San Diego County and City Whiff on Indoor Vaccine Mandates
[they've] ...decided it’s time to declare victory even though we are still, as Dr. Fauci has put it, “in the seventh inning.”
By Jim Miller
It appears that it’s not just the San Diego Padres who choked down the stretch while our rivals in Los Angeles and San Francisco kept pushing forward. Last week, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and the City of San Diego whiffed when it came time to follow the lead of our neighbors to the north in the public health arena. As the San Diego Union-Tribune reported:
San Diego County officials don’t plan to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for entry into restaurants, shopping centers and other indoor settings, local officials announced Wednesday.
The news comes a week after the Los Angeles City Council voted 11-2 to require proof of full vaccination at indoor venues throughout the city. That mandate takes effect in November. But Nathan Fletcher, chair of the Board of Supervisors, says the county likely won’t follow suit.
“Our vaccination rates are some of the highest in the nation and our COVID cases are clearly declining,” said Fletcher in a statement. “At this time, San Diego County has no plans to mandate vaccines at local businesses.” . . .
The city of San Diego won’t mandate vaccination for entry into indoor spaces either, according to Courtney Pittam, press secretary for Mayor Todd Gloria, unless the county changes its guidance.
Thus, as Los Angeles prepares to follow New York and San Francisco and lead on vaccine mandates for indoor spaces to finally crush the pandemic, San Diego County and City have decided it’s time to declare victory even though we are still, as Dr. Fauci has put it, “in the seventh inning.”
Up until this point, things were going in the right direction with vaccine mandates happening for schools, colleges, and public sector employees, but now, right as we are preparing to head into the winter months where more people are likely to be shifting most of their social activities indoors, local leaders have decided to keep their bats on their shoulders rather than take another swing at the pandemic.
Suffice to say, this is a deeply unwise decision.
While it’s great that our vaccination numbers are higher than Los Angeles and Covid-19 cases are finally in decline, we have all seen this movie before. Anyone who follows the news on the pandemic knows that a chorus of epidemiologists expect yet another fall bump, if not a fifth surge. Add to this the fact that, in the wake of the Delta variant, many epidemiologists are suggesting that herd immunity may ultimately be elusive and that Covid-19 will eventually become endemic but the pandemic will grind on for months in the process before subsiding to that level. Thus we will be left dealing with a persistent minority of vaccine resisters who will put the responsible majority in jeopardy as we await the slow motion end to drag to a conclusion.
As the New York Times noted last week, even as we might be beginning to see the end in sight:
[A] small numbers of “superspreaders” seem to play a disproportionate role in setting off outbreaks. “About 10 to 20 percent of the people are responsible for 80 to 90 percent of the infections,” said Christina Ramirez, a biostatistician at the University of California, Los Angeles.
That means that two similar communities might find themselves on radically different trajectories simply because one highly infectious person happened to attend a crowded indoor event, fueling a major outbreak.
So why not, after all we have been through in this long nightmare, opt for being more rather than less aggressive in fighting the pandemic by making those indoor spaces safer?
The only conceivable answer is political. A month or so before the recall, I had a conversation with a local elected who thought that the mandates would come after the election as no one wanted to add fuel to that dumpster fire. If not a profile in courage, that was at least a reasonable calculation.
But that excuse is gone now and all the early evidence points to the fact that vaccine mandates work extremely well. Perhaps the endless drumbeat from the crazed wingnuts at public meetings has taken a toll on our public servants or they are getting similar pushback from the same Chamber of Commerce types who decried the mandate in Los Angeles. With re-election campaigns in the not-so-distant future, why kick the beehive when there are signs of progress? As someone who works in public education, I’m certainly aware of the fury of the backlash against sound public health measures in these insane times.
Nonetheless, I can’t help but see this as a kind of surrender of sorts in the face of yet another tough but clearly necessary decision. What we do know is that not issuing these mandates will do nothing to keep ratcheting up the pressure on the unvaccinated. It also won’t make the still large numbers of people who are not going back to eat inside restaurants, frequent indoor music venues, etc. any more comfortable to support those businesses.
And it won’t stop more folks who did the right thing and got vaccinated from unnecessarily getting breakthrough cases or those foolishly resisting vaccines from getting sick or dying. In the end, shouldn’t that be the final measure?
Instead, San Diego whiffed. Los Angeles and San Francisco beat us again. Let’s hope the consequences are not something we all end up regretting.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1449882190037323776?s=20