> Now its an absolute chaotic situation where lockdowns go up and down per county every week with it based on number of cases(colleges are open leading to huge case jumps).
How is a system that loosens and tightens restrictions based on cases and positivity rate "chaotic"?
Because the system is completely arbitrary. There is no explanation of why 3 extra cases per XX people means you get indoor dining, but 3 less doesn't. All of the numbers that I saw where never justified, and seemed to be based on someone saying we need a few different tiers so that people think we know what we're doing.
I think the problem is that there is no easy formula for making these kinds of decisions. You need to look at the data and figure out what's going on before deciding what to do. For example, let's say someone has a big party and there are 100 new cases because of it. It wouldn't make sense to shut down indoor dining just because there was a spike. But on the other hand, if you saw 100 cases coming from a lot of restaurants spread out across a county, then you might consider shutting down indoor dining again.
Alot of the cases recently from california are from colleges starting classes. Cases are spiking at the college and instead of closing the college or forcing it to go fully remote the entire county suffers by having its businesses forcibly closed. Or take Lompac[1], a huge outbreak at the prison there caused santa barbara county to possibly enter a restrictive tier(even though the prisoners have no involvement in the community). Also the wording of the level of restriction changed from phases(1,2,3,4) to colored 'tiers' with no explanation. If that is not the picture of dysfunction I don't know what is.
How is a system that loosens and tightens restrictions based on cases and positivity rate "chaotic"?