Outdoor worship service in Redding defies California mask order, alarming health officials

Hundreds of worshipers, led by an organizer affiliated with a megachurch whose members believe they can heal the sick and raise the dead, gathered Wednesday at the Sundial Bridge in Redding, flouting mask-wearing orders and bans on large crowds.

Videos of the “Let us Worship” gathering show several hundred people singing in tightly packed groups below the bridge, one of Shasta County’s most popular tourist attractions. Few people were wearing masks.

The gathering wasn’t formally affiliated with Redding’s Bethel Church, whose members believe in faith healing. A church spokesman said the event was organized by Sean Feucht, a Christian musician and recent congressional candidate. Feucht produces music under Bethel Church’s record label.

“Sean and his family attend Bethel Church and he is a volunteer worship leader on one of our many church worship teams,” Bethel spokesman Aaron Tesauro said in an email.

Shasta County health officials condemned the event. In a news release, officials said that when they approached organizers, they were told attendees would adhere to social distancing rules, and the event would only involve a “small battery powered amplification for acoustic guitar and mic” instead of a concert. Organizers never sought a permit.

Officials noted local residents intermingled without wearing masks with people from out of town, putting the community at risk. Shasta County, population 180,000, until this point has largely avoided a major outbreak. It’s had 268 confirmed cases and 7 deaths from COVID-19.

“We truly empathize with all who have had to change the way they worship in the past few months,” county officials said in the news release. “Very sadly, some of our local cases of COVID-19, including hospitalizations, have resulted from faith gatherings, and it’s critical that our faith community leaders continue to offer safe services that follow the state guidelines.”

Feucht didn’t immediately respond to an email or a message sent through his website.

Feucht’s Twitter feed said similar protests are planned in the coming days in Pasadena, Bakersfield, Fresno and San Diego. He tweeted that those who’d planned to attend Wednesday’s gathering should wear masks, and said there would be some available.

“Spread out. Let’s worship Jesus and love on our city!” he Tweeted Wednesday.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article244439837.html

COVID-19 patients will be ‘sent home to die’ if deemed too sick, Texas county says

The situation was not always as dire in this rural South Texas county.

Starr County once went about three weeks without a COVID-19 case at the beginning of the pandemic. It banned large gatherings, tested hundreds of residents a day, issued stay-at-home orders and required face masks — many of the same mandates now commonplace across the U.S. The poor and mostly Latino county on the Mexico border was containing COVID-19.

“A model for the country,” Starr County Judge Eloy Vera said Tuesday — as he shared an update that now appears gloomy.

In April, its aggressive and successful approach to beating the coronavirus was spotlighted by NBC News.

“We are very proud at this point that our numbers are very low, considering we are an at-risk population and the disparity in medical services and our low socio-economic population,” Joel Villareal, mayor of county seat Rio Grande City, told NBC News. “We rank as one of the poorest counties in the nation. However, that does not deter us.”

But after Gov. Greg Abbott issued orders for for the reopening of the state, overriding local control and decision-making, COVID-19 cases surged.

Now Starr County is at a dangerous “tipping point,” reporting an alarming number of new cases each day, data show. Starr County Memorial Hospital — the county’s only hospital — is overflowing with COVID-19 patients.

The county health board — which governs Starr Memorial — has been forced to create what’s being compared to a so-called “death panel.” It’s set to authorize critical care guidelines Thursday that will help medical workers determine ways to allocate scarce medical resources on patients with the best chance to survive.

A committee will deem which COVID-19 patients are likely to die and send them home with family, Jose Vasquez, the county health authority, said during a news conference Tuesday.

“The situation is desperate,” Vasquez said. “We cannot continue functioning in the Starr County Memorial Hospital nor in our county in the way that things are going. The numbers are staggering.”

Starr County, with a population of about 61,000, is located about 230 miles south of San Antonio. The county has 1,432 confirmed coronavirus cases and 15 deaths. But Vasquez told The Monitor there are more than 30 more pending confirmation.

Per 100,000 people, Starr County has reported about 92 cases a day over the past week — the 11th highest rate in Texas, data compiled by Harvard Global Health Institute show.

Starr Memorial quickly filled up its eight-bed COVID-19 unit after the state began reopening and expanded to 17 beds, Vasquez said. It expanded again to 29 beds when state officials sent medical workers to the county.

On Sunday, Gov.Abbott announced U.S. Navy teams will go to South Texas to provide medical assistance, including the hospital in Starr County.

Still, the new committee will be necessary, officials say. The hospital transfers COVID-19 patients daily to other counties and even out-of-state, but those hospital beds are filling up, Vasquez said.

“For all of those patients that most certainly do not have any hope of improving, they are going to be better taken care of within their own family in the love of their own home rather than thousands of miles away dying alone in a hospital room,” he said.

As the situation has gone from promising at beginning of the pandemic to desperate, the county judge will soon issue a stay-at-home order.

“Unfortunately, Starr County Memorial Hospital has limited resources and our doctors are going to have to decide who receives treatment, and who is sent home to die by their loved ones,” Vera said in a Wednesday news release. “This is what we did not want our community to experience.”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article244443257.html

‘I don’t believe it’: Huntington Beach a symbol of mask resistance as doubters abound

As Brad Colburn whisked his metal detector over the tan sands of Huntington Beach, a rejection of Orange County’s spiking coronavirus infection rates surfaced.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe the rates are rising,” Colburn said. “They’re inflated. It’s another way of shutting everything down … of the Democrats trying to get what they want.”

The 58-year-old Huntington Beach resident said he has yet to wear a mask outside of shopping. Standing by a beach path as cyclists and in-line skaters zoomed by, he offered his own alternative policy to restrictive coronavirus health orders.

“If you don’t want to go outside, don’t go outside,” Colburn said.

More than any other place in California, Huntington Beach has come to symbolize resistance to many of the coronavirus safety rules government officials have imposed in recent months. It’s not as though no one in the city is wearing masks and social distancing.

But many who oppose mandatory mask rules and other measures like closing beaches have been outspoken here, and used the tourist mecca as a platform for their views. In May, angry demonstrators converged a block away at the now mostly quiet Huntington Beach Pier to protest the state-ordered shutdown of local businesses.

Since then, many roaming through the city’s downtown area are proudly not wearing masks. And the stance has even inspired a parody video that went viral on social media in recent weeks.

Fred Smoller, a professor of political science at nearby Chapman University, described Huntington Beach as a conservative stronghold and said that the attitudes about the coronavirus there reflect larger political divides.

“Their ideology is a lens through which they are viewing the coronavirus,” Smoller said. “I would imagine many people there see it as a hoax, which the president has encouraged them to do in order to up his chance of reelection. I’m sure there’s quite a bit of animus toward the governor.… They’re viewing [state restrictions] as further evidence of the deep state and of an intrusive government.”

Huntington Beach Mayor Lyn Semeta said the city would continue its educational efforts to keep residents safe. Masks, she said in an email statement to The Times, are “critical in keeping people healthy and helping our businesses operate safely in the limited capacity they are able to.”

When asked about opposition to COVID-19 restrictions in Huntington Beach, Semeta said she was aware people around the state are “uncomfortable with the use of face coverings.”

“I can certainly understand that sentiment. However, while there is still much we are learning about this virus, health experts have come out strongly recommending face coverings as an effective measure that helps stop the spread of COVID-19,” Semeta said, urging residents to wear them.

The number of Orange County coronavirus cases has surged in recent weeks, with more than 31,000 confirmed cases and more than 500 deaths. The number of hospitalizations has tripled in the last two months and overall infections have grown so dramatically that the county is now second in the state to Los Angeles County.

There is widespread acceptance that masks play a key role in slowing the spread of the coronavirus, and their widespread use in other countries is credited with slowing infections dramatically.

But skepticism abounds over the seriousness of the outbreak.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-22/doubts-about-dangers-of-covid-19-linger-in-huntington-beach