Scroll from the bottom up to read in chronological order. And click here to catch up on the rest of our coronavirus coverage.
Don’t be fooled by the empty shelves. There’s plenty of food to go around.
Ron Fong, head of the California Grocers Association, is trying to hammer that point home through a new initiative called Enough for All.
“The bare shelves you are occasionally seeing do not indicate lack of supply,” he says.“It is a temporary result of consumers overbuying given the understandable worry right now. The supply and distribution systems are prepared to accommodate this behavior for a day or two during holidays, but not for extended periods of time.”
The men and women who’ve become frontline workers by staffing our grocery stores and distribution centers are working day and night to catch up, Fong says. And hiring sprees are bringing more people aboard to keep pace with demand.
“Everyone can help stop this unnatural cycle of demand by simply buying only what you need for a week and curbing the tendency to over-buy,” he advises. “Getting shopping patterns back to normal will reduce stress on the distribution system and can go a long way toward creating some normalcy in our grocery stores.”
With that in mind, Fong says, let’s “just buy smart and don’t overfill our carts.”
11am: Who’s got you covered?
Though San Jose has a lower rate of uninsured residents, a new study shows that an alarming number of the city’s million people have no healthcare coverage. According to credit-building company Self Financial, about 50,000 have no health insurance. “Efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 depend on the nation’s ability to provide testing and treatment for all Americans, even the 28.5 million who lack health insurance,” a summary of the study reads. Yet the coronavirus pandemic comes after a two-year decline in coverage in the U.S. After a seven-year increase in coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured rate began ticking up again in 2018 after the repeal of the individual mandate penalty. Click here to read the report and see how various cities and states stack up.
10:20am: Keep on keeping on.
“Don’t think for a second that we’re a day or two from lifting that order. We’re not.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom relayed the message in his latest COVID-19 briefing, where he made clear that California has no plans to grant President Trump’s wish of getting back to business as usual by Easter Sunday.
There’s just no way, the governor said. Not now, as the death toll careens upward, and hospitals already overrun with gasping coronavirus patients brace for the storm.
That’s because what we’re doing is working.
The social distancing, the staying home, the discipline required for millions of us to hunker down—it’s doing what it’s supposed to. It’s flattening the curve.
“We can’t let up on the good decision-making that we’ve seen,” Newsom said. Later in the address, he added: “We know it’s had an impact … so let’s not let up. Let us commit to this home isolation and physical distancing.”
Since containment’s no longer an option, mitigation’s the name of the game now. And though a lack of testing means we’re blind to the full scope of the problem, we’re not entirely in the dark. Data show that the Bay Area’s sweeping shutdown has prevented infections and saved lives. Just look at the graph above to see how this region has fared compared to one that notoriously lagged on enforcing distancing mandates.
“We don’t live under assumptions,” Newsom told us the other day. “We live under real data trend lines—and real application.”
Last night, Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith called me to follow up on an email I’d sent earlier in the week about the local public health lab’s testing capacity. When I asked him what message he’d like to get out there more than anything, he reiterated the governor’s mantras about social distancing.
The single most impactful thing people can do right now is keep this up, Smith said, promising that the effect of collective lockdown will become more apparent in the coming weeks. “Social distancing is working,” he said. “It will work. But we really don’t have time with this crisis to be fooling around.”
I told him to keep me in the loop if there’s any data to share or stories to tell that illustrate that point because I believe that the more we inform people about what’s going on, the more they’re invested in doing their part.
Showing people how the stay-home mandate is working might encourage them to stay the course. And being transparent about the county’s limitations—like the dearth of testing resources—might spur people to rise to the occasion.
All the stories we’ve seen about the critical shortage of ventilators have inspired creative minds to figure out ways to hack the machines and companies such as Tesla to re-open its factory to manufacture them. By being open and honest about rationing masks and other protective gear, hospitals have prompted a public outpouring of donations.
As journalists, we aim to hold people in power accountable. Of course. But a lot of our job is more simple than that. We’re just trying to tell people what the heck’s going on.
Sometimes that requires scathing takedowns. Most of the time, it’s just sharing the latest updates, like new case counts or how many masks our hospitals need. It also involves reporting the good news, highlighting solutions and telling personal stories.
I say all this because I want our readers to think of all the different stories we could cover (with our limited resources) and send us tips that point us in the right direction. I want to hear from you. So, text me at 408.515.7611 or email [email protected] as inspiration strikes. Nurses, doctors, frontline workers: I can promise confidentiality.
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