Bee Opinionated: Sacramento’s COVID response + Kings eye River Cats + Elk Grove housing
It’s Robin Epley, with The Bee Editorial Board. Let’s talk about mask requirements.
The Editorial Board met with Sacramento County Public Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye last week to learn more about the ongoing COVID response, as well as the increasing threat of monkeypox in our region.
The current COVID surge — caused by the BA.5 subvariant — spreads easily and has been able to evade our immune response, a combination that has put Sacramento County and other high-transmission areas in a precarious position.
Deaths and hospitalizations are lower thanks to the availability of vaccines and treatments, but the public’s aversion to masking invites new risks by ignoring the lessons of the past two years, and 1 million deaths, we noted in an editorial last week.
State leaders and the local officials who defer to them could enact mask mandates and other sensible measures to reduce transmission, but have so far failed to do so. Our board felt that reviving requirements in certain environments, such as public transportation, large indoor gatherings and certain school settings and workplaces, could reduce transmission without restricting public life.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Public Health have the authority to put these precautions in place, but they have largely abdicated the responsibility to individuals in county public health offices such as Sacramento County’s own Dr. Kasirye. During the interview, Kasirye said she would comply with a statewide mandate but has no plan to follow in the footsteps of Los Angeles County, where a new mask mandate was considered, but ultimately abandoned. The state’s current guidance is simply a “strong recommendation” in favor of masking indoors.
The most effective way to stop COVID from mutating further and prolonging this pandemic would be to accept the minor inconvenience of masking in some places so we can try to keep pace with future variants.
Walking the Walk in Elk Grove
Elk Grove does not have a homelessessness crisis like Sacramento, but the county’s second-largest city does have a role to play in helping the region confront it, as Yousef Baig wrote in an editorial last week. The City Council’s decision to reject a supportive housing project that included homeless services — the same week as the city’s anti-camping ordinance took effect — doesn’t match up with the empathetic approach council members are selling to the public.
“Homelessness is not exclusive to Sacramento; neither is the responsibility for dealing with its far-reaching effects on the health of our region. Elk Grove leaders can’t talk their compassion into existence without action, and there’s no compassion in cracking down on unhoused people while rejecting housing that could help lift them out of homelessness.”
The Kings Play Ball
California Opinion Editor Marcos Breton returned to his roots as a sports columnist and broke big news this week on the Sacramento Kings’ interest in buying the city’s minor league baseball team, the River Cats.
“Triple-A baseball is all about community, and the job of minor league baseball owners is to focus on marketing, advertising, community development and fan experiences. Player personnel on the River Cats would continue to be run by the San Francisco Giants, the parent club of the River Cats since 2014 …
“If this deal goes through, (Art and Susan Savage) should be remembered for creating a beautiful amenity in the Sacramento region. River Cats games became a summer ritual for families and baseball fans. The Savages became respected members of the Sacramento business community.”
Opinion of the Week
“Along with the large rodent’s capacity to devastate environments and infrastructure alike, its just-plain-unsightliness lends palatability to a government project that might otherwise be regarded as unseemly: exterminating them with extreme prejudice.” — Josh Gohlke on the bipartisan effort in California to kill the invasive nutria species.
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Have fun shooting swamp rats,
Robin Epley
