San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SAN DIEGO PREPARES FOR HOLIDAY AMID FEARS OF COVID-19
Experts worry there may be deadly results
Hold that 20-pound turkey. With coronavirus infections and hospitalizations surging across the country, the traditional Thanksgiving feast has instead turned into America’s next big test.
Public health officials are imploring people to resist the urge to gather with others outside your household and instead celebrate the holiday with a scaled-down meal at home. The request comes as the public grows increasingly fatigued with maintaining vigilance, and as the longing to see loved ones deepens.
“We recognize we’ve asked over the past nine to 10 months a lot of all of our residents,” said Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer. “But we’re asking for more over the holiday season. If we don’t do the things that are being asked, we will see an increase in
the number of cases as we’ve seen over the past couple weeks.”
But will we pass?
Hard decisions
In San Diego, shopping carts are filling up earlier than usual, and they hold promising clues that people are erring on the side of safety.
Smaller turkeys are in, according to the California Grocers Association, signaling plans for intimate meals with already established quarantine pods.
With tinier birds becoming hard to find, many customers at The Wise Ox are asking for huge turkeys to be cut in half to split orders with friends, or they ordering pork roasts and prime rib instead, said head butcher Ryan Sharpe.
At Barons Market in North Park, the deli counter’s pre-made sides of cranberry sauce, stuffing and roasted butternut squash are in high demand, an alternative to the usual home cook’s show-stopping dishes.
Many people are using the circumstances as an excuse to throw out tradition altogether.
“I’m more of a dessert guy, so we might skip the whole dinner and go straight to dessert,” said Gerardo Ramos while he shopped at Barons last week.
Even though his family lives just 15 minutes away in Imperial Beach, he’s decided to celebrate Thanksgiving with his roommate. His mother and sister have preexisting conditions that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19. He hopes others will take similar precautions.
“The more we adhere to them,” Ramos said, “the quicker this pandemic will be over.”
Stephanie Nguyen, a Mission Valley resident, will miss seeing her siblings from Seattle and New York, as well as her uncle’s usual lavish feast, prepared in Temecula over the course of 20 hours.
Instead she is opting for a modest meal within her quarantine bubble — her parents, husband and their 16-month-old baby. Her mom, who lives in Mira Mesa, will make a pot of traditional Vietnamese pho for dinner, although Nguyen hopes to keep one Thanksgiving staple: pumpkin pie.
“I definitely feel like we all need to do our part,” Nguyen said.
The majority of Americans seem to be getting the message.
A recent national survey by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that 79 percent of people plan to celebrate the holiday season with household members only.
Zoom has decided to let families chat as long as they want on Thanksgiving Day by getting rid of the 40-minute limit on free meetings.
A lot will hinge on how safe the other 21 percent plays it.
“Small, short and safe” are the keywords Wooten advises for those still planning to gather: no more than three households, for no longer than two hours, with safety precautions such as masks and social distancing.
And it may be awkward, but it is also crucial to ask about and understand exactly where every person who will be sitting around that shared table has been going, how often and how recently, said Dr. Rodney Hood, a San Diego-area internal medicine specialist and founder of the Multicultural Health Foundation.
If mom and dad have just been sitting at home and only going out for groceries, they still pose a risk, just much less so than an uncle who has been slipping off to his favorite watering hole off and on.
“It’s like if you’re in a car accident,” Hood said. “If you have your seatbelt on, your risk of dying is significantly reduced, but is has not completely gone away.”
A need to connect
After a lot of hand-wringing, the San Diego Rescue Mission decided it couldn’t not hold its annual Thanksgiving outreach meal.
So on Saturday, several hundred people waited in a socially distanced outdoor line for their hot meal — except this time the turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies and roll were served in a to-go box.
Still, guests — many of whom are homeless — were encouraged to eat and enjoy the live music in the parking garage, which had been converted into a festive dining room. Physically disabled guests were permitted to eat in the Rescue Mission’s indoor cafeteria. The mission had prepared to serve about 1,000 meals.
The nonprofit worked closely with county health officials to make the event as safe as possible, including temperature checks, name and phone number records, masks, hand-washing stations and extra sanitizing, said Rescue Mission President and CEO Donnie Dee.
“People experiencing homelessness are some of the most isolated people on the planet. They don’t think anybody cares or understands,” said Dee. “What we’re hoping to accomplish is not just a great meal, not just a nice thing to do during COVID, but really trying to connect with people.”
Both the Salvation Army and Father Joe’s Villages decided to go a different route, canceling their traditional communal Thanksgiving dinners in lieu of to-go meals. But it was not an easy decision.
“It’s just the safest option,” said Deacon Jim Vargas, president and CEO of Father Joe’s. “At the end of the day we still want it to be meaningful, especially this time of year and especially because of this year.”
On Wednesday, the nonprofit’s courtyard downtown will be open for a special lunch service with decorations and music. And on Thanksgiving Day, rather than gather at downtown’s Golden Hall, the Salvation Army will distribute meals at four sites across the county.
Eating out
Tradition is also being served with a twist at restaurants, which aren’t allowed to serve guests indoors under the state’s most restrictive tier for COVID-19 protocols.
“Normally Thanksgiving is a huge, beautiful family reunion for all — with parties of 10, six, eight, etc. — and it all happens in our main dining room, normally with a fireplace and a cozy affair,” said Bertrand Hug, owner of Mille Fleurs in Rancho Santa Fe and Mister A’s in Bankers Hill.
This year, his staff will have to try to re-create the experience on patios only, which limits the fine-dining eateries’ operating capacity to 30 percent.
Both locations are booked to capacity with waiting lists capped out.
“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” he said. “I feel lucky that we do have an outside (patio) because a lot of my colleagues do not.”
For the first time ever, Hug said Mille Fleurs is also taking advance to-go orders that can be picked up Thursday.
Although the restaurants have managed to pivot to still make sales on what is typically one of the busiest days of the year, Hug said it’s unfortunate that some bad actors ruined dining out for all of San Diego’s restaurants.
“We have been following the letter of the law as far as distancing and doing everything right — we’re not like the bars, where people are five-deep, as I’ve seen,” Hug said. “I think it’s disgusting that we are treated like bars. Sadly, it’s those who do not care who ruined it for those who care.”
While businesses such as restaurants are continuing to shoulder a large part of the burden wrought by the worsening pandemic, epidemiology data shows many outbreaks in the county are happening at small, private home gatherings — the very kind public health experts are asking people to avoid this week.
“Admittedly, it is a sacrifice,” said Dr. Juan Torres, a pediatrician at Sharp Rees Stealy in Otay Ranch. “I’m just really hoping that some of the predictions of extreme spikes in COVID are wrong. Maybe we can pull together and that won’t happen.”
Heiðar Hallgrimsson and his husband have already decided to stick close to their North Park home rather than travel to Austin to visit his husband’s mother and sister’s family as usual.
As a native of Iceland, Thanksgiving doesn’t hold that much nostalgia for him, anyway.
But they’ll probably still use their oven Thanksgiving Day — to cook a frozen a pizza.
Staff writer Paul Sisson contributed to this report.
kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com lauren.mapp@sduniontribune.com