Virus rages as rules challenge mettle of Central Valley city
LODI >> In San Joaquin County, part of California’s vast Central Valley that produces most of the country’s fruits and vegetables, the coronavirus is spreading like a weed and the hospitals are running out of beds for the sickest patients.
San Joaquin is part of a 12- county region that on Saturday had 100% of its intensive care unit beds filled, the highest rate anywhere in California. And with cases continuing at an unprecedented rate, the death toll inevitably will grow, too.
A new stay-at-home order was imposed this week but it’s anybody’s guess whether it will have the intended consequence of finally changing enough people’s behavior to slow infections as a vaccine is rolled out.
“It’s been frustrating,” said Chuck Davis, CEO of data science company Bayesiant that tracks virus numbers for the county. “It’s like we see the train coming down the track and we’re telling people, and some people listen and get off the track and other people get on the track and start dancing.”
Virus makes impact
The virus has found a foothold in Lodi, a city of 68,000 on the county’s northern rim. The birthplace of A&W Root Beer, Lodi is surrounded by vineyards that rely on Latino farmworkers.
On School Street, the city’s picturesque retail and restaurant hub, sycamore leaves as big as your hand littered the sidewalk. In normal times, volunteers clear the leaves. But that stopped during the
pandemic, and the leaves piled up, a subtle reminder of how things have changed.
More stark reminders are at the local hospital, where a second intensive care unit was created to handle patients. A team of 17 nurses arrives Monday so the hospital can begin accepting patients from some of the county’s six other hospitals, all of which are at 100% capacity or more in ICU units.
Dr. Patricia Iris, medical officer for Adventist Health Lodi Memorial, said during the first surge of cases this year 75% of patients were Latino. The hospital interviewed 30 Latino families to find out why, discovering they didn’t trust the hospital.
Things improved after Adventist partnered with Spanish-language TV and radio stations to educate people about wearing masks and social distancing
But across the city, many
residents still don’t follow the rules, Iris said.
“People can’t help themselves. They want to be near family,” she said. “We don’t have the same culture and the rigidity around following the guidance here than, for example, San Francisco. We need to educate, educate, as much as we can so we can get some relief.”
Widespread closures
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a threeweek stay- at-home order for the San Joaquin Valley. The order forced restaurants to only offer takeout and delivery, shuttered hair and nail salons, movie theaters and other businesses, and limited retailers to 20% capacity.
Pat Patrick, president and CEO of the Lodi Chamber of Commerce, signed a letter to Newsom, urging him to let businesses stay open.
“There’s just no rhyme or reason to some of these
things and certainly no data,” he said.
Lodi Junction, a sprawling thrift store, is following the rules, only allowing a maximum of 30 customers and requir ing masks and distancing. More than a dozen people were sampling the wares on Wednesday — a box set of Anthony Robbins selfhelp books, a $ 150 f lat screen TV with no remote — as Bruce Hornsby sang “that’s just the way it is” over the speakers.
Roman Winter was browsing some shirts while wearing a mask. He’s a doctor of internal medicine at a Southern California hospital, but once worked in San Joaquin County and still has a house in Lodi. He was visiting for the first time in six months and thinks not much has changed.
“It’s busier out there now than it was before the whole thing started,” he said. “It doesn’t seem. that anybody cares.”