Beth Kenny, at Crab Cove in Alameda, Calif., on April 8th, 2023. Kenny, who is immunocompromised, says dropping masking requirements in health care is “devastating.” Tests show their body is unable to produce COVID-19 antibodies despite vaccination. Photo: Felix Uribe for Calmatters.
For months California disability and labor advocates have been attempting to preserve statewide masking requirements in health care settings.
But with the sunset of one of the last remaining COVID-19 mandates, they say people who are the most vulnerable to severe illness now have to make an “impossible choice” — risk getting the virus at a doctor’s office, or avoid necessary health care.
On April 3, the California Department of Public Health ended masking and vaccination requirements in high-risk settings, including health care facilities, jails, prisons and emergency homeless shelters.
Now, instead of statewide rules, it’s up to local health departments and individual facilities to decide whether to mandate masks. The department says it gave facilities a month of lead time to develop those internal policies. California’s three-year state of emergency ended in February.
But Raia Small, an organizer with Senior and Disability Action, said the department’s announcement that it was going to end masking requirements came as a shock. She said the group met with top department officials multiple times, as recently as January, and was told there was “no plan to stop masking requirements in health care.”
“I emailed them and let them know how upset we were, especially since we had been in communication with them and this came out with no warning,” Small said. “They haven’t responded.”
Other groups, including the California Nurses Association and Disability Rights California, have also been vocal in their opposition to the state’s new policy, or lack thereof. People with disabilities or chronic health conditions face higher risk of COVID-19 complications and interact with the health system more frequently than average, they say.
Elizabeth Zambelli, a San Francisco resident, is one such patient. She has multiple health conditions and is on medication that suppresses her immune system. Typically, Zambelli spends several days a month at the doctor’s office or in the hospital.
“I’m not going to go in unless it’s an emergency because I’m at risk for complications from COVID,” Zambelli said.
Nurses and other health care workers also have no choice but to risk exposure. They have raised alarms about their safety throughout the pandemic, including access to masks and testing, and say this latest change is a “failure” of public health officials.
“They are supposed to be protecting the public. For them to abandon the standards is counterproductive,” said Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, co-president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee.
Following federal guidelines
State epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan told CalMatters “strong statewide consistency” was crucial in the early days of the pandemic when severe disease and death rates were high and little was known about the virus. But today, she said many things have changed, including vaccination and herd immunity levels, the behavior of different viral variants and the reliability of certain data like unreported over-the-counter tests, making standardized statewide requirements less workable.
“Now, there just is such a variability …in geography, local transmission, the types of patients people are seeing, the needs of the facility, the ventilation of the facility. So I think those are all considerations that are really hard to standardize statewide,” Pan said in an interview Monday with CalMatters..
The CDC guidelines “strongly recommend” wearing masks during periods of high transmission, but do not offer guidance for health departments or employers to institute masking requirements. A scientific summary describing how the CDC developed its Community Levels indicator notes that masks are primarily intended to prevent infectious people from spreading COVID-19 to others while offering some protection to the wearer, meaning they are most effective in high-risk settings when everyone is masked. The summary does highlight, however, that new strains of the virus are less likely to cause severe illness, making relaxed guidelines more feasible.
The only remaining statewide COVID-19 protocol is a five-day isolation period, down from 10 days, if someone tests positive for the virus but has improving symptoms.
“I’m not going to go in unless it’s an emergency because I’m at risk for complications from COVID.” — Elizabeth Zambelli, San Francisco resident and immunocompromised patient
Pan said health systems wanted more autonomy over internal infection control procedures, which is typical for other respiratory diseases such as the flu. For example, during flu season many facilities require unvaccinated employees to wear masks.
“Health care facilities know exactly where their most vulnerable populations are and they can really customize their plans,” Pan told CalMatters. “And that’s what we have heard has been happening actually, that a lot of systems have updated some requirements in their facilities.”
But that’s exactly what vulnerable patients like Zambelli say is the problem. She has tried talking to her health care team about requiring universal masking at their facilities but has been told that they are following state and local guidelines.
“That’s why it’s really important for CDPH, San Francisco public health and other departments to be the ones to set this policy,” Zambelli said. “It’s terrible to put people in a position where people have to ration care because they have to decide if they can safely access that health care.”
A hodgepodge of masking rules
Most counties and health care facilities such as hospitals have been swift to follow the state’s lead, with the five largest health systems dropping mask mandates for employees and patients except in instances where local health departments have retained mask requirements. Sutter Health, University of California Health and Dignity Health all told CalMatters masks are “strongly recommended” but not required in most instances, in keeping with state and local policy. Kaiser Permanente and Providence did not respond to questions but updates to their websites indicate masking has been dropped.
Los Angeles and San Francisco counties have the strictest local requirements, with health workers of all types still required to wear masks. Alameda and Contra Costa counties are requiring masks in nursing homes, and Santa Clara County announced masks will be required next winter, when respiratory virus transmission is high.
Advocates said they are particularly frustrated that the state has not created or published criteria that would trigger new masking orders. The state Department of Public Health has shied away from setting such thresholds since the state’s controversial and confusing multi-tiered pandemic recovery plan ended in July 2021.
“We wanted a timeline or a metric for changing the requirement — cases are at this level or test positivity is at a certain level. They refused to give any kind of scientifically based guidelines,” said Small, with Senior and Disability Action.
Pan said the state health department learned from its “incredibly complex” pandemic recovery plan that tying policies to thresholds for cases or transmissions does not always reflect the actual impact on a local hospital’s capacity. As more testing has shifted to non-reportable over-the-counter tests, data that could be used for benchmarks has also become less reliable.
“It’s challenging to come up with something that we can say ‘This particular data is going to absolutely have the best correlation with what the impact is in this hospital, for example, or in this community,’” Pan said.
Future state policies will be based on the COVID-19 SMARTER plan, which was released in February 2022, the public health department said. The plan lays out preparedness and response actions, such as maintaining a stockpile of masks and vaccines, but does not include indicators to trigger action.
If the state is going to rely on a “do-it-yourself public health approach,” it needs to tell the public about any COVID outbreaks at facilities and publish information about facility policies, said Dr. Noha Aboelata.
According to CDC data, all counties in California, and most of the country, have low transmission levels. However, cases are likely undercounted, with average testing rates in California reaching lows not seen since the early days of the pandemic when testing was severely limited by supply and laboratory capacity.
“When you look at the number of hospitalizations per day, we were doing better one year ago than we are right now. So there’s no data-driven rationale,” said Dr. Noha Aboelata, CEO of Roots Community Health Center in Oakland.
The most recent state data shows the 14-day daily average for COVID-19 hospitalizations is more than 1,600, compared to about 1,300 at the same time last year.
Aboelata said if the state is going to rely on a “do-it-yourself public health approach,” it needs to tell the public about any COVID outbreaks at facilities and publish information about facility policies. Aboelata said she would not refer vulnerable patients to providers who are not enforcing masking, especially since health care providers have a responsibility to keep patients safe and incorporate new science into their practice. The Roots clinic will continue to require universal masking.
“When we learned about blood-borne pathogens, we wore gloves. Gloves suck, they’re uncomfortable, some people are allergic to them, and you can’t feel what you want to feel,” Aboelata said. “They’re not awesome, but we do it…I think we need to do the same thing here.”
Beth Kenny, a patient in Alameda, said the termination of masking requirements is “devastating.” Kenny has Crohn’s disease, which requires monthly drug infusions that suppress the immune system. Kenny is enrolled in an internal Kaiser Permanente study on the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine and said the data shows their body isn’t able to produce protective antibodies.
They are trying to switch insurance providers to get treatment at a county facility that still requires masking, but that would cost an additional $1,000-plus per month.
“It’s hard to feel like there’s any value in my life in these policies,” Kenny said. “I feel pretty devastated, pretty alone, and gaslit by our political leaders and public health leaders.”
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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
Heather Athlyn Petersen of Eureka passed away on March 17, 2023 due to complications
from breast cancer. She was 36 years old.
Heather was born on November 15, 1986 in Eureka, the younger of two daughters born to Michael and
Melinda Petersen. She was named after her great grandmother, Athlyn. She attended Ridgewood
Elementary School, Cutten Elementary School, Winship Junior High School, and Eureka High School,
graduating in 2004. She and her older sister, Nicole, were close and grew up exploring the redwood forest
near their home in Cutten and camped often with family. Heather loved basketball and played many years
in the Hoopsters recreational basketball league. Every Friday when she was a child, Heather went to her
grandparents’ home in Eureka, and when her grandparents moved to Willow Creek in 1995, she loved to
spend school breaks with them, playing in the backyard and walking to the nearby Trinity River. She
enjoyed playing video games and cooking. She created a chicken, broccoli, and rice dish that continues to
be a family favorite and loved making pineapple upside down cake. She had a wonderful sense of humor
and loved watching stand-up comedy specials. She was a beautiful girl and loved doing her and her friends’
hair and make-up. Every summer when Heather was a teenager, she would fly to Las Vegas to stay with her
Aunt Kari and her cousins, David, Kara, and Danielle. She enjoyed traveling and went on cruises to
Mexico, Canada, Catalina Island, and Disneyland with family. She had many close friends, but her best
friend throughout her life was her next door neighbor, Sasha.
In 2014, Heather graduated with her cosmetology license from Frederick and Charles Beauty School in
Eureka. Soon after, she got a job as a Hair Stylist at Regis Salon at the Bayshore Mall. She adored her dog,
a Chiweenie named JuJu Bee, and never went anywhere without her. She loved teasing and spending time
with her nephew and niece, Josiah and Daphne.
In 2019, Heather gave birth to her pride and joy, her beautiful little girl, Farrah Elaine. She named her after
her mom, Melinda Elaine, who she was incredibly close. She doted on Farrah, playing games with her,
doing her hair, and buying her the cutest clothes to wear. She would set up a kiddie pool in the backyard on
warm days so Farrah could cool off and swim. They would bake cupcakes together, she taught Farrah how
to ride her bike, and she would always play along when Farrah would cook imaginary food for her in her
play kitchen. They loved dancing together to Baby Shark, The Floor is Lava, and the Freeze Dance Song.
In December 2021, Heather was diagnosed with stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer (triple negative). She
endured multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatments over the next year, but tried to continue
living as normally as she could, continuing to go out and visit with her family and closest friends. She
didn’t tell many people about her diagnosis as she never wanted anyone to worry. She passed away
peacefully at home with her parents by her side.
Heather was always the life of the party and made many friends throughout the years. She was a very
sweet, affectionate child who grew into an incredibly loving, kind, and hilarious adult. She would always
go out of her way to help anyone who needed it, and always made people laugh. She was full of life and
always made whoever she was with feel important and cared for. She touched so many lives, and she will
be missed more than she ever could have known.
Heather is preceded in death by her grandparents, Dennis and Lorna Petersen, her grandfather, Charles
Nichols, her step-grandfather, Jack Armstrong, her great grandmother, Athlyn Lawson, her uncle, Martin
Nichols, and her best friend, Sasha Peters.
She is survived by her parents, Michael and Melinda Petersen, her daughter, Farrah Elaine Petersen-Log,
and her sister, Nicole Petersen-Log (Joseph). She is also survived by her grandmother, Kathlyn Nichols, her
nephew and niece, Josiah and Daphne Log, and numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.
The family wishes to thank the exceptional staff at Hospice of Humboldt for their kindness and continuous
care over the past few months. Per Heather’s request, no celebration of life will be held, but please feel free
to share your memories of her at www.lostcoastoutpost.com.
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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Heather Petersen’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.
Larry Benjamin Fleek October
9, 1958 - February 14, 2023
After an emergency
trip to the hospital where it was discovered that he had an
inoperable mass on his brain and was in rapidly declining health,
Larry went on to Heaven to be reunited with many loved ones.
A lifelong native of
Eureka, Larry grew up enjoying trips to the beach and to local rivers
and lakes with family and friends. A highlight in the summertime was
camping at Willow Creek, or Trinity and Ruth Lakes where skiing,
hiking, and family and friend time around the campfire were daily
musts. On hikes, he will be remembered for never being able to pass a
rotted log without giving it a good kick for firewood gathering, then
running to get away from angry bees! Yahtzee, Monopoly and card games
at the camp table often went on late into the night after a round or
two (or three!) of s’mores.
Except for several
years during his teens living in Georgia with his family, Larry
attended all local schools and graduated from Eureka High School in
1977. Many of his friends date back to his elementary days at Cutten
School, then Winship Junior High and Eureka High School. Larry worked
alongside his dad, Jim Fleek, at Pacific Saw & Knife in Eureka
for many years. He was also employed at Mad River Hospital in Arcata
and was a residential house painter who took pride in the details, no
matter the time it took to finish a job.
Larry will be
remembered for the days of joy he had with his family, especially his
nieces and nephews who always looked forward to spending time with
“Uncle Bubba/Bubs.” Adventures near and far were always filled
with fun and laughter! Getting to attend the sporting events of his
stepchildren Krista, Kara and Colt when they were young were also
happy times for Larry. As a lifelong San Francisco Giants fan, he
rarely missed listening to a game on the radio or seeing it live on
TV, especially when his mom was watching along with him and loudly
rooting on “their Giants”!
Preceded in death by
his loving parents Jim and Darlene Fleek and sister Nancy, Larry is
survived by siblings Randy, Cindy, and Kathy; nieces and nephews
Jennifer, Kim, Marissa, Kelsey, Holly, Sean, Cody, and Karrie; as
well as great-nieces and great-nephews Aiden, Giselle, Connor,
Dillon, Devin, Deon, Evangeline, Savannah, Aubree, and Annabelle; and
great-great niece, Shawnie. He was dearly loved and will be greatly
missed by all.
No services are
planned at this time. Please think of Larry whenever you’re
watching a sunset at the beach, enjoying a warm day at a lake, or
walking in the quiet of a redwood forest. And remember to hug the
ones you love as often as you can for life may be shorter than you
think.
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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Larry Fleek’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.
Bruce Bacchetti was born on June 12, 1939, in Eureka. He passed away peacefully, in his home on March 26, 2023. He was a family man and a hard worker.
When he was nine years old, he started working for the Times-Standard, delivering newspapers to the neighborhoods. He worked hard and retired after a long 50-year career with the Times-Standard.
When he was not working, he could be found in his yard. He enjoyed gardening and cutting firewood at the local lumber mill. He met many people and impacted many lives with his cheery and bright personality. He was not just a hardworking individual; he was also a family man. He was a husband, father, grandfather and papa.
He met his wife, Beverly Bacchetti, in Eureka. He loved his wife and family with all his heart. He married his wife at the young age of 18 years old and remained married for 60 years until his wife passed away in 2019. He had three children, Teressa, Brian and Michael Bacchetti. He was also an amazing grandfather to his two grandchildren, Kristen Peruchin, and Melinda Marshall. His favorite role in life was being a papa to his four great grandchildren — Anthony, Ashlynn, Alijah and Arlina.
He was an amazing man and will be greatly missed by all.
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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Bruce Barchetti’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.
HUMBOLDT TODAY: A McKinleyville man has been arrested for allegedly murdering an ex; Governor Newsom announced that California is stockpiling abortion pills; plus, a major wind energy corporation is opening an office in Eureka. Those stories and more in today’s newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
On April 8, 2023, at about 12:58 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a residence on the 1200 block of Windy Road in McKinleyville for the report of an unwanted subject. The reporting party, 41-year-old Daniel Forrest Rena-Dozier, told emergency communications dispatchers that his former partner was at the residence and refusing to leave.
While responding to the residence, Rena-Dozier advised that an altercation occurred inside the residence and one person had been shot. Deputies arrived at the residence and located a 30-year-old female victim with a gunshot wound. She was transported to a local hospital where she later succumbed to her injuries.
The Sheriff’s Major Crimes Division responded to investigate. Based upon the totality of evidence collected while on scene and interviews with Rena-Dozier and a female witness, Rena-Dozier was arrested on charges of murder. During a search of the residence, deputies located multiple firearms. One of those firearms was equipped with a homemade silencer, another was found to have its serial number removed.
Rena-Dozier was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of murder (PC 187(a)), possession of a firearm silencer (PC 33410) and tampering with the ID marks on a firearm (PC 23900).
This case is being forwarded to the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office for further review and prosecution.
The victim has been identified as Mia Simone Felder. An autopsy is in the process of being scheduled.
Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.
Illustrations of the proposed Crowley Wind Services terminal via Harbor District. Click to enlarge.
The big international maritime company known as Crowley is working with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District to build a big facility on the Samoa Peninsula, at the site of the old pulp mill, to help service the offshore wind industry.
The company has opened offices in Eureka — in the Carson Building, according to the company’s website — and it’ll be having a big launch party at the Wharfinger next Wednesday afternoon.
Press release from Crowley:
Crowley and the Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce will announce the company’s new Wind Services office in Eureka, California, as part of its actions to develop an offshore wind terminal at the Port of Humboldt Bay. This event will herald the start of a partnership with the people of the region to be a U.S. leader in supporting renewable energy from offshore wind. The U.S. logistics, maritime and energy solutions company is planning the facility to support renewable energy in concert with the community and the port. Services at the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Marine Terminal will support tenants in the manufacturing, installation and operation of offshore wind floating platforms, the use of large heavy cargo vessels, and provide crewing and marshalling services in the Pacific waters.
Event Details
Event Location: The Wharfinger Building, 1 Marina Way, Eureka, California Date: Wednesday, April 19, 2023 Time: Remarks and ribbon cuttingat 3:00 PM PT. Community reception to follow
About Crowley Crowley is a privately held, U.S.-owned and -operated maritime, energy and logistics solutions company serving commercial and government sectors with $3.4 billion in annual revenues, over 170 vessels mostly in the Jones Act fleet and approximately 7,000 employees around the world – employing more U.S. mariners than any other company. The Crowley enterprise has invested more than $3.2 billion in maritime transport, which is the backbone of global trade and the global economy. As a global ship owner-operator and services provider with more than 130 years of innovation and a commitment to sustainability, the company serves customers in 36 nations and island territories through five business units: Crowley Logistics, Crowley Shipping, Crowley Solutions, Crowley Wind Services and Crowley Fuels. Additional information about Crowley, its business units and subsidiaries can be found at www.crowley.com.
