Jin+Guice wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 9:32 pm
I don't think people are going to isolate without some sort of militarized enforcement, which is also scary. How is the forced isolation in SF going? [...] I'm considering small gatherings of friends (like 1-on-1) who also have no symptoms after I'm done quarantining. Is this horribly irresponsible?
Two full days of mandatory "shelter in place" here in Bay Area. Legally speaking, meeting up with friends, even just one, is a misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment- but SFPD and mayor have said they are going to be lax about this. I haven't seen a single cop (just a pair of parked patrol cars once).
This has been what I've seen during the ~2.5 hours of walking around that I've done for exercise during the last two days: 1) There are a ton more people walking around than normal. In the neighborhoods around me, that means a couple people per block on average. People have been good about keeping distance, but yeah... it looks nothing like the footage I've seen from France, Italy, or Spain, where the police will ask for papers and/or the public spaces are empty. The first thing you realize is that sidewalks are not six feet wide! So you get into a lot of awkward games of chicken. I walk next to the parked cars in the street when the road is clear. Oh yeah, and kids. They're mostly with their parents/playing in front yards, but they are all over the place. 2) Considering you are only supposed to make essential car trips, there's actually a lot of traffic. If I didn't know the "shelter in place" was happening, I wouldn't have even registered a difference. 3) The commercial street near me was about 25-50% of normal in terms of pedestrians/parking. 4) Two-car light-rail that I saw today around rush hour had maybe a dozen people on it, maybe three wearing masks. It would normally have maybe 4-5x that. 5) A lot of people are making use of local parks, which is kinda annoying, because I used to have those places mostly to myself. 5) Haven't been to a grocery store, but the local paper/news stations have talked up lots of empty shelves for the last few days. 6) You know who really has it made? Pets. I've never seen so many people walking the dog in the middle of the day. (Happy for them)
Summary: I'm fairly sure this won't be as effective as the European lockdowns - it certainly isn't as strictly enforced. But at the same time, maybe it'll get 80+% of the results? No one seems to be flagrantly violating the order, and because of store/restaurant/venue closures, there really isn't much to do besides hang out at home or take a walk anyway. From what I can tell from Wuhan, South Korea, and starting to show up in Italy, the "topping" process of the curve takes about 5 days (same length of time as exposure>symptoms), so I'm hoping by the weekend, there'll be numbers to show that the infection rate has started leveling off in the Bay Area.
