Returning to normal after COVID-19 won’t be easy, Fauci warns UC Berkeley panel

Public officials will need to determine who receives the first coronavirus vaccines once they become available, Dr. Anthony Fauci told a virtual gathering of the nonprofit Berkeley Forum.

A “good vaccine” might mean a gradual return to a sense of normalcy toward the end of next year, Fauci said Thursday evening. At the same time, the highly regarded director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases cautioned that such a return will not be as easy as “turning a light switch on and off.” A coronavirus vaccine will not be 99% effective, and the majority of people likely will not be vaccinated, he said.

“There are a number of people that don’t get vaccinated because they don’t have the time, but they don’t fully appreciate the importance and the seriousness of it,” Fauci said Thursday. “If you can make it easier for them to get vaccinated, you may win over at least a segment of the people who, for one reason or another, do not want to get vaccinated.”

As for who will be at the head of the line to receive any approved vaccines, Fauci told the forum that a committee of medical and public health experts will advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since it’s likely that sufficient doses will not be available right away.

The panel, which is called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will also work with Black and other minority groups to fight skepticism and misinformation about the vaccine.

The reason, Fauci said, is that the coronavirus is “shining a very bright light” on health care inequities that are causing a disproportionate amount of minority populations to die from COVID-19.

Minority groups are already at higher risks of diabetes, obesity, and heart and lung disease that make them more vulnerable to the virus, Fauci said Thursday. Their vulnerability is compounded by the nature of their jobs, many of which do not allow them to work from home.

“I hope that the terrible experience that we’re going through now galvanizes and energizes us to make a decades-long commitment to doing things about these social determinants of health,” Fauci told the online forum. “But they’re not reversible overnight. They’re reversible over a long period of time, and that takes a societal commitment.”

The Berkeley Forum is an undergraduate student-run organization at UC Berkeley that hosts talks, panels and debates led by experts on timely and topical issues. All events are hosted virtually due to the pandemic.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Returning-to-normal-after-the-coronavirus-won-t-15635120.php

Yolo County (CA) mails incorrect election ballots to 581 voters. Here’s the plan to fix it

Yolo County elections officials mistakenly mailed out nearly 600 ballots with an incorrect local race or measure, and they say they developed a plan to correct the error and ensure nobody votes twice.

Officials announced Friday in a news release that out of 115,260 vote-by-mail ballots sent out this week, 581 voters in 371 homes received incorrect ballots for the Nov. 3 election. The incorrect ballots were sent to voters in Davis, West Sacramento, Woodland and Winters.

“This error occurred due to a transitioning of data systems, where not all streets were correctly carried over into the appropriate precinct as expected,” according to the news release from the county elections office. A list of the main areas where incorrect ballots were sent is available online in the news release.

Within hours of confirming the error, elections officials determined who received the incorrect ballots and began implementing the plan to correct the mistake. All voters who received an incorrect ballot will receive an expedited, newly issued precinct ballot and a voter information guide, along with a letter describing the error, officials said.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and are working diligently to resolve this issue,” Jesse Salinas, the county’s assessor, clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, said in the news release.

Any voter with an incorrect ballot and who is contacted by the elections office should discard the incorrect ballot and fill out and return the new one, according to the news release.

If a voter already filled out and mailed an incorrect ballot, elections officials said they we will cancel that ballot once the new ballot is received. They say this will ensure no voter is able to vote twice.

Officials said 90% of the voters who received an incorrect ballot in Davis live in the Covell Commons Condos and the 8th and Wake Apartment complex. They said efforts were underway to directly contact the management at those properties.

San Joaquin County elections officials mistakenly mailed incorrect ballots that left out a race for San Joaquin Delta Community College District Trustee Area 2. ABC 10 reported that county is mailing replacement ballots that include the college district trustees race.

Any voters with a question about their ballot or who believes they received something in error can call the Yolo County Elections Office at 530-666-8133.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article246354680.html

https://www.yoloelections.org/news-and-publications/important-update-regarding-elections

As pandemic restrictions on indoor shopping ease, mall owners sue to stop another shutdown

Indoor shopping centers opened Wednesday as Los Angeles County officials eased pandemic-related restrictions on businesses, but one of the biggest mall operators in the region is suing to stop the county from shutting down centers again.

The owners of Westfield-branded malls, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the county in late September that called for the county to lift prohibitions it called “unlawful and unjustifiable” in part because they are targeted at indoor centers, which were then mostly closed.

Although the county gave the green light to indoor mall stores operating with limits on the number of customers who can be inside, Westfield is suing in federal court to stop officials from repeatedly opening and closing stores to blunt the impact of the pandemic.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has likened such openings and closings of businesses to a dimmer switch that the state can raise or lower in relation to the transmission of COVID-19. When fewer new cases are diagnosed, restrictions on occupancy of stores, restaurants and other businesses will be loosened. If more people get sick, restrictions will retighten.

Los Angeles County has lagged behind other parts of California in reopening businesses because of its continued high numbers of new cases and deaths. But on Wednesday, “nonessential” stores in indoor shopping centers reopened with limited capacity for the first time since July.

Westfield and the owner of Del Amo Fashion Center, a regional indoor mall in Torrance, have both filed lawsuits intended to stop the county from effectively shutting down their shopping centers as a coronavirus prevention measure. Merchants including a sports apparel seller and a children’s clothing boutique operator have joined the lawsuits.

The county has not commented on the litigation, but its public information office said in a statement last month that the county “has been intensely committed to protecting the health and safety of its residents through an unprecedented crisis using science and data and responding in real time to a deadly and previously unknown virus that has tragically claimed thousands of lives and upended life for millions of people.”

County officials continue “to assess the data, the science and the state guidelines to safely guide the reopening” of local businesses, the statement said.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-09/pandemic-restrictions-ease-westfield-sues-to-stop-another-shutdown