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shannon_aSonoma was not one of the six Bay Area counties to declare a shelter-in-place order, and they had a good reason: they thought it would cause panic.
And, I think they were right.
San Jose reported that the panic buying of food has spread to panic buying of guns, and so began shutting down gun stores as "non-essential" services.
And as I wrote yesterday, a genuine existential fear seems to be at the heart of our stager deciding to throw her professional reputation in the toilet: an existential fear that's just not (yet?) justified by the current situation.
And we were even seeing overflow of that here in Hawaii, which has tight connections to California, as that 10% or so of patrons at Costco on Monday were jamming their carts full of water, then shuffling out as fast as they could, not talking to anyone, then tossing it into illegally stopped vans that had avoided the fence of carts that CostCo has put up to prevent exactly that sort of illegal panic buying and loading.
And it's equally obvious to me that those Bay Area counties have just the faintest idea of what they've done.
I wrote about the mad scrambling of the recorders offices yesterday.
Today I spent four hours on hold with the Berkeley Public Health Office, trying to get them to confirm that moving services are essential (and how could they not be? People could literally end up homeless during a shelter-in-place order because the counties didn't think to include moving in their essential-services list.) For four wretched hours I sat programming the thin-auth server for Skotos, trying to ignore the homicide inducing Berkeley hold message, looping every thirty seconds and telling me that they'd get to me shortly.
It was a relief when my carrier cut my call off at precisely four hours, though of course that meant that I didn't get my confirmation, and that I can't yet show our stager proof that she needs to do her job.
I've tried to follow-up with a few emails instead, and meanwhile my realtor is working on getting similar input from Alameda County, though they're not technically who's in charge of the shelter-in-place in Berkeley.
(Berkeley is in fact the only city in the six-county area going it alone. AS USUAL. And that seems to be working out aces.)
Yep, I'm in an annoyed, pissy mood tonight.
It's mainly having to listen to that infernal hold message for four hours straight.
But I'm also very non-plussed over the decisions now being made by Hawaiian politicians, which seem very wrong-headed and at odds with the rest of the US.
The governor's order yesterday was generally what we'd expect at this stage in the pandemic for a country that has woefully botched its ability to test for COVID-19. Shut down bars and clubs. Make restaurants go take-out only. There were two rather shocking bits: he closed down churches (which is a big deal in Hawaii) and he asked tourists to stay away for thirty days (which is going to devastate an already reeling economy).
But the thing at odds with current wisdom was that he also closed state parks. In other parts of the country that are being locked down, people are being encouraged to get out into parks and exercise (and at a respectful distance), so that they don't go crazy. Federal parks went free today. But the governor of Hawaii doesn't seem to get it and is closing down our open spaces instead.
Meanwhile, the really wrong-headed move came from Kauai's mayor, who today laid down a curfew saying that everyone must be in their residence from 9pm-5am every day. Wow. Does he think the biggest crowds are at night? Does he think that COVID-19 spreads worse at night? It's pretty hard to figure out what's going through his head when he finds it necessary to lay down one of the most fascist rules anywhere in the country.
I certainly won't ever be voting for Mayor Derek Kawakami, who has gone full-on fascist in my mind, and Governor David Ige has gone onto my questionable list, for such a dramatic misunderstanding of the human psyche, even if the rest of his order was just following the same unfortunate direction as the rest of the US.
It's an unfortunate direction because South Korea has shown us the proper answer, and it's testing and tracing, not extreme social isolation. And they're done great.
We can't follow in that direction, unfortunately, because of the entirely pathetic Federal response. We hoped for four years that Trump wouldn't have a crisis, because we knew he'd be entirely insufficient for the task, and that's now proven true. We had our first case the same day as South Korea's, and they've done a magnificent job of controlling the crisis without destroying their economy (or their freedoms) and we've had the president jumping up and down with his fingers in his ears.
He refused tests from other sources, he said it wasn't a problem, and now he's screwed us all.
Whoever asked to live in interesting times can bite me.
And, I think they were right.
San Jose reported that the panic buying of food has spread to panic buying of guns, and so began shutting down gun stores as "non-essential" services.
And as I wrote yesterday, a genuine existential fear seems to be at the heart of our stager deciding to throw her professional reputation in the toilet: an existential fear that's just not (yet?) justified by the current situation.
And we were even seeing overflow of that here in Hawaii, which has tight connections to California, as that 10% or so of patrons at Costco on Monday were jamming their carts full of water, then shuffling out as fast as they could, not talking to anyone, then tossing it into illegally stopped vans that had avoided the fence of carts that CostCo has put up to prevent exactly that sort of illegal panic buying and loading.
And it's equally obvious to me that those Bay Area counties have just the faintest idea of what they've done.
I wrote about the mad scrambling of the recorders offices yesterday.
Today I spent four hours on hold with the Berkeley Public Health Office, trying to get them to confirm that moving services are essential (and how could they not be? People could literally end up homeless during a shelter-in-place order because the counties didn't think to include moving in their essential-services list.) For four wretched hours I sat programming the thin-auth server for Skotos, trying to ignore the homicide inducing Berkeley hold message, looping every thirty seconds and telling me that they'd get to me shortly.
It was a relief when my carrier cut my call off at precisely four hours, though of course that meant that I didn't get my confirmation, and that I can't yet show our stager proof that she needs to do her job.
I've tried to follow-up with a few emails instead, and meanwhile my realtor is working on getting similar input from Alameda County, though they're not technically who's in charge of the shelter-in-place in Berkeley.
(Berkeley is in fact the only city in the six-county area going it alone. AS USUAL. And that seems to be working out aces.)
Yep, I'm in an annoyed, pissy mood tonight.
It's mainly having to listen to that infernal hold message for four hours straight.
But I'm also very non-plussed over the decisions now being made by Hawaiian politicians, which seem very wrong-headed and at odds with the rest of the US.
The governor's order yesterday was generally what we'd expect at this stage in the pandemic for a country that has woefully botched its ability to test for COVID-19. Shut down bars and clubs. Make restaurants go take-out only. There were two rather shocking bits: he closed down churches (which is a big deal in Hawaii) and he asked tourists to stay away for thirty days (which is going to devastate an already reeling economy).
But the thing at odds with current wisdom was that he also closed state parks. In other parts of the country that are being locked down, people are being encouraged to get out into parks and exercise (and at a respectful distance), so that they don't go crazy. Federal parks went free today. But the governor of Hawaii doesn't seem to get it and is closing down our open spaces instead.
Meanwhile, the really wrong-headed move came from Kauai's mayor, who today laid down a curfew saying that everyone must be in their residence from 9pm-5am every day. Wow. Does he think the biggest crowds are at night? Does he think that COVID-19 spreads worse at night? It's pretty hard to figure out what's going through his head when he finds it necessary to lay down one of the most fascist rules anywhere in the country.
I certainly won't ever be voting for Mayor Derek Kawakami, who has gone full-on fascist in my mind, and Governor David Ige has gone onto my questionable list, for such a dramatic misunderstanding of the human psyche, even if the rest of his order was just following the same unfortunate direction as the rest of the US.
It's an unfortunate direction because South Korea has shown us the proper answer, and it's testing and tracing, not extreme social isolation. And they're done great.
We can't follow in that direction, unfortunately, because of the entirely pathetic Federal response. We hoped for four years that Trump wouldn't have a crisis, because we knew he'd be entirely insufficient for the task, and that's now proven true. We had our first case the same day as South Korea's, and they've done a magnificent job of controlling the crisis without destroying their economy (or their freedoms) and we've had the president jumping up and down with his fingers in his ears.
He refused tests from other sources, he said it wasn't a problem, and now he's screwed us all.
Whoever asked to live in interesting times can bite me.