pandemic

[cellio]

Pennsylvania shut down "non-life-sustaining businesses" tonight. There's a link there with a detailed list of what's in and out -- some oddities (beer distributors are life-sustaining, apparently), but mostly what you'd expect.

And California extended the stay-at-home order already in force in San Francisco to the entire state tonight. Even so, their governor thinks half the state will be infected in the next eight weeks. I haven't heard any projections for PA, but cases here have been following the usual curve so far.

siderea posted a summary of the Imperial College report that might be spurring the government to take this more seriously. (The report is linked.) They ran simulations of a few response scenarios, ranging from "basically do nothing" to fuller responses. Even with stronger responses, it's looking grim. And it's (at the national level) self-inflicted; we saw what was happening elsewhere and dallied anyway.

Comments

[hlinspjalda]

SFGate, the local web news outlet here in the Cradle of Kingdoms, noted about the governor's words: A spokesperson for Newsom later told Politico that the 56 percent number reflects the infection rate if "mitigation efforts aren't taken into account." So not quite as dire as it sounds in headlines. But still bad.

[cellio]

That's an important detail that was not clear to me. Thank you for that correction.