The Department of Public Health Order C19---02 and My Letter to the Editor

Over the weekend, the Department of Public Health issued the ORDER OF THE HEALTH OFFICER No. C19-02 with instructions for City-owned facilities to cancel all non-essential group events to facilitate social distancing, which will help prevent further spread of COVID-19 in our community.

Bravo to Tony Bravo for his plea “Don’t let virus fears kill local arts scene.”  I certainly sympathize with people with an autoimmune condition like those Erin Allday wrote about in “Isolation a risk amid virus fear” on March 8th, but I see signs that the epidemic of fear is worse than the epidemic of the coronavirus. I recently went to a sing-along for Baby Boomers at the Anza  Public Library, where they were discouraging large unnecessary gatherings but seemed to understand that a sing-along doesn’t fall into that category! Later I heard that a book discussion group is being cancelled there.  A friend scheduled to interview former SF Columnists, Leah Garchik and Ruthe Stein for Word Week in Noe Valley let me know that that, too, has been cancelled. 

I still plan to BART to two meetings pertaining to the climate change emergency that I wish people would take more seriously—the Last Chance Alliance today and the Women’s Environmental Network tomorrow.  It’s thanks to the latter that I learned about the Corona Dance, which puts washing hands into movements and had  242,793 views the last time I looked.

Let’s sing along to that as we wash our hands.