After weeks of public unity, the Bay Area is joining the rest of the state in coronavirus shutdown chaos: Its new reality will be a county-by-county patchwork of conflicting COVID-19 restrictions and shelter-in-place rules as political fissures have swiftly widened into full-blown chasms.
San Mateo and Marin County on Friday followed San Francisco’s lead and released timelines that by mid-summer aim to re-open appointment-based access to hair salons and barbershops, some in-store retail, church services, beaches and, potentially, sporting events sans fans.
Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties, meanwhile, continue to take a wait-and-see approach to gauge the effect on infections of earlier and very modest rules changes, such as allowing curbside retail.
Alameda County, while eyeing a revival of outdoor gathering spots like museums and restaurants, is hanging back a bit on account of having “the highest rate of case increases in the Bay Area alongside a large increase in hospitalized cases,” health officials said in a Friday news release. But interim Health Officer Dr. Erica Pan said in an exclusive interview Thursday that the East Bay county expects to release a reopening plan next week, modeling it after San Francisco.
So far, San Mateo County is going furthest of all, allowing churches and in-store retail to reopen with precautions starting Monday and also loosening restrictions to county beaches. Health officer Dr. Scott Morrow, who famously chided people flouting early social-distancing and other health directives by telling them “you spit in our face,” now is espousing an approach more in line with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s loosening state guidance.
“These modifications seek to increase the immunity of the population slowly and methodically, while minimizing death. We are trying to keep equity in mind and minimizing economic damage, while not overloading the health care system,” Morrow said.
COVID-19 cases sailed past the 105,000 mark and were approaching 4,100 deaths Friday. Newsom reported the state is now performing over 50,000 virus tests a day and that the positive test rate has stabilized at around 4%.
Places of worship and businesses will be required to follow certain rules, such as capping religious service attendance at 25% of building capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower. Churches must mark six-foot increments to show where people should stand, and aisles must be designated as one-way. Stores, meanwhile, must limit the number of people inside to a number that allows for social distancing.
After weeks spent condemning counties that broke ranks with state stay-at-home directives, Newsom on Friday reinforced his more recent pivot toward permissiveness. With Newsom’s public encouragement, forty-eight of California’s 58 counties have now filed COVID-19 “County Variance Attestation” forms that permit them to move more quickly through Stage 2 and into Stage 3 of Newsom’s four-part reopening process.
“What works in Lassen may not work in other parts of the state,” Newsom said. “What works in Kern may not even work nearby in Tulare County. Each county has its own unique conditions, and localism is the foundational principle.”
To political scientist Dan Schnur, who was a chief media spokesperson for former Gov. Pete Wilson and now teaches at UC Berkeley and USC, there are few alternative paths for Newsom if he wants to maximize the population’s compliance with health requirements.
“When the crisis first hit, the governor was very strict in his approach. But as he started seeing resistance from local communities, he seemed to adopt a more flexible bend-but-don’t-break approach,” Schnur said. “No elected official, local, county or state, can afford to be absolute on either end of the spectrum. The most responsible leaders are those who rely on medical and health data, but they also recognize the potential for civic disobedience and even unrest.”
Schnur added that by stretching what he is willing to tolerate, Newsom may be sowing enough goodwill that he can credibly re-institute restrictions if a second wave of the novel coronavirus crests.
“If there is another outbreak, then it’s going to be necessary to scale back and stay home,” he said. “Because Newsom has been flexible, he may be hoping that Californians will be less resistant if that time comes.”
Santa Clara County health officer Dr. Sara Cody, who criticized Newsom’s reopening pace this week, said plotting a safe re-opening of the local economy is “vastly more complicated” than her first-in-the-nation decision to order people to stay at home.
“I’d say that many of the conditions on the ground are not changed. We don’t have herd immunity, we don’t have a vaccine. What we do have is a much more robust infrastructure in terms of testing and contact tracing,” Cody said during a Friday webinar sponsored by Forward Thinking. “But now we have the challenge that we’ve been sheltering in place for a long time, there’s been … incredible social and economic disruption.”
“And now how do we phase things back?” she added. “We want to, of course, go quickly because we want to mitigate all of the distress, but we don’t want to lose the progress that we’ve made.”
Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese added that what might appear like reluctance is actually just county officials being prudent and detail-oriented about how to carry out plans for relaxing restrictions. He expects the South Bay to catch up with its neighbors by early next week.
“I’m very confident they’re going to take significant steps forward in terms of re-opening and reactivating places of employment and public activities. They don’t make those announcements in Santa Clara County until they have to,” Cortese said. “I understand that patience is wearing thin. But come June 1 or June 2, you’ll see a lot more uniformity.”
Staff writers Kerry Crowley, Lisa M. Krieger and David DeBolt contributed to this report.
