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As someone who runs a restaurant in the Bay Area, that's not really accurate. We were busy right up until the shut-down.

by asdf21 7y ago

ashtonkem 7y ago
San Francisco shut down incredibly early compared to most of the US, especially compared to their case load. By the time SF shut down they had 50 cases, while NYC waited until they had 10,000 cases to shut down. That probably is why the shut down and lack of demand line up so closely for businesses in the Bay Area.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  And that's also unfortunately why the death rate is so unconscionably high here in NY: our leaders failed us and shut down way too late.
  - legolas2412 7y ago
    And that is why I find it hilarious to see everybody fawning over governer Cuomo now.
    - ashtonkem 7y ago
      It’s still unclear to me whether Cuomo dropped the ball, or whether he was hindered by De Blasio. Either way, Inslee and Breed deserve more credit. Preventing a crisis is superior to responding effectively after its started.
      - hilbertseries 7y ago
        No, De Blasio wanted to issue a shelter in place order on March 17 and Cuomo said absolutely not. Then eventually Cuomo comes around and they start a shelter in place on March 22nd.
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        They both dropped the ball big time. de Blasio went to the gym on literally the last day before those kinds of businesses were shuttered. He kept waffling on shuttering the schools and waited way too late. He only started taking things seriously when the heads of his department of health threatened to resign if he didn't take more action. See e.g.: https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/coronavirus-de-blasios-katrina.html https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-ci... They both started off as a complete joke on this. Cuomo has at least since been improving, but de Blasio remains a complete joke. He's incapable of so much as even closing some empty streets (or some lanes on streets) to give pedestrians more space to spread out. Other cities have been doing this to great success, but de Blasio has only ever understood things from the perspective of being behind a windshield.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      I'm not so sure it's 'fawning' so much as he's in the spotlight so much because his state is currently the worst.
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        There has definitely been plenty of fawning, I can confirm.
  - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
    It's not their fault. The disease hit New York first before it hit anywhere else in the US and hence had a lot of time to develop. I heard from one source, that it was already present in New York back in december and that one of the first worldwide cases came to New york early. that was from a Joe Rogan podcast episode.
    - rhizome 6y ago
      We don't even know if "time to develop" in that way is even a thing in reality.
    - ashtonkem 7y ago
      Given the close economic and cultural ties between the west coast and Asia, I find it very hard to believe that Coronavirus travelled through Europe to NYC before it travelled directly from China to LA or SF.
- rad_gruchalski 7y ago
  Seems to be a lesson well learnt from 1918. SF skipped the first wave back then too. Good to hear some people remember and take notes.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    NYC was the best city on the entire east coast back then. We closed early and had fewer deaths because of it. Unfortunately that lesson wasn't learned (likely because nobody in charge of anything back then is still alive today), and this time we were unfortunately saddled with an incompetent governor and mayor who hadn't learned from history and didn't take action soon enough.
karthikb 7y ago
https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry Scroll down and click "city" instead of country. SF bookings on OpenTable were consistently down starting the last week of February. Your restaurant might have had different performance for a number of reasons.
icedistilled 7y ago
As A san francisco resident, I got take out a couple times but I would not have considered eating sit down in the couple weeks prior to the formal orders. I was, however, marveling at how many people were still eating sit down. They would have nearly all vanished once the hospitals started filling up had there been no formal order. And then it would have lasted longer.
- ashtonkem 7y ago
  LA resident here; while I’m not a dining out kind of person, I pulled back from the gym 2 weeks before I was officially ordered to stay in. I also skipped a former colleague’s leaving town party for the same reason.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    There were a few activities I did in the last week before I stayed home that definitely felt unsafe, and were the last time I did those things (in advance of official shutdowns). I went to the gym and it felt unsafe, I saw a play on Broadway and felt unsafe, and ran on the East River and felt unsafe, and then we settled in to not go anywhere anymore the next week (still a week prior to the official orders), but by then I'd already caught it. My first symptoms appeared on March 16th, meaning I'd most likely gotten it within the past week, and NYC didn't shut everything down until the 23rd, when I was already at the peak of the illness. So I would have needed to have stopped doing things several weeks prior to the government actually getting off its ass and acting in order to be safe, but I didn't have the understanding of how widely in the community it was already spreading at that point, or how severely we were under-testing. As a city we were unbelievably late to act, and the over 10,000 dead in NYC alone (with ~750 more every day) are a testament to that. It's the peak of absurdity to imagine the city somehow going on as normal under this unbelievable toll if only we weren't being told to shelter in place, when the only street noise you can hear a lot of the time is ambulance sirens.
    - sizzle 7y ago
      Hope you are doing better, if you don't mind me asking, how were the worst of the symptoms and did you recover completely? any breathing complications? any tips you felt helped you fight it off, assuming you didn't get hit with with the full force of the virus. Wishing you a speedy recovery fellow HN reader friend.
Supermancho 7y ago
In Seattle, people were dining out at about 80% until the official shut down of businesses. Things like IHOP and Denny's were still fully packed, but more niche were often sparse.

As someone who runs a restaurant in the Bay Area, that's not really accurate. We were busy right up until the shut-down.

by asdf21 7y ago

As someone who runs a restaurant in the Bay Area, that's not really accurate. We were busy right up until the shut-down.

ashtonkem 7y ago

San Francisco shut down incredibly early compared to most of the US, especially compared to their case load. By the time SF shut down they had 50 cases, while NYC waited until they had 10,000 cases to shut down. That probably is why the shut down and lack of demand line up so closely for businesses in the Bay Area.

CydeWeys 7y ago
And that's also unfortunately why the death rate is so unconscionably high here in NY: our leaders failed us and shut down way too late.
- legolas2412 7y ago
  And that is why I find it hilarious to see everybody fawning over governer Cuomo now.
  - ashtonkem 7y ago
    It’s still unclear to me whether Cuomo dropped the ball, or whether he was hindered by De Blasio. Either way, Inslee and Breed deserve more credit. Preventing a crisis is superior to responding effectively after its started.
    - hilbertseries 7y ago
      No, De Blasio wanted to issue a shelter in place order on March 17 and Cuomo said absolutely not. Then eventually Cuomo comes around and they start a shelter in place on March 22nd.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      They both dropped the ball big time. de Blasio went to the gym on literally the last day before those kinds of businesses were shuttered. He kept waffling on shuttering the schools and waited way too late. He only started taking things seriously when the heads of his department of health threatened to resign if he didn't take more action. See e.g.: https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/coronavirus-de-blasios-katrina.html https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-ci... They both started off as a complete joke on this. Cuomo has at least since been improving, but de Blasio remains a complete joke. He's incapable of so much as even closing some empty streets (or some lanes on streets) to give pedestrians more space to spread out. Other cities have been doing this to great success, but de Blasio has only ever understood things from the perspective of being behind a windshield.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    I'm not so sure it's 'fawning' so much as he's in the spotlight so much because his state is currently the worst.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      There has definitely been plenty of fawning, I can confirm.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  It's not their fault. The disease hit New York first before it hit anywhere else in the US and hence had a lot of time to develop. I heard from one source, that it was already present in New York back in december and that one of the first worldwide cases came to New york early. that was from a Joe Rogan podcast episode.
  - rhizome 6y ago
    We don't even know if "time to develop" in that way is even a thing in reality.
  - ashtonkem 7y ago
    Given the close economic and cultural ties between the west coast and Asia, I find it very hard to believe that Coronavirus travelled through Europe to NYC before it travelled directly from China to LA or SF.
rad_gruchalski 7y ago
Seems to be a lesson well learnt from 1918. SF skipped the first wave back then too. Good to hear some people remember and take notes.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  NYC was the best city on the entire east coast back then. We closed early and had fewer deaths because of it. Unfortunately that lesson wasn't learned (likely because nobody in charge of anything back then is still alive today), and this time we were unfortunately saddled with an incompetent governor and mayor who hadn't learned from history and didn't take action soon enough.

karthikb 7y ago

https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry Scroll down and click "city" instead of country. SF bookings on OpenTable were consistently down starting the last week of February. Your restaurant might have had different performance for a number of reasons.

icedistilled 7y ago

As A san francisco resident, I got take out a couple times but I would not have considered eating sit down in the couple weeks prior to the formal orders. I was, however, marveling at how many people were still eating sit down. They would have nearly all vanished once the hospitals started filling up had there been no formal order. And then it would have lasted longer.

ashtonkem 7y ago
LA resident here; while I’m not a dining out kind of person, I pulled back from the gym 2 weeks before I was officially ordered to stay in. I also skipped a former colleague’s leaving town party for the same reason.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  There were a few activities I did in the last week before I stayed home that definitely felt unsafe, and were the last time I did those things (in advance of official shutdowns). I went to the gym and it felt unsafe, I saw a play on Broadway and felt unsafe, and ran on the East River and felt unsafe, and then we settled in to not go anywhere anymore the next week (still a week prior to the official orders), but by then I'd already caught it. My first symptoms appeared on March 16th, meaning I'd most likely gotten it within the past week, and NYC didn't shut everything down until the 23rd, when I was already at the peak of the illness. So I would have needed to have stopped doing things several weeks prior to the government actually getting off its ass and acting in order to be safe, but I didn't have the understanding of how widely in the community it was already spreading at that point, or how severely we were under-testing. As a city we were unbelievably late to act, and the over 10,000 dead in NYC alone (with ~750 more every day) are a testament to that. It's the peak of absurdity to imagine the city somehow going on as normal under this unbelievable toll if only we weren't being told to shelter in place, when the only street noise you can hear a lot of the time is ambulance sirens.
  - sizzle 7y ago
    Hope you are doing better, if you don't mind me asking, how were the worst of the symptoms and did you recover completely? any breathing complications? any tips you felt helped you fight it off, assuming you didn't get hit with with the full force of the virus. Wishing you a speedy recovery fellow HN reader friend.

Supermancho 7y ago

In Seattle, people were dining out at about 80% until the official shut down of businesses. Things like IHOP and Denny's were still fully packed, but more niche were often sparse.