The Bay Area’s health officers must lead again
This has been a week of COVID-19 whiplash for Bay Area residents.
First, we learn that three Bay Area counties — San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa — will not follow new state masking guidelines, instead allowing vaccinated people to go without face coverings in workspaces and gyms.
Then Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody warned of a “deluge” of omicron cases coming. “What I see is perhaps one of the most challenging moments we’ve had yet in the pandemic,” she said. “… I want to let you know, when I look around the corner, I see a lot of COVID, and a lot of omicron.”
The disconnect between those two reactions is stunning. While leaders in three counties seem in denial, Cody once again demonstrated she’s not afraid to speak the truth about what lies ahead. Cody has been the standout leader of the Bay Area health officers, the one willing to put herself out there first. And, once again, she’s right.
Early in the pandemic, the rest of the Bay Area health officers followed her lead. They provided consistent rules and spoke with a unified voice. But as ugly political pressures mounted, some were more willing to stay the course than others.
The result is a Bay Area mishmash of inconsistent mandates that have left residents and business owners confused and often unable to find a reliable centralized resource to clarify the rules they’re supposed to be following.
We’re sympathetic to the struggles the health officers have faced — the science-defying resistance of some people to vaccines, masks and social distancing. Sadly, for parts of our society, singular selfishness cloaked in a claim of liberty overrides the common good. And we’re all paying the price for it.
It’s time for Bay Area health officers to once again step up, to unify and to lead. To show the confidence necessary to get ahead of the COVID-19 curve rather than waiting for a critical mass of cases before acting. To unite on one set of rules that they present with clarity and consistent messaging — and an easily navigable regional website residents can utilize when they have questions.
The refusal of San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa to follow the new state rules is a prime example of the chaos created when the Bay Area health officers splinter.
For most of the pandemic, the health officers have been ahead of the state, setting the health standards for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to emulate.
But as we know all too well, when it comes to COVID-19 rules, Newsom is slow and timid. Even with his new masking mandate for Dec. 15 through Jan. 15, he allowed counties that had looser preexisting masking requirements for indoor public settings to maintain those, which is what San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties did.
The result is more disparate rules, as if the coronavirus somehow respects political boundaries — in this case, county lines. That somehow it will behave differently in, say, Fremont in Alameda County than in neighboring Milpitas in Santa Clara County.
It’s ridiculous. We need at a minimum a regional approach. If we could depend on the state to lead, that would be great. But Newsom has consistently been too slow to confront oncoming surges and too fast to relax rules as they seem to be passing.
Cody is right: A new Bay Area COVID-19 surge is imminent. We’re already seeing case rates climb again. And omicron will almost certainly take hold in the Bay Area just as it is doing elsewhere in the nation and the world. The sooner we get ahead of this, the better.
Which is why the reaction of Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties is so mind-boggling. Early research shows that omicron is far more infectious than the delta variant and better able to penetrate the defenses of our vaccines, especially for people without booster shots. Vaccination and masking are essential in indoor public spaces — and the variant won’t cut us a break when it’s in a gym or a workplace.
On Friday, the Bay Area health officers issued a joint statement calling on everyone who is eligible to get booster shots. While some evidence suggests that omicron infections might be less severe than those of its predecessors, they noted that if a surge causes many thousands of new cases each day, even a small percentage of that total entering our hospitals will overwhelm health care delivery systems.
They’re right. Getting boosters is a key line of defense. But it’s going to take a lot more than that to head off another round of tragic deaths. That’s why Bay Area health officers must find their backbones once again.