Is there strong evidence that outdoor eating is causing significant transmission? Enough to impose this cost on a struggling sector?
We're in the phase now where we understand enough to be more targeted aren't we?
I worry that this will end up being counterproductive, though. Probably the net number of people meeting other people will go down. However, of those who still meet other people, they will likely meet somewhere indoors (someone's home for dinner), which is much more dangerous than outdoor dining.
The current lockdown strategies, like with many political measures, seem to be more motivated by "we need to look like we're doing something" than "we need to fix the problem".
What they should be screaming is, "Why did you squander the last lockdown? Why aren't we testing and tracing on massive scale? Why didn't we build more hospital capacity in the time we had?"
The state squandered the time we bought ourselves with the last lockdown. For example, where is the army of contact tracers we were supposed to hire?
https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/i-m-contact-tracer-san-fr...
The San Mateo fairgrounds has a field hospital setup that's currently unused, and I understand that Santa Clara County has a couple as well. The equipment is currently being moved into real hospitals because staffing and equipment is apparently more of a bottleneck than space.
The problem is that nothing can stop an exponential curve other than bringing the exponent under 1.0. You can delay by minimizing it, but an Rt of 1.2 vs 2.0 just means it doubles in 4 weeks rather than 1. You're still screwed, you just have longer to get there.
OP talks about how people will be coming with pitchforks for public health officials. I think more ire will be directed at national public health officials than state and local ones. The national ones obviously screwed up when it came to messaging regarding masks, and I think less obviously but just as importantly screwed up when it game to rolling out the vaccine.
These decisions are probably more impactful than the decisions state and local health officials made around whether bars are open or not.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/scientists-investigate-whether-...
The numbers are generally small (maximum a hundredful), so not difficult to handle.
Most of China has not had any lockdowns since July. I wish I could travel.
They just do batch tests and mix samples in groups, if positive, test again. My father did one a few months ago after returning from Qingdao, where there were a small outbreak then in a hospital.
China is really good at doing things at scale and honestly US is nowhere close (too slow and too inefficient, from what I see here in Santa Clara)
The main difficulty is getting everyone to give a sample but with China’s level of social cohesion and control that is a solved problem.
While in China, it's like putting sparks off here and there, but most of people are not affected. If the problem can be solved by money, it's not a real problem.