[conspire] June 15th reopening in California

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Yesterday I went to 3 stores.  Two had removed the mask required sign
> from the door.  In one store some employees and customers were masked.
> Since it was very hot, I decided to treat myself to the ice cream
> store next door.  Please wear mask inside the store. Then go outside
> to eat.

Yes, business policies following the June 15th relaxing of statewide
rules have been differing widely -- and will probably continue to do so.  
Several grocery stores I've visited have retained their mask mandates,
as did a shop in Belmont where Deirdre got her hair cut, two days back.

Blue Oak Brewing Co. (https://www.blueoakbrewing.com/, San Carlos) 
shed all restrictions and went to full table capacity indoors as soon as
the law permitted.  It's a useful illustrative example, in that the
taproom has super-high ceilings and about the best through-ventilation you can
imagine without being actually outdoors (propped open entry door in the
front, opened rolltop industrial door in the back) -- so the owner's past
unhappiness with mandated capacity (and other) restrictions were pretty
reasonable in context, that space being way safer than most.

Hanging out there, Wednesday, was really nice.  Their ales (rotating
seletion) are top-notch, there is usually a food truck or two in
back, the vibe is laid-back and relaxing, and there are shaded tables 
in back in addition to the tables inside.

The other local example I tend to cite, with the opposite situation, is
the downtown Menlo Park Ace Hardware, which is very cramped and
questionably ventilated -- thus markedly more dangerous for transmission
of respiratory infection.

The larger point is that we now know a lot more about transmission
modes:  Transmission via contamination of surfaces ("fomites", in the
medical jargon) is quite rare, so all of that crazed washing of
groceries with bleach, etc., was excessive, and people can stop being
quite so paranoid about touching things.  Aerial person-to-person
transmission, almost always from an asymptomatic person who has no idea
he/she is infected, is overwhelmingly how it spreads.  So, ventilation
is quite important in lowering risk.


Anyway, my own inclination is to mask-up, out of courtesy to employees
and fellow customers, inside any even-a-little-crowded indoor business,
as long as we still have pandemic conditions.  It's the kind thing:  
They don't know I'm vaccinated, and as mentioned even if they had proof, 
there's always danger that we vaccinated people might transmit
asymptomatic infection to others, as long as there's still significant
community infection to pick up and pass along like the world's worst
birthday gift.

When R-effective drops a lot, and case counts plummet, then we can be
less guarded, in my amateur-epidemologist opinion, but we're not yet
there.


Back in my hometown (Hong Kong), it is/was tacitly considered minimal
courtesy to wear a face mask any time you have respiratory symptoms and
might be at risk of infecting others.  I'm hoping that aocial convention
starts prevailing, here.

(Data point:  Vancouver's suburb of Richmond, the location of its large
Chinatown, has unfortunately over the past year seen a lot of bigotry
towards the Han Chinese Canadians living there -- which is horribly
ironic, since Richmond has been, IIRC, one of the least COvID-19-affected 
places in British Columbia, and residents' culturally-linked caution
about respiractory disease transmission, and wearing face masks as a
precaution, is very likely to be a major reason why.
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/members-of-b-c-asian-community-call-for-charges-in-richmond-hate-incident-1.5440538)


The "nowcast" estimate of San Mateo County's R-effective is still
hovering _above_ 1.0 (worrisome if it persists) on 
https://calcat.covid19.ca.gov/cacovidmodels/?ftag=MSF0951a18 .
As I said, watch those trend lines.

Speaking of biergartens, Clan Moen will be having an early dinner
_today_, at Devil's Canyon Brewing Company's Beer Friday event, likewise
in San Carlos:  https://www.devilscanyon.com/fridays.html  Y'all can find
us there around their 4pm opening time, if you're free and interested.

Yes, as it turns out, it'll be a bit hot out, dammit.  We might be
lurking in one of the (big, well ventilated) indoor spaces, rather than
out in the big biergarten.

Bier ist gutes Essen.  Außerdem wird es Foodtrucks geben.  ;->