'Covid's not the only health issue': inside the rural counties defying California's lockdown
Along Plumas Street in Yuba City, California, diners on Tuesday sat in restaurants, sipping their drinks and enjoying their meals. Women relaxed in cushy spa chairs as pedicurists massaged their legs. A hair stylist fluffed and blowdried a client’s hair.
Only the protective face masks on the food service workers – and the few shops that remained closed – hinted at the global pandemic gripping the rest of the state, which was still under the same stay-at-home order that has been in place since 19 March.
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, had begun the week with a cautious concession that after weeks under shutdown, some regions could begin to modify the order. Some retailers would be able to offer curbside pickup starting Friday – but for rural communities like Yuba and Sutter counties that have not seen the level of infection that other parts of the state have experienced, the governor’s cautious approach simply was not enough.
On Monday, following the directive of their bi-county public health officer, Dr Phuong Luu, businesses across both counties that were deemed “lower-risk” reopened under certain modifications. After weeks of darkened windows and closed signs, residents were once again flocking to their favorite gyms, salons, tattoo parlors and sit-down eateries.
Newsom called the counties’ move “a big mistake”. “They’re putting the public at risk, they’re putting our progress at risk,” he said at Tuesday’s briefing. But the clash between the two reopening orders highlights the struggles that come with governing a state as large and as diverse as California, especially in a pandemic. Last week, officials from six rural northern California counties wrote to Newsom, asking him to allow their localities to take charge of their own reopening.
Many in these counties argue that a one-size-fits-all approach from Sacramento too often ignores the needs of rural communities in favor of population centers like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“You can’t paint us with the same paintbrush that you’re going to paint San Francisco and San Diego and Sacramento with,” said the Sutter county lawmaker Mike Ziegenmeyer. “That’s just not fair.”
‘We cannot wait for a vaccine’
Yuba and Sutter are located just north of Sacramento, but a few minutes’ drive from the state capital, the region’s agriculture overtakes the scenery. Miles of orchards, plowed fields, flooded rice paddies and cow pastures separate Sacramento and Yuba City, the county seat of Sutter, and Marysville, the county seat of Yuba, located just over the Feather River from Yuba City.
Just more than 78,000 live in Yuba while almost 97,000 live in Sutter, with more than two-thirds of the county population residing in Yuba City. Since the pandemic reached California, the two counties have reported 50 cases and three deaths. California in total has seen 58,815 cases, with 2,412 deaths as of Thursday. The six Bay Area counties that were the first in the country to issue a stay-at-home order have had more than 8,100 cases, while Los Angeles county’s more than 28,000 cases have led to more than half of the state’s deaths.
For three weeks before Luu issued her reopening order, the rate of new cases in Yuba and Sutter plateaued, she said. In the more populated counties around Yuba and Sutter, the rate has plateaued for almost two weeks.
Many in the county have attributed the low rate of infection to rural living – with fewer people who live further away from one another, the chances of spreading the virus are lowered. But with rural living comes a different set of needs. There’s more of a sense of isolation when sheltering in place. With fewer businesses open, fewer supplies are available. And perhaps most daunting in counties like Yuba and Sutter is the question of the economy.
More than a third of the civilian labor force work farm jobs, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of the remaining workforce, only about 3,600 work the information or professional and business services jobs that allow for telecommuting.
Luu said as a public health official, she had to consider “the totality of health for the entire community”.
“Covid-19 is dangerous and scary but it is not the only health issue,” Luu said in a statement. “We cannot wait for a vaccine without seeing extreme economic damage done to our community. The consequences of waiting will be additional health concerns brought on by stress and the very real dilemma for those with limited resources whether to buy life-saving food or life-saving medicines.”
By Wednesday, Luu was issuing a warning to the Yuba and Sutter business community, warning them about not following the social distancing and protective gear guidelines she had put in place for the counties’ reopening. “It has become clear a number of businesses are not enacting required protocols to ensure the safety of the com
munity,” she wrote. “I understand that some of your customers may strongly object to a facial covering requirement, but the long-term safety of our community is at stake. We do not want to take any steps back in our phasing-in efforts.”
‘We’re following the guidelines strictly’
In Yuba City and Marysville on Tuesday, few customers wore masks when they entered stores or strolled along the sidewalks. But several businesses took Luu’s guidelines to heart.
The waitstaff at the Happy Viking sports bar wore face masks and gloves and were strict about how many people they allowed inside at a time. While diners sat at tables spaced feet apart from each other inside the restaurant, those waiting outside to be seated bunched up by the door.
“We’re still smoothing stuff out,” said Sandy Drown, who has owned the Happy Viking with her husband for 12 years.
Though they still offered takeout under the stay-at-home order, their business dropped 74% since March, Drown said. They burned through their savings and had to let go of 39 of their 47 employees.
She rehired all of them this week. At the Training Zone in Marysville, staff stood at the front to remind entering gym members that they had wear face masks while working out. In addition to spacing out all the equipment and limiting capacity to 75 members at a time, the owner, Chris Gill, hired more cleaning staff and cut hours to fit in extra cleaning.
“We really respect what the county did and kind of going out on a limb for us,” he said. “That’s why we’re taking the precautions and following the guidelines really, really strictly.”
In the past few days, his staff has taken a number of calls from prospective members wanting to sign up because their gym still wasn’t open, Gill said. They have also taken a number from members who wanted to freeze their accounts because they were not comfortable returning just yet.
Melissa Poma, owner of Melissa Poma Hair Salon in Yuba City, has been contacted nonstop by new clientele. On Monday, the first day of the reopening, she said it was like a scene out of a zombie movie, people coming up to her window just in shock to see someone cutting hair again. She received an inquiry from a woman who lived a few hours away but was so desperate for a haircut that she was willing to drive in.
The problem is, Poma said, she needs to be careful. Even though she burned through her savings during the closure and could use the extra income, she is only taking clients that she knows and can be honest with when it comes to their health. “I have a child,” she said. “If my child is in the hospital, I’m not going to be there with him. I have a mother, I have a grandmother. I’m taking it very seriously.”
‘We recognize one size does not fit all’
Though she’s getting in what work that she can, Poma doesn’t think the counties’ reopening will be long-term. “There’s no way we can go by the health regulations in this industry,” she said. “I don’t know how to do a six-foot-away haircut.” Like others, Poma is conflicted.
“It’s rough,” she said. “Our country worships the money god so much that we will put our health on the back burner. But livelihoods, people are closing down. I can’t imagine if you don’t have any sort of anything to fall back on.”
She knows too that by operating while the state’s order is still in effect, she risks the state taking away her license. Already this week, the state regulatory boards have begun flexing in the rural communities that reopened early. On Tuesday, state alcoholic beverage control officials were in Yuba and Sutter, asking licensed locations to shift to takeout dining, and to close in-house dining voluntarily. John Carr, a spokesman for the state agency, said while agents could discipline and file administrative action against businesses that do not comply with their requests, “we hope for voluntary compliance.” Newsom could choose to enforce the state order more stringently in the coming days. Previously, he’s leaned toward education rather than enforcement, but when photos of packed beaches in southern California made headlines around the country, he ordered all beaches in Orange county closed for a weekend. Even then, however, law enforcement aimed not to arrest people violating the order.
Across the state, cases have continued to rise incrementally, but-numbers have not reached the doomsday predictions initially projected by state experts. As of Thursday, only 3,334 patients with confirmed cases were hospitalized statewide, along with 1,347 with suspected cases. State health officials have repeatedly pleaded with Californians,however, not to become complacent with their efforts, and to recognize that it is because of their actions that the numbers are where they are.
For some in communities like Yuba and Sutter, however, the state is taking it too far. “I feel like the state’s a little overdramatic,” said Steve Lewis, a tattoo artist at Artistic Temple Social Club in Marysville. After weeks of no work, Lewis is just happy he can pay his bills again.
“I have a lot of friends in this industry in other parts of the state who are in the same boat I was in just last week, and they’re just trying to get through, selling art, trying to do gift cards, doing GoFundMes,” he said. “I can work again. They can’t. I see everyone else in that position, and it’s a rough thing. I’m very grateful.”
Newsom often refers to California as a “nation-state” in his daily briefings, to give “a sense of the scale and scope” of a state with the world’s fifth-largest economy and a population of almost 40 million.
“We recognize that one size does not fit all,” he said. “You can’t manage a state this large, this diverse in every way, shape or form ethnically, racially, religiously, on the basis of geography, without recognizing a bottom-up construct.”
But he has repeatedly stressed that California must be united in its response against coronavirus.
In that regard, the governor and Ziegenmeyer, the Sutter county lawmaker, are in agreement. “This is the way I look at it, and the way I hope he looks at it: we’re all a team in this in the state of California,” Ziegenmeyer said. But in rural California reopening, he sees not risk but economic potential.
“If one small region can get back to work, think about the impact we’re going to have on the unemployment lines,” he said. “To me, that right there, opening up with the direction of a good health doctor who is going by the science and the numbers, that is huge.”