story than major US hotspots.

You paint an incredibly unfair picture with your comment.

British Columbia shutdown hard and fast, controlled the disease well, and has daily case numbers in the single digits.

Ontario fucked everything up, had massive spread in their care homes, and still has hundreds of cases a day.

My understanding is that Canada is currently at the stage of reopening that California is rolling back to, where gyms, indoor restaurants, and movie theaters are closed.

Yup, that's the case in Ontario. Mask wearing is also now mandatory indoors. I guess the question is why did California rush to re-open fully?

The governor's been clear that's part of the intended strategy; counties will be allowed to rush forwards as long as infection rates remain low, and then pull back if infections rise. He's consistently warned that some rollbacks should be expected.

The problem with this strategy is that it's been incredibly confusing; I'm getting whiplash from all the back-and-forth. The news reporting has been bad, as well, not clearly distinguishing between statewide and per-county (or for counties on the "watch list", which changes daily).

My friends who are in the service industry have to figure out from day-to-day what they're going to be doing. This is just a giant mess.

Yeah, I think that's fair. I've been plugged in enough that I don't feel the whiplash much, but I can't imagine how confusing it would be to understand what's happening from just scrolling through headlines in the morning.

...and just this evening Santa Clara county (most of the valley) announced they're shutting down gyms and salons on Wednesday, because they expect the state will shut us down anyway. Craziness.

I'm glad our state is doing something, it's just so unpredictable.

It's also hard to rollback quickly when you've got a 2-week lag between when you steer the ship and when it starts to turn. I can't see how anything other than a gated approach over significant time can be preferable, unless the motivation is political (spoiler: it is).

It is, but... should it not be? Politics is the process by which people decide what society should look like.

I was happy when the state released clear metrics for what would allow a county to move onto Phase 2.5 and Phase 3 of the reopening.

Initially one of the key metrics is that the county have 0 deaths and no more than 10 new coronavirus cases per 100k residents over a 2 week period.

Then the number became 25 cases per 100k residents.

Then it became 100 cases per 100k residents.

Then my county was permitted to mostly reopen with 300+ new cases per 100k residents, in conjunction with a few hundred deaths per week. To me it's clear that we've strayed from the original emphasis on "science based" metrics.

Which county might that be? Only Los Angeles has more than a few hundred death due to COVID total.

In Santa Clara county still about 20 times as many people die every day due to unrelated causes than due to COVID. That makes it hard to justify the economic damage, which is devastating to those who lost their job and are waiting for unemployment benefits for months now.

Yup, LA. I think we're currently ~50 deaths and 2500 new confirmed cases per day

> I guess the question is why did California rush to re-open fully?

Because states have a higher cost of borrowing than the feds and usually also have constitutional balanced operating budget mandates, they tend to rely on federal aid to deal with major extended emergencies. With the feds not providing substantial state aid in this crisis, there’s significant financial pressure for economic reopening.

It was all middle ground strategy from day one. The national lockdown was timed to the nyc wave and that was a probably a mistake depending on how you view the purpose of the lockdown. If it was to flatten the curve, outside of nyc, we did too much too soon and are now reaping the effects of “precaution fatigue.” It’s a marathon rather than a sprint, but each region, has its own race to run on it’s own timeline, it’s own demographic and medical infrastructure factors.

Or maybe it's just that the places where it spreads are indoor dining and bars, and people just won't stop overanalyzing it.

> The national lockdown was timed to the nyc wave

There was no “national lockdown”. The California lockdown was timed based on the Bay Area and Los Angeles surges.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com