Wake up, you sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed. Wake up, the confusing Blueprint For a Safer Economy is dead! The Blueprint is dead. Dead!
And California Gov. Gavin Newsom is singing it high, singing it low to let everyone know how well the state did to get the COVID-19 pandemic to go.
Well, to almost go.
“California is turning the page on this pandemic, thanks to swift action by the state and the work of Californians who followed public health guidelines and got vaccinated to protect themselves and their communities,” Newsom said in a June 15 press release. “With nearly 40 million vaccines administered and among the lowest case rates in the nation, we are lifting the orders that impact Californians on a day-to-day basis while remaining vigilant to protect public health and safety as the pandemic persists.”
That “swift action” and “work of Californians” also included 3.8 million or so COVID-19 cases that swept through the state starting during the holiday season—when a lot of Californians were not following “public health guidelines … to protect themselves and their communities.”
Oddly, though, now that we’re on the other side of that mess, all of those COVID-19 infected people are helping prevent new infections … how’s that for some irony?
And along with the irony of confusing COVID-19 guidelines, the state’s new post-vaccine masking policy continues the trajectory.
“No person can be prevented from wearing a mask as a condition of participation in an activity or entry into a business,” according to California Department of Public Health guidelines. Basically, a business can’t force you to take your mask off.
And if a business feels like “remaining vigilant to protect public health and safety as the pandemic persists,” they’ve got three mask policy choices.
“They can use a self-attestation compliance method to determine compliance, they can implement a vaccine verification, or they can require that all patrons wear a mask,” Santa Barbara County Public Health Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso said.
So they can do whatever they want, you know? And the truth of the matter is that they will, just like everyone has thus far throughout the pandemic.
People who refused to get vaccines for political reasons aren’t going to volunteer that fact or volunteer to wear a mask—because they don’t believe in masks, anyway! So get ready to forget about public safety!
Just like the Democrats forget about diversity, equity, and inclusion when it’s convenient for them—partisanship wins every time.
On June 2, members of the Santa Barbara County Citizen’s Independent Redistricting Commission had a choice to make. In one corner was a Latino Republican from an underserved community (Guadalupe). In the other, a white Democrat. The commission’s got a lot of, umm, identities it needs to balance when picking squad members. And if it picks the “wrong” squad members, somebody threatens to sue them.
Let’s face it, there’s no way for the commission to pick the “right” squad members because the requirements are so ridiculously specific.
So in the choice between a person of color or a Democrat, the Santa Maria-Lompoc Chapter of the NAACP told commissioners that color shouldn’t be more important than party representation.
Identity politics be damned. Party over POC!
The Canary regrets triggering you. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 17-24, 2021.