Gov . Newsom decided to close all beaches for Friday after viewing photos such as these of beaches in Orange County.
UPDATE: Around 12:30 pm Thursday Mayor Faulconer tweeted that San Diego beaches will stay open – with restrictions still. Here is what Faucloner said:
Great news: the Governor heard us. San Diego beaches WILL STAY OPEN under our plan approved by lifeguards and health officials. In a time of great crisis we don’t need knee-jerk policies. We need to keep a steady hand. It’s the only way to keep the public’s trust. Keep it up, SD!
It appears that California Governor Newsom will be ordering all state beaches and parks to close again on Friday, May 1. A memo sent to California police chiefs on Wednesday says Newsom will order all beaches and state parks closed starting Friday to curb spread of the coronavirus.
The California Police Chiefs Association sent the bulletin to its members Wednesday evening. Eric Nuftez, president of the association, said it was sent to give chiefs time to plan ahead of Newsom’s expected announcement today.
In addition, it was announced Wednesday that region’s popular Over-the-Line Tournament will not happen this year.
Though disappointing for thousands of people, the news was put into immediate context with the announcement of two additional COVID-related deaths in San Diego County, a 78-year-old man and and an 85-year-old woman, bringing the total to 120 as the human toll of the disease neared 61,000 nationwide. Confirmed local cases increased by 118 as the U.S. total passed the 1 million mark.
According to Thursday’s San Diego Union-Tribune:
After 15 straight days of new case totals in the double digits, seven or the last nine updates have featured totals with more than 100 cases. However, that’s probably a good thing. Long held back by a range or factors, from a lack or materials to restrictive criteria that emphasized only the sickest and those at the highest risk, testing is happening more frequently. As health officials have explained time and time again over the past week, more positives pop up when more tests are performed.
To deal with this reality, the county has been releasing the percent or newly reported test results that are positive and, here, the trend continues to be encouraging. About 6 percent of the results reported to the county Tuesday were positive. That’s significantly better than a 12 percent rate reported just a few days ago. Overall, though, the key is to see a gradual decline in the number of positives and, for the most part, that does appear to be happening, at least according to a rolling 14-day average computed and released daily by the county.
“There is some up and down, but the primary thing that we want to see in the past 14 days is a downward trajectory,” said Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health Officer. “We feel that this is also going in the right direction.”
That “also” came in the context of Wooten’s overall report on how the region is doing meeting the governor’s five reopening criteria. One of the most critical Is a steady or declining trend of COVID-related hospitalizations and a stable impact on local hospitals that is not forcing them to open “crisis” mode. Though hospitals to the south are clearly handling more COVID patients than those In the rest of the county, it’s clear, Wooten said, that no facilities are currently in crisis mode and none have been so Tar. The county will also need to demonstrate downward trends in the number of emergency department patients exhibiting flu like or COVID symptoms and, in both of those cases, Wooten said, the downward trajectory of trend lines has been encouraging so far.
During this weekend’s Southern California heat wave, a number of beaches in Orange County were visibly crowded with thousands of people. The sight clearly disturbed the governor, who admonished beachgoers in a press conference on Monday. He said such risky behavior could delay the state’s ability to reopen other activities as it tries to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“Those images are an example of what not to see, what not to do if we’re going to make the meaningful progress we’ve made the past couple of weeks,” Newsom said.
“The reality is we are just a few weeks away, not months away, from making measurable and meaningful changes to our stay-at-home order.”
Several municipalities in San Diego County reopened their beaches to limited use on Monday. Recreational activities such as running and swimming.
In San Diego, gatherings, boating and group activities are not permitted, and boardwalks, piers and parking lots are closed.
“We do not want to give back the gains that we have sacrificed so hard (for),” Mayor Kevin Faulconer said. “We do not want to see the beaches crowded. That’s what led to their closure in the first place.”
Beaches in Coronado, Encinitas and Oceanside reopened for recreation uses Monday.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
There needs to be a regional approach to beach closures, otherwise, what do you think will happen?
All the Orange County and LA surfers will hear, “oh, wow! San Diego beaches are still open! Let’s go!”
I seem to have a hard time understanding all the directives. If the governor orders beaches closed, and the mayor orders beaches open, who wins?
Nobody wins :(.
Faulconer is an IDIOT and had no competence to be mayor in the first place. Frank is right, there will be a mass migration to SD beaches. Geoff is right, except even a coloring book is likely too sophisticated for Faulconer since he apparently can’t “color within the lines”
Color me disgusted with the lack of restraint!
Now I’m extra confused: https://twitter.com/Kevin_Faulconer/status/1255943167582429184?s=20
@Kevin_Faulconer
19m
Great news: the Governor heard us. San Diego beaches WILL STAY OPEN under our plan approved by lifeguards and health officials. In a time of great crisis we don’t need knee-jerk policies. We need to keep a steady hand. It’s the only way to keep the public’s trust. Keep it up, SD!
They haven;t finished the coloring book that Faulconer will read to understand the governor’s remarks.
I watched it and the Governor announced targeted, hard close of Orange County Beaches. Those COVIDIOTS got what they deserve. Now let’s hope Frank isn’t right and they stay away from San Diego!!!
Hasn’t this morning been a hoot? I read the memo and news reports last night (including Del Mar cancelling their decision to open THEIR beaches). Today I listened to Gavin weaving happy talk around the subject of closures until it became apparent that he had listened to the local push back (he specifically pointed to “the County of San Diego” and San Diego in the same sentence – Jacob’s letter being curt and to the point) and was going to close down the OC beaches.
Now that both the LA and OC beaches are closed, and SD’s are wide open I think Frank is going to be proven right.
hullo people! Listen to your Gov! He’s one of very few people in the entire nation getting it right at the moment. You should be proud to follow his lead….what can I say? You want to follow Michigan, with its guns in the capitol?!!! Lord. Gawd. Whatever you believe in. Follow this guy’s guidelines, and you might see yourselves back to some kind of ‘normal’ in a few months. tho that has actually changed forever.
If you think this concept of global, viral pestilence, whether its covd-19, or Covid-20, or -21, is over, you are not absorbing reality. Walking in the park, surfing, dog park, packed airplane seating, and all these things you “enjoy” will again be available, but in a somewhat different form.
Time to evolve. Whether we like it or not…. :/
retired botanist,
This is gonna be real bad. If this country would pay attention to the rest of the world instead of living in total egocentric nationalism, privilege, and denial, they might find out that other countries that had a far better, quicker, and more organized response with massive testing, far more stringent and longer closures and quarantines, and were months ahead of the US (that is STILL in no measurable way even comparable yet)…are CLOSING DOWN AGAIN. Germany is opening but they have an actual scientist leading the country (Merkle is a physicist) though they were a bit slow off the mark at first. But honestly, given the figures for what is happening elsewhere, they will, JUST LIKE WE WILL, be closing down again very soon.
Germany is reopening. Safely. Because its leader is a trained scientist, not a con man
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/22/1939480/-Germany-is-reopening-Safely-Because-its-leader-is-a-trained-scientist-not-a-con-man
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Two weeks after the same ‘partial re-opening’ game that our government and Germany are now doing, infection rates…wait for it…ballooned in those much better prepared and smaller population countries. Singapore is closing back down, Hong Kong already did, because it roared back as soon as people started gathering. It doesn’t ‘go away’ in a few weeks. Period. Are people nuts?
I’m staying home. And I will continue to wear mask/glove/glasses when off the property which, since mid-March, has been once every 11 days to run in to town for store/po box/bank. I keep a dishpan, water, soap, and towel to wash down with before I get back in the truck after parking and running my errands on a skate. Then I strip on the porch when I get home, and the the old 4Runner sits facing the sun with the windows open during the day so the breeze can blow through for the next 10 days before I drive in again. Why?
Because we are just now starting to find out just how severe the under-counting all around the world have been, how many governments are LYING trying to hide the reality.We are just finding out that microdroplets hang in the air far longer than originally thought, though the larger droplets to tend to hit the other person’s shoes at about 6 feet when talking. At least they got part of that correct…
And more to the point, that the US has absolutely no freaking idea how many people are carrying COVID, how many have already had it, or the real numbers of dead since there are counties all over that are having a 60% rise in weekly/monthly death rates over last year and the year before but they aren’t testing the bodies to see if they were infected. Since COVID is causing heart attacks and strokes…every single dead body should be getting tested, too. They are just starting to do that in Europe, and isn’t Italy at a 10% death rate already??? We’ll catch up because we always have to be #1…
But hey, why make the numbers any worse than they are, eh? Trump wouldn’t like that a bit and you know how he gets…
Asymptomatic carriers are causing the majority of infections. Notice how many evangelical preachers have died recently that refused to close their mega-churches? There’s some real serious irony for ya! I had to laugh when I read about the 40 or so that have committed suicide by stupidity in the last 5 weeks… George Carlin would have come up with some real telling comments I’m sure! Too bad he isn’t around to…make fun of stupid.
Hasn’t ANYBODY else read about the history of the ‘Spanish’ Pandemic and the three killing waves that washed across the world? Am I the only one who had a grandpa serving with the US Army in France in 1917-1919 that told his grandkid the stories? I feel sometimes that I’m living in Tom Tomorrow’s Stupidverse…
And where I live in these mountains south of Canada:
A coronavirus wake-up call is coming to red America, complicating Trump’s push to reopen
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/24/1940066/-A-coronavirus-wake-up-call-is-coming-to-red-America-complicating-Trump-s-push-to-reopen
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We are still in just the 1st Wave, folks, and many states are still spiking higher and they’re opening?? And because the wealthy who own everything (including us) and make all the rules don’t want to support the citizens of this country that created their wealth, we ‘have’ to get back to work to pay the bills WE OWE THEM. Hmmmm? Privatized profits and socialized costs to the rest of us and the planet. But I read that there is $10 trillion for the expected continued ‘bail-outs’ to Wall St and the big corporations. And only just a decade since the last give-away. And you have how much put away for your retirement???
I highly suggest that those who are whining the most about stay-at-home educate themselves about that reality. Pick up a book and freaking read about the Spanish Flu Pandemic. 50 million dead, and that was with a world population of only 1.2 billion, and it took weeks to cross the oceans by ship and most of the world was still riding horses and wagons…. The 2nd Wave was FAR more deadly than the 1st. Way worse. Think about that, folks. But then we’ve been all so inconvenienced this last month…we couldn’t even GO A FREAKING MONTH WITHOUT WHINING?
National Nurses United Statement on Reopening the Country
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/04/28/national-nurses-united-statement-reopening-country
Very few people in this country are absorbing reality I’m afraid retired kelp botanist lady! The reality in 2-3 weeks, when the hospitals start ordering more refrigerated trucks to pack more dead bodies into, is gonna be an eye-opening wake-up call for a lot of folks in this country. Pampered lifestyles and Capitalism cannot function in a Pandemic. A systemic crash is quite possible, and since Capitalism is the only thing that matters as the Texas Lt. Governor said, a crash is built into the system.
Again, I re-post this:
Because we have forgotten the lessons from other virus’s learned in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. This virus will make us learn them all over again, at a horrible human price. Very good 7 min video from NYT Science guy.
https://youtu.be/YND3EfeNOvw
And to those Trump-supporting Fascist militia types that squawk about their rights (which are only temporary privileges, folks!), remember this: George Washington imposed quarantine in 1775 for smallpox. He promised the Continental Congress President that he would control it, and locked up people in special hospitals surrounded by guards. There weren’t any Uber food deliveries, the pot stores weren’t open, Amazon wasn’t dropping crap off, there wasn’t any tv or radio of utube or FaceBlech or Netflicks. You couldn’t go outside and shout about your rights spewing smallpox virus on everybody. Thinks you are so put upon NOW? Is that a joke?
And quit waving those stupid Confederate Flags around while carrying AR15 and screaming idiotic slogans about freedom. Those slave owning traitors that used that flag lost that war to keep slavery, so burn the damn thing and get over it.
sealintheSelkirks