> I think Governor Cuomo said something very interesting the other day, to paraphrase, when he was asked whether he should've started stay at home earlier and if that would've saved lives. Of course it would have, but the interviewer is not taking into account compliance and public sentiment.

That’s great, but right up until the shutdown, De Blasio and other NYC officials were encouraging New Yorkers to go out and support their local theaters, restaurants, and bars. And at no point did initial shutdowns meet with any substantial resistance. This is just retconning the history of the past six weeks to make himself look better.

This is true. Speaking from California here, several Bay Area counties were the first I knew of. NYC started doing shelter-in-place like 3 weeks later.

I'm all about more data, more columns. It's the framework for thinking about things. Counterproposing with a more detailed plan would be great. It's the type of dialog we should be having (e.g. what are the thresholds for mandatory masks). Not vague political grandstanding.

> I think Governor Cuomo said something very interesting the other day, to paraphrase, when he was asked whether he should've started stay at home earlier and if that would've saved lives. Of course it would have, but the interviewer is not taking into account compliance and public sentiment.

I'm living on the West Coast, but the way I remember the news from NY was that De Blasio wouldn't shutdown the city because he said he lacked the authority; he passed the buck to Cuomo to issue shutdown orders. Cuomo said that it was the Federal governments responsibility to organize and order shutdowns, passing the buck to Trump while implicitly admitting it was something that needed to be done. Trump in turn said that it was the states' responsibility. Importantly, De Blasio and Cuomo knew the stance of the person they were passing the buck, which means they knew nothing would be done. Equally as importantly, they both ended up later ordering measures they previously refused, and otherwise contradicting their earlier selves.

Meanwhile, over here on the West Coast, we saw real leadership--making hard decisions in a moment of public paralysis.[1] Cuomo and De Blasio seem to be smart administrators, at least smart enough to recognize and follow expert, consensus opinion smacking them in the face. But they clearly suck as leaders.

I'm still astonished how quick we all are to retcon recent history. (And I don't mean to imply that you are doing that, though I am responding to a sentiment that seems to defend Cuomo.) Similar revisionism happened after 9/11 and the Great Recession, where people ended up judging people and events according to narratives and sentiment that arose weeks and even days subsequent, despite obvious contradictions with then recently reported facts.

[1] Not just politicians. Noteworthy (and apropos HN) is how Seattle Flu Study researchers stuck their necks out and bent the law rather than twiddle their thumbs while the CDC fumbled.

I recommend you read this which details how Breed's actions seem somewhat politically motivated to steal show. Chiefly, there was an agreement that all counties would let their health director's announce the lock down order and Breed jumped ahead to announce it herself.

https://missionlocal.org/2020/04/covid-atlantic-london-breed...

The story leaked that morning. The SF Chronicle reported on it at ~11:30AM, explaining "County authorities were expected to announce the move at 1 p.m. and gave a draft of the order to media outlets to prepare. The Chronicle is reporting the story after a television station published the news early." https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/1239620219376504832

I knew Breed jumped the gun and thought it a little showy, but I assumed she did it partly to get ahead of the rumor mill. Maybe her office coaxed the TV station (KTVU?) to leak it early?

Anyhow, this is all largely irrelevant. I purposefully didn't single out Breed in my previous comment. What's relevant is that these counties had clearly been working on this order long before the announcement, which means that for her part Breed would have known about it and approved of it days prior. Which is in stark contrast to mayors like De Blasio and most other politicians outside the West Coast and especially outside the Bay Area--Newsom was almost too late in ordering a state-wide shutdown, judging by how bad Los Angeles got. They were consistently days late, during a time when days and even hours mattered.

I'm not very concerned by Breed trying to capitalize on her decisions. What matters is that she has made decisions that could have easily resulted in intense blowback (and still might) while others sat around on their thumbs too afraid of the political costs. There's plenty to still criticize Breed for, but relatively speaking she deserves some praise. And that's basically how the Mission Local article lands, too.

EDIT: See also Breed's first tweet at 11:57AM, which I think comes before her press conference, though Youtube isn't showing the time of the video, just the date. https://twitter.com/LondonBreed/status/1239626809865416704 Speaking of which, it's highly annoying how the SF Chronicle and the Mercury News update their articles in ways that obscure the timeline of what was said and when.

The attached spreadsheet is basically I've been waiting to see. I figured from the title of this post that's what this would be. Everyone I talk to is asking, "Now what? Do we just keep doing this until there's a vaccine?" This post is "California's Roadmap" as in California the government, not California the public. They all seem like questions they should have been asking themselves at least a month ago.

Sure, keep the green columns internal, but broadcast the "Levels" and restrictions, incorporate your bullet points (like temp checks). That way people can prepare for moving to "Level 4" with a rough timeline. With a possible second wave and next fall/winter being inevitable I don't think anyone would be surprised about moving backward.

Personally, I'm not upset by this. It just doesn't seem very useful to the public.

Thanks for chiming in. As I said in another thread I think at least this is the kind of framework for a discussion. Want to add more columns? Great. Want to double a number or halve a number, great.

I personally think there is zero downside to publishing the numeric targets. Of you get more data in to change them, just change them (it's at least better than now where they have dates that they just keep changing). I don't see how having a date that you keep changing is locking political leaders more than metrics that you change.

What was touched on in the reply, things like the amount and distribution of testing, the compliance and effectiveness of measures like wearing masks, and other information and treatments could change the criteria marked in green--which means they'd have to be revised publicly causing confusion. Kept internal they can revise it as things change and just announce Level changes publicly.

All of those numbers in green have been called out as likely incorrect at the moment. You can see positive tests jump as more are done in the daily numbers. In situations where people are dying they're often foregoing tests to save them for the living. At some point we'll hopefully have wider testing which will change the numbers and likely the criteria for level changes.

Thanks for replying! I agree I would like to see better numbers. However, I don't think that things like mask compliance would change the criteria marked in green, rather it would change the actual tracked metrics and require another lockdown.

While I am highly confident I didn't get everything right, I did account for the testing angle because I think that while tests are coming in on average (something like 7 days) very high positive, it is a very good sign that test quantity is wildly off. That is why I personally look at that metric. If 95% of tests are coming back negative (assuming good tests), that is a sign testing is going well. If 40% are positive, we aren't testing enough and should be conservative.

If our testing goes up which dramatically shoots up cases, even though its is a good thing I think its prudent to potentially escalate measures to be sure.

It should only be when everything is at least as good as a certain level should things decline. So for example if there are 1000 new cases in a week in california, with 2% growth rate, but 25% positive tests for some reason, then lock it down again (this is a very made up example).

The government has the power to check temperatures, force people to use a contact tracing app, require masks etc.

It actually largely doesn't have that power.

I mean, it does until challenged, and it could impose restrictions on entering government buildings -- but the government really doesn't have an unlimited authority to declare arbitrary restrictions on the right of people to peaceably assemble.

Not legally, anyway.

At least at the state level, states' general police powers have usually been interpreted to give pretty broad authority to enforce measures like quarantines and mandatory isolation if necessary to protect public health. There's a bit of recent case law from the 2014 Ebola quarantines: a few nurses who had had contact with a suspected case (but had no symptoms) were put under mandatory quarantine, and sued for unlawful detention, but courts upheld the quarantine.

There's some limit to these powers, e.g. a quarantine in SF in the year 1900 was struck down as being racially discriminatory in a way not justified by public health (only ethnic Chinese were quarantined). But courts are reluctant to second-guess this kind of thing unless it seems like a pretext.

There is a distinction between quarantining someone who is sick for the duration of their illness and putting the entire population under indefinite detention and building a long-lasting deep surveillance operation with mandatory universal participation

I think we all know each right has its limits when the greater good is at stake. Largely, it's intent that matters.

The idea of inalienable rights is antithetical to this outlook. No matter how noble the authorities’ intentions may be, certain essential rights are allegedly sacrosanct.

> The idea of inalienable rights is antithetical to this outlook.

There's no such thing. The idea that a right is inalienable is aspirational. While we should respect it, we should also respect that nothing is absolute and the best laid plans of mice and men and whatnot. We cannot allow perfect to become antithetical to good.

The draft is still legal and constitutional. If society and the constitution thinks it's acceptable to send 18 year old boys against their will to get machine-gunned in a foreign jungle in the name of "national security", then by those standards none of the measures being proposed to combat the coronavirus are an unprecendented or unacceptable violation of any so-called inalienable rights.

The virus poses a larger threat to national security than the Viet Cong, after all.

> Largely, it's intent that matters

I'm sure Earl Warren said that to himself when he locked up the Japanese Americans during WWII.

Everything comes in shades of grey, and that's a particularly dark one. That doesn't mean small concessions aren't the right thing from time to time. In the same way while Americans are allowed to bear arms they aren't allowed to bear nuclear arms. I doubt you'll find a single person in favor of unrestricted domestic nuclear proliferation in the name of the second amendment.

Especially when the country isn't even sure about bump stocks.

How about we address such things on a case by case basis?

> It actually largely doesn't have that power.

Yes it does. This is war.

No war has been declared.

But in a way, you are right. We are in a war for our futures, and we are losing.

Now you're right in a way. We're in a war for our futures against an opponent that won't do any damage to the vast majority of the population and will disproportionately negatively affect a small slice. That small slice must be protected and the rest of us need to venture out of our burrows.