"Hospitals such as Stanford shut down elective surgeries, a large source of revenue, under a state mandate to prepare for a surge of COVID-19 patients, but on Wednesday Gov. Gavin Newsom relaxed some of those restrictions...."

Wait, I'm confused. I thought that the reason that we were doing all of the social distancing and face mask stuff was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. Now the news is that not only are hospitals like Stanford not being overwhelmed but are actually being underutilized to the point that they're encouraging their workers to take flex-time or unpaid time off?

It Is What it Is!

What it now is is a strategy that is not going according to plan. Since according to health experts virtually EVERYONE in the Bay Area is destined to become infected with the coronavirus, the only way we are going to really get out of this problem anytime soon is by developing a herd immunity to the virus ASAP. By keeping the infection rate as low as we currently are, we are unnecessarily dragging out the process, resulting in more and longer economic pain, more unemployment, and a longer economic recovery period.

Newcome is a moron. Completely over and continues to mismanage this.

Seems like the state should redirect some of the 125 million dollars they want to give to illegal aliens toward these brave essential first line hero workers.

Wow. That’s bold.

Time to find a way to get back to work safely people..

Recall Newsom! He is MIA on any real action plan to help citizens! He should be spraying down Caltrain and Bart and playground equipment to open up. Recall the Newsom dictator.

And Newsom lied about “2 weeks of stay home to help our hospitals” such BS, he need to go ASAP! He just wants to bankrupt our hospitals for his single payer plan!

Does anyone know what our translation plan is? Dates? Milestones? Or are we just leaving things to Tom Steyer?

Yes! This is what free market capitalism is all about! You socialists want everyone to have what the wealthiest and therefore best people have rightfully gained, but now we’re seeing the invisible hand of the market bring these overpaid “workers” to the proper wage level. If they want to earn more, they should do a better job. It’s called conservatism, people, and it’s saving America right now!

We didn’t act this way for the H3N2 of 2017-2018 flu where over 80,000 died in this country. Web Link

The problem now is, because there was this shutdown, they will take the credit that their response was necessary. The models were wrong, unfortunately like most models when you don’t have good information to put in the boxes to give you direction. Are we going to really stop living and just let our economy tank? Poverty kills and even senior citizens such as myself feel safer with a strong economy and a strong country. We have always balanced deaths and measured/weighed the outcomes when making decisions. Nobody blinks an eye over 70,000 deaths a year from opioid overdoses, 50,000 deaths from suicide, 25,000 deaths from homicides, 321,000 abortions each year, and tens of thousands of deaths from any number of diseases each year. Our bodies are constantly fighting bacteria and virus’s of various pedigrees.

When you really begin your search of deaths per year in this country and globally, your attitude changes. People are looking at the emotion of it all, not the data. The further we run down this rabbit hole, the harder it is to back up. Minimally, this Governor is going to keep us isolated until June 1. Listen to what he doesn’t say. Watch the way he speaks to us. He is going to get so far out on the limb that it will break. I hear the cracking as I write.

Listen for the growing demonstrations that are taking place in this state and nationally. You really think you can corral the citizenry indefinitely without pushback?

I’m sure all of our elected officials have all signed up for pay cuts

Below is a link to two Bakersfield ER doctors at a press conference discussing COVID-19. If nothing else it gives you another perspective. Warning; its long but worth the listen.

We lose 35,000+ lives each year to car accidents. If we eliminated motor vehicles of all types we could save those lives. But no, we won't do that because it is the cost of doing business. We are willing to sacrifice those lives for the betterment of society. I am not advocating we eliminate cars, just that there is a cost that society has agreed to accept in order to make our live better. In the end, it will be the same with COVID-19, we will accept a certain amount of deaths to live as a free people.

Web Link

@CVM,

Motor vehicle deaths aren't contagious.

A point to ponder:

""Yes, probably at some point," (Santa Clara County Public Health Director) Dr. Cody replied when asked if she believes everyone will be infected. "What our shelter-in-place order does, though, is slow things down, so we spread the cases out over a long period of time, and so that we spread the number of people who are severely ill and require hospitalization over a long period of time as well.""
ABC News: Web Link

So how slow do we want to go? Hospitals like Stanford Health's medical center are already running far below capacity, and in fact Stanford Health is cutting workers' wages. The slower we go, the longer we drag this entire process out, with more businesses closing and more people losing their jobs in addition to the 30 million now out of work. And we don't save any additional lives by going slower because virtually everyone is going to be eventually infected regardless of social distancing and the wearing of masks.

Either (1) get this over quickly and get back to business, or (2) allow this to remain a long, dragged out affair with millions of more people losing their jobs and countless more businesses going out of business and more massive government bailout dollars being spent. The number of lives ultimately lost due to coronavirus will be about the same either way because virtually everyone in the Bay Area is eventually going to get coronavirus.

@BobB
You're right it is not contagious but those 35,000 people are going to die. We are talking prevention and we can eliminate all those deaths if we eliminate vehicles. Fact. You miss the point entirely. Society as a whole will accept a certain amount of deaths in order to be a free people. Never in the history of our country have we ever had every HEALTHY citizen told to stay home and lose their income by the millions. In the long run people will not obey a law that they dislike, in order for a law to be enforceable the vast majority of people must obey it. I guess is this will be an unenforceable law by around mid June.

Did you take the time to see the other side of the coin by watching the link on my last post?? At least you get a different perspective if you have an open mind on the subject.

It's no conspiracy or secret plot to take all our freedoms. The country is following these guidelines put out by some of the country's best health and public policy experts.

Web Link

"The number of lives ultimately lost due to coronavirus will be about the same either way ..."

That isn't true at all. Haven't you read about the various strategies of delaying exposure until better treatments come on line as they are tested and approved? As more effective treatments become available, fewer people die. There are many articles explain that. That is another important reason to slow the spread. The most vulnerable people may be able to wait until a vaccine is developed. Here's one list of some of the treatments being rapidly studied.

Web Link

" Never in the history of our country have we ever had every HEALTHY citizen told to stay home ..."

We're not saying that now. Essential workers aren't being told to stay home. Also large numbers of healthy people were told to stay home in 1918 - 1919. And terrible mistakes were made then:

Web Link

We need to stick to the plan. We also need to get more stimulus passed in Washington and sent out to people's whose financial well being and dreams are being harmed by these stay-at-home orders.

@CVM,

"Did you take the time to see the other side of the coin by watching the link on my last post"

Yes.

The Wuhan Virus doesn’t scare me as much as the reasoning of some people. Case in point: some of my neighbors are liberals (good people, just bad ideas) and they believe we need to stay contained until there is a vaccine developed. I told them that the vaccine may take a year to eighteen months to develop and who knows how long to deliver to each person. No big deal, my neighbors believe we need to stay indoors until then. I explained to them if we wait 3 more months there won’t be an economy to come back to. Their eyes just continued to develop that glazed over appearance. Second case in point: Gavin Newsom is starting to develop that look.

@BobB

To: "The number of lives ultimately lost due to coronavirus will be about the same either way ..."

BobB wrote: "That isn't true at all. Haven't you read about the various strategies of delaying exposure until better treatments come on line as they are tested and approved?"

Get real. We're talking about development of new medical drugs and treatments for a new virus. You know very well that whenever human safety enters into an equation, that we're talking about a very, very long process of extensive human subject testing and reviews before drug approval. The timeline for a coronavirus vaccine is about 12 months away because of that, and it will be the same for any sort of medical cure for coronavirus - assuming that one even exists. Don't hold your breath waiting for a treatment to be tested and approved.

BobB wrote: "The country is following these guidelines put out by some of the country's best health and public policy experts."

Health experts like Dr. Fauci see things from almost entirely one perspective: That of a medical professional, period. Dr. Fauci doesn't weigh in the economic destruction that's going on in our country. Dr. Fauci doesn't weigh in on the 30 million lost jobs (and counting) in this county so far. Dr. Fauci doesn't weigh in on all the businesses that are being shut down. IF Dr. Fauci were asked to comment on these things and on how we should properly balance the economic destruction occurring in this country as a result of the current strategy against coronavirus versus the need to protect lives against coronavirus, do you know what he would say? He would say "No comment. That's not my job or area of expertise. I'm a doctor."

There is a wider perspective on this other than a purely medical perspective. We have to balance economic costs (which includes very real human costs such as despair over lost jobs, evictions, and increased suicides) against deaths directly due to coronavirus. And as CWM pointed out, such a balancing act is nothing new - as a society we've ALWAYS done such balancing whether we've been dealing with flu outbreaks or automobile safety or airline safety or product safety or workplace safety, etc..

@Jake Waters

Don't turn this into a conservative versus liberal thing. I'm a left-leaning independent, but I'm largely in agreement with you and some other conservatives on this issue about the problems with how we're reacting to coronavirus. So are many other independents and liberals. That doesn't mean that I won't give you a solid bonk on the head if you start going stupid on me, though.

@Wombat,

"Get real. We're talking about development of new medical drugs ... "

Please read the link I sent you regarding timelines of various treatments. Also go back and look at those charts Mike Pence kept showing and flattening the curve. It showed both a lower rate of hospitalizations and lower rate of overall deaths.

"We have to balance economic costs ..."

The white house task force did not ignore those costs when it set up those guidelines.

ok folks, maybe against my better judgement, I'm going to wade into this, as a Pleasanton resident and a Stanford ValleyCare employee. Not to debate social distancing, Gavin Newsom, the economy, or anything else. Point one, a little disappointed in the Weekly, because this is the PLEASANTON Weekly, and Linda Cornell does not work at ValleyCare. She works in Palo Alto, and has nothing to do with ValleyCare. Sounds to me like SEIU trying to rattle some cages in there, but that is their business. Point two, yes, here at ValleyCare, we are asked to do the reduction because to Wombat's question, yes, we in this area are doing such a good job of avoiding spread, and/or because of the restriction on surgeries and procedures, and/or people fearing to go to the emergency room, the hospital is very quiet. Point three, the hospital has been very fair to employees, using people in labor pool opportunities for preparation work instead of, like other organizations, just sending people home and saying good luck to you. Now we are well prepared IF a large outbreak happens, and employees have been able to work for the past 5-6 weeks. Point four, this is temporary, and it is because the hospital IS quiet. If people are needed to run the hospital based on the current census, there is always enough that are on staff to take care of the patients, we are not shorthanded. And if tomorrow it hits the fan and we are in need, we ramp back up. Point five, "never be able to pay it back" regarding PTO and "not being able to go on vacations with our families"? A bit of hyperbole here. Employees will continue to accrue time off, so even if someone has to go into the negative in the short term (which is another generous gesture), it will not take long for it to come back to the positive.
To close, Pleasanton Weekly, why not a story on the health care heroes at ValleyCare and not this type of negativity? To the residents of the Tri-Valley, everyone should be comfortable that your community hospital is ready if you are in need, and that you will be taken care of. However you feel about any of the other stuff, let's take a breath and keep being kind to each other and helping each other out. "No man should judge unless he asks himself in complete honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same." (Viktor Frankl)
Now I'm going out for a walk, bye!

@BobB
Not going to get into a no win argument with you over this. It will all play out in the next 30-60 days or so and it will be what it is going to be. I went for a walk after I wrote my last post and as I went thru the park it looks to me like social distancing is getting close to being a thing of the past. Volleyball, picnics, skateboarding, bikers, joggers.... Only person I saw wearing a mask was driving a car.

For clarity, I am in the high risk group in multiple columns.

@BobB wrote "Also go back and look at those charts Mike Pence kept showing and flattening the curve. It showed both a lower rate of hospitalizations and lower rate of overall deaths."

Yes, of course there will be a lower *rate* of coronavirus hospitalizations and coronavirus deaths with our current practices of social distancing and the wearing of masks. No argument there. What I have been talking about is the total number of deaths that will ultimately occur due to coronavirus, not the rate at which they will occur.

As Dr. Sara Cody said, virtually everyone in the Bay Area is going to get coronavirus. Social distancing and the wearing of masks slows down the rate at which people get coronavirus but doesn't alter the fact that virtually everyone is going to get it.

ACPHD is reporting ten percent (9.60) increase in COVID-19 in Pleasanton from one week ago.

CWM and all of you other naysayers:

First off, we are at 55,000 deaths in the U.S. currently, so that's way more than the 35,000 vehicle deaths you quote and we are likely to have many more before this thing abates.

Secondly, if you kill or maim someone because of a car crash, there are consequences: lawsuits for many thousands or millions of dollars for which you can lose your home and possessions or a stint in jail or prison for vehicular manslaughter. If you have any conscience at all, you will also have to live with the guilt of your recklessness for the rest of your life.

Are you willing to take that responsibility for your reckless actions due to COVID-19? It would, after all, be for the good of society and the price you have to pay for the benefits of working and living in this society.

The problem, of course, is that the victims of your recklessness will never be known to you and you are unlikely to experience any consequences -- unless the coronavirus takes YOU or your loved ones out. But that's a price you are willing to pay, right?

And if you survive the virus, what about the known maiming it is known to cause? You haven't figured into your estimates the number of people who have kidney failure, permanent lung and heart disabilities and amputations, all recorded due to COVID-19.

You want to live with that or have to care for a loved one for the rest of your and their lives?

My guess is you don't know anyone who has suffered through this disease and you haven't had this illness. There is plenty of money that we've given to our government in our taxes for decades that could and should be used to support our businesses and hospitals. We could use a few billions from the corpulent military budget or from some other pork barrel project to help businesses out while we all suffer through these hard times together.

My family has lost half its income from this virus, but we are not complaining. It is hard, but we are tightening our belts, paying our bills responsibly and staying inside.

If this disease was to just take you, I'd say go ahead. Instead, it isn't apt to only take you or even just a couple of people, as in a car accident, but up to 10 or more. That's what the public health officials estimate is the number of contacts each person with COVID makes. Those contacts then expose another 10 people each to the disease. And on it goes.

The more we quit bellyaching and the more we hunker down, the quicker we'll extinguish this disease and get back to a somewhat normal life. I'm not willing to die for you, sorry.

CWM

I agree with your comments.

Yes, in 30 to 60 days it will play out. Hopefully by that time there will be enough understanding of how this new virus works, who it really impacts (not just old people) and how it impacts them, and the best way to treat people who get it (to minimize deaths) until a vaccine is found. And once the vaccine is found, what the expected death rate will be even with a vaccine. Just like we know the same facts about flu. And people feeling comfortable to say their will be deaths from the virus just as there is with the flu.

As far as the social distancing, my observation has been there have been many people not taking it seriously- yes even here in “perfect Pleasanton”- to the point where I have had to search out times and routes to avoid people. Just this morning I observed a happy young couple sipping on their Peets coffee walking in the sports park, unwilling to make space for elderly couple, forcing the old couple tp move off the sidewalk and walk in the landscaping.

I am in the risk group, similar to you, for multiple factors.

I just hope this is over in the 30-60 days. I hope the large number of people ignoring the social distancing won’t have a negative impact on the situation. I hope the economy does recover quickly and our country recovers with a minimal amount pain and suffering for those less fortunate than myself. And I hope we aren’t doing the same thing again in the fall or winter if this virus makes an encore appearance.

@Be Responsible wrote "The more we quit bellyaching and the more we hunker down, the quicker we'll extinguish this disease and get back to a somewhat normal life."

No, according to the Santa Clara County Public Health Director Dr. Sara Cody, coronavirus in the Bay Area won't be "extinguished" the more we hunker down. According to her expert opinion, that is a misconception. Read her quote below carefully:

""Yes, probably at some point," (Santa Clara County Public Health Director) Dr. Cody replied when asked if she believes everyone will be infected. "What our shelter-in-place order does, though, is slow things down, so we spread the cases out over a long period of time, and so that we spread the number of people who are severely ill and require hospitalization over a long period of time as well.""
ABC News: Web Link

In the Bay Area with its population density, coronavirus will NOT be extinguished by means of shelter-in-place orders. The purpose of shelter-in-place is to slow the virus, not extinguish it. So if you thought that your sheltering-in-place and social distancing and mask wearing will prevent you from ever catching coronavirus, you're in for a rude surprise: The Santa Clara County Public Health Director thinks otherwise.

@Wombat,

Not just a lower rate of deaths, also a lower overall total number of deaths. It was right there in the charts. It is also easily explained. Please look it up.

@BobB

If the charts assumed that deaths would increase due to overflowing hospitals, then that assumption is called into question by this article. If it’s “easily explained” for some other reason, then explain it.

@Wombat,

Also more effective treatments, like on that list I linked to above.

@Be Responsible
Thank you for your assuming things that I didn't say. What I said was people will accept a certain amount of deaths in order to live "free", without government overreach. What that number is will be set by the people in due time. I do my part with the social distancing, but I will not let fear be my guiding light.

@CVM,

You don't have to wear a mask when you are out for a walk, as long as you are in an open area where you can maintain social distancing. You can also be as close as you want to members of your own household when you are out.

Geez, I know all of that. My point was that few were "social distancing" or wearing a mask except the one guy driving his car all by himself with the windows up. Now that makes sense! I also don't think the 6 teenagers playing volleyball were all from the same family. Nor the 6 adults picnicking with 3 small kids were likely living in the same house. But that is the way it goes. You can let the fear grip you as tight as you want, I'm not.

It isn't fear but rational thinking that should be guiding us.

All of this calamity for 1710 fatalities in 6 weeks in a population of 40 million.

And BobB calls this "rationality".

Heh.

If all C-level executives at Stanford Healthcare and high salay upper management also take the same 20% pay cuts, then this *might* be acceptable. But the article is silent on that. Hello ... ? Keep digging, keep asking.

@DKHSK,

So, what did Mike Pence get wrong? Did he listen to the wrong advisors? Should we not have closed sports arenas and large gatherings? No social distancing?

Some of the confusion can come from things like this:

"It scared a lot of people,” Smith said. “It gives people a false sense that things have gotten better, and that’s not true.”

Web Link

Many on here have been taken in by the fear mongering media.
They want everyone to stay home and do nothing, but get paid for it. Socialism 101. They believe self isolation cures an illness, when in fact the opposite is true. The more you interact with your environment, the more your body resists and becomes immune. That's why when you have newborns with a fever, because they have not built up any immunity's, they run multiple tests, but with adults its a dose of antibiotics or they tell you to take an over the counter product. Immunity 101.

The original models were so far off, in my opinion it's criminal. And those so called experts have no self courage to admit they were wrong, they are now doubling down to try and make it look like they were right. Every time in recorded history, the sick were isolated, not the healthy. Why are we now isolating the healthy? With the numbers available now, with the science statistics now, as the alarmist always said to look at, there is zero reason to self isolate or wear masks, unless you are actually sick. Which in that case, stay the F home. But the chicken little sky is falling crowd will not relent. They say, see more people have gotten it. Exactly, that's what we want. The more the better. Herd immunity is what we want. When it's all said and done, the statistical death rate will be 'statistically' no different than a 'bad' flu year.
The flu kills tens of thousands in the USA every year. We have a flu shot available every year. It helps some each year, it doesn't help others that same year. People still die of 'flu related' issues after getting a flu shot. More than half of Americans, do not even get a flu shot. Why? Because they choose not to. (BTW, corona virus is nothing new, its been around since at least the 70's, and like any other form of influenza, it changes)

Last. Those that keep trying to fear monger that you could kill someone by not following the 'rules', my question to you is, did you stay home last time or any time you thought you had a cold or flu? Did you self isolate? Did you wear masks or gloves? Nope. And yet you think you didn't cause anyone to die then, did you? How [removed ]do you know? [removed]

If their main revenue source is elective surgeries, then the demand is not going away. It’s just postponed.

BobB,

I’m just old enough to realize that humans, and especially politicians, are often overwrought in how they respond to crises.

Global cooling; global warming; killer bees; acid rain; rising seas; nuclear war; Russian collusion; Ukraine collusion....etc.

And now this.

I put up fatalities for the State and from you and compare them with population and what do we get from you? Panic and fear mongering instead of common sense and calm.

Two judges, one in Illinois and one in Virginia just ruled their States lockdowns as unconstitutional.

The fight from those who value freedom is just starting to happen.

As for my opinions about Trump and Pence? I’m hopping angry that they’ve let this go the way it has. New York should have been under lockdown, along with other “hotspots”. Locking down a whole state like ours because Santa Clara county and LA are hotspots was a stupid thing to do.

Dan

“Locking down a whole state like ours because Santa Clara county and LA are hotspots was a stupid thing to do.”

Well it’s only stupid if you could keep SC and LA residents strictly in SC and LA.

Kathleen,

“Well it’s only stupid if you could keep...”

I see. So you concede that it would be impossible to lock down cities, but possible to lock down an entire State?

You realize you are contradicting yourself, yes?

Doesn’t it seem silly to you that they just recently revised BART rules in response to the virus after almost 2 months of lockdown?

Don’t you also think I todd that they now REQUIRE masks in grocery stores?

Why now, after peak was reached, to implement these rules?

Some of what I read about masks is related more toward easing us back to opening the economy.

No contradiction really. I’m not going to SC or LA. I’m also not going to IL or TX or CO, although I have reason to go to all five of those places.

How to lockdown Pleasanton:

Police put barriers up on all freeway entrances and exits on Sunol blvd, foothill road, hopyard, Stoneridge mall, Hacienda and Santa Rita roads. Close off foothill road south at sunol. Close off sunol road east at Shadow cliffs.

Cut off hopyard, haciendaand santa Rita northbound at the freeway 580.

There, the city is shut down.

Dan

There has been NO PLAN, by our dumb governor to open the economy. Nothing.

Dan

Tahoe is doing something, right? Keeping people out of second homes because they don’t have hospital capacity if a multitude get seriously ill.

Help me understanding this: for the past month every pundit and politician were singing the praises of our healthcare workers (very much deserved) to the point many mayors around the country are expecting to organize parades for an appreciation of their service. Nice idea. But now they are cutting there salaries. Disconnect.