May 6, 2020 — At the May 5 Board of Supervisors meeting, public health officer Dr. Noemi Doohan presented her latest health order, which will go into effect Friday, provided the governor ushers the state into Phase II of the reopening by then.
And Supervisor John Haschak announced Dr. Doohan’s replacement, Dr. Joseph Iser, who retired last year from his position as Chief Health Officer of the Southern Nevada Health District. Dr. Iser has been hired on a contract basis for the month of May, to work on the transition with Dr. Doohan. He will start in June as a full-time county employee.
But the main topic of discussion was the new order, and how Mendocino County will advance in the reopening by a process of attestation, or being able to attest that the community is meeting various benchmarks. County Counsel Christian Curtis summed up the level of detailed knowledge about that process when he offered advice about writing letters to the governor:
“We really don’t know what the governor’s going to do and what it’s going to look like,” he cautioned. “He’s given us some hints.”
Some of those hints are that communities must be able to do one test per 1,000 people per day. That’s about 90 tests a day for Mendocino County, which is not currently happening, but CEO Carmel Angelo said she was working with state representatives to get testing capacity going in-county. Currently, Mendocino relies on the public health lab in Sonoma County to test its samples. Another aspect of the attestation period involves a strict protocol about how skilled nursing facilities will handle an outbreak, including a requirement that they have two weeks’ worth of personal protective equipment on hand.
Earlier this week, Doohan released a graph, indicating which sectors she has gathered, from phone calls with health officers’ groups, state leaders, and careful divining of the governor’s words, will open up in which phase of the reopening.
All essential businesses, which are already open, are at the top of the list for Phase II, followed by all retail, which will be allowed curbside pick-up. This led to complaints of unfairness, since people are having something similar to a normal shopping experience in the stores that are open now. Manufacturing will be open, as well as work in offices where telework is not possible. Summer programs, childcare, and outdoor recreation will be available again by the weekend, “assuming that the governor does do what he says,” Doohan temporized, “which is allow all of California to enter into Phase II. Phase II being the beginning of the limited reopening.”
Supervisors asked detailed questions about which activities would be allowed, including one from Supervisor Dan Gjerde about outdoor work like site surveys. “I would say yes,” Doohan told him. “We want people to get back to work. Inasmuch as that is a very low-risk activity because it has the ability to social distance, there would be decreased transmission, and I think these are exactly the types of things that I hope will resume.”
One thing that makes work a lot easier for people with kids is if someone else is taking care of the kids. Childcare was already allowed as essential, but in Phase II, educational and recreational programs including summer camp will be allowed, as long as the children stay in the same small group.
But some attempts to lift restrictions on business sectors do not seem feasible, like allowing stylists to make house calls. One stylist wrote a letter to the board, saying she could lose her state-issued license to work if she does that. Supervisor Ted Williams asked if the house calls provision was “a workaround” to get personal care professionals back to work before Phase III, when haircuts and manicures will be legal again. Doohan said yes, but reminded him that ultimately, all things will be allowed or vetoed by the governor’s order.
That order and Doohan’s are packed with minutiae that’s critical to people’s livelihoods — and, in the absence of treatments or a vaccine, their lives. Supervisor John McCowen found a line item that would give a dog groomer grounds to go back to work — after plowing through a few subordinate clauses, and under very specific conditions.
Haschak closed that part of the discussion with something like a benediction. “We’re blessed right now, being able to discuss dog grooming, when there’s over 70,000 deaths in our country,” he said. “It’s a luxury.”