My experience with SF goes back 60 years. The 30 foot rule is a feel good thing. Have you hiked the trails below UCSF? No way could you stay even 6 feet away from people in some areas. No way is a jogger in the zone wearing a mask.
And the outstanding question of infections resulting from protests stands. I will place a bet…my State and certainly my nearby counties will NOT provide data implicating those activities, if such data exists. But, in order for it to exist, there would have to be a will and directive to search for it. I say…no way!
Meanwhile, the beach is dangerous, Yosemite closed campgrounds because they are dangerous, hiking in a group is dangerous.
My favorite line from The Last Black Man in San Francisco (a movie that I HIGHLY recommend, but I may be biased) is: “You don’t get to hate San Francisco. You don’t get to hate it unless you love it,”
Oh, but i DID love it. I loved it thru the 70’s and the 80’s. I loved it when I returned from the ‘country’ until about the late 90’s. Having the ability to compare then to now gives me the data to make a judgement. It pains me to see what has happened to The City By the Bay.
My Health Care provider’s office called today. Said it’s time to book my physical. Weird. Had a visit with a provider just few months ago. Long story but it was two ‘new patient intakes’ with two different providers in less than 6 months. Those visits are way more in-depth than the ACA covered well person checks. Clearly they are in need of patients and revenue.
I’m concerned about the financial future of the average family provider. Either costs will skyrocket or they will migrate to concierge service style practices.
Even if PPE were plentiful, hardly anyone would have complied with such an order for obvious reasons. Now that we know substantially more about this virus transmission and people have seen how devastating the virus can be, you bet there will be significantly more compliance.
They were allowed to ask about being within 6 feet of people or being without a mask, though, and I believe, being in larger gatherings, so that would have covered if the people had been exposed or not. They were not tracking the protests in particular in some places it seems.
I think had the surgeon general gone on tv and demonstrated how to properly wear a surgical mask and urged all Americans to wear them (or t-shirt mask, or any mask) if we had enough PPE for the public (which I wish we did!), people would have worn them just as they did when he later went on TV and urged people to wear t-shirt masks. There was no new information at that time. The virus was known to spread person to person since January, asymptomatic spread also since January, and the fact that virus can travel very far, especially in an enclosed room and infect people and hang in the air for hours since 2014 when MIT did the study that was re-released as ‘new’ just before the surgeon general’s t-shirt mask stuff.
@BunsenBurner , Many people knew , or should have known, how bad the virus could be, from early on. Be transparent, at least put the info out there that masks can help. If people don’t want to initially believe the info or don’t want to wear masks, okay. But at least you’ve done what you could do to put the info out there. The whole thing seemed botched here from the get go. The virus “hoax” certainly has taken a big toll on America. Very sad.
Since I guess it’s OK to talk about masks in this thread, this is very interesting - apparently while obviously its best to cover your mouth and nose when wearing a mask, its not terrible to let the mask be just below the nose if need be, since most particulates expelled come from the mouth, not the nose https://abc7news.com/face-mask-reopening-california-required-ca/6251167/
It’s funny how different things can be in the same state. I’m not sure where in MA you are, but I’m in a small town in Worcester county and this isn’t the case at all. People wear masks in stores and that’s it. I have seen a couple people driving with masks but not many. I’ll admit that the thought that they were “virtue signaling” didn’t enter my mind. I did think that they were a bit over zealous and maybe didn’t understand that you didn’t need them when not near others.
My son and his friends went into Boston on Saturday night just to go get pizza in the north end and walk around. He said they kept masks with them and put them on when it got crowded and when they actually went inside to get their pizza. He said they didn’t need them all the time because they could stay far enough away from other people.
Not trying to defend anyone high above, but it sounds like even health professionals were working with only bits and pieces of the info in the very beginning. Remember all the talk about fecal transmission and other such stuff? (Anyone who still believes that China only had 4,000 or so deaths, please raise your hand! I do not see too many hands up in the air.) Only when Italy and Spain started expecting large losses, and the link between being indoors in proximity of an infected person was made, the reality sunk in. If you had put the “info” out without a solid backup, there would have been lots more resistance than there is now (amazing how anyone can make a political issue out of a piece of fabric, isn’t it?).
I cannot believe we are still debating the mask issue and social distancing rules. This is not rocket science. Wear a mask and social distance. If you hate wearing a mask, stay home. If you cannot control yourself enough to socially distance when not wearing a mask outdoors, stay home.
I just want to preface this that I like Dr. Fauci but he has given us a lot of advice over the last 3 months that had been questionable (e.g. no need for masks, this virus is nothing to be concerned about, etc) either because he didn’t know any better, it was a political decision, or incompetence.
Either way, I’m coming to the realization that I don’t have a lot of confidence in what any of these so-called “experts” say anymore.
It’s shocking and baffling to me that these people, who have been infectious disease experts for decades , cannot tell us any meaningful recommendations and predictions about this virus?
I just don’t get it…there has to be more to the story than we are lead to believe…
I will not take this bet. I’m convinced my county knows a lot more about where the infections are and what the routes of infection are than they are saying. Before the protests, this was not a political issue, I don’t think–an outbreak at a construction site does not have a political valence–yet they haven’t been as forthcoming as I wish they would be. So I don’t have hope that Santa Clara County is going to tell me whether the new cases are related to the protests.
Alameda County had a lot of cases today. There were a lot of protests in several cities in Alameda County.
It’s so hard to untangle though since these protests coincided with many states opening up, and some states are having surges in positive cases which don’t correlate to the level of protesting there relative to the states that aren’t having a surge in cases.
As I understand it, it is best practice to wear your mask from the moment you leave home to when you get back home and can wash your hands and face. If your mask traps droplets containing the coronavirus, taking the mask off and putting it back on could expose you to the virus, so you shouldn’t take it off while driving. (Maybe you could leave it off from your house to your first stop, but not after that, definitely, until you get home.)
Most of Michigan is still in phase 4 of 6. We were hoping to move to phase 5 this week, but it’s been put off, hopefully until only next week. We’ll see.
Observations:
Lots of graduation parties on the calendar for seniors in the upcoming weeks. D20 has been to 1 so far – outdoors only, but with no masks. Distancing looked good, though. It was a drive-by style, where people popped in for a few minutes. I waited in the car. She dropped off a gift, posed for a picture, chatted for 5 minutes, then we left. She has 1-2 parties every weekend until she leaves for college. Hers is August 2nd, and we are still figuring out logistics.
There have been multiple “parent-sponsored” proms over the past week or so. Lots of kids, no distancing based on the pictures D20 and D21 see on social media. She has no interest in attending one. Thankful we hadn’t bought a dress when the shelter-in-place went into effect. D20 is still very cautious about interacting with peers.
We still don’t socialize the way we used to, but we are slowly expanding our circle to include close friends. One family had to quarantine when the husband was exposed at work, but we hadn’t seen them in a while. They all tested negative earlier this week, thankfully. I’m having outdoor coffee and conversation with the wife tomorrow. I miss seeing my friends.
We are thankful that things here in SE Michigan have improved so much since March/April. Hoping the trend continues.