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The Nooner for Tuesday, December 8, 2020, presented by SYASL Partners
Well, happy Tuesday. We now have a 2021-22 California Legislature. The State Senate's organizational session was somewhat normal, aside from the masks, plexiglass, and eight members participating remotely. They were Patricia Bates, Josh Newman, Steve Glazer, Monique Limón, Melissa Melendez, Jim Nielsen, Richard Roth, and Henry Stern. The Assembly was a bit different, strewn across what ordinarily would be a basketball arena this time of year. Absent were Richard Bloom, Autumn Burke, Jim Frazier, Dr. Shirley Weber, and Buffy Wicks. Aside from the absence of family members at their desks and an empty "gallery" (arena seats), it was pretty standard fare. Assembly member Kevin Kiley (R-Roseville) used his nomination speech for Assembly Republican Leader Marie Waldron (R-Escondido) to be Speaker for an attack on Governor Gavin Newsom's response to COVID-19 and the associated restrictions of public health orders. In other words, the 2021-22 Legislative Session begins where we left off in August. I still don't know why the Assembly didn't sell cardboard cutouts to adorn the seats. While distanced during the session, The Bee's Hannah Wiley reports that five Assembly members dined together outside at a midtown restaurant:
...and we know what Kevin Kiley's first speech during session of the new year will be, particularly since Republican-turned-independent Mayes was at the table. Meanwhile, we crossed a milestone in the pandemic yesterday as California blew past 20,000 deaths, landing at 20,054 according to the LA Times survey of health departments. (The state data is usually a one-day lag.) Governor Newsom yesterday appointed Dr. Tomás Aragón as the new director of the California Department of Public Health, replacing Dr. Sonia Angel who resigned in August. Aragón has been Health Officer for the City and County of San Francisco and Director of the Population Health Division for the San Francisco Department of Public Health since 2011. If you missed it on Sunday night, 60 Minutes had a segment on Blue Flame Medical, the company formed by former GOP consultants to import and distribute personal protective equipment during the pandemic. If you recall, this is the company with which California entered a $500 million contract to procure N95 masks early on. While the payment was being processed, a bank used by the state for the transfer questioned the destination's veracity, given that it was a brand new company. The payment was stopped and masks were ordered directly from a China-based company instead of a middleman. Not all purchasers through Blue Flame were so lucky and waited and waited for promised supplies. DECEMBER FIRES:
NO JUICE FOR YOU: This week in PSPS (public safety power shutoff):
BILLS, BILLS, BILLS: Following the swearing-in and organizational sessions of both houses, legislators began introducing bills for the 2021-22 Legislative Session. There were 68 bills introduced in the State Senate and 96 in the State Assembly. In the Senate, there were three legislative constitutional amendments introduced, while in the Assembly there were two. The themes were predictable with members introducing priority bills highlighted on the virtual campaign trail:
Assembly members can continue to introduce bills through December 18, but I didn't hear how long the State Senate "desk" will remain open for such. The two houses reconvene on January 4. REFER MADNESS: Yesterday, the Secretary of State reported that the proponents of the referendum on SB 793 (Hill), the flavored tobacco ban, have submitted 758,648 raw signatures and ordered county elections offices to conduct a random sample for validity. To avoid failing, proponents need 78.1% validity to reach the 623,212 signatures required for qualification. To qualify without a full count, they would need 90.4%, which won't happen. It's going to be close as to whether it qualifies or not. From my observations, 78% validity is a well-run petition campaign with verification of signature validity and duplicates before submission. If the measure qualifies, it places SB 793 on hold until the November 8, 2022 election. Otherwise, the law takes effect January 1, 2021. As you may remember, a few measures have had deadlines extended by courts because of the challenges this year of signature gathering during changing public health orders. This includes two initiatives (plastics reduction and gaming) as well as the proposed recall of Governor Gavin Newsom. However, while the courts ordered extensions of statutory deadlines, the 90-day collection period for referenda is established by Art. II, Sec. 9(b) of the state's Constitution and thus can't be extended by the courts. HUNGER GAMES: We have the Senate seat. If Newsom taps Secretary of State Alex Padilla, now the odds-on favorite following yesterday's pick of Becerra as HHS Secretary, that opens up an appointment to SOS. Then, presuming Becerra is confirmed by the US Senate to HHS, then Newsom will have AG to fill. On the Senate speculation list (assuming not a caretaker):
While I have removed House members from the AG list, I'm leaving a couple on the possibles for the U.S. Senate seat. I could see Pelosi green-lighting the appointment of a Democrat from a safe seat to the upper house despite the slim margin in the House. On the Attorney General speculation list, some additions and some deletions from that included yesterday. List again is alphabetical.
On the Secretary of State speculation list (alphabetical):
--IF YOU LIKE THE NOONER AND DON'T ALREADY, CONSIDER A SUBSCRIPTION, ADVERTISING, OR OTHERWISE SUPPORT THE WORK USING SQUARE, PAYPAL, OR CHECK. COVID-19: Yesterday, 117 deaths were reported in the state, bringing the total to 20,054. -Tiers for fears: No changes to county tier assignments. Purple/Widespread=52 counties; Red=5/Substantial; Orange/Moderate=1 -Stay at home: I am not including all of the main points and restrictions of the new stay at home order. You can find them in The Nooner for December 5, or read the state order or state guidance. Documents: Update on 12/03 with Governor Newsom and HHS Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly: Update on 12/07: Regions: Here is the latest ICU capacity by region, which is from this state page.
*County has voluntarily adopted the state's Stay At Home Order Cite: COVID19.CA.GOV: About COVID-19 restrictions (Under "Regional Stay Home Order") Central Coast: San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties are seeking to be removed from the Southern California region because they feel they are being dragged down to Stay At Home based on Los Angeles and other counties' numbers. However, they don't point out that California's existing EMS mutual aid regions breakdown has the counties with LA and Orange counties, something that hasn't been complained about before when they had the theoretical resources in the event of, say, a Central Coast earthquake. The regions were modified from six to five because this emergency is a virus rather than a localized incident like a natural disaster or chemical spill. Travel patterns matter in addition to hospital resources. If the Central Coast counties were to break off from the Southern California region, those from Brentwood, Beverly Hills and the like with resources would spend their time in hotels and hanging out on bar patios on the Central Coast commuting back and forth to Los Angeles and defeating the purpose of the Stay At Home order. That's what I'm hearing, anyway... It would also be a lot easier to have a statewide order. 84.5% of Californians are already under one at this point and most Sacramentans I talk to figure it's basically here (Bizjak article). But, I understand why the regions and ICU capacity are being used given all of the criticism that orders weren't data-driven this year. Restaurants: In the LAT, Anh Do and Luke Money look at restaurants unwilling to abide by the Stay at Home order in Southern California.
The superior court judge found in favor of the restaurant plaintiffs in a tentative ruling, writing that the County "acted arbitrarily" and "failed to perform the required risk-benefit analysis." The trend: Here are the first five days of data.
Here are the numbers of available ICU beds for the Greater Sacramento region and I've updated the spreadsheet for all five regions with this morning's availability data. Generally, these reflect the percentages above calculated the previous day. So, for Greater Sac, the 113 beds for 12/07 would tie to the dip to 18.2% on 12/06 and the 138 beds this morning would tie to the 20.3% availability calculated yesterday. I'm doing this mostly because of social media suspicions about how the percentages are calculated and I was trying to figure it out myself. If this assumption is correct, Southern California should rebound back to around 12.5% today. We see good news on availability for Stay At Home considerations, although it's always important to remember that an increase in the number of available ICU beds may signify more sad loved ones.
THE TRAGEDY OF TRIAGE: In the LAT, a team reports on the tough decisions facing health care professionals amidst strained resources in hospitals.
I was already going to write about this today so that's a good stage-setter. We don't like to talk about what happens when a hospital's critical resources become overloaded as they did in Italy causing a disaster early in the pandemic. We don't like to talk about the choices that have to be made as to who lives and who dies. In California, there's a chart for that put out by the California Department of Public Health. As I understand it, this is the same triage tree for any public health emergency that overruns critical care resources, such as after a natural disaster. You can find this chart and the associated narrative on page 15 of the June 2020 memo sent to health leaders and county health departments. When ICU capacity is overrun, these are the questions that physicians must ask and answer. I hear a lot of complaints about industry restrictions but rarely talk about this, because it's "yucky." We don't like to talk about death. Our health care professionals are dealing with it daily and the more we blow off restrictions (I hate them too and feel similar economic pain and fear), the more likely professionals have to turn to this triage tree and decides who lives and who dies. Meanwhile, I just saw photos of some NorCal folks poolside in Palm Springs "sheltering," in clear violation of the Southern California health order (by both the patrons and the AirBNB owner). I've seen several other examples; this one just popped up while writing this item.
The app: The LAT's Suhauna Hussain takes a look at the new app for contact notification announced during Governor Newsom's briefing yesterday.
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