“A Lot Of People Are Leaving”: COVID Shutdowns Have Turned San Francisco Into A Ghost Town

San Francisco has managed to curb the virus slightly in its city – but at what cost? Those paying sky high taxes to live in the Bay Area may soon be wondering why they are paying to live in a shut down city that state and local government officials have refused to allow to reopen due to a virus with a CDC-predicted infection fatality rate of between 0.00002 and 0.093.

The entire downtown area of the city, once vibrant with business and tourism, is now “empty” according to a new report by AP. Everything from food trucks to local workers used to be sights one would see on a daily basis in San Francisco. Now, the city has been all but abandoned.

Even the tech giants that San Francisco is known for have left the city, in favor of working remotely from elsewhere. Families have moved out of the city in favor of the suburbs. Rents in the city are crashing, as we highlighted about a month ago. Tourists, once part of the lifeblood of the city, are now “scarce”.

As a result, business owners wonder if the city will ever get back to normal. Evan Kidera, CEO of Señor Sisig food trucks, said: “Is it ever going to get back to normal, is it ever going to be as busy as it was — and will that be next year, or in 10 years?”

This past week, part of the city re-opened as a result of virus numbers slowing. We’re sure it won’t be long until case numbers freak out elected officials heading into the winter, however, and everything is once again put into draconian “the government knows what’s best for you”-style lockdown.

31 Oct: MSN: Daily Mail: Sunetra Gupta reveals how crisis has been ruthlessly weaponised
by Professor Sunetra Gupta, infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. Her fee for this article has been donated to The Childhood Trust, a charity which fights to alleviate the impact of child poverty.
Lockdown is a blunt, indiscriminate policy that forces the poorest and most vulnerable people to bear the brunt of the fight against coronavirus. As an infectious diseases epidemiologist, I believe there has to be a better way...

I expected debate and disagreement about our ideas, published as the Great Barrington Declaration...
But I was utterly unprepared for the onslaught of insults, personal criticism, intimidation and threats that met our proposal. The level of vitriol and hostility, not just from members of the public online but from journalists and academics, has horrified me...

Of course, I do have deeply held political ideals — ones that I would describe as inherently Left-wing. I would not, it is fair to say, normally align myself with the Daily Mail...

At the heart of our proposal is the recognition that mass lockdowns cause enormous damage...
The results — to name just a few — include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health.
Such pitfalls of national lockdowns must not be ignored, especially when it is the working class and younger members of society who carry the heaviest burden...
I was also deeply concerned that lockdowns only delay the inevitable spread of the virus...

So I was left stunned after being invited on to a mid-morning radio programme recently, only for a producer to warn me minutes before we went on air that I was not to mention the Great Barrington Declaration. The producer repeated the warning and indicated that this was an instruction from a senior broadcasting executive.
I demanded an explanation and, with seconds to go, was told that the public wouldn’t be familiar with the meaning of the phrase ‘Great Barrington Declaration’.

And this was not an isolated experience. A few days later, another national radio station approached my office to set up an interview, then withdrew the invitation. They felt, on reflection, that giving airtime to me would ‘not be in the national interest’.
But the Great Barrington Declaration represents a heartfelt attempt by a group of academics with decades of experience in this field to limit the harm of lockdown. I cannot conceive how anyone can construe this as ‘against the national interest’.

Moreover, matters certainly are not helped by outlets such as The Guardian, which has repeatedly published opinion pieces making factually incorrect and scientifically flawed statements, as well as borderline defamatory comments about me, while refusing to give our side of the debate an opportunity to present our view.
I am surprised, given the importance of the issues at stake — not least the principle of fair, balanced journalism — that The Guardian would not want to present all the evidence to its readers. After all, how else are we to encourage proper, frank debate about the science?

On social media, meanwhile, much of the discourse has lacked any decorum whatsoever.
I have all but stopped using Twitter, but I am aware that a number of academics have taken to using it to make personal attacks on my character, while my work is dismissed as ‘pseudo- science’. Depressingly, our critics have also taken to ridiculing the Great Barrington Declaration as ‘fringe’ and ‘dangerous’...

Yet of all the criticisms flung at us, the one I find most upsetting is the accusation that we are indulging in ‘policy-based evidence-making’ — in other words, drumming up facts to fit our ideological agenda.
And that ideology, according to some, is one of Right-wing libertarian extremism.

According to Wikipedia, for instance, the Great Barrington Declaration was funded by a Right-wing think-tank with links to climate-change deniers...
https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/mindandbody/sunetra-gupta-reveals-how-crisis-has-been-ruthlessly-weaponised/ar-BB1ayBze?ocid=msedgdhp

30 Oct: LA Times: UCLA football player tests positive, then negative for COVID-19
By Ben Bolch
A UCLA football player who tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week has tested negative through more sophisticated follow-up testing but must receive a second negative result before being cleared to rejoin the team, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to disclose the results publicly because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The player has entered isolation for 10 days from the date of the first test or until the verification of a false positive. A handful of close contacts from the team have been placed in quarantine for 14 days from the last date of contact or until the false positive is confirmed, the person with knowledge of the situation said...

False positives have become an increasingly common theme across college football...
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-10-30/ucla-football-player-covid-19

31 Oct: Daily Freeman: 11 of 12 positive COVID tests at Woodland Pond in New Paltz were incorrect
By Diane Pineiro-Zucker
NEW PALTZ, N.Y. — Follow-up tests this past week on 12 residents of Woodland Pond have found that only one of them, in the retirement community’s skilled-nursing unit, has COVID-19, the facility’s president and CEO said Saturday.
And the one infected resident continues to be asymptomatic, Michelle Gramoglia said...
https://www.dailyfreeman.com/news/local-news/11-of-12-positive-covid-tests-at-woodland-pond-in-new-paltz-were-incorrect/article_47b69ca0-1b85-11eb-8e02-9b466973cd0b.html

previous day 4 “cases” were reported, then corrected, as two were “false positives”!

31 Oct: 7News Australia: Victoria’s latest COVID case deemed false positive, marking another day of zero cases
by Emily Olle
Victoria has recorded another day of zero COVID-19 cases after the state’s most recent case was deemed a false positive.
One new infected was recorded on Saturday in a person already in hospital.
That person had previously tested negative multiple times, sparking suspicious the “weak positive” test was merely remnants of the virus...

Under eased restrictions, only one household can visit another per day within the 25km limit.
Outdoor gatherings remain capped at 10 people but there are no limits on how many households can be involved.
Metropolitan Melbourne’s rolling 14 day average is now down to 2.4, while regional Victoria has hit zero.
Despite the promising figures, Premier Daniel Andrews urged Melburnians to maintain social distancing and good hygiene with eased restrictions...
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/victorias-latest-covid-case-deemed-false-positive-marking-another-day-of-zero-cases-c-1493104

The article’s author is citing bogus statistics. The IFR of the virus is 2.5%.

Even if you divide the number of dead by the total population you get a value greater than the low end of his claimed range. But that is not the correct way of calculating IFR. Also, IFR is misleading in and of itself. It is a way to include every case under the assumption that everybody that has not died so far will live. If you include only resolved cases, then the CFR is 3.9%.

Perhaps he meant that high end .09something estimate to be 9.something%. Think about that - 1 in 11 dies. That’s a big nothing, right? That’s what Italy had after their HCS collapsed. In their own words, a “whole generation” was taken. Maybe some of you all that are so vocal about the mitigation efforts aren’t just ODD. Maybe you’re just impatient for your inheritance.

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