Sacramento’s COVID-19 enforcement failures will cost lives. Here’s who to blame

With COVID-19 infections surging and hospital intensive care unit beds filling up fast, Sacramento County must now endure another stay-at-home order. More than 20,000 Californians have lost their lives so far, including 635 people in the Sacramento area. Many more will die in the weeks ahead.

Unfortunately, three out of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors’ five members are still refusing to take this pandemic seriously. On Tuesday, three supervisors — Sue Frost, Don Nottoli and Sue Peters — helped kill a proposal to give county health officials a tool needed to save lives.

The three supervisors opposed a proposal to allow county officials to fine businesses that flagrantly violate public health rules. The proposal, now shelved, would have imposed fines of between $500 to $10,000 on businesses that openly defy health rules and put lives at risk.

“The penalty for noncommercial citations would range between $25 and $500,” wrote Michael Finch II and Tony Bizjak of The Sacramento Bee. “The amount would have [to be] based on ‘the gravity of the public health risk posed by the violation,’ according to the proposed ordinance.”

The fines would provide an important tool to health officials who have relied on a toothless “educational” approach to enforcing the rules. Unfortunately, some irresponsible business owners have openly violated health rules, putting lives at risk. The word is out: anything goes in Sacramento County.

It’s getting harder to find an open ICU bed in Sacramento County, but you can still book an indoor fitness class or dine indoors at a packed restaurant. Despite the spiking local infection rate and a national death toll that’s headed toward 300,000, some people in our community refuse to take the threat seriously.

Behavior, like COVID-19, is infectious. By allowing a handful of businesses to break the rules and get away with it, Sacramento County is increasing the likelihood that others will follow suit — and that the death toll in our community will continue to rise.

But Sue Frost doesn’t seem to care if our hospitals get swamped with the sick and dying. She prefers the county’s failed strategy.

“I don’t think it is a good direction,” Frost said of the proposed fines. “I think education is the best way to approach.”

Disproving her own point, Frost was the only member of the board who refused to wear a face mask during part of the meeting, even though we all know masks play a major role in halting the spread of the infection. If an elected official in Sacramento doesn’t have enough sense to don a mask during an indoor meeting in December 2020, then education alone is clearly insufficient.

Discussion of the proposal was briefly delayed by 30 shouting protesters who barged into the chambers. One held a sign that declared the coronavirus a “hoax.”

Most businesses and people in Sacramento are trying to do the right thing. We want to save lives — and we want this pandemic to end as soon as possible. With a vaccine on the way, there’s hope that we can emerge from this nightmare next year. If we ignore science and surrender to the virus, however, many more Sacramento-area residents will die horrific and preventable deaths.

By bowing to a handful of protesters and downplaying a deadly virus, Frost, Nottoli and Peters are prolonging the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone. Hopefully, they will reconsider their positions as Sacramento’s death toll rises.