People are mad. People are afraid. That’s understandable. A virus has upended our lives, filled our hospitals and disrupted everything we took for granted as normal in our lives. When people are angry and fearful, common sense often goes out the window.
Until Gov. Gavin Newsom’s even more sweeping “stay home” order superseded it on Thursday, Los Angeles County’s outdoor dining ban had sparked a firestorm of criticism and second-guessing. For county health officials, the shutdown must have been a close call at the time. By itself, dining seems to play a real but relatively small role in spreading COVID-19. For public health officials, however, it’s far easier to ban highly visible commercial activity than it is to get people to consistently wear masks and skip indoor gatherings with people outside their household. So faced with a deadly COVID surge, those officials had to weigh a marginal public health benefit against the economic damage to struggling restaurants and their staffs. “Science” doesn’t provide a clear-cut answer — and neither does “economics.”
It seemed everyone had an opinion. Among the most vocal were some local elected officials in the 85 cities under county Health Department jurisdiction. Councilmembers in Whittier, West Covina, Beverly Hills, Lancaster and Hawaiian Gardens have urged their cities to consider breaking free from county health. “I’m very interested in exploring the possibility of having our own health department or in joining forces with other cities,” Whittier Councilwoman Jessica Martinez declared.
This push for independence was bolstered by the initial decision by Pasadena not to go along with the outdoor dining shutdown. Pasadena is one of just three cities in the county with its own health department (the others are Long Beach and tiny Vernon). Ironically, Pasadena was clearly torn. City Manager Steve Mermell told his City Council: “So we’re being careful, we’re being measured. I’m sorry we don’t have a definitive answer for you, but we also didn’t want to do the kneejerk of just falling in step with L.A. County until we can make our own assessment, and that’s what we’re currently doing.”
Far from being an island of sanity in the crisis, Pasadena found itself in the crosshairs. A surge of out-of-town diners over Thanksgiving weekend strained the ability of local restaurateurs to safely host the economic windfall. City inspectors found two-thirds of local eateries fell short on health compliance. Five restaurants were ordered closed because of violations. Faced with its own rising COVID caseload, Pasadena imposed a new rule on Wednesday — only members of the same household could dine out together. The utter unenforceability of that edict shows the intensity of the pressure to find some magic middle ground.
When we return to common sense (which looks unlikely while the pandemic rages), the push for independent health departments will recede. The three that exist in our county are anomalies — in California’s 57 other counties, there is only one other city — Berkeley — with its own health bureau. All four in California have been around for a century. It’s hard to imagine a worse possible outcome from this pandemic than a patchwork of brand-new health departments sprouting up across the county. If we learn anything from our failure to prepare for this pandemic, it should be the necessity of having in place well-resourced, competent public health agencies. It’s been a century since we’ve faced this grave a threat. We’d be foolish to think that we’ll have another 100 years before the next one.
In the meantime, the responsible course is to set aside political wrangling and work together to get through the grim weeks ahead. Stay calm, stay informed and stay healthy!
Rick Cole was mayor of Pasadena and city manager of Azusa. He welcomes feedback at venturacole@yahoo.com.
"middle" - Google News
December 06, 2020 at 09:19PM
https://ift.tt/39J9RWB
There’s no magic middle ground on the virus - The Pasadena Star-News
"middle" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MY042F
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment