Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

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BigBear
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by BigBear » May 20th, 2020, 6:07 pm

Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court called their governor's extension of the stay-at-home order was "unconstitutional and unenforceable." The order does not comply with the commerce clause of the Constitution, and I suspect that it wouldn't hold water to the 1st Amendment's right to assemble. In Oregon, it was limited to the 1st Amendment's religious freedoms.

There's no question that taking reasonable precautions is the key to keeping from spreading any flu-like virus. I did note that Oregon's deaths were 4% of the confirmed cases, Washington's was 5%, the US average was 6% and worldwide its 7%. Depending on how accurate that news story was as to there being 4 times the number of infections as the number confirmed (perhaps due to the lack or reduced symptoms of that portion of the population), then the percentage of deaths would be reduced substantially.

I never will understand why the forests and beaches were closed to the locals. It may be an issue in Florida where people lay around and sunbathe, but on Oregon beaches (especially March and April), no one is just laying around and soaking up the rain and wind. There's that argument that tourists will flood the local communities, blah blah blah, but I can't recall anyone I hike with adding any more to the economy during a day hike than a cup of coffee - which ironically has been available throughout the shutdown. (It's kind of like the plastic bag ban which banned paper bags and kept the plastic bags flowing). I wonder if I'll still have enough ability to hike once we are allowed to visit the trees some month in the future.

Aimless
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by Aimless » May 20th, 2020, 9:16 pm

BigBear wrote:
May 20th, 2020, 6:07 pm
I never will understand why the forests and beaches were closed to the locals.
How would you close a beach to non-locals while leaving it open to locals? I'm curious, because locals and non-locals all look alike and it's not like you can lock the beaches and then distribute keys just to locals. Having law enforcement attempting to check identification wouldn't work very well in terms of minimizing people's exposure and not spreading the virus, since the LEOs would necessarily be coming into contact with everyone. Then there's the constitutional legal problem of "equal protection under the law".

I'm not sure your idea works either medically, practically, or legally.

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retired jerry
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by retired jerry » May 21st, 2020, 6:40 am

The reason they were closed to locals is first governor Brown told people to social distance, avoid crowds.

Then there were huge mob scenes of people "trying to infect each other".

Then governor Brown issued stay at home order and local governments closed the beaches totally, gorge was closed completely.

I think those constitutional arguments are crazy wacko. It's constitutional to close things for health reasons, temporarily, as long as there's a real health reason. Hopefully, the pandemic will rip off the bandaid and most people will recognize this.

The question is epidemiology - how do you suppress the virus and stop the epidemic. When you accomplish that, then move on to things like arguing constitutional technicalities.

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drm
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by drm » May 21st, 2020, 7:46 am

Our legal rights, including constitutional ones, are not absolute, never have been. They have been limited for practical purposes and temporarily violated for emergencies since the founding - by the Founders themselves, who were a pragmatic bunch, approved by numerous Supreme Courts over our history. It is nothing new. It's always been a balancing act, and any time you are balancing things, sometimes they will get it wrong. Different people will have different opinions as to whether they are getting it wrong now, but such limitations have numerous precedents in our history.

Closures of the backcountry are frustrating because there is no safer place to be, especially dispersed camping. It's safer than being at home because the open air quickly disperses any virus that may be there. The risk is not the backcountry itself, it is the parking lots, the trailhead bathrooms, in some cases the visitor centers, and the towns and shops city visitors would pass through getting there. And because it was not seen as essential, access was sacrificed. I think things would be opening up faster if people were diligent about distancing and wearing masks. But because some people are lazy and others are intentionally resistant, it will be slower, and in some cases that is to protect staff you might interact with.

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BigBear
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by BigBear » May 21st, 2020, 9:28 am

Retired Jerry:
"then move on to things like arguing constitutional technicalities."

Wow, I'll be laughing my asteroid off on this comment for a long time. "Then we can move on to things like" the Constitution. I guess we can forget about trivial things like global warning, civil rights, etc. They're merely suggestions of fairness after all. So much for the supreme law of the land.

And I guess the concept of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has an "OR" after "LIFE" right? Throw out the liberty and any pursuit of happiness, be content if the King gives you your life? So, the Revolutionary War was something you saw on TV once, and the entire history of jurisprudence is a fairy tale?

No wonder things like laws, processes and norms are ignored if we can so easily put the Constitution hold for 90 days...six months...sometime next year... After all, its just some piece of old paper with a bunch of ink stains on it. It's not like the foundation of our country meant anything. Right, Jerry?

Trump wants you to join his army to suspend the Constitution. After all, we can just put it on hold until after November.

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xrp
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by xrp » May 21st, 2020, 10:43 am

retired jerry wrote:
May 21st, 2020, 6:40 am
The question is epidemiology - how do you suppress the virus and stop the epidemic. When you accomplish that, then move on to things like arguing constitutional technicalities.
By establishing herd immunity.

Now that we know the high risk factors associated with fatalities, we should open everything up, publish guidelines identifying the risk factors accompanied by risk mitigation for those with higher levels of risk.

For example, using data from NYC:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... ographics/

We can see that ages 0-17 are almost at 0 risk to dying as a result of COVID-19.

We can also identify what increases risk, as cited by the CDC here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... -risk.html.

Unfortunately, the worldometers data by age isn't more granular. There is a lot of difference between an 18 year old vs a 44 year old. Even the next age bracket, 45-64, is too wide.

But in any case...almost 75% of fatalities are age 65 and older. A further 75% of that 75% have "underlying conditions".

In light of that, and more data from all around the world, it makes sense to open up everything, right now and provide guidelines for the older people (probably age 50+). For example, if you're age 75 and 300 pounds with diabetes, you should wear a mask or stay home for awhile.

The younger people will likely get sick, but they will develop that herd immunity, for the herd. Additionally, it would enable them to continue working, without fear (because the fear is overblown, but that gives politicians more power). Putting younger people out of work for an extended amount of time is going to really long term slam them as it delays the building of wealth, skills and experience while enabling the retirement of debt.

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retired jerry
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by retired jerry » May 21st, 2020, 11:53 am

this is going down an internet rathole :)

Aimless
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Re: Governor Brown's caronavirus orders may be void.

Post by Aimless » May 21st, 2020, 12:09 pm

xrp wrote:
May 21st, 2020, 10:43 am
By establishing herd immunity. Now that we know the high risk factors associated with fatalities, we should open everything up, publish guidelines identifying the risk factors accompanied by risk mitigation for those with higher levels of risk.

(...much omitted material...)

it makes sense to open up everything, right now and provide guidelines for the older people (probably age 50+). For example, if you're age 75 and 300 pounds with diabetes, you should wear a mask or stay home for awhile.
If we were to follow your plan, I can think of many difficulties that I would like to see addressed by a competent epidemiologist (which I assume you are not, any more than I am).

First herd immunity in general. In an earlier post on another thread I did some rough math on what would be required to reach herd immunity in Oregon without the availability of a vaccine to supply that immunity, based on the preliminary numbers for R0 and infection fatality rate that I could find published in reputable sources. I tried to lowball the numbers, which still occupy a fairly large range of possibility in the available literature, using R0 of 3, which requires 70% immunity in a population to achieve herd immunity, and a fatality rate of 0.5% to 1%. As Big Bear noted, the 'official' numbers on ifr would indicate "the US average was 6% and worldwide its 7%", so you can see I am being quite conservative in my choices.

The math on my very conservative numbers comes out with 14,000 to 28,000 covid-19 deaths in Oregon alone before herd immunity numbers are reached. We are currently at 140 or so. That would be a hundredfold increase, at least. For the USA, the same calculation yields 1,175,000 to 2,350,000 covid-19 deaths, as opposed to the 92,000 we have already suffered. Furthermore, epidemiologists point out that during a pandemic herd immunity is not effective at once, but will normally surpass the required numbers before settling back to a more steady state.

Somehow, the possibility of depriving young people of a year or so of wealth accumulation for their retirement does not seem like a disproportionate sacrifice to ask, compared to 1,175,000 dead. For comparison, US military deaths from all causes during WWII were 407,000 over four years of intense warfare, or about a third of 1% of the population. Projected onto today's US population that would be 1,100,000 dead, or fewer than my lowest number of covid-19 deaths to get to herd immunity.

Even if my conservative numbers are still twice what reality would be, that many dead people seems like a big problem to me and worth avoiding, if possible.

Edit: Since this thread was only tenuously connected to hiking to begin with and now has lost touch with hiking altogether, I will move it to Idle Chatter.

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