8 ms·

Bay Area restaurants consider closing due to outdoor dining ban

44 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

supernova87a 6y ago
I mean, I'm tolerant of most all the public health measures that are taken out of reasonable caution by the state+county authorities, but this feels like overkill. 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?
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Actually, evidence seems to point the other way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25314732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25314732
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    That talks a lot about bad modeling, not outdoor eating?
- iab 6y ago
  Maybe it’s more like this is one actionable lever that the state can pull, so they pull it. Doesn’t feel like a data-driven decision.
  - zests 6y ago
    "Do anything because we need to do something" is one of my biggest pet peeves. It is unfortunately common.
- scarmig 6y ago
  A lot of it is a panic mode--December is going to be a very cruel month. And if the medical system collapses under strain, a mob will be at public health officials' throats screaming bloody murder. "Why didn't you shut down restaurants when you could?" I don't envy their position. 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.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    I feel like we're going to end up with the opposite question: "What good were these lockdowns when the medical system collapsed anyway?" 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".
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      Collapse isn't a binary. Collapse could mean everything from a small number of the highly vulnerable being triaged away from care to a full on black-plague-like "bring out your dead".
  - twblalock 6y ago
    > A lot of it is a panic mode--December is going to be a very cruel month. And if the medical system collapses under strain, a mob will be at public health officials' throats screaming bloody murder. "Why didn't you shut down restaurants when you could?" I don't envy their position. 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?
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      I think that most of that exists. The state has an army of contact tracers, you just don't hear about them or their work because all of it is private and confidential. I know people through the grapevine who have been informed that they've been exposed through daycare etc. I'm awaiting the results of my second COVID test (out of an abundance of caution, I don't actually believe I have it), and the process for getting it is super easy - fill out a form online and drive through, you're in and out in 5 minutes. There's a first-hand report of a contact tracer's job here: https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/i-m-contact-tracer-san-francisco-you-won-t-believe-stories-i-hear 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.
- fibers 6y ago
  if we only learned from china how to combat this
  - ppf 6y ago
    You mean, ignore it? It beggars belief that countries like New Zealand, which have significant geographical and population advantages over China, have had to work so hard to get where they are today, yet China was able to quietly beat it.
    - LanceH 6y ago
      How freely do large numbers of people move around the country in China?
      - azurezyq 6y ago
        Er.... There's no restriction. Whatever number you want. My father just traveled several times recently (each of them hundreds of miles). In China, fully moving to a different city takes some effort (schooling, etc), but simple travels are just matter of high speed rail tickets.
    - cloudwizard 6y ago
      What do you mean quietly beat it? Whenever they had a small outbreak, they would test the entire city. Symptomatic, asymtomatic, everyone in the span of a week. They spent a ton of money on shutdowns, testing, and contact tracing.
      - ppf 6y ago
        Yep, I've seen one or two reports of entire cities being tested. What testing method do they use, that is accurate enough to catch all cases in a very densly populated developing city (and within a week)? Unless Covid isn't as infectious as we have been lead to believe, that doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
        6y ago
staticassertion 6y ago
Townsend just closed, and I'm pretty upset about it. 40 years. The waiter was there for nearly 20 - an amazing guy. They had no intent to close, I used to see the owners bringing food to people, they'd talk to me, clearly loved their jobs. Just so sad to see it go. Restaurants make a city. They're critical to its culture and the lifestyle of those who live there. I don't know that this is the right or wrong decision, but it's just awful that this is happening, and we need to acknowledge how fucking terribly this has been handled.
- adinosaur123 6y ago
  I headed to Townsend the other morning to grab breakfast and was surprised to see the sign. That's the fourth(!) "spot" that I used to visit regularly that has now permanently closed in my area. Does anyone know where the state/city legislature is hosted online? I'm genuinely curious on what the laws are that give officials authority to close businesses like they have over the past 9 months.
- antpls 6y ago
  Wouldn't a 40-years old restaurant have no debt to pay and a good treasury? I would assume they paid back any debt by then, and could survive for a long time without doing business
  - Bradlinc 6y ago
    Maybe if the restaurant owned the building but otherwise the rent alone could chew through the profit of a restaurant or bar pretty fast. It is difficult to buy the building of a successful restaurant unless you had a right of first refusal or buyout option in the initial lease. Landlords are reluctant to sell you the building for anything reasonable if they feel you are successful as their money is fairly safe and inflation adjusted. I run two bars. One of them is five years old and very successful. I would say right now it has about eight months of rent payments until it would be a problem.
  - siliconmountain 6y ago
    It’s been 9 months... they still have to pay rent and equipment costs and staff
seibelj 6y ago
The safest thing for everyone is to sit inside and watch Netflix box all day. Even without covid. I hope that after covid they outlaw biking, driving, eating meals over 700 calories in one sitting, and getting too much sunlight. Sunlight CAUSES CANCER! How can we burden society with all of these illnesses and accidents? You are positively evil if you drive a car - what if you kill a family as you jiggle the knobs in your dashboard? The world is simply unsafe and we can no longer allow anything but lockdown.
mark-r 6y ago
Try living in Minneapolis, where outdoor seating is only practical for 6 months of the year - if that. I do feel sorry for restaurants everywhere though, and all the other myriad businesses wiped out by COVID.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Note that a judge recently blocked LA County from banning outdoor dining without evidence: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-02/covid-19-la-county-outdoor-dining-ban-judge https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-02/covid-19... I can’t help but think that a lot of people have been whipped up into an irrational level of panic, and they’re unable to navigate the risk benefit tradeoffs calmly. Add to that the politicization of this issue, and people have become very set in their stance of being pro lockdown versus against lockdown. This has led to them expecting authoritarian mandates from politicians to help them not feel so panicked. The politicians themselves feel they have to issue the mandates this cohort expects even though they don’t believe in those mandates themselves. This is why so many politicians have been caught violating their own rules (https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/03/rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me-a-rundown-of-lockdown-leftists-ignoring-their-own-rules/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/03/rules-for-thee-but-not-...) - it’s not that they think they’re above the rules (although it plays a part) as much as the fact that they don’t believe in them. The reality is that life comes with risks. We will never face zero risks. We still need to go about with our lives and retain the freedom to make our own choices and evaluations of which risks we are willing to accept. Arbitrary actions like banning outdoor dining are a step too far.
- listless 6y ago
  The downvotes on this are proof that people don’t want to navigate the benefit trade offs. I just feel sad. Sad for people who have died from this. Sad for their loved ones. Sad for small business. Sad for people who were already struggling. Sad for my own children. This is just awful no matter how you slice it. We’ve got to acknowledge that we only have awful outcomes to pick from. We just disagree on which outcome is less awful and I’m sad that we can’t even do that.
twblalock 6y ago
The state government has not provided evidence that outdoor dining is responsible for much of the spread. At the same time, people have been travelling for Thanksgiving, and people are gathering with friends and relatives inside private homes more frequently than before. That isn't going to stop happening. If restaurants are closed, that might happen even more often, because there is nowhere else to do it! Law enforcement in parts of the state have already told us that they won't enforce curfews, or won't use curfews as probable cause for stopping people who are out and about. So, stay-at-home orders won't prevent private gatherings and travel from continuing to happen. The only way to actually stop the spread is to prevent people from having physical contact with people from other households, and we clearly aren't willing to do that. Orders to stop outdoor dining are going to kill businesses and cause people to lose their jobs for minimal public health gain.
- rllearneratwork 6y ago
  >>"The state government has not provided evidence that outdoor dining is responsible for much of the spread." - This is outrageous. This is the same government who has been shutting beaches in Northern California few months ago, despite all the "science" (which they claim to follow) pointing to the fact that outdoor transmission is very unlikely.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    Meanwhile .. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12.3.20-Stay-at-Home-Order-ICU-Scenario.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12.3.20-St... : what the regional order says.. It’s really weird. We can’t eat outdoors but can congregate indoors. We can worship together and participate in protests, but can’t use outdoor playgrounds.
    - twblalock 6y ago
      It must be very frustrating to lose your business or your job because of public health restrictions like banning outdoor dining, while at the same time you see the government doing nothing about other activities which are far more risky.
briefcomment 6y ago
Things that are contagious and invisible cause people to act like lunatics. On top of that, the enforcers are hypocritical. What a mess. See https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1335016414315307009 https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1335016414315307009
monological 6y ago
A study was just released by Stanford University with the objective of estimating the infection fatality rate of COVID-19. The results are as follows: "In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%."[0] Is it right to shut down the entire economy with these statistics or are people overreacting? High risk individuals do have the option to get food delivered to their home, if they're afraid of contracting the virus. Shouldn't they also be able to make that decision for themselves, if they're OK with taking that risk or not? On the other hand, we don't want hospitals filling up past their limits and putting tremendous strain on health care workers. It's definitely a tricky situation. [0]: https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gexla 6y ago
  > On the other hand, we don't want hospitals filling up past their limits and putting tremendous strain on health care workers. This seems like it's the only thing which matters. Having a working health care system is one of the pillars of modern society?
  - serjester 6y ago
    On one extreme, I'm sure most people would agree it's not worth spending millions of dollars to add months to the lives of geriatric patients. How much collateral damage are we willing to endure to add another 9 to the probability a senior citizen doesn't die from the pandemic? It's a balancing act. I don't pretend to know the answer, but in general I am opposed to another shutdown given how much we've progressed in handling this disease. On a side note, I'm not a fan of how the 15% rule makes it seem like we're on the brink of being overrun - you have to keep in mind 60 to 80% of hospital beds are occupied by non-covid patients.
- 6y ago
tfehring 6y ago
This shouldn't be a choice between risking continued transmission of a pandemic disease and letting small businesses fail. The US collectively produces way more than enough to keep them afloat until the end of the pandemic; the only reason for the dichotomy is Congress's failure to pass enough aid funding to provide that support. As far as I'm concerned, congressional Republicans - and in turn, everyone who voted for them - are ultimately responsible for the failure of every small business that shutters due to the pandemic, due to their absurd insistence on legal indemnity for employers whose employees get COVID due to unsafe working environments. To be clear, as a lot of other commenters have pointed out, it doesn't seem to be well established how risky activities like outdoor dining are. If it were a question of whether it were worth an additional $X billion in aid to prevent that risk, great, that's a conversation that's worth having. But you can't have that kind of meaningful conversation starting from an ultimatum, as we are today.
- nradov 6y ago
  The fault is not with Congress. The federal government hasn't forced any businesses to close. All of the lockdown measures have been imposed by state and local governments so they are the ones that should subsidize impacted businesses. The Florida state government allows restaurants in that state to remain open so why should Floridians pay to keep California restaurants running? There's nothing stopping the California legislature from raising taxes on the wealthy to fund pandemic relief in our state.
  - tfehring 6y ago
    State-level funding sounds good on paper but would work poorly in practice because the federal government benefits from its sovereignty in ways that state governments don't. The vast majority of Americans' tax revenue goes to the federal government, not to state or local governments, even in wealthy, high-tax states like California. And state governments, unlike the federal government, don't have access to effectively unlimited borrowing capacity at <2% interest. Also, California can't shut down its border to Floridians - or prevent Californians from traveling to Florida and then returning - to stop the virus from being carried from Florida to California.
ookblah 6y ago
I think the people who keep pushing on "freedom to choose" and what not do not understand human nature, as if these laws are the only thing stopping restaurants from enjoying economic success. I know business owners want to peg their hopes on that. Look at other countries where everything is nearly completely open. Dining, theaters, etc are still down revenue wise. There will be ebbs and flows were people get sick of staying in and COVID fatigued and go dine out, then as cases or hospitalizations rise they naturally self distance or stay in. A restaurant might be able to survive that, but it's punishing and I'm willing to bet most won't. You can't just stop and start a restaurant on a whim. Look at NYC where Broadway made a pre-emptive decision to shut down until May of next year because of crap like that. I guess leave it up to us Americans to fly in the face of common sense, though.
justinzollars 6y ago
It feels like we are living through a second Great Depression. A number of my favorite San Francisco businesses have permanently closed and it's an incredibly sad time to live through such a thing. This is a small list of a few of my personal favorite places that are gone: * The San Francisco Hound Lounge * Walzwerk East German Restaurant * Old Jerusalem Restaurant * Lucky 13 I can't see how any business can operate in these conditions. It certainly feels like Government is playing favorites, dubbing big box stores as safe - while small businesses that made San Francisco a great place to live are falling on the knife.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
What is missing is the number of agricultural workers who are being disproportionately affected. They still have to work as essential workers. It is not so much as masking protocols or social distancing. They car pool or the labour contractor picks them up in a van to take them to the fields. Many live in groups with 2-4 people to a room. This is reality. Outside the tech bubble. This is why I am disappointed that Agtech and tech sector has done NOTHING to help the most vulnerable. It’s just faffing around, harvesting data and twirling three times after chanting ‘blockchain..blockchain..blockchain’ in agtech. If any, it’s for commodity crops like soy or corn harvested once a year and turned into fodder sludge or ethanol. But farms that grow food have laborers working there every day. This is surreal and I am beyond heartbroken that nothing is being done to alleviate the problem that is most dangerous. I posted this elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320797

44 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

I mean, I'm tolerant of most all the public health measures that are taken out of reasonable caution by the state+county authorities, but this feels like overkill. 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?

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Actually, evidence seems to point the other way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25314732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25314732
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  That talks a lot about bad modeling, not outdoor eating?
iab 6y ago
Maybe it’s more like this is one actionable lever that the state can pull, so they pull it. Doesn’t feel like a data-driven decision.
- zests 6y ago
  "Do anything because we need to do something" is one of my biggest pet peeves. It is unfortunately common.
scarmig 6y ago
A lot of it is a panic mode--December is going to be a very cruel month. And if the medical system collapses under strain, a mob will be at public health officials' throats screaming bloody murder. "Why didn't you shut down restaurants when you could?" I don't envy their position. 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.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  I feel like we're going to end up with the opposite question: "What good were these lockdowns when the medical system collapsed anyway?" 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".
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Collapse isn't a binary. Collapse could mean everything from a small number of the highly vulnerable being triaged away from care to a full on black-plague-like "bring out your dead".
- twblalock 6y ago
  > A lot of it is a panic mode--December is going to be a very cruel month. And if the medical system collapses under strain, a mob will be at public health officials' throats screaming bloody murder. "Why didn't you shut down restaurants when you could?" I don't envy their position. 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?
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    I think that most of that exists. The state has an army of contact tracers, you just don't hear about them or their work because all of it is private and confidential. I know people through the grapevine who have been informed that they've been exposed through daycare etc. I'm awaiting the results of my second COVID test (out of an abundance of caution, I don't actually believe I have it), and the process for getting it is super easy - fill out a form online and drive through, you're in and out in 5 minutes. There's a first-hand report of a contact tracer's job here: https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/i-m-contact-tracer-san-francisco-you-won-t-believe-stories-i-hear 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.
fibers 6y ago
if we only learned from china how to combat this
- ppf 6y ago
  You mean, ignore it? It beggars belief that countries like New Zealand, which have significant geographical and population advantages over China, have had to work so hard to get where they are today, yet China was able to quietly beat it.
  - LanceH 6y ago
    How freely do large numbers of people move around the country in China?
    - azurezyq 6y ago
      Er.... There's no restriction. Whatever number you want. My father just traveled several times recently (each of them hundreds of miles). In China, fully moving to a different city takes some effort (schooling, etc), but simple travels are just matter of high speed rail tickets.
  - cloudwizard 6y ago
    What do you mean quietly beat it? Whenever they had a small outbreak, they would test the entire city. Symptomatic, asymtomatic, everyone in the span of a week. They spent a ton of money on shutdowns, testing, and contact tracing.
    - ppf 6y ago
      Yep, I've seen one or two reports of entire cities being tested. What testing method do they use, that is accurate enough to catch all cases in a very densly populated developing city (and within a week)? Unless Covid isn't as infectious as we have been lead to believe, that doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
      - 6y ago

staticassertion 6y ago

Townsend just closed, and I'm pretty upset about it. 40 years. The waiter was there for nearly 20 - an amazing guy. They had no intent to close, I used to see the owners bringing food to people, they'd talk to me, clearly loved their jobs. Just so sad to see it go. Restaurants make a city. They're critical to its culture and the lifestyle of those who live there. I don't know that this is the right or wrong decision, but it's just awful that this is happening, and we need to acknowledge how fucking terribly this has been handled.

adinosaur123 6y ago
I headed to Townsend the other morning to grab breakfast and was surprised to see the sign. That's the fourth(!) "spot" that I used to visit regularly that has now permanently closed in my area. Does anyone know where the state/city legislature is hosted online? I'm genuinely curious on what the laws are that give officials authority to close businesses like they have over the past 9 months.
antpls 6y ago
Wouldn't a 40-years old restaurant have no debt to pay and a good treasury? I would assume they paid back any debt by then, and could survive for a long time without doing business
- Bradlinc 6y ago
  Maybe if the restaurant owned the building but otherwise the rent alone could chew through the profit of a restaurant or bar pretty fast. It is difficult to buy the building of a successful restaurant unless you had a right of first refusal or buyout option in the initial lease. Landlords are reluctant to sell you the building for anything reasonable if they feel you are successful as their money is fairly safe and inflation adjusted. I run two bars. One of them is five years old and very successful. I would say right now it has about eight months of rent payments until it would be a problem.
- siliconmountain 6y ago
  It’s been 9 months... they still have to pay rent and equipment costs and staff

seibelj 6y ago

The safest thing for everyone is to sit inside and watch Netflix box all day. Even without covid. I hope that after covid they outlaw biking, driving, eating meals over 700 calories in one sitting, and getting too much sunlight. Sunlight CAUSES CANCER! How can we burden society with all of these illnesses and accidents? You are positively evil if you drive a car - what if you kill a family as you jiggle the knobs in your dashboard? The world is simply unsafe and we can no longer allow anything but lockdown.

mark-r 6y ago

Try living in Minneapolis, where outdoor seating is only practical for 6 months of the year - if that. I do feel sorry for restaurants everywhere though, and all the other myriad businesses wiped out by COVID.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Note that a judge recently blocked LA County from banning outdoor dining without evidence: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-02/covid-19-la-county-outdoor-dining-ban-judge https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-02/covid-19... I can’t help but think that a lot of people have been whipped up into an irrational level of panic, and they’re unable to navigate the risk benefit tradeoffs calmly. Add to that the politicization of this issue, and people have become very set in their stance of being pro lockdown versus against lockdown. This has led to them expecting authoritarian mandates from politicians to help them not feel so panicked. The politicians themselves feel they have to issue the mandates this cohort expects even though they don’t believe in those mandates themselves. This is why so many politicians have been caught violating their own rules (https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/03/rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me-a-rundown-of-lockdown-leftists-ignoring-their-own-rules/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/03/rules-for-thee-but-not-...) - it’s not that they think they’re above the rules (although it plays a part) as much as the fact that they don’t believe in them. The reality is that life comes with risks. We will never face zero risks. We still need to go about with our lives and retain the freedom to make our own choices and evaluations of which risks we are willing to accept. Arbitrary actions like banning outdoor dining are a step too far.

listless 6y ago
The downvotes on this are proof that people don’t want to navigate the benefit trade offs. I just feel sad. Sad for people who have died from this. Sad for their loved ones. Sad for small business. Sad for people who were already struggling. Sad for my own children. This is just awful no matter how you slice it. We’ve got to acknowledge that we only have awful outcomes to pick from. We just disagree on which outcome is less awful and I’m sad that we can’t even do that.

twblalock 6y ago

The state government has not provided evidence that outdoor dining is responsible for much of the spread. At the same time, people have been travelling for Thanksgiving, and people are gathering with friends and relatives inside private homes more frequently than before. That isn't going to stop happening. If restaurants are closed, that might happen even more often, because there is nowhere else to do it! Law enforcement in parts of the state have already told us that they won't enforce curfews, or won't use curfews as probable cause for stopping people who are out and about. So, stay-at-home orders won't prevent private gatherings and travel from continuing to happen. The only way to actually stop the spread is to prevent people from having physical contact with people from other households, and we clearly aren't willing to do that. Orders to stop outdoor dining are going to kill businesses and cause people to lose their jobs for minimal public health gain.

rllearneratwork 6y ago
>>"The state government has not provided evidence that outdoor dining is responsible for much of the spread." - This is outrageous. This is the same government who has been shutting beaches in Northern California few months ago, despite all the "science" (which they claim to follow) pointing to the fact that outdoor transmission is very unlikely.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Meanwhile .. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12.3.20-Stay-at-Home-Order-ICU-Scenario.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12.3.20-St... : what the regional order says.. It’s really weird. We can’t eat outdoors but can congregate indoors. We can worship together and participate in protests, but can’t use outdoor playgrounds.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    It must be very frustrating to lose your business or your job because of public health restrictions like banning outdoor dining, while at the same time you see the government doing nothing about other activities which are far more risky.

briefcomment 6y ago

Things that are contagious and invisible cause people to act like lunatics. On top of that, the enforcers are hypocritical. What a mess. See https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1335016414315307009 https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1335016414315307009

monological 6y ago

A study was just released by Stanford University with the objective of estimating the infection fatality rate of COVID-19. The results are as follows: "In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%."[0] Is it right to shut down the entire economy with these statistics or are people overreacting? High risk individuals do have the option to get food delivered to their home, if they're afraid of contracting the virus. Shouldn't they also be able to make that decision for themselves, if they're OK with taking that risk or not? On the other hand, we don't want hospitals filling up past their limits and putting tremendous strain on health care workers. It's definitely a tricky situation. [0]: https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gexla 6y ago
> On the other hand, we don't want hospitals filling up past their limits and putting tremendous strain on health care workers. This seems like it's the only thing which matters. Having a working health care system is one of the pillars of modern society?
- serjester 6y ago
  On one extreme, I'm sure most people would agree it's not worth spending millions of dollars to add months to the lives of geriatric patients. How much collateral damage are we willing to endure to add another 9 to the probability a senior citizen doesn't die from the pandemic? It's a balancing act. I don't pretend to know the answer, but in general I am opposed to another shutdown given how much we've progressed in handling this disease. On a side note, I'm not a fan of how the 15% rule makes it seem like we're on the brink of being overrun - you have to keep in mind 60 to 80% of hospital beds are occupied by non-covid patients.
6y ago

tfehring 6y ago

This shouldn't be a choice between risking continued transmission of a pandemic disease and letting small businesses fail. The US collectively produces way more than enough to keep them afloat until the end of the pandemic; the only reason for the dichotomy is Congress's failure to pass enough aid funding to provide that support. As far as I'm concerned, congressional Republicans - and in turn, everyone who voted for them - are ultimately responsible for the failure of every small business that shutters due to the pandemic, due to their absurd insistence on legal indemnity for employers whose employees get COVID due to unsafe working environments. To be clear, as a lot of other commenters have pointed out, it doesn't seem to be well established how risky activities like outdoor dining are. If it were a question of whether it were worth an additional $X billion in aid to prevent that risk, great, that's a conversation that's worth having. But you can't have that kind of meaningful conversation starting from an ultimatum, as we are today.

nradov 6y ago
The fault is not with Congress. The federal government hasn't forced any businesses to close. All of the lockdown measures have been imposed by state and local governments so they are the ones that should subsidize impacted businesses. The Florida state government allows restaurants in that state to remain open so why should Floridians pay to keep California restaurants running? There's nothing stopping the California legislature from raising taxes on the wealthy to fund pandemic relief in our state.
- tfehring 6y ago
  State-level funding sounds good on paper but would work poorly in practice because the federal government benefits from its sovereignty in ways that state governments don't. The vast majority of Americans' tax revenue goes to the federal government, not to state or local governments, even in wealthy, high-tax states like California. And state governments, unlike the federal government, don't have access to effectively unlimited borrowing capacity at <2% interest. Also, California can't shut down its border to Floridians - or prevent Californians from traveling to Florida and then returning - to stop the virus from being carried from Florida to California.

ookblah 6y ago

I think the people who keep pushing on "freedom to choose" and what not do not understand human nature, as if these laws are the only thing stopping restaurants from enjoying economic success. I know business owners want to peg their hopes on that. Look at other countries where everything is nearly completely open. Dining, theaters, etc are still down revenue wise. There will be ebbs and flows were people get sick of staying in and COVID fatigued and go dine out, then as cases or hospitalizations rise they naturally self distance or stay in. A restaurant might be able to survive that, but it's punishing and I'm willing to bet most won't. You can't just stop and start a restaurant on a whim. Look at NYC where Broadway made a pre-emptive decision to shut down until May of next year because of crap like that. I guess leave it up to us Americans to fly in the face of common sense, though.

justinzollars 6y ago

It feels like we are living through a second Great Depression. A number of my favorite San Francisco businesses have permanently closed and it's an incredibly sad time to live through such a thing. This is a small list of a few of my personal favorite places that are gone: * The San Francisco Hound Lounge * Walzwerk East German Restaurant * Old Jerusalem Restaurant * Lucky 13 I can't see how any business can operate in these conditions. It certainly feels like Government is playing favorites, dubbing big box stores as safe - while small businesses that made San Francisco a great place to live are falling on the knife.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

What is missing is the number of agricultural workers who are being disproportionately affected. They still have to work as essential workers. It is not so much as masking protocols or social distancing. They car pool or the labour contractor picks them up in a van to take them to the fields. Many live in groups with 2-4 people to a room. This is reality. Outside the tech bubble. This is why I am disappointed that Agtech and tech sector has done NOTHING to help the most vulnerable. It’s just faffing around, harvesting data and twirling three times after chanting ‘blockchain..blockchain..blockchain’ in agtech. If any, it’s for commodity crops like soy or corn harvested once a year and turned into fodder sludge or ethanol. But farms that grow food have laborers working there every day. This is surreal and I am beyond heartbroken that nothing is being done to alleviate the problem that is most dangerous. I posted this elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320797