Heads Up! Santa Clara County (CA) Takes First Careful Step Toward Reopening

The following is an email from Santa Clara County Supervisor I received earlier this afternoon.

Today, the seven Bay Area health officers, led by Santa Clara County’s Dr. Sara Cody, issued a new shelter-in-place order that beginning on May 4 reduces some of the restrictions that have been in place since March 16.

A copy of the new order is here. A copy of the press release describing it is here.

Our community’s success in sheltering in place has worked to flatten the curve and earned this first, careful step toward reopening.

As President of the Board of Supervisors, I want to say thank you to every Santa Clara County resident for the important role that each of you has played in making our County a national leader in fighting this virus.

Construction
I am especially glad to see the reopening of construction. This is an opportunity to prove that we can reopen an important sector of the economy with rigorous worker safety requirements that keeps everyone safe. By allowing construction to return to full operation, we get a key part of the local economy moving again. This means not only that hundreds of workers will be back on the job, and back earning paychecks, but also that work will resume on critical residential projects that will help alleviate our regional housing shortage.

Childcare
Childcare has been such a struggle for so many families during the shelter-in-place order, especially for our essential workers. The updated order allows childcare centers, summer camps, and other educational and recreational programs that provide care for children to serve essential workers and anyone else who is allowed to work outside the home. They must keep children in stable groups of 12 or less and comply with several other safety protocols. This will ease a tremendous burden that the families of our health workers, first responders, and other essential workers have been dealing with since last month.

The State of California’s Shelter Order includes restrictions on childcare that are more extensive than the new order from the seven Bay Area health officers. The more restrictive of the two orders, in this case the State’s, will take precedence.

"...earned this first, careful step toward reopening..."

You'e been such good little children that you can now go outside to play. But don't go beyond the neighborhood!! You've earned a big Gold Star!

[...continues...]

Outdoor Businesses and Recreation
Businesses that are primarily outdoors and where social distancing of at least six feet can be maintained between all individuals can now open. Among the businesses this covers are nurseries, landscapers, and agricultural operations.

This is great news. Spring has arrived here in Northern California and that means it is prime time for gardening. This allows people to grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables. It is also something that parents and children can do together.

The modified order also allows recreation facilities that do not encourage gathering, or do not use high-touch equipment, to open for individuals or members of the same household or living unit.

This includes places such as golf courses, skate parks, and athletic fields. However, before they can open, they must comply with all social distancing and safety protocols. While we want to begin a careful reopening, the health of our residents remains the top priority.

Similar to childcare, recreation facilities are also covered by the State Shelter Order and the more restrictive of the two orders takes precedence. As an example, the State currently does not allow golf courses to open, so they cannot open in Santa Clara County until the State order is eased.

Indicators
Also today, the seven Bay Area health officers have released a series of indicators that will be used to measure progress in containing the virus and ensuring we have the infrastructure in place to protect the community from COVID-19. These indicators will be used to guide to decisions in the coming weeks and months about further easing of shelter-in-place restrictions.

You can see the indicators here.

We have lost so much in Santa Clara County already because of COVID-19. Families have been isolated from each other. People have lost their jobs. Businesses have shuttered permanently, some of them were real pillars of their neighborhood and community that had been around for decades. Most tragically, 106 of our family, friends, and neighbors have lost their lives.

However, things could have been so much worse. We just need to look at the news reports from Italy, Spain, and especially from New York City, to see how much even a few days delay in social distancing and shelter-in-place adds to the human toll from this pandemic.

Over the past seven weeks we have done so well as a community. We have come together while still staying home and staying safe. These past few weeks have me more convinced than ever that this is the best place in the world to live, work, and play.

We have earned our success. We still have much to do. I know we will do it together and get through this pandemic stronger than ever as a community.

Be well,

Cindy

If I didn't know better, I'd think we had just won WW III.

She wrote "We just need to look at the news reports from Italy, Spain, and especially from New York City, to see how much even a few days delay in social distancing and shelter-in-place adds to the human toll from this pandemic." I find this to be BS. We have been blessed here with a much less virulent clade of the virus than hit other major cities. It also has to do with our lower density of people, lower density of our business parks, our lower utilization of public transit, greater use of private automobiles, and the spread-out suburbs. I seriously doubt a few days earlier lockdown amounted to a hill of beans.

You asked "Is there evidence the A2 clade is more virulent?"

I know nothing about genetic Phylogeny, but my lay interpretation of the data at NextStrain suggests that there is a big difference in virulence (at least to my layman's eye).

If you go to NextStrain at the above link, you can click on points to see the geographic origin and date of a particular sample. You see that A2 is color-coded blue. B1 is color-coded orange.

New York City is almost entirely A2 which had a European origin. The west coast is predominantly B1 and has a much lower infection and death rate than NYC. This is obviously a huge multi-variate problem (I listed a lot of the factors I think were at work in Santa Clara County in a post above), but it appears the clade is a big factor in infections and death.

Note that Seattle and King County are 3/4 B1 and 1/4 A2a. Santa Clara County and San Francisco County are 1/2 B1, and roughly 1/4 A2 and 1/4 A2a.

But NYC is almost entirely A2a.

Take it for what it's worth. Lots of new test data is entered every day.

Traffic is definitely picking up. The hum outside from the nearby freeways was completely gone a month ago, but it’s detectable now. I went for an hour walk last night about 8 pm and could hear the background droning noise from the roads and freeways.

Went on a walk around Shoreline Park this afternoon in Mountain View. A month ago, there were two or three cars parked on Terminal Boulevard. Today it was probably 95% full! The trails at the Arastradero Preserve in Palo Alto are definitely more full.

I noticed that there was not yellow “Caution” tape on the park benches throughout Shoreline Park today. I presume they were taped off like all other benches in the area. Maybe people tore it down like they did at the Arastradero Preserve (how STUPID is it to prevent people from sitting on a bench anyway?)

Luckily my son and I got about the last haircuts before they shut down the barbershops, but we are definitely due! My wife bugged out with our doggy to our Idaho place and the dog groomers there are open! So our guy just got a trim the other day. Lucky him!

Thanks for pointing that out. People are smart and actually CAN use common sense. I've read quite a few editions of the "Creston Review" newspaper (Southern British Columbia just north of Idaho) from 1918 during the Spanish Flue. It's quite instructive -- the public health officials and people then were doing the same thing we are doing today:

asking people to not congregate
cancelling all public meetings
asking people to wear masks
shop keepers were disinfecting twice a day
closing down the schools
visitors to some towns were inspected for the flu and sent to the isolation hospital for three days if found positive
honeymoon trips were cancelled or curtailed
all Sunday School and Church Services were cancelled (!)
no congregating in groups greater than six
no loitering
pick up the mail late in the day after all sorting was completed
teachers came home to Creston from Vancouver because schools there were shut
the "flu fighting committee" gave away free sanitizer if you brought a bottle
When the November 11 Armistice was declared, there were no public celebrations
People were asked to not go dancing, don't do any entertaining at home, stay at home, keep your children off the street and refrain from congregating even in small groups.
Doctors and nurses were in short supply in some towns. Creston was recruiting volunteer nurses to keep their hospital open. Health care workers were overworked, working 10-12 hours a day.
"The malady cannot spread if there are no people going places where it might possibly exist."

It's actually quite amazing how similar the actions taken then are to those taken today. Reading those newspapers reveals that things today aren't that different.

They were "social distancing" even before that HORRID PHRASE had been coined.

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