[Goose]

We all want better information about how to decide what should be open and closed.  The bottom line is that there is no good data on exactly what sorts of facilities are safe to open.  Most of the studies for things like restaurants are basically anecdotes, with n=1.


What is strongly suspected (with some data to back this up) is that: 1) extended contact is bad, 2) enclosed spaces are bad, and 3) doing things that make you speak loudly, sing, or breath hard might be bad.  Add up those three items, and you end up closing the sorts of facilities that Newsom did.  In hindsight, some of these closings may be unnecessary.  Alternately, these closings could turn out to be totally inadequate.  We won't know the answers to that for some time, and maybe never.  Based on what I've been reading, what Newsom has done here seems reasonable.  I don't think that additional analysis would help because there is not enough data to do any real analysis.

Amen!!! Everybody must remember that almost all the recommendations being made by the "experts" suffer from lack of definitive data. Masks were and are like that. So are Newsom's decisions on what to shut down. It is at best a plan based on inadequate and rapidly changing data. However, that is all we have, so the decision makers do the best they can. Probably in retrospect we will find some of the  decisions were optimal, some were downright harmful, and a few worked well but for the wrong reasons.

[Goose]

We all want better information about how to decide what should be open and closed.  The bottom line is that there is no good data on exactly what sorts of facilities are safe to open.  Most of the studies for things like restaurants are basically anecdotes, with n=1.


What is strongly suspected (with some data to back this up) is that: 1) extended contact is bad, 2) enclosed spaces are bad, and 3) doing things that make you speak loudly, sing, or breath hard might be bad.  Add up those three items, and you end up closing the sorts of facilities that Newsom did.  In hindsight, some of these closings may be unnecessary.  Alternately, these closings could turn out to be totally inadequate.  We won't know the answers to that for some time, and maybe never.  Based on what I've been reading, what Newsom has done here seems reasonable.  I don't think that additional analysis would help because there is not enough data to do any real analysis.

Amen!!! Everybody must remember that almost all the recommendations being made by the "experts" suffer from lack of definitive data. Masks were and are like that. So are Newsom's decisions on what to shut down. It is at best a plan based on inadequate and rapidly changing data. However, that is all we have, so the decision makers do the best they can. Probably in retrospect we will find some of the  decisions were optimal, some were downright harmful, and a few worked well but for the wrong reasons.