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Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by ashtonkem on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @06:03PM (#22883634)
Demand started dropping before official shut-down orders arrived, as risk-conscious citizens cut down on high risk activities before officially ordered to do so.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by asdf21 on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @06:06PM (#22883662)
As someone who runs a restaurant in the Bay Area, that's not really accurate. We were busy right up until the shut-down.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by ashtonkem on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @06:11PM (#22883699)
San Francisco shut down incredibly early compared to most of the US, especially compared to their case load. By the time SF shut down they had 50 cases, while NYC waited until they had 10,000 cases to shut down.

That probably is why the shut down and lack of demand line up so closely for businesses in the Bay Area.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by CydeWeys on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @06:16PM (#22883753)
And that's also unfortunately why the death rate is so unconscionably high here in NY: our leaders failed us and shut down way too late.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by legolas2412 on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @07:00PM (#22884166)
And that is why I find it hilarious to see everybody fawning over governer Cuomo now.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by ashtonkem on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @07:24PM (#22884343)
It’s still unclear to me whether Cuomo dropped the ball, or whether he was hindered by De Blasio.

Either way, Inslee and Breed deserve more credit. Preventing a crisis is superior to responding effectively after its started.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by CydeWeys on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @08:23PM (#22884781)
They both dropped the ball big time. de Blasio went to the gym on literally the last day before those kinds of businesses were shuttered. He kept waffling on shuttering the schools and waited way too late. He only started taking things seriously when the heads of his department of health threatened to resign if he didn't take more action. See e.g.: https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-ci...

They both started off as a complete joke on this. Cuomo has at least since been improving, but de Blasio remains a complete joke. He's incapable of so much as even closing some empty streets (or some lanes on streets) to give pedestrians more space to spread out. Other cities have been doing this to great success, but de Blasio has only ever understood things from the perspective of being behind a windshield.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by hilbertseries on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @08:05PM (#22884657)
No, De Blasio wanted to issue a shelter in place order on March 17 and Cuomo said absolutely not. Then eventually Cuomo comes around and they start a shelter in place on March 22nd.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by bduerst on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @08:22PM (#22884776)
I'm not so sure it's 'fawning' so much as he's in the spotlight so much because his state is currently the worst.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by CydeWeys on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @08:24PM (#22884786)
There has definitely been plenty of fawning, I can confirm.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by thorwasdfasdf on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @09:52PM (#22885290)
It's not their fault.

The disease hit New York first before it hit anywhere else in the US and hence had a lot of time to develop. I heard from one source, that it was already present in New York back in december and that one of the first worldwide cases came to New york early. that was from a Joe Rogan podcast episode.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by ashtonkem on Thursday April 16, 2020 @04:48AM (#22887410)
Given the close economic and cultural ties between the west coast and Asia, I find it very hard to believe that Coronavirus travelled through Europe to NYC before it travelled directly from China to LA or SF.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by rhizome on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @10:04PM (#22952174)
We don't even know if "time to develop" in that way is even a thing in reality.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by rad_gruchalski on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @06:40PM (#22883976)
Seems to be a lesson well learnt from 1918. SF skipped the first wave back then too. Good to hear some people remember and take notes.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by CydeWeys on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @08:25PM (#22884793)
NYC was the best city on the entire east coast back then. We closed early and had fewer deaths because of it. Unfortunately that lesson wasn't learned (likely because nobody in charge of anything back then is still alive today), and this time we were unfortunately saddled with an incompetent governor and mayor who hadn't learned from history and didn't take action soon enough.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by karthikb on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @06:45PM (#22884031)
https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry

Scroll down and click "city" instead of country. SF bookings on OpenTable were consistently down starting the last week of February. Your restaurant might have had different performance for a number of reasons.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by Supermancho on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @07:33PM (#22884415)
In Seattle, people were dining out at about 80% until the official shut down of businesses. Things like IHOP and Denny's were still fully packed, but more niche were often sparse.
Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by icedistilled on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @06:46PM (#22884051)
As A san francisco resident, I got take out a couple times but I would not have considered eating sit down in the couple weeks prior to the formal orders. I was, however, marveling at how many people were still eating sit down.

They would have nearly all vanished once the hospitals started filling up had there been no formal order. And then it would have lasted longer.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by ashtonkem on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @07:27PM (#22884367)
LA resident here; while I’m not a dining out kind of person, I pulled back from the gym 2 weeks before I was officially ordered to stay in.

I also skipped a former colleague’s leaving town party for the same reason.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by CydeWeys on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @08:37PM (#22884865)
There were a few activities I did in the last week before I stayed home that definitely felt unsafe, and were the last time I did those things (in advance of official shutdowns). I went to the gym and it felt unsafe, I saw a play on Broadway and felt unsafe, and ran on the East River and felt unsafe, and then we settled in to not go anywhere anymore the next week (still a week prior to the official orders), but by then I'd already caught it. My first symptoms appeared on March 16th, meaning I'd most likely gotten it within the past week, and NYC didn't shut everything down until the 23rd, when I was already at the peak of the illness.

So I would have needed to have stopped doing things several weeks prior to the government actually getting off its ass and acting in order to be safe, but I didn't have the understanding of how widely in the community it was already spreading at that point, or how severely we were under-testing. As a city we were unbelievably late to act, and the over 10,000 dead in NYC alone (with ~750 more every day) are a testament to that.

It's the peak of absurdity to imagine the city somehow going on as normal under this unbelievable toll if only we weren't being told to shelter in place, when the only street noise you can hear a lot of the time is ambulance sirens.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by sizzle on Thursday April 16, 2020 @03:52PM (#22892824)
Hope you are doing better, if you don't mind me asking, how were the worst of the symptoms and did you recover completely? any breathing complications? any tips you felt helped you fight it off, assuming you didn't get hit with with the full force of the virus.

Wishing you a speedy recovery fellow HN reader friend.

Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up by CydeWeys on Thursday April 16, 2020 @04:44PM (#22893352)
I had all the listed symptoms including headache, fever, sore throat, muscle ache, and diarrhea, but those were all pretty mild compared to other illnesses I've experienced in the past, like the flu or even a bad cold. The one symptom that was unlike anything else I've ever experienced was the shortness of breath. There was a period of several days where it felt like I was at several miles' altitude. When I was being sedentary I was OK, but I was noticeably not getting enough oxygen even just while walking around my apartment, like I couldn't catch my breath or suck down enough oxygen.

I've since mostly recovered, but my lungs are still giving me problems (this is apparently expected; it can take months to recover from severe pneumonia, so I'm doing better than that at least). I haven't gone running in over a month whereas I used to go several times a week, and even stuff like playing Beat Saber has kicked my ass. Ironically, wearing masks is hard for me now because they interfere with how much oxygen you can take in, so I can wear them while walking leisurely, but I start walking faster, or try to carry a heavy load (groceries), or climb stairs with a mask on, then I really start feeling shitty. So I haven't been wearing a mask while outside and only don one for being inside stores (which is fine, it's been way more than 14 days since I last experienced any symptoms of infection).

So yeah, a weird illness, quite different from the usual human viruses like the cold flu that we all know and "love". I don't know if I have any tips other than don't expect to get better from it quickly (you don't bounce back in a few days like you would from the cold), and lying prone helps you breathe better (but I fortunately never got serious enough to the point where I was struggling to breathe even while being sedentary; it was only after activity). Oh, and if you do anything like smoke or vape (I don't), quit that right now. You want your lungs to be in the best possible condition before going into this because you're gonna lose a lot of capacity and if that puts you below the level required to sustain your basic sedentary metabolism, you could die, or at the least require supplementary oxygen in a hospital. Heck, take up running or some similarly aerobic activity now if you haven't already; that'll help.