How Bay Area locals feel about delta surge
Beyond the obvious health perils and the economic harm to working families and small businesses, the persistence of COVID19 has forced us to recalibrate, again and again, how we live our lives from day to day.
This has been true since last March, and the convulsive spread of the delta variant shows that deciding how to navigate the social landscape is as volatile as ever. In the wake of surging infection rates and a new regional edict to wear masks inside, some people are pulling back from activities they had resumed just weeks ago. Others are following the same path as before, but with more vigilance.
This is what several Chronicle reporters gleaned from interviews with more than 40 people one day this week regarding their comfort levels with five types of activities that until last year we took for granted — dining indoors, flying off on vacation, returning to work inside an office, going to an indoor concert and having friends over for dinner.
Everyone was asked to rank their comfort level between 1
and 10 in each category. An athome dinner with vaccinated friends had the greatest acceptance, followed distantly by going back to work at, you know, work. Airplane travel landed in the middle of the comfort zone, ahead of dining in a restaurant where customers needn’t show proof of vaccination. The creepiest option, emphatically, was the notion of an indoor concert.
Put another way: Hang out at home with vaccinated friends? Probably fine. Dive into a mosh pit? Siri, cue up the pandemic playlist instead.
The results from these conversations in Oakland, San Francisco and southern Alameda County are subjective, to be sure. But they offer a glimpse into the way we live now: exhausted, uncertain and wondering what else might lie ahead.
Delta disruption
Tim Cordell and his wife have an unvaccinated 9yearold son, so they’ve been cautious even though they received the vaccine themselves. The one exception was that they had begun hosting vaccinated friends in their San Francisco home — but with the surge of the delta variant, that’s no longer the case.
“It feels like a reset button has been hit, in a way,” Tim said on a foggy morning along Clement Street in the Richmond District. “Chances are my son will be fine, and we’ll be fine, but God, I’d hate to be wrong.”
Vincent and Linda Lam feel the latest shift from another perspective.
The Mill Valley couple own three Richmond District restaurants, and “we are seeing walkin business fall off by about 2025%,” Vincent said. It may or may not be tied to delta dread — “there has been no consistency in business after reopening during the pandemic” — but the renewed wariness in the air has the Lams scuttling moves that would have suggested progress toward some muchdesired normal, such as opening up a salsa counter at one restaurant.
Several people who had trips planned to see relatives, or in hopes of putting the pandemic behind them, are having second thoughts. One is Oakland resident Denise Caramagno: “I was supposed to go visit my aunt in Florida” this month, she said, but she no longer feels comfortable with the idea of flying. “So I postponed.”
Same goes for Dan Purkett of Oakland, who has tickets to take a flight in September to see his grandkids. Now? “We’re thinking of canceling,” he said.
Smaller plans have been scuttled as well.
For six weeks, Jo Schmidt of San Francisco was counting down the days to a birthday party bash for one of her old coworkers. Before retirement,
she worked with him for 20 years at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. More than 100 people were set to attend, many of them familiar faces that Schmidt, 76, hadn’t seen in years.
Tuesday morning, she received word that the event was canceled.
Family matters
For many people who share a household with loved ones, caution shaped their actions even before the delta variant raised the stakes.
“To me, family is everything,” said Jordan Hickman, a Vallejo resident who was spending the afternoon at Dolores Park in San Francisco, reading a book. He had COVID over the winter but now is vaccinated, as are his sister and their parents. His young niece and nephew are not.
Because of this, and especially now, Hickman has cut back on his social life. “If something were to happen because I was the one — I would never be able to forgive myself,” he said. “You miss out on some things, but family is more important than any time you could have going to a concert.”
Alex Manzo, 42, lives in Hayward and works as an IT specialist at El Camino Hospital on the Peninsula. He is comfortable returning to his workplace — El Camino Hospital, which requires vaccinations for all employees — but has shied away from going to large events or dining at restaurants that don’t require proof of vaccination. A big reason is that he lives with his elderly parents, who are immunocompromised.
Also, the immigrant from the Philippines feels that residents of a country where vaccines are abundant should do what they can to keep other people safe.
“For me, it’s a moral and ethical responsibility,” Manzo said.
What’s with these people?
Many of the people interviewed expressed their disbelief or frustration with other Americans who seem to act as though the coronavirus — which has killed more than 610,000 people in the United States — does not exist.
“We’ve got friends that haven’t gotten their vaccinations, and I won’t let them into the house,” Gilbert Mendez of Fresno said emphatically. “I’ll talk to them through the door, but that’s it.”
Gilbert and his wife, Lupe, were in San Francisco to visit the Veteran Affairs Medical Center near Lands End. It was their biggest outing since the pandemic started, and he’s baffled at friends who continue to resist vaccination. “It’s really scary,” Gilbert said of the delta variant’s rise. “The scariest part would be to find out that I have it. I don’t want that.”
Hickman, the Vallejo resident, told of his dismay last week when his Twitter timeline showed pictures of fans, most of them maskless, at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago.
“I get it, we’ve been in COVID for a long time and people are tired of being inside but you’ve got to be responsible, especially with the delta variant spreading as much as it is,” Hickman said. “You’re putting yourself at risk and you’re putting everyone else you know at risk.”
Oakland resident Myesha Shuaibe saw similar images from Lollapalooza, and had the same reaction to hundreds of unmasked people in large crowds, even though she herself is not yet vaccinated (“I’m not interested in it.”) Eating at a restaurant is one thing; plunging into large events is another. “And I’m the girl that goes to Coachella and things like that,” she added, laughing.
Life goes on
On a June trip to visit family in Reno, Alfredo Sturlini of Union City contracted COVID19. What followed was a harrowing, bedridden three weeks, days that left him with “no strength.” And yet, he is certain that he won’t be getting vaccinated anytime soon.
“I’m a very spiritual person,” the 64yearold Uber driver explained, saying that his faith got him through the harrowing experience. “I believe in, you know, God protecting me.”
For Gerhard and Joan Skutsch, who have lived in San Francisco for more than 40 years, the roiling uncertainty isn’t as turbulent as it might be for other people. They’ve gone through the pandemic so far, and they figure they will be fine.
The couple, 87 and 80 respectively, still wouldn’t feel comfortable flying, or going to an indoor concert. But they have each other — and after more than 50 years together, they can count on each other to be on the same page.
“I’m not young anymore,” Joan said, mentioning that as she’s aged she’s accepted more things as just factors of living. “So this is just one more.”