Hacker News Reader

Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to come back, but the problem isn't with the city, it's the political situation.

Who wants to start a company or a business if the local government can arbitrarily shut down your office for several months? Who wants to live in a city that could shut down bars, restaurants, and theaters for a year. I'd rather make my own decisions based on my personal health situation. For several months a vaccinated individual and business owner could not consensually do business without a face mask. Where is the science in that?

Things might be different if there were no other options, but the US is a big place. There is a lot of competition, and life is too short to sacrifice years of your life for the whims of some bureaucrat. Ironically this is the same reason I moved to San Francisco in the first place; it was a place where diverse people and cultures had the freedom to express themselves.

View on HN

So you don't want to do business in CA, NY, Europe, Great Britain, Singapore, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, or Mexico, to name a few?

Basically, you don't want to start a business in any of the world's biggest economies, or in the places with the best tech scenes or financing opportunities?

Activities were shutdown because of a massive global pandemic the likes of which the world hasn't seen for over a century. 4 million people are dead, and counting, and there have been at least 4 surges related to new strains spreading.

And you're leaving/left because you had to wear a face mask?

That is not the hill to die on.

The refusal to follow the CDC guidelines for vaccinated individuals and masks was simply a good example of a government that was/is not interested in following the science, and demonstrates that CA is not going to act rationally in a public health situation. That's not an environment I would want to risk starting a business or investing in.

It sounds like you have an ideological issue rather than a scientific one.

CA's lockdowns were based on scientific evidence that COVID19 spreads through the air. Requiring masks was based on that evidence. As there were a lot of scientific unknowns during the past year, the lockdowns were overly broad as a matter of necessity--nobody knew how bad it could get. Moreover, CA's refusal to stick to the lackadaisal CDC guidelines was based heavily on the Trump administration's politicization of COVID19, and especially on the CDC's missteps at the beginning of the COVID19 crisis (i.e., when they were originally advising people not to wear masks...because they wanted to save them for medical workers and had neglected to make purchase orders for masks).

Requiring masks after vaccination was required for several months because it wasn't yet known how effective vaccinations would be in the real world. Once that data was established, the mask mandate ended for the vaccinated.

Also, note that the vaccinated can still get and spread COVID19, especially the newer strains like delta, they simply won't suffer severe symptoms if they do get infected.

If you don't want to live in an environment like CA where science and public health plays a role in decision-making, it's probably for the best that you're not living in CA.

Come on, for a while there we had a “0% ICU capacity” despite empty beds because every COVID patient counted as two people or something [1]. That’s not science.

We did some things right, but the state government really, really is not some bastion of good sense.

[1]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/12/29/how-can-california-ha...

> And you're leaving/left because you had to wear a face mask?

You really shouldn't put words in the author's mouth. They very clearly said:

> government can arbitrarily shut down your office for several months

and

> a city that could shut down bars, restaurants, and theaters for a year

There are a number of states that managed to keep schools, restaurants, and barbershops open without having worse outcomes than California did. And when the state chose to ignore the CDC for an entire month and keep things locked down, even for vaccinated people, it kinda pushed a lot of people over the edge.

government can arbitrarily shut down your office for several months

Not arbitrary. Based on evidence that COVID19 is airborne, and that standard office/business filters were insufficient to filter out the virus, most indoor businesses were closed down to limit the spread except those deemed "essential."

There are a number of states that managed to keep schools, restaurants, and barbershops open without having worse outcomes than California did.

That's not true at all. On a per capita basis, those states ended up having significantly higher infection rates and death rates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com