The County and COVID-19

How did we get here? It’s a mess.

I believe that the Napa County board of supervisors are our representatives into the county, much like a congressman or senator would be. They should be who we turn to for help. Why is it so hard to get a response from them?

Back in April, I wrote Supervisor Wagenknecht about my concern for violators who were open illegally and a big box store that wasn’t practicing any of the established protocol. I never heard from him and sent a letter to the Board and the Mayor, for good measure. The only person who responded was Mayor Techel, with a very helpful package of information that was relevant at the time. So this issue of enforcement isn’t new. I did finally speak with Wagenknecht weeks later and he replied in an aw-shucks manner, “What I hear you seeing is that we need to be better about enforcement.” Uh, yes. This was in April.

Is this is a crisis or isn’t it? The feds have deserted us and the state makes mandates that the county executes. Yes, there needs to be enforcement. As of today, there is a “task force”. It is July, we have tourists coming in unmasked and there is no clear policy.

There have been a series of live informational streams on Facebook with HHS director Relucio, Supervisor Dillon, and Communications and Public Information Officer Elizabeth Scott. Scott cherry-picks the questions from the Facebook comments section and there is zero opportunity for a follow-up question. It’s a frustrating exercise, especially when Dillon and Relucio seem to be blaming the problem all on large private social gatherings. They clearly are a part of it and there was a doozy recently, but it takes a week to get an appointment for testing and it’s taking up to 11 days to get results. They have no idea where we are. Tracing is minimal and we’re looking at a snapshot of 3 weeks ago. They seem to think opening up the county to tourism isn’t the issue and yet anyone can take a stroll through the Oxbow Market or downtown and it’s clear, these aren’t people sheltering in place together and many of them aren’t wearing masks. Someone is going to remind me of the email address for reporting violations. Please. What happens? Do you get a finger wag? A real strong pinch? A sneer?

Personally, it seems that a simple $100 fine, if you’re not wearing a mask in public in Napa, would work. I don’t understand why a task force has to be created for that. And for the record, this was an emergency in April. Creating a task force in July is not anything to be proud of.

We should be demanding more. There was every indication that we’d end up right where we are and it’s not a success.