Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
For Kids With Special Needs, Online Schooling Divides Haves and Have-Nots
Virtual classrooms are aggravating the economic disparities that plague education, with widening divides in access to supplies, workspace and parental guidance. The problem is especially acute for children with learning disabilities. (Anna Almendrala, )
Med Students ‘Feel Very Behind’ Because of COVID-Induced Disruptions in Training
The pandemic has led medical schools to cancel many of the rotations in hospitals and clinics that students perform to see a broad mix of patients with a diverse mix of problems. (Julie Rovner, )
In Unprecedented Move, Nearly All Republican State Senators In Quarantine: Nearly every Republican in the California Senate was forced to stay away from the Capitol on Thursday as they quarantined after coming into close contact with a fellow senator who later tested positive for the coronavirus. The extraordinary move, during legislators’ pivotal final week in session, came a day after Sen. Brian Jones, R-Santee, tweeted that he had been infected with the virus. Read more from Dustin Gardiner of the San Francisco Chronicle and Melody Gutierrez and Taryn Luna of the Los Angeles Times.
Firefighters Urge Vigilance As Residents Return Home: Record-setting wildfires continued to burn across the Bay Area, but major headway on containment by the more than 15,000 firefighters on the lines allowed some residents to return home Thursday — albeit with a warning. “You need to be ready,” said Cal Fire Unit Chief Shana Jones. “We have probably another few months of peak wildfire season, so it’s your duty — it’s your responsibility — to be prepared (and to) help us help you.” Read more from Michael Williams, Mallory Moench and Jill Tucker of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage and the best of the rest of the news.
More News From Across The State
Fresno Bee:
Does My Mask Protect Me From Smoke? Here’s The Expert Advice
In recent days, Sacramento weather conditions have improved, reducing smoke in the air, but hundreds of wildfires continue to burn across California. This fire season brought novel challenges, since poor air quality limited the potential for outdoor activities — which officials had encouraged as a safer alternative during the pandemic. It’s a complicated time, so The Bee spoke to several experts to get their advice on taking care of our health this fire season. (Kerber, 8/28)
Bay Area News Group:
California Wildfires Renew Housing Policy Regulations, Debates
The devastating California wildfires have brought fresh calls to focus on housing development and the preservation of existing homes as the state becomes more prone to blazes. But as some of the largest wildfires in history continue to burn, efforts to reform fire management and development policies in California have stalled amid the state’s other crisis, the coronavirus pandemic. (Hansen, 8/27)
CalMatters:
Smoke, Ash From River Fire Raises Questions About Produce, Farmworker Safety
The River Fire, now one of the largest in California, is chewing through chaparral and trees on the south side of River Road. On the north side, within shouting distance of the conflagration, grows millions of dollars worth of produce that growers and farmworkers alike hope will feed people across the nation. Ag industry experts say they hope the impact to consumers will be minimal, with little disruption to the supply chain than has already taken place this year under the pandemic. (Cimini, 8/27)
San Francisco Chronicle:
The 2020 Wildfires And Bay Area's Food And Wine Supply: What You Need To Know
Since Aug. 15, 700 fires have raged through California, destroying 1.6 million acres of land. Three large fire complexes — named LNU, SCU and CZU — have hit Northern and Central California particularly hard, affecting agriculture-heavy counties from Napa to Monterey. For the Bay Area, these events have the potential to be devastating for the food economy. Besides the well-known wine regions, the area boasts a diverse range of agricultural products, from strawberries to dairy to irises, and is very important for regional food security, Jeanne Merrill, policy director at California Climate and Agriculture Network, said. (Echeverria and Mobley, 8/27)
Bay Area News Group:
Leukemia Took Her Daughter. Then California’s Second Largest Wildfire Came For Her Home.
Carol and Bruce Schafer are no strangers to tragedy. They lost their seven-year-old daughter Lisa to leukemia 26 years ago, three months after their son Greg was born. This month, historic wildfires took their dream home. But they know they will pull through this, too. “Losing a house? This is stuff. But losing (Lisa) was horrific and there’ll never be anything worse than that,” said Carol. (Bouscher, 8/27)
Los Angeles Times:
After 8 Workers Die Of COVID-19, Officials Want Merced County Foster Farms Plant Closed
The site of one of California’s worst coronavirus outbreaks has been a Foster Farms poultry plant in the Central Valley. And now, officials want the processing plant shut down. Eight workers at the Foster Farms Livingston Facility have died — representing 18% of the COVID-19 death toll in Merced County among people under the age of 65. At least 358 employees have tested positive, Merced County health officials said in a statement. (Lin II, 8/27)
The Desert Sun:
COVID-19 In California: Deaths Skyrocket Among Working-Age Latinos
Deaths from coronavirus among working-age Latinos in California have increased nearly five-fold in the past three months, according to research released today by professors at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Research by Professors David Hayes-Bautista and Paul Hsu showed the increase in death rates in all Latino age groups: young adult, early middle age and late middle age. (City News Service, 8/27)
KQED:
Why A Massive COVID-19 Outbreak At Fresno County Jail Flew Under The Radar
More than 1,100 people at the Fresno County Jail have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began. The running tally of infections at the county-run complex actually surpasses those at all but two state prisons in California. But unlike the state’s careful tracking and reporting of cases at prisons and nursing homes, data on COVID-19 infections in county jails have not been consistently collected or made readily available to the public. Although the hundreds of thousands of people who pass through jails in California each year could be a vector for spreading the virus, each of the state’s 58 counties run their facilities independently, with varying approaches to tracking or reporting COVID-19 infections among inmates and staff. (Hall, Small and KIein, 8/27)
COVID's Invisible Victims: A Special Investigation
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
COVID-19 Is A ‘Crisis Within A Crisis’ For Homeless People
Nearly 200 tents stand inches apart on the scorching gravel lots, many covered in blankets for an extra layer of relief from the desert sun. Outside, their occupants sit on hot ground or in folding chairs, nearby palm trees providing no shade. Despite 12-foot-square sections painted in the gravel, there is little social distancing for Phoenix’s homeless population. … At the start of the pandemic in March, researchers warned that at least 1,700 of the nation’s estimated 568,000 homeless people could eventually die of COVID-19. The administration’s homelessness czar told Congress in July there had been just 130 homeless deaths, noting that was “significantly lower than had been originally projected.” However, the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism tracked at least 153 deaths of homeless people in the same time period in just six areas with large homeless populations – San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., Seattle and Phoenix – and at least 206 deaths nationwide by early August. (Bohannon, Surma, Fast, Abdaladze, Lupo, Fields and Garg, 8/24)
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
Homeless In 43 Counties Most Vulnerable To COVID-19
The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism developed a vulnerability index to understand which counties' homeless populations might struggle the most in a COVID-19 outbreak. The index was based on an analysis of homeless and poverty rates, as well as numbers of doctors and shelter beds in a given area. (Fast, 8/24)
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
Voices Of The Homeless
Homeless people across the U.S. talk about their struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic. Audio has been edited for length and clarity. (Abdaladze, Lupo, Fields, Bohannon and Garg, 8/24)
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
Months Later, Communities Still Await Federal Homeless Aid
Four months after Congress rushed $4 billion to help the nation’s homeless population cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, most of those funds still have not made their way to local communities, the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found, and even those with access to the money have yet to receive federal guidelines on how it can be spent. The head of one homeless nonprofit in Florida, a state with one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates, said the delay means that some people are living on the street when they could have been housed. (Surma, 8/25)
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
COVID’s Impact On The Homeless Is Largely Unknown
No one knows how many homeless people have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, not even the nation’s homelessness czar. One man in New York City describes his pandemic plight. (Fast, 8/25)
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
Homeless Workers Face Heightened Risks In The Pandemic
At the beginning of the pandemic, Tiffany Cordaway’s biggest struggle was finding a place to shower. She worked two jobs in Northern California, disinfecting medical equipment during the day and caring for an elderly couple overnight. When she finally clocked out, she just wanted to clean up. But she had nowhere to do that. Cordaway, 47, was homeless, sleeping in a friend’s car between her two eight-hour shifts. Unlike her co-workers, who talked about showering when they got home, she worried about finding hot water and a place to clean up where no one could see her. Some nights, she just washed from a 2-liter bottle of water. (Lupo, Abdaladze, Bohannon, Garg, Fields and Surma, 8/26)
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
Homeless People In Rural America Struggle To Find Help
Allie Smith was three months shy of high school graduation when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and students were sent home to finish the year remotely. The problem is, Smith doesn’t really have a home. The 18-year-old is one of an estimated 1.5 million students classified by the U.S. Department of Education as homeless because of unstable living situations. Smith grew up in New Castle, a rural town of almost 22,000 in western Pennsylvania, bouncing from group homes to foster care in between stints living with her mom, dad and other family members. (Fields and Surma, 8/27)
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University:
COVID-19 Homeless Work-Arounds Turn Into Silver Linings
When the Downtown Emergency Service Center in Seattle moved its homeless residents from crowded shelters into hotels, staff worried about how to keep them connected to services. They decided to buy cellphones, tablets and laptops, and now their clients at the Red Lion Hotel can virtually attend medical appointments and meet with mental health specialists with greater flexibility than before the pandemic. In San Francisco, homeless workers are providing small amounts of alcohol and nicotine to homeless people with addictions to encourage them to remain in quarantine. And throughout the country, shelter operators are seeing new life in people who have been relocated to hotels and motels that have been empty because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. (Garg and Fields, 8/28)
Los Angeles Times:
O.C. Hopes History Doesn't Repeat Itself As It Anticipates Reopening Guidelines
Orange County is expected to receive the green light for in-person learning at all schools just before Labor Day if it continues to remain off the state’s watchlist. The county, which reported 369 COVID-19 cases and 29 related deaths Thursday, met the state’s six safety thresholds for case counts and hospitalizations last week. Removal from the list affects only a county’s ability to reopen schools, but the state is set to release new reopening guidelines Friday for how other business sectors could reopen. (Shalby, 8/27)
Bay Area News Group:
This Sunnyvale School Became First In The Bay Area To Return To The Classroom Thursday
Fifty-seven grade-schoolers bounded through the campus gates Thursday morning in adorable pastel-colored face masks and lined up to scrub their hands, ushering in a new era of education in the Bay Area as the first school to officially return to the classroom in the age of the coronavirus. Sunnyvale Christian School, a TK-5 private school in the heart of Silicon Valley, became the region’s first to welcome back students with a new set of rituals and safety protocols — along with a renewed sense of normalcy painfully absent since the mass quarantines closed classrooms in March. (Woolfolk, 8/27)
CalMatters:
Pandemic Tests The Fragile College Mental Health System
The pandemic has increased the mental strain on a generation of college students already reporting record levels of psychological challenges, state and national surveys show. California colleges have responded by moving therapy appointments online and using state grants to add services. But some mental health advocates say the coronavirus crisis highlights the fragility of a system that even before the pandemic was not doing enough to meet students’ needs. (Coston, 8/27)
CalMatters:
California Poised To Become Leader On Mental Health Coverage
Californians could see the most dramatic expansion of mental health and addiction coverage under state law in decades, if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a bill that is likely heading to his desk in coming weeks. The bill – SB 855 by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco – would significantly expand what treatments are considered medically necessary for health insurance coverage. Current state law requires health plans to cover medically necessary treatment of just nine serious mental illnesses; the new law would expand that coverage to include a much broader array of mental health issues, notably substance use disorder and addiction, among others. (Wiener, 8/27)
AP:
Sean Penn Ups Fight Against COVID-19 With Relief Expansion
Sean Penn has expanded his fight against the coronavirus beyond his own expectations.The Oscar winner’s disaster relief organization CORE has gone from providing 6,500 tests in a couple weeks to administering more than 1.3 million within a five-month span. The organization started at four sites in Los Angeles and currently operates in 32 locations in cities including New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. The organization, which started as an international relief group, had initially planned to operate testing sites in Los Angeles for three months. It’s now expanding its services and bracing for the winter months, when the virus could surge and strain resources. (Landrum Jr., 8/27)
Sacramento Bee:
Coaches, Musicians And More To Be Exempted From California Labor Law Under Democratic Plan
California Democrats on Thursday released a final package of exemptions to a new state labor law that requires businesses to give benefits to more employees, allowing more leeway for youth sports coaches, artists, appraisers and insurance field representatives to work as independent contractors. The proposed exemptions come in the form of Assembly Bill 2257, a “clarification bill” to the 2019 labor law known as Assembly Bill 5. The bill with proposed exemptions is backed by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, who was the main advocate for the new labor law. (Bojorquez, 8/27)
The New York Times:
Wildfires, Covid-19, Earthquakes. What’s Next For California?
Every other week for the past 18 years, my wife and I have made a five-hour round-trip drive between [Berkeley] and Mendocino County. She has a health care practice in both places, so our rural home isn’t a retreat; nonetheless, like others who had the option, when the pandemic kicked in we opted for the country, where social distance is axiomatic and anxiety less likely. But that was before fire season, which has just returned with a vengeance. (Just as hurricanes have resumed storming the Gulf.) In the past week, hundreds of blazes have incinerated more than a million acres, destroyed nearly 2,000 homes and buildings and taken seven lives. (David Darlington, 8/27)
KQED:
Let's Talk About Wildfires And Prisons
When officials ordered local residents to be evacuated because of the fire, the evacuation area originally outlined by the Vacaville Police Department contained the two prisons. But the people in both prisons were never evacuated, and instead given masks. Soon after, the facilities were removed from the mandatory evacuation listing, with a CDCR spokesperson giving the reason that "they were not in immediate danger." At the same time, the Mercury News reported that as firefighters approached Cherry Hill Road, just over the ridge from the prisons, they radioed to each other, “do not worry about any firefighting.” Instead, they scrambled to assist in the evacuation of local residents. (Pendarvis Harshaw, 8/24)
Los Angeles Times:
CDC's Incredibly Bad Coronavirus Testing Advice
It has been a bad week for the credibility of federal health officials, who have backtracked under fire from two ill-considered pandemic directives that were adopted under pressure from the White House. It started Sunday with the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Stephen Hahn, grossly overstating the benefits of giving COVID-19 patients blood plasma from people who’d recovered from the coronavirus. To support President Trump’s announcement that the therapy was some sort of amazing breakthrough (it isn’t) and that the FDA would be giving it emergency approval, Hahn had said the treatment would save an additional 35 lives out of 100 patients treated. Other medical experts quickly pointed out, however, that the data showed no such thing, and on Tuesday Hahn publicly apologized. (8/25)
Los Angeles Times:
Kayleigh McEnany's Preexisting Condition Needs Protection From Trump
The cognitive dissonance of the Republican National Convention reached an especially clangorous point Wednesday night when White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said President Trump supported her “as an American with a preexisting condition.” I get that conventions are laden with hyperbole, especially when describing how the other party’s candidate will destroy America as we know it (or as we pretend it is). But time and again, speakers at the GOP’s surreality TV show have ascribed traits and achievements to Trump that are so far removed from reality, you wonder what they’ve been watching for the last four years. (Jon Healey, 8/26)
CNN:
Why Our Brains Are Having So Much Trouble With Covid-19
Covid-19 has been devastating for many reasons. There are the distinctive features of how the virus spreads and sickens us. There is the insufficient preparation, infrastructure, and leadership. Naturally, there's the social inequality that guaranteed that the virus would run its wildest among people with the least resources. The list goes on and on. But it's worth examining how the wreckage has also been made worse by a feature of our psyches -- namely, how poorly we handle ambiguity. (Robert M. Sapolsky, 8/22)
Los Angeles Times:
Why College Students Have A Hard Time Living By Pandemic Rules
As a college professor, I am very worried about more colleges and universities opening around the country over the next few weeks. If campus communities can’t comply with social distancing requirements, thousands of students could contract COVID-19, forcing schools to scramble to shut down again and go fully remote. Quite a few schools that have opened — with safety protocols in place — have already either closed or are struggling to deal with coronavirus spikes. Cases have been reported at colleges and universities in 36 states, including Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Iowa, Alabama, Massachusetts and Mississippi. And fingers are being pointed at students for being irresponsible and dangerous for violating social distancing rules in the midst of this pandemic. (Samuel J. Abrams, 8/25)
LA Daily News:
Flavor Ban Would Deprive Smokers Of Safer Options
Senate Bill 793, which would ban the sale of flavored tobacco products throughout California, on Monday passed the Assembly and now heads back to the Senate. The legislation purports to improve public health, but it actually would endanger the health of people who are trying to quit smoking. The bill prohibits retailers from selling tobacco or nicotine with a characterizing flavor. One of its obvious targets is vaping, given most electronic cigarettes use liquids that have flavoring added to them. SB793 supporters claim that vaping companies entice young people with candy, fruit and mint tastes. (8/25)
San Francisco Chronicle:
US Postal Service Is Critical To Californians’ Health
On Monday, House Democrats proposed $25 billion in emergency funding for the U.S. Postal Service. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has lowered revenues, the USPS has run a multibillion-dollar funding deficit with Republicans unprepared to budge. Reports now indicate that mail sorting machines and post boxes have been removed in cities and towns across America. Politics of the Postal Service aside, I can tell you, as a doctor, how vital the post office is for the health of our most vulnerable Californians. (Shoshana Ungerleider, 8/21)