The California press is no less hesitant than the national media in fear-mongering when it comes to COVID-19 cases as we head into the holiday season.
For example, even though any reasonable person who has been following COVID news can anticipate more waves of infection (especially during the cold and flu season), local reports are predicting….a surge!
California now has one of the lowest coronavirus infection rates in the country, with 1.9% of people testing positive for the disease in the last week as the nation’s most populous state has so far avoided the uptick feared heading into the end-of-year holidays.Coronavirus hospitalizations in the state have fallen about 14% in the last month — a trend state data models forecast will continue for the next month — but Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday continued to sound the alarm about the potential for another winter spike that could overwhelm hospitals in some areas.Visiting a coronavirus vaccination clinic in San Francisco, Newsom urged people to wear masks and get COVID shots ahead of the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend. He pointed to at least 27 states that have seen at least a 10% increase in cases in the past week.
Now Santa Cruz County public health officials have reversed themselves and again require people to mask up indoors as cases rise ahead of the holidays.
“What it looks like to the public is that we’re going back and forth and can’t make up our minds. What it really is science evolving as we speak,” says Dr. David Ghilarducci, the county’s Deputy Health Officer.
Under the reimposed Santa Cruzrules, everyone, regardless of vaccination status, must wear a mask in indoor public settings and private settings, including homes when non-household members are present.
The Bay Area is rife with such mandates.
While virus case rates in the Bay Area are not as high as the spikes seen in July and August, officials fear waning immunity and the congregation of large groups of people indoors during the holidays and winter months could lead to a new surge.Bay Area counties, excepting Solano, were among the first in California to reinstate mask mandates in early August, as cases soared during the delta surge. Some counties elsewhere in California, including Santa Cruz, also made the move, though universal masking was never reimplemented statewide.For a Bay Area county to lift the mandate, one criterion is that it must record “moderate” levels of coronavirus transmission as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — in the range of 10-49.99 new cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days.
Of course, this may explain why it is so easy for masked individuals to be out and about arranging flash-mob-robberies.
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