Will your job require a COVID vaccination? Why many California businesses aren't so sure
Sac Bee, DALE KASLER: "Scott Shapiro and the vast majority of his co-workers at the DowneyBrand law firm in Sacramento have been vaccinated against COVID-19. But Shapiro, the firm’s managing partner, isn’t ready to order the remaining employees to get vaccinated.
Among the reasons: He doesn’t want them to leave.
“In this employment market, you don’t want to lose good people,” Shapiro said."
READ MORE related to Vaccines/Masks: 'Breakthrough' cases rising in LA, but the vaccinated are still strongly protected, data show -- LA Times, LUKE MONEY
CDC document paints more dire picture of threat posed by Deta variant
LA Times, KAREN KAPLAN: "The highly transmissible Delta variant is a more formidable foe than previously believed, largely due to its ability to infect and be spread by people who are fully vaccinated, according to data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A confidential document prepared by the agency cites evidence from a recent outbreak in Massachusetts involving at least 145 people who were infected with the Delta variant, which was first detected in India. In the Massachusetts outbreak, the viral loads of the 80 people who were vaccinated were essentially the same as the viral loads of the 65 people who were not vaccinated.
The CDC document also cites reports about so-called breakthrough cases in India. The viral loads of vaccinated people who nonetheless became infected with Delta were higher than the viral loads of vaccinated people who were infected with other coronavirus strains, those reports found."
C.D.C. Internal Report Calls Delta Variant as Contagious as Chickenpox
NY Times, APOORVA MANDAVILLI: "The Delta variant is much more contagious, more likely to break through protections afforded by the vaccines and may cause more severe disease than all other known versions of the virus, according to an internal presentation circulated within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the agency, acknowledged on Tuesday that vaccinated people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant carry just as much virus in the nose and throat as unvaccinated people, and may spread it just as readily, if less often.
But the internal document lays out a broader and even grimmer view of the variant.
Bay Area residents confront climbing case numbers and renewed restrictions
The Chronicle, RYAN KOST: "Many months ago, more than a year at this point, the pandemic was supposed to be a short nuisance, something happening elsewhere that would only derail the usual ways of living for a couple weeks. It didn’t take long to realize how naive that thinking was.
Hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of people died, and those that didn’t lost whatever year they’d imagined for themselves as the pandemic continued on, no end in sight.
But then in June, some sort of ending began to feel within reach. Health officials across the United States rolled back pandemic-era measures almost entirely. There would be no more mask mandates, no more tiers or restrictions — just life."
PG&E 'criminally liable' in 2020's fatal Zogg Fire in California, Shasta prosecutor says
Sac Bee, DALE KASLER: "Shasta County prosecutors plan to file criminal charges against PG&E Corp. over its role in last September’s fatal Zogg Fire.
It will mark the third time in less than three years that a big California wildfire has triggered criminal charges against Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett announced Thursday on Facebook that “her office has determined that PG&E is criminally liable for causing the Zogg Fire. This fire caused the deaths of four people and damaged numerous homes and other structures, killed wildlife and harmed our community.”
California's long history on assault weapons on the line in court battle
LA Times, PATRICK MCGREEVY: "Born of a long history of gun violence, California’s pioneering assault weapons ban was enacted in 1989 after a herculean effort by lawmakers driven by outrage over a mass shooting at a Stockton elementary school.
Legislators said they had to overcome a years-long grip on the Capitol by the National Rifle Assn. and shift strategies to pass the first-in-the-nation law.
But now, after a federal judge’s ruling declared it unconstitutional, gun safety advocates fear California’s trailblazing work is in jeopardy, concerned that the decision could help unravel decades of hard-fought progress here and across the country."
Newsom says California recall could help GOP in 2022, have 'consequences nationwide'
Sac Bee, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "If California Gov. Gavin Newsom is recalled, he predicted the effects would be felt “all across the country” for “many, many years,” arguing Thursday in an interview with McClatchy’s California editorial boards that it could boost Republican chances in the 2022 midterms.
The Democratic governor, who faces a recall election Sept. 14, said he doesn’t think people are really considering the question of what happens if he loses.
“I don’t think the National Democratic Party’s asking themselves that question,” Newsom said during the interview with the editorial boards of The Sacramento Bee, The Fresno Bee, The Modesto Bee and The Tribune of San Luis Obispo. “If this was a successful recall, I think it would have profound consequences nationwide, and go to not just politics, but to policy and policymaking.”"
READ MORE related to Recall Effort: California voters say recall election is a waste of money -- Sac Bee, KATHERINE SWARTZ; Recall candidate Kevin Faulconer once lobbied for auto industry group that questioned climate science -- The Chronicle, DUSTIN GARDINER
SJ potentially first Bay Area school district to require staff to be vaccinated. Will SF follow?
The Chronicle, EMMA TALLEY/ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: "Teachers and other staff in San Jose schools will have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or get tested twice a week, district officials announced this week, a decision aimed at mitigating the delta variant and rising case rates just as classrooms are set to fully reopen.
The South Bay district was among the first school systems in the country to mandate vaccines for employees, following New York’s lead, even as other education officials across the Bay Area contemplate the idea.
San Jose Unified, which serves over 30,000 students, appears to be the first district in the Bay Area to require vaccines of employees, but probably not the last."
Governor Newsom to join President Biden in second White House meeting on Western wildfires
Sac Bee, ISABELLA BLOOM: "President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with Gov. Gavin Newsom and six other governors on Friday to discuss efforts to prevent 2021 wildfires, according to White House officials.
California so far has had 5,671 wildfires in 2021. The still-burning Dixie Fire in Butte, Plumas and Tehama counties has already destroyed over 220,000 acres, according to Cal Fire.
Biden and Harris on Friday will hear from the governors of California, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho and Minnesota. The meeting comes after 22 extreme weather and climate-related disasters caused some $95 billion in damages in 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
How a forgotten Black activist fueled a California city's racial reckoning
LA Times, JEANETTE MARANTOS: "For 129 years, Black educator and activist Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark lay unsung and forgotten in an unmarked grave in Altadena’s Mountain View Cemetery.
She was the granddaughter of a freedman who fought in the Revolutionary War and spent years traveling alone through the South to teach formerly enslaved people how to read and write, protected only by a paper “passport” to show she had no owner but herself.
In 1866 she went to court to argue that law-abiding African Americans should be able to sit wherever they chose — nearly 90 years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala."
Ed Buck's Black victims fought to be believed
LA Times, HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS: "Before he testified in federal court about Ed Buck injecting him with methamphetamine, one man’s anxiety sent him to the hospital.
Others who had planned to testify against Buck, who was convicted this week in the overdose deaths of two Black men in his apartment, couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Some wept on the witness stand.
Before testifying, Dane Brown, whose near-fatal overdose led to Buck’s 2019 arrest, did deep breathing exercises and tried to steel himself for his character being publicly questioned since he was homeless and in the throes of addiction when he last saw Buck."
