Today's orders for shelter in place to slow coronavirus infections specifically exempts FARMERS MARKETS, allowing them to remain open as essential public services. Thank you, Mayor Breed, for recognizing the critical role that the City's markets play in feeding vulnerable low income residents who live in neighborhoods without supermarkets.
Order goes into effect at midnight.
Farmers’ markets in Alameda County are also being classified as essential services and can remain open.
Thanks, I'll have a summary at end of day on the efforts to keep farmers markets open across the state and how you can help. We have a number of successes so far and other challenges yet to overcome.
If you can go to indoor grocery stores, you should be able to go to farmers markets, where the food has had a lot fewer handlers! I wish this could happen in Boston area. Our indoor winter farmers markets have all been closed and I don't think that will change because the venues all have at least 50 people who are vendors. And our "spring" markets outdoors won't open until May...if that happens then.
We've had unseasonably warm weather here for a couple of months now. But it snowed this morning, didn't stick. It's sad for the farmers and their supporters.
Yes, that’s a nice little concession.
But the declaration of a health emergency in SF is premature, and un-supported by scientific evidence. There have been 40 cases in a city of 800,000. The lack of testing makes these numbers questionable. The logical thing for a mayor to do would have been to make testing in drive-up facilities widely available, so health authorities could get a picture of how widespread the virus really is. Instead, the city is crippled. Tens of thousands will be unemployed; hundreds of businesses will go under.
Maybe 5 or 10 lives will be saved, who knows.
Restaurants will be decimated.
Thanks Mayor Breed.
Absolutely agree. The reaction is far worse than the threat, IMO. Fear and panic have spiraled out of control, and there seems no way to damp THAT exponential. Once one area has a lockdown, the next thinks it should do the same or risk being thought of as irresponsible or immoral. And so the dominos fall. Life is suffering far more than lives, and the damage to our societal mental health will be much longer lasting.
Happy St. Patrick's Day.
In Boston, with all our supposedly great hospitals, we can 't even get testing in hospitals without a several day delay (or ever, so far) for people with symptoms who haven't traveled to a "hot spot." And that's if you go to the hospital and wait for hours alongside people with obvious symptoms and have a known existing condition that makes you more vulnerable.
The lack of drive up testing is the worst part of this crisis. There are many people walking around with no symptoms who are likely carriers, able to infect others. Also, even if you do get tested and are negative, you could well get infected within hours or days.
The seasonal flu is never quarantined or tested; shops, bars, and restaurants aren't closed; and we manage to live through it each year. Seasonal flu is regarded as "unstoppable", so attempts aren't made to stop it. The seasonal flu vaccine is only 50% effective and only 50% of the population bothers to get it. So each year 75% of us are vulnerable to getting the seasonal flu. That's vs. 100% for The Virus. Not that big of a difference, really. Here are relatively up-to-date numbers, just to keep things in perspective:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/...
Widespread testing and quarantining those actually infected would "flatten the curve" sufficiently and not excessively, for both seasonal flu and coronavirus. And getting a bacterial pneumonia shot would help those who are weakened by either virus from developing that very serious complication.
Having The Virus and the seasonal flu overlap has been unfortunate, but happily the flu season is rapidly winding down.
I've started a new topic with an update. Please check it out.
https://www.chowhound.com/post/update...
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