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The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to pass an ordinance that, as of Nov. 4, will require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter restaurants, movie theaters and many other private businesses. Now, the businesses that must require vaccines also include restaurants of any kind (fast food establishments, coffee shops, tasting rooms, cafeterias), gyms and fitness venues, entertainment venues (movie theaters, shopping centers, concert and performance venues, sports arenas, museums, arcades) and personal care establishments (spas, nail salons, hair salons, tanning salons, estheticians, skin care, tattoo shops). “If we ever want to get back to normal, to what Los Angeles...

Bay Area health officials are considering dropping indoor mask mandates. On Tuesday, Mayor London Breed said the change is long overdue. But, there's still a lot of hesitation among Bay Area residents, epidemiologists included. Mask mandates have been a moving target throughout the pandemic. In mid-June, when California reopened, the state dropped indoor mask mandates. But when Delta created a new surge, seven Bay Area counties re-issued indoor masking mandates in early August. Now Bay Area health officials are discussing ditching the face coverings once again. "The mask just feels like a safety blanket," said San Francisco resident, Danielle Coller....

Bay Area health officials on Thursday are expected to announce plans for an eventual end to the region’s indoor masking mandate.Health officials are finalizing criteria in which counties would be required to meet in order to lift the restrictions. Those criteria are likely to include case rates, vaccination rates and hospitalizations, according to officials.“We have been discussing this among the health officers in the region, and our intention and our plan is to develop a set of metrics we all share that are common across the region as to when to lift indoor masking,” Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr....

The San Jose police union and the city have reached an agreement on employee COVID vaccinations. The agreement stipulates officers have until Sunday to either be vaccinated or show proof of a weekly negative COVID test.Upwards of 140 police officers, half the dispatchers, and 80 firefighters have indicated they’ll resign or take termination before being forced to get vaccinated. Firefighter Barry Arata had said that "if a firefighter and police officers don’t want to get vaccinated that is our choice with our rights to freedom and privacy."In terms of the rules for the city, the mayor's office said they...

In the first such action in the nation, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a mandate Friday requiring all eligible public and private schoolchildren in California to be vaccinated against COVID-19... The mandate would take effect for grades 7 through 12 the semester following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's full approval of the vaccine for children ages 12 and over, ...Students in kindergarten through sixth grade would be phased in after the vaccine is formally approved for younger children. Once in effect, students will not be allowed to attend classes in-person on campus without being vaccinated, just as with any other...

A new set of restrictions were implemented last week for residents of Contra Costa County. The goal is to increase the percentage of vaccinated citizens. The County will adopt some of the strictest COVID-19 measures in the country. According the Contra Costa Health website, "Everyone 12 and older must show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to enter restaurants, gyms and other indoor businesses where there's an increased risk of spreading." California has one of the highest rates of vaccination among the United States. The state has administered at least one vaccine dose to 70% of the eligible...

At a Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors meeting at the end of August, Supervisor Susan Ellenberg repeatedly pressed Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody on when the county's indoor mask mandate would be lifted. The number of new COVID-19 cases in Santa Clara County had started to slow at the time of the meeting, and when Ellenberg asked Cody how long the mandate would last, Cody seemed to suggest some degree of perpetuity. What followed was an exchange that grew increasingly tense with each reply. "I appreciate that comment about the flu, of course last year not only were we...

There is good news coming in on the COVID-19 front. A new CDC forecast model put together at UMass Amherst predicts that COVID hospitalizations will drop by nearly half in the next two weeks. COVID death and case numbers are also likely to drop and a Stanford doctor says that the latest U.S. surge has likely hit its peak. "It's clear that the United States has probably peaked in its latest surge connected to the Delta variant and some states will see steeper declines than others and some counties within states will do the same," says Stanford's Dr. Jorge Salinas....

Businesses requiring their workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 are still facing some holdouts, prompting concern that workers fired for not getting the vaccine will expand the staffing shortages across the country. The Biden administration has said that companies will face $13,600 fines per violation and mandatory weekly testing will be the alternative to being vaccinated. Delta Air Lines stopped short of requiring vaccination but said that starting in November, unvaccinated workers on the company health plan will pay a $200 monthly surcharge.

Los Angeles is considering a sweeping law requiring adult customers to show proof of full vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, shopping centers, museums, movie theaters and hair and nail salons. The proposal also would require adult customers to show proof of vaccination to enter bowling alleys, arcades, cardrooms and pool halls, as well as personal care establishments such as tanning salons, skin care businesses, tattoo and piercing shops, and massage therapy settings except for treatment of a medical condition. An exemption to the requirement would be available for people with a "sincerely held religious belief" or a...

In June, San Francisco announced requirements for all city employees to be vaccinated.There are 366 unvaccinated police officers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.More than half, 193 of them, are requesting religious exemptions.See more stories on Insider's business page.Of the 366 San Francisco Police Department employees that are unvaccinated against COVID-19, 193 have applied for religious exemptions to avoid having to get required vaccines, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.In June, San Francisco became the first major city to announce that it will require approximately 35,000 city employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk losing their jobs, The Los Angeles Times...

Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell is pouring cold water on new reporting from Bob Woodward, detailed in the Washington Post Tuesday, that General Mark Milley vowed to give China a heads up if President Donald Trump ordered an attack. He's also dismissing calls from Alexander Vindman, the "whistleblower" behind Trump's first impeachment over a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for Milley to resign. From the Washington Post's reporting on Woodward's book: In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing...

This video by pro-Elder filmmaker Errol Webber lists 100 reasons to support a recall of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The video has been age-restricted by San Mateo County-based video hosting platform YouTube as potentially "inappropriate or offensive to some audiences." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yos11OT3mp4 YouTube warns: "Viewer discretion is advised."

In response to a growing disparity in vaccination rates across the United States, some have called for restricting domestic travel of people who are unvaccinated against COVID-19. "A no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take," former Obama administration official Juliette Kayyem argued in The Atlantic. "Under federal law, only the federal government (typically the TSA or FAA) may impose travel restrictions or conditions," SFO said in a statement. "Neither the Airport nor the City would have the authority to require vaccination or other requirements for travel." The first portion of that statement...

San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced in a tweet Sunday that 80 percent of eligible residents in the city have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.This marks one of the highest vaccination rates for a major city within the US.San Francisco is comprised of 683,699 residents age 12 and up who have been vaccinated. Of those, 86% have received at least one dose and 80% have been fully vaccinated.

Some of the biggest school systems in the U.S. are taking a hard line with teachers and staff members who are not yet vaccinated against COVID-19: Get a jab or lose your job.Most teachers already are vaccinated, and national teachers' unions have endorsed vaccine mandates, but the policies have sparked protests from educators and, in some cases, pushback from local district leaders who fear large numbers of departures.Coronavirus vaccines are not yet available to children younger than 12.“This is to ensure that the children we all cherish are safe, that their families are reassured,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio,...

New York Governor Kathy Hochul revealed 12,000 more people died of COVID-19 than was reported under her disgraced predecessor, making good on her promise for greater transparency on just her second day leading the state.The state is now reporting a total of 55,400 people died in New York from coronavirusThat's an increase of 12,000 over the 43,400 reported https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-updates-new-yorkers-states-progress-during-covid-19-pandemic-229 by Andrew Cuomo as of his last day in office before resigning in disgrace amid a sexual harassment scandal."We're using CDC numbers, which will be consistent. And so there's no opportunity for us to mask those numbers," Hochul told National Public...

The light was fading on what had been a breezy 101-degree afternoon by the time the two women with clipboards approached Ashley Reyes, who sat watching her son and his cousins play in her gated driveway. Had she heard, the women wondered, about the election coming up on Sept. 14? “No,” Reyes replied, a look of puzzled curiosity crossing her face. What election? I saw this scene and many similar ones play out this month when I tagged along with Karen Diaz, 27, and Tanairy Guzman Reyes, 22, as they knocked on doors in Palmdale, a city north of Los...

U.S. President Joe Biden plans to campaign for fellow Democrat and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall election on Sept. 14, the White House said on Wednesday.

Caroline Chen of ProPublica has written a provocative article challenging the objectivity of the FDA in its approval of new drugs. Entitled: “FDA Repays Industry by Rushing Risky Drugs to Market”, Chen contends that the agency is beholden to the biopharmaceutical industry which pays three quarters of the FDA’s budget used for the drug review process. This is an astounding number. Is any other federal agency supported to this extent by the industry it regulates? Given this level of support, one might assume that the FDA would bend over backwards to meet the needs of its financial backers. "...this all...