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California. According to media, it reopened this week! NO. There is virtually nothing open in California and-PUNCHLINE-this thread will show it will NEVER reopen under its current tier system as, big surprise, it is mathematically flawed b/c it doesn’t account for testing volume
First, let’s dispense with the MSM “reopening.” Literally 99.9% of the State’s population is in the “Purple” tier, which means no schools, no gyms, no indoor dining, no bars, no offices, no museums, no arcades, no having visitors at home, no churches, no Disneyland, no nothing
Ok, now the reopening math. Each county’s tier is based on the WORST of two metrics: (i) positive PCR tests per 100k population and (ii) test positivity %. Of course there is some BS woke “equity metric” that factors in tree canopy, but let’s put that aside for simplicity.
The problem is that prong (ii) is inherently self-adjusting for increases in testing volume whereas prong (i) is not. Run more tests, get more positives, but the county population denominator does not change. The State says it adjusts for this, but it doesn’t: “We want to avoid
disincentivizing increased testing...we are therefore increasing the adjustment for higher volume testing.” So they apply an adjustment factor: “For counties with testing volume above the state median, the factor is less than 1, decreasing in a linear manner from 1.0 to 0.5 as
testing volume increases from the state median to 2x the state median. The factor remains at 0.5 if the testing volume is greater than 2x the state median.” So, the adjustment only accounts for RELATIVE testing increases amongst counties and tops out at 2x the median. So they
effectively created a zero sum game where counties are incentivized to test more than their neighbors (to get a 0.5x adjustment), but at a certain point (which we’ve reached), counties are running so many tests that false positives alone will result in substantial restrictions
(even if the virus had disappeared). Moreover, if all counties ramp up testing volume simultaneously, the median rises. Mathematically not every county can be above the median. And indeed that is exactly what has occurred. After a cursory review, I cannot find a single instance
where prong (i) yields a better answer than prong (ii). Let’s take San Mateo county in the Bay Area where I spent most of the summer. Back in September, CA in total was running about 100k tests/day and San Mateo was doing about 2.5k. CA is now doing about 400k tests/day and SM
is doing about 10k tests/day (both have gone up 4-fold). Accordingly, because the adjustment factor is only relative, San Mateo county receives no adjustment despite running quadruple the tests it was 4 months ago. Indeed, assuming test accuracy of 99.5% (which I think is
generous), San Mateo would produce 50 positives. With a population of 778k, that is 6.4 “cases” per 100k population, putting SM just shy of the most restrictive tier. Again, that’s if the virus had disappeared entirely (clearly it has not). Even if you gave SM the max 0.5x test
volume adjustment, they would be in the heavily restricted Orange tier (gyms at 25%; still no Disneyland). If the metric looked instead at test positivity %, numerous populous counties would at least be allowed to open something—Alameda, SF, S Mateo, Marin, SLO, Santa Clara, etc.
The county data is available below along with historical spreadsheets for those interested. Someone has to stop these tyrants who have destroyed California and made it uninhabitable. I [temporarily?] left, but I want to go back to the State where I was born and that I love
I would be remiss not ending with this: 2020 exposed G. Newsom as an empty suit, the embodiment of incompetence, void of any substance, that has been failing upwards for 20 years by virtue signaling. CA has continued to succeed despite him and his ineptitude, not because of him.
@Zigmanfreud @justin_hart @ianmSC @BillFOXLA @adamcarolla @markgeragos @pnjaban @peterpham @jeffreyatucker @JenniferSey @danielkotzin @jenneraub @TheRealJohnHCox @Kevin_Faulconer @KevinKileyCA @J_GallagherAD3 @RepMcClintock @bergerbell
