The day after a protest in Pacific Beach against the COVID-19 restrictions, dozens – perhaps hundreds – of people show up and go surfing today, Monday, the first day of a limited opening of the beaches in San Diego. (Screen grab from 7SanDiego)
Meanwhile, here’s the U-T’s daily chart of the San Diego County Update.
Newsom chastises beachgoers, warning that defying order could delay reopening California
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday criticized Californians who defied the statewide stay-at-home order and flocked to beaches this past weekend, saying that ignoring restrictions could prolong the spread of the coronavirus in the state.
Newsom’s comments come after thousands of beachgoers descended on the coast in Orange and Ventura counties despite his pleas last week to avoid the temptation of doing so during the warm weekend.
“This virus doesn’t take the weekends off,” Newsom said during his daily COVID-19 briefing in Sacramento. “The only thing that will set us back is people stopping to practice physical distancing and appropriate social distancing. That’s the only thing that’s going to slow down our ability to reopen this economy.”
Newsom vowed to increase statewide enforcement of the stay-at-home order if necessary and, in a thinly veiled criticism of the cities and counties that saw crowded beaches, said “we’ll have a little work to do to improve upon Saturday.”
“You didn’t see those images at L.A. beaches and San Diego beaches and [in] Northern California … because we had strong guidelines that were not only adopted but were abided by, and we had local partners that supported those efforts,” Newsom said. LA Times
Coronavirus lingers in air of crowded spaces, new study finds
The new coronavirus appears to linger in the air in crowded spaces or rooms that lack ventilation, researchers found in a study that buttresses the notion that Covid-19 can spread through tiny airborne particles known as aerosols.
At two hospitals in Wuhan, China, researchers found bits of the virus’s genetic material floating in the air of hospital toilets, an indoor space housing large crowds, and rooms where medical staff take off protective gear. The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Research, didn’t seek to establish whether the airborne particles could cause infections.
The question of how readily the new virus can spread through the air has been a matter of debate. The World Health Organization has said the risk is limited to specific circumstances, pointing to an analysis of more than 75,000 cases in China in which no airborne transmission was reported. The Mercury News
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I just got back from a walk on the beach. Everyone pretty chill from Dog Beach to the pier.
Here’s a couple of headlines from today, Monday 4/27:
“Newsom chastises beachgoers, warning that defying order could delay reopening California” and this “Coronavirus lingers in air of crowded spaces, new study finds”. Both can be found in this post.
In response to this post, I received a nice comment that accused me of being a communist and “lying piece of shit” – just wanted to share some of the great responses that come into the Rag on a near daily basis. Of course we also receive many friendlier ones, which are posted.
I mean I am a socialist and proud of it and I believe in democracy, so I guess I yam what I yam and tat’s all that I yam.
Since I have some time on my hands, I wanted to explore this negative comment apparently left on the Rag but not printed. Where is the “lying” exactly? The photo is what’s called a “screen grab” and it’s from 7SanDiego. Did they doctor their video? Or did editrodude doctor it? Or is the graph update of SD County COVID-19 a “lie”? The photo is a long shot, and as such it collapses the distance between objects – so maybe the lie is that it falsely shows many surfers all grouped together but they weren’t .
Or are Gov. Newsom’s comments part of the lie? He has been accused of being a “commie” for instituting the restrictions, so maybe that’s it. Or was the comment just a spiteful and exasperated general diss? Presumably the person is a surfer and I know from experience there are some surf nazis out there. But there’s also surfing socialists and anarchists. And there’s groups like that eco-minded surfing association. Or maybe it’s just Gormlie’s politics. He says he’s a socialist and a democrat, like Bernie? The Rag did pretty much support Sanders during both of these campaigns, ’16 and ’20. Come to think of it, the tea party used to call Obama a socialist – which he clearly was not – and “commie” – remember?
The far right has always tried to cut down Democrats and the left in general by calling them “communists” ala Joe McCarthy J Edgar Hoover (who called MLK a “commie”) and “socialists” for a long, long time. Bernie much to his credit has brought the term “socialist” back and again has made it a household word. It used to be a much more common term in our political lexicon. 80 years ago California had a very strong socialist movement and a socialist once made a very credible run for Cal’s governorship back in the 30s.
So, I think the comment with the “POS” attachment is some holier-than-thou opposition to what the Rag is trying to do, I think, that is keep on reminding people about the need for restrictions, to slow down the rush to “normal”, and to keep the public health necessity narrative going.
The comment was “FU Gormlie, you lying communist POS” but not with initials.
Not very creative. I was called a “whimpering libtard” yesterday.
Politics has always been the great divider and probably will never not be. Far right wingers will always accuse anyone not a far right as them “communists”. Likewise, no shortage of my fellow libs consider anyone not as left leaning as them Nazis and/or fascists. 20 in the military and still working for them as civil service I’ve learned the fine art of tolerating the intolerant.
Thanks for your service, and yeah, when you work with a lot of different people at a job, often ya gotta put politics on the backburner.
Thanks Frank. One good thing about working with so many different people is find out that many are not the enemy simply because they don’t share your politics. There really are good people on both sides of the political spectrum (not to be confused with saying there are good racists).
That’s a telephoto lens that makes the background look closer. Look up front: each group is 6+ feet away. Look at the lifeguard towers. They look much closer together than any you see in real life.
If you never saw lifeguard towers before and just looked at this photo, you’d think the first two are only 25 feet apart.
I saw the drone footage. There wasn’t any social distancing involved. Several collisions in a 30 sec shot.
FYI about half that crowd was already out of the water 30 min later I was watching on the cam. The camera crew knew Tourmo was the spot to be to catch all the frothers getting in the ocean before work for the first time in a month. It’s just easier to find extra parking up there.
They sure got their rage clicks from taking that footage like they wanted. As I said, not 30 min later was that crowd sized halved and about another half hour later it was regular old Tourmo. So don’t let NBC raise your blood pressure. I was watching all the cams and I thought the city and citizens did a great job overall on day 1.
Haha, Frank, honestly, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “what’s in a name?” For those of us who have supported people, rather than parties, over all these political decades, Chris’ comment about name- calling is quite right: that it works both ways, and that name- calling is a pretty dumb substitute for intellectual objection! :-) So we who are out-of-the-closet socialists, some years you’re lauded, others you’re vilified. Comes with the territory I guess-
Meanwhile. I don’t know what to say about the beach landscape, I’m not there to visually weigh in, I know surfers gotta surf, swimmers gotta swim.
But what I CAN say is that the rest of the nation, and most CA residents, have their eyes on the State right now, watching how it handles closing/opening/support/. People are impressed with many of Newsom’s measures; his recent brokering of partnership between restaurants and Meals on Wheels, and FEMA support, his brokering of mental health care lines for isolated seniors who simply need someone to talk with, his confidence with his established stay-at-home measures that have been implemented these past 2 mos. We’ve got Newsom on the West, Cuomo on the East, two leaders who have been leading well, thank God, because the Federal Govt certainly hasn’t been living up to the challenge.
So I guess this is to say, having heard my daughter (a NorCal restaurant manager, now out of work) say that she is impressed with Newsom’s efforts, and proud to be a Californian:
Don’t screw it up now, SoCal!! Images of crowded beaches (however the images are generated) are not the right optics, and they undermine months of California working hard to get it right.
Exercise restraint. Be mindful of your fellow men/women who may also be giving up and foregoing personal routines and activities. Who wants a second, summer wave of this pestilence?! We’ll already be dealing with it again come fall and winter, so restraint now might give us a couple months of outside freedom later this summer….
and last, back to Frank, we got your back, Editordude! :)
Doesn’t this seem convoluted to you?
Your post references a scientific article stating that crowded poorly ventilated indoor spaces are hastening the spread of the coronavirus – “The new coronavirus appears to linger in the air in crowded spaces or rooms that lack ventilation, researchers found in a study that buttresses the notion that Covid-19 can spread through tiny airborne particles known as aerosols.”
And so the Governor says people shouldn’t be outside, in the fresh air, soaking up the sun.