The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: After-School COVID-19 Vaccination Clinics To Begin Tuesday
Sonoma County parents can begin to get COVID-19 vaccinations for children ages 5 to 11 on Nov. 9. The Sonoma County Office of Education, in partnership with Sonoma County Department of Health Services and Sonoma County school districts, chose dozens of sites around the county, with a focus on equity. (Minkler, 11/4)

Orange County Register: Vaccines For Kids 5 To 11 Start Rolling Out In OC
Doses sized for little bodies are being doled out to health care facilities around the state, and clinics and pediatricians’ offices across the region have begun administering them. At the Tustin clinic Thursday, where six kids were given their first shots, 8-year-old Niko Varner sat with her hand holding up the shirt sleeve on her opposite arm as she waited for the poke. When it was all over, her mom and big sister clapped. (Sheets, 11/04)

Modesto Bee: Stanislaus County Is Giving COVID Shots To Kids Ages 5 To 11 
Stanislaus County public health Thursday began giving the coronavirus vaccine to younger children at its COVID-19 vaccine clinics. The county received a first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 after the shot received authorization for emergency use from the Food and Drug Administration. (Carlson, 11/04)

CapRadio: COVID Vaccines Are Rolling Out For Younger Kids In Northern California. Here's What To Know
Federal health officials have approved the Pfizer-Biotech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 — a change many California parents have been eagerly awaiting. Dr. Beatrice Tetteh has been immunizing children ages 12 and up at her Sacramento pediatric office since the vaccine was approved for that age group in the spring. She said parents have been asking about scheduling appointments for younger children for weeks, and she’s had to tell them to wait until approval came through and doses arrived. (Caiola, 11/04)

Sacramento Bee: Video: West Sacramento Kids Get First COVID Shots 
West Sacramento parents and kids speak on Nov. 4, 2021, at one of the first area clinics where children age 5 to 11 could receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which was recently approved for the age group. The event was held at Elkhorn Village Elementary. (Kitagaki, 11/04)

CapRadio:  Fact-Checking Claims About Children And COVID-19 Vaccinations 
Misinformation continues to spread about whether children can get sick from COVID-19 (they can) and whether vaccines will harm them (health officials say the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective). (Nichols and White, 11/04)

Modesto Bee: COVID Vaccine & National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program 
If you or someone you know dies or gets injured from any of the three COVID-19 vaccines — which medical experts say is rare — legal compensation is available. But the process is different and generally more limited compared to other vaccines. (Camero, 11/04)

Los Angeles Times: Study Shows Dramatic Decline In COVID Vaccine Effectiveness 
As the Delta variant became the dominant strain of coronavirus across the United States, all three COVID-19 vaccines available to Americans lost some of their protective power, with vaccine efficacy among a large group of veterans dropping between 35% and 85%, according to a new study. Researchers who scoured the records of nearly 800,000 U.S. veterans found that in early March, just as the Delta variant was gaining a toehold across American communities, the three vaccines were roughly equal in their ability to prevent infections. (Healy, 11/04)

Modesto Bee: Biden Vaccine Mandate: What Workers, Employers Should Know 
Federal officials released the rules governing an employer vaccine and testing requirement on Nov. 4 — nearly two months after President Joe Biden first announced the mandate as part of his six-part plan to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Senior officials with the Biden Administration said the rule will impact more than 84 million workers across the U.S. (Fowler, 11/04)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Won't Immediately Enforce Strict Vaccine Mandate Rules 
Los Angeles city officials are set to implement some of the nation’s strictest COVID-19 vaccine verification rules next week, but they don’t plan to immediately cite or fine those who run afoul of the new regulations. While crackdowns in the Bay Area against In-N-Out Burger generate national headlines, L.A. officials plan to start with educational and outreach efforts, rather than immediately penalize businesses when rules go into effect Monday. (Money and Lin II, 11/04)

Orange County Register: Union Says Hundreds Of Unvaccinated L.A. Firefighters Could Lose Their Jobs If City Doesn’t Pay For COVID-19 Testing
If the city doesn’t cover the cost of testing unvaccinated employees, about 800 Los Angeles firefighters could be fired if they don’t pay for the tests themselves when an order mandating the COVID-19 jab for all city workers goes into effect Dec. 18, the firefighters’ union says. As of Thursday, Nov. 4, 799 of the LAFD’s 3,340 sworn firefighters were unvaccinated, department spokeswoman Cheryl Getuiza said in an email. When the mandate goes into effect, they will be required to get tested for COVID-19 via a third-party vendor chosen by the city twice each week. That must be done on their own time and at a cost of $65 a test in order for them to keep their jobs. (Licas, 11/4)

Bay Area News Group: How Will U.S. COVID Vaccine Mandate Affect Bay Area? 
The U.S. Labor Department on Thursday put teeth into President Biden’s pledge of a vaccine mandate for employees at the nation’s large private companies, giving employers until Jan. 4 to ensure that their workers are either vaccinated against COVID-19 or are being tested weekly for the virus and wearing face masks on the job. Several cities and counties in California already have enacted similar vaccine requirements for private employers, but the federal rules expand such requirements across the state. Here’s the latest on vaccine rules for private workers. (Woolfolk, 11/4)

Los Angeles Times: Newsom, Guards Challenge Vaccine Mandates At Prisons 
With COVID-19 vaccine mandates growing across California, opponents in law enforcement are warning that their ranks would rather quit or retire than get their shots. And the state’s prison guards and staff have an unusual ally: Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has otherwise been a champion of vaccines. (Winton, 11/04)

Orange County Register: Slight Increase In Case Rate For First Time In A Month In Orange County On Nov. 4 
Case rates and testing positivity (which are both provided as the average over seven days, lagging for a week to give time for more complete data to be factored in) are updated each week, reflecting information up to the prior day for testing data, and same day for case data. Calculations are based on guidelines from the California Department of Public Health. (Snibbe, 11/04)

The Bakersfield Californian: BC Rolls Out Its Vaccine Mandate 
The Kern Community College District's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students and employees went into full effect Monday. The Bakersfield College COVID Response Team has been keeping busy. Just since Monday, the team has received more than 500 requests from students for a religious exemption from the vaccine mandate, according to Dean of Students Nicky Damania. (Gallegos, 11/5)

San Francisco Chronicle: The Pandemic Deepened Inequities For Bay Area Students. How Can Schools Respond?
According to educators and youth advocates, the traumas of last year have carried over into a delta-hobbled fall semester and could manifest for years to come, particularly for female, LGBTQ and nonbinary students, as well as all students of color. “We broke last year as a society in a big way,” said Emma Mayerson, founding director of Alliance for Girls, an Oakland-based nonprofit. “If we don’t respond with culture and gender holistic services ... we’re going to see a slide back in a lot of the progress we’ve made.” (Hosseini, 11/04)

Daily News: State Gives $41.5M To UCLA, UC San Francisco To Study Affect Of Childhood Adversity, ‘Toxic Stress’ On Health 
Medical centers at UCLA and UC San Francisco have been awarded $41.5 million from the state to create a multi-campus effort to address the impacts of “adverse childhood experiences” and other causes of “toxic stress” on health, it was announced Thursday. According to UCLA Health, researchers have found that 62% of Californians have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, and the added stress of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to even more ACE exposure for children and youth. (Rosenberg, 11/04)

CapRadio: New Cooking Classes, Student Gardens At Sacramento Elementary School Aim To Address Food Insecurity 
Some of the school supplies in the Floyd Farms classroom look a little different than notebooks, pencils and paper. Instead, students at the new cooking school, located at Leataata Floyd Elementary just south of Broadway and Front Street, work with produce, spices, kitchen supplies and aprons. Floyd Farms, run by the Food Literacy Center, will host cooking classes and house student gardens when it opens next spring. The center aims to prevent diet-related diseases through teaching food-insecure children to cook and develop healthy eating habits. (Salanga, 11/05)

AP: Lawsuit Briefly Blocking California Assisted Death Law Ends
An appeals court has formally ended a lawsuit that in 2018 temporarily suspended a California law that allows adults to obtain prescriptions for life-ending drugs, a gap that advocates blamed Thursday for a significant drop in its use that year. California lawmakers made the lawsuit moot last month when they reauthorized and extended the law until 2031 while reducing the time until terminal patients projected to have six months or less to live can choose to be given fatal drugs. (Thompson, 11/5)

Orange County Register: Hospital Chaplains Help Health Workers Heal With Compassion And Spirituality 
As health workers provide care to patients in an environment that has become more stressful as the coronavirus pandemic continues, hospitals are increasingly stepping in to provide emotional and spiritual support for their employees. Last year, as the pandemic surged and intensive care units reached capacity, hospital chaplains such as Lee took on the roles of surrogate family members, delivering messages to patients from loved ones who could not visit or say their goodbyes in a time of lockdown. This year, chaplains have pivoted again to serve the needs of health workers who have struggled to deal with a number of stressors. (Bharath, 11/04)

Bay Area News Group: Elizabeth Holmes Trial: Holmes Gets Small Win But Picture Darkens
After recent damning testimony and evidence in her criminal fraud trial, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes scored a small victory this week, with the judge blocking a former patient who used the company’s blood-testing technology from testifying for the prosecution about an allegedly inaccurate test result. But while the judge’s ruling Wednesday provided a rare bright glimmer for Holmes during the prosecution’s portion of the trial, the picture turned darker Thursday with witness testimony about allegedly false statements Holmes made concerning the U.S. military’s use of her company’s technology. (Baron, 11/04)

Los Angeles Times: Young Kids Should Get The COVID-19 Vaccine Now 
It’s great news that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week cleared the way for children ages 5 to 11 to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19, after the FDA authorized it last week. It’s also good news that neither the state of California nor Los Angeles schools will require them to get it — yet. That’s not to say kids should skip the vaccine. There’s good evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective for them. The best way to quell this pandemic once and for all is by vaccinating as much of the population as possible. (11/04)

Sacramento Bee: In-N-Out’s Troubling Foray Into California COVID Policy 
“Lean not unto thine own understanding,” another food-borne proverb advises. And indeed the only question I ever had about In-N-Out’s sacred cheeseburger was whether to wash it down with a Coke or a milkshake. If, however, you’ve been looking for a reason to stop eating this stuff your whole life, In-N-Out has provided one. No longer content to mutter its articles of faith under cover of potatoes and soda in exchange for nearly a billion dollars in annual sales, the chain has decided its beliefs supersede the policies of the democratically elected governments of California. (Josh Gohlke, 11/03)

East Bay Times: Vaccination Victories In California’s Vegetable Valleys 
If demography really was COVID destiny, then Gonzales—a small, working-class town with a young, Latino population in rural California—would be a pandemic disaster. Instead, Gonzales is among California’s most vaccinated places. In this Salinas Valley town of 9,000, 98 percent of eligible residents have received at least one dose. Gonzales is part of a larger, unexpected success story around vaccination in the state’s two leading agricultural areas for lettuce and green vegetables—the Salinas and Imperial Valleys. (Joe Mathews, 11/5)

Los Angeles Times: How Supply And Demand Have Driven The U.S. Drug Crisis Into The 'Synthetic Era' 
At a party in Venice in September, four people overdosed from what they thought was cocaine, three of them dying before paramedics arrived. The cocaine they used reportedly contained fentanyl. The deaths were another example of what has taken place across the U.S. over the last few years as we have entered what I call the synthetic era of drugs — street dope made with chemicals; no plants involved. Synthetic drugs of various kinds have been around for decades, but none have come close to the supply and threat of the two staples now coming up from Mexico: fentanyl and methamphetamine. (Sam Quinones, 10/31)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco's Homelessness Is A Humanitarian Crisis, Not An Unsightly Inconvenience
To hear many residents, city leaders and, too often, The Chronicle’s online comment section, talk about it, San Francisco is no longer a habitable city. It is, instead, merely an archipelago of safe islands floating in an ocean of human feces and hypodermic needles. Homelessness is the cause of this nightmare, and drastic measures must be taken to prevent this once majestic city from further becoming a Boschian hellscape. This focus on the city’s cleanliness, however, isn’t just nakedly hyperbolic (the Tenderloin and other parts of the central city are struggling, but these critiques are hardly relevant citywide), it puts the impetus for action on meeting the need of the housed to feel comfortable and not on those going to the bathroom in the streets for lack of an otherwise safe place to do so. (11/03)

Los Angeles Times: Regulators Must Force Oil Refineries To Cut Smog 
While the world focuses on the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, here in Southern California air quality officials will be meeting to decide how tough to get on the oil industry and its health-damaging pollution. The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s governing board is set to vote Friday on new emissions standards for oil refineries, in its biggest proposal to cut smog-forming pollution in years. The board should adopt the rules and reject any further industry efforts to weaken or delay them. (11/04)

Los Angeles Times: Rise In School Shooting Threats Is A Cry For Help 
Before a mass shooting, communication of intent to do harm is common, and about half of all mass shooters do so. The professionals who evaluate what is known as “leakage” try to separate the signal from the noise, the real threat from the hoax. They look for red flags such as mentions of a specific date and time, weapon, location and targets, and motive for the attack. The threat against Central High was taken seriously. But there was a highly confusing and complicating factor. Different versions of the threat were being made at about the same time against more than 30 schools in more than a dozen states — including California, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. It seemed unlikely that multiple, simultaneous attacks were about to take place. (James Densley, David Riedman and Jullian Peterson, 11/05)