COVID-19 vaccine appointments now open to all 16+ in California
RONG-GONG LIN II, COLLEEN SHALBY and LUKE MONEY: "Everyone in California 16 and older can now book COVID-19 vaccine appointments on the state’s My Turn appointment system. The changes to the system went into effect Wednesday night.
In Southern California, residents of Orange and Ventura counties ages 16 and up became newly eligible to book vaccine appointments through My Turn. Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Imperial counties had already made everyone 16 and older eligible.
My Turn officials said the online system can handle up to 300,000 transactions per hour, and that they expect it to handle demand."
30% of California adults fully vaxxed, 20% partially
Sac Bee's MICHAEL MCGOUGH: "As the state sprints toward 24 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine given, California hit another pair of remarkable milestones Wednesday: more than 30% of its adults are now fully vaccinated, and over half have one dose of a two-shot inoculation.
The California Department of Public Health on Wednesday reported providers across California have administered 23,760,123 doses over the course of the rollout, averaging more than 380,000 shots per day over the past week.
CDPH said in its daily update it is again dealing with data processing issues leading to incomplete counts."
California enlists surveillance satellites to sniff out greenhouse gas ‘super-emitters’
TONY BARBOZA, LA Times: "Years after former Gov. Jerry Brown pledged California would launch its “own damn satellite” to track planet-warming pollutants, the state plans to put not one, but two satellites in orbit to help it hunt for hard-to-find “super-emitters” of methane and carbon dioxide.
In an announcement Thursday, a partnership of government and research organizations working under a newly formed nonprofit called Carbon Mapper said it is on track to launch the satellites in 2023 using $100 million in funding from philanthropic groups.
The two satellites will be used to locate, quantify and make visible plumes of methane and carbon pollution, which remain major obstacles in the fight against climate change. Regulators and scientists say faster, more accurate monitoring is urgently needed to accelerate greenhouse gas reductions and keep global warming from reaching catastrophic levels."
'Breakthrough' cases of vaccinated people who get COVID may be key to unlocking immunity
The Chronicle's ERIN ALLDAY: "After more than a year of anxiety that someone in her multigenerational household would bring home the coronavirus and expose elderly grandparents and great-grandparents to a possibly fatal disease, Vanessa Bain was breathing a lot easier by the end of March.
Almost everyone in their Menlo Park home had had at least one dose of vaccine. And then her husband tested positive. Within days so did her grandfather and great-grandmother, along with Bain and her teenage daughter, who was too young to be vaccinated.
Their story is both a cautionary tale and a celebration of vaccines. Yes, one or more members of the household may be so-called breakthrough cases — people who get sick after being fully vaccinated. But her grandfather and great-grandmother, ages 81 and 95, and considered very high risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19, are doing OK despite testing positive."
Column: California Democrats have a chance to flex some muscle and work to restore deductions for taxpayers
GEORGE SKELTON, LA Times: "Some U.S. House Democrats from New York and New Jersey are threatening a gutsy move that their California colleagues should consider.
The threat: refusing to vote for President Biden’s signature infrastructure package and the higher taxes to pay for it unless state and local tax breaks are fully restored.
Good for the handful of northeastern Congress members. California Democrats should show the same courage on an issue that has cost millions of their constituents billions of tax dollars.
Nearly 50K COVID cases likely went unreported in NorCal county
Sac Bee's MOLLY SULLIVAN: "A study with Stanford University to better understand the prevalence of COVID-19 in Placer County found that about 68% of cases went unreported.
Dr. Julie Parsonnet, professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, told the county Board of Supervisors in a presentation Tuesday that seropositivity rates, meaning the presence of antibodies over time, were “pretty darn low” and nowhere near the threshold for herd immunity, making the vaccine all the more important for the county’s fight against the disease.
Starting in October, researchers began mailing questionnaires and blood tests to 20,000 people across different census tracks to obtain a representative sample. By March, 2,035 had responded, Parsonnet said."
Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli ignores calls for resignation despite mounting allegations and residential outrage
The Chronicle's ALEXANDRA BORDAS: "Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli told his Town Council colleagues that he would ignore their demands that he resign and then listened calmly as dozens of speakers strongly urged him to quit, some even cursing him, during an extraordinary emergency meeting held by the town Wednesday evening.
Foppoli, who was accused of sexual assault by several women in a recent Chronicle investigation, was positioned in a center square on the screen during the public Zoom meeting, surrounded by the same Town Council colleagues and employees who called the meeting to demand his resignation.
As mayor, Foppoli ran the first half of the meeting even though it was about his own alleged misbehavior, ushering speaker after speaker through the public comment segment, reminding people to unmute, only to have them unload on him after they did. They sobbed, hurled profanities at him, and called him a “gross joke,” a “sociopath,” a “narcissist” — and a “rapist.” Several people accused Foppoli of additional sexual misconduct."
Capitol Weekly Podcast: LA County Supervisor Holly Mitchell
Capitol Weekly: "Former state Sen. Holly J. Mitchell was elected last year to a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, representing District 2 – the same district in which she was born and raised. Term limits have turned the traditional local government-to-Legislature pipeline on its head, as has the stratospheric growth of LA: As a supervisor in a county of 10 million people, Mitchell represents twice as many constituents as she once did in the state Senate.
The LA Board of Supes – known for years as the “five little kings” – are “kings” no more. With Mitchell’s election, the Board is, for the first time, made up entirely of women. Two of the other Supervisors, Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, are, like Mitchell, former state legislators."
Newsom calls for full reopening of California schools by fall, urges extended class time
Sac Bee's LARA KORTE: "Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday urged schools to prepare for “full, in-person instruction” this fall as coronavirus rates drop and vaccinations ramp up across the state, but he stopped short of saying he’d hand down an executive order to force open classrooms.
So far, more than 9,000 of California’s 11,000 schools have opened for in-person instruction or have announced a date for a return to classrooms.
More than 23 million vaccinations have been distributed throughout California, and the state’s COVID-19 positivity rate is less than 2%. Starting Thursday, all Californians 16 and older will be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. By June 15, the state intends to fully reopen businesses."
State's fiscal crisis team sounds alarm on CCSF's solvency
The Chronicle's NANETTE ASIMOV: "City College of San Francisco is at risk of insolvency and a takeover by the state because it has lost control of its payroll expenses, a new report obtained by The Chronicle says.
City College “must act quickly if it wants to continue operating independently in the California community college system,” the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team said in the four-page report it sent to the California Community College Chancellor’s Office on April 7.
The college lost 39% of its enrollment over the last decade — from 90,000 to 55,000 full- and part-time students. But the school failed to cut expenditures in line with that loss, said the report by the team formed in the 1990s to help troubled schools. City College “can no longer fulfill its commitments to its staff, faculty, administration and, most important, its students while also remaining solvent,” the report said."
Why does everyone think it is illegal to pick a California poppy?
The Chronicle's ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: "Despite years worth of urban legends to the contrary, picking California’s state flower — something most Bay Area residents have been told never to do — is not technically illegal.
So why do so many people still believe it is?
It might be because it’s partially true. California's penal code includes a section saying that removing or damaging plants from property that a person doesn’t own — without permission — may constitute trespass or petty theft."
Paul Flores killed Kristin Smart in dorm room during attempted rape, DA says. LAPD investigated local cases
LA Times's MATTHEW ORMSETH/RICHARD WINTON: "Paul Flores killed Kristin Smart in his college dorm room as he sexually assaulted the 19-year-old student, prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
The grim details of how Smart is believed to have died while a freshman at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo came on a day when Flores was formally charged with first-degree murder in the case and accusations surfaced that he has assaulted other women in the decades after Smart’s disappearance.
Los Angeles Police Capt. Jonathan Tippet, head of the agency’s Robbery-Homicide Division, said detectives in recent months gathered evidence against Flores in two sexual assaults that allegedly occurred over several years."
