Commentary: City to Declare Emergency as Region Is Sheltering in Place – The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

The city council will hold a special meeting in which the council will likely to declare a local emergency. Staff notes, The speed at which COVID-19 is spreading across the world and regionally is unprecedented in modern times. As a result, guidelines are not only changing rapidlysome changed several times in a single day.

As a result, Local mitigation decisions must be made near instantaneously with changing health and safety conditions.

This requires the City take steps now to allow the City Manager, as the Director of Emergency Services, to take any actions necessary to address or mitigate impacts COVID-19 may have on City operations and services. It also allows the City Council to approve emergency regulations to prevent the spread of illness should that become necessary. Finally, it allows the City to take advantage of State and federal funding and other resources as necessary to address issues within Davis.

On Monday, huge swaths of northern California have been ordered to shelter in place starting at midnight on Monday night.

These counties include: San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa, Alameda, and Santa Cruz counties.

This isnt a time for half measures, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said on Monday. History will not forgive us for waiting an hour longer.

Indeed, Santa Clara has become one of the epicenters of the pandemic with at least three deaths and dozens of cases. This is not the same as the imposition of martial law where the National Guard would be sent out. Notably, grocery stores, banks, gas stations, and pharmacies, as well as police and fire departments, will stay open.

You can even take your dog for a walk, said Matt Willis, the health officer of Marin County. We are not expecting empty streets. Social distancing does not mean disconnecting from each other.

But they warn that non-essential travel, including on foot, scooter, bicycle, car or public transportation, as well as any gatherings of any size, are banned.

The key hereslowing the spread of the virus is urgent in order to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Some individuals who contract the COVID-19 virus have no symptoms or have mild symptoms, which means they may not be aware they carry the virus, the order said. Because even people without symptoms can transmit the disease, and because evidence shows the disease is easily spread, gatherings can result in preventable transmission of the virus.

One of my questions was why not simply attempt to test everyonein part because people without symptoms can transmit the disease.

I asked former Davis Mayor Robb Davis that question and he said, I dont think there is such a thing as blanket testing. He noted even South Korea is not doing that.

He said, I AM in favor of providing testing for those with a given set of symptoms.At this point it is a numbers game: enough kits need to be available.If people have influenza like illness, I think they should be eligible for a test and be able to easily get one. That would help them self-isolate more effectively and catch those at greatest risk. I am in favor of that type of aggressive testing.

Is the federal government doing enough at this point?

Robb Davis said that we expect that each level of government will operate to mitigate the crisis based on its own unique role. For example, macroeconomic issues are not the purview of local governmentobviously. But the same holds for sick leave, unemployment insurance, etc. For the most part states and local governments cannot provide this for citizens. We expect the federal government to deal with large scale infrastructure needs, and county health agencies to provide guidance to local businesses on safety precautions.

He added that this goes back to the Federal Governments responsibilities.They are not meeting them in my viewBut that is because we have a fractured health care system.We do not have a national health system.

How long can we expect to live like thisin separation from friends and the community?

Experts dont know.

What we hear: Its going to get worse before it gets better.

As the Boston Globe notes: No, its not reassuring. But thats the message from epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and infectious disease doctors, who have been sounding the alarm for weeks about the growing threat of the novel coronavirus and the dire consequences the United States will undoubtedly face if the spread of the disease, Covid-19, is not aggressively tamed.

This virus will not be conquered until we have a vaccineperiod. Its just so unstoppable, said Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. Were in this tough spot for the long haul.

And optimism isnt there eitherwith the belief being that, despite prioritization of efforts to develop a vaccine, it will take at least a year, probably closer to 18 months.

So how long will we live like this?

Unfortunately, the answer is not one most people want to hear: We dont know, said Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvards Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. Were not trying to come up with long-term plans to stop the pandemic. What we are doing now is trying to stop it from destroying us.

Furthermore, The answer also depends on how we respond over the next few days, said Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor at Northeastern Universitys Network Science Institute, and if we increase the amount of social distancing, remote work, school closures, et cetera, or blithely ignore the advice of public health officials

Some warn that if the US goes the way of Italy, within two weeks there would be 150,000 confirmed cases and about 12,000 deadthat is adjusting for population.

Can we avoid that with these drastic measures? Maybe.

The goal as we have heard it many times over is to flatten the curve through social distancing. It was just a week ago I was warning the consequences of it. On the other hand, the consequence of not doing this is hundreds of millions infected and millions dead.

The challenge right now is we dont really have anything to combat the disease, said Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Floridas Emerging Pathogens Institute. Certainly, if we can find a highly effective therapeuticsomething that reduces mortality or something that reduces the severity of illnessthat would be very valuable. And that might give us some reassurance in relaxing some of these strategies.

For now, were buying ourselves time for a vaccine to be evaluated, manufactured, and deployed, Dean added. It is possible that this will be a new way of life for a stretch thats longer than any of us would like.

Ouch.

David M. Greenwald reporting

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Commentary: City to Declare Emergency as Region Is Sheltering in Place - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis