I messaged city leadership in early March about the dangers of COVID in a city with front-line workers living in overcrowded housing, and that they should treat this emergency with the same urgency as they would a 7.0 earthquake. EPA has not met the challenge of Coronavirus. This is literally the FIRST time I have seen City Manager Jaime Fontes make a statement about COVID-19. The city needed to have an "all hands on deck" approach, and has failed miserably in making this the #1 priority and elevating this to an emergency level "house on fire" response. There has been a lot of performative actions, but few public health measures that would have prevented us from having the worst response in the Bay Area. I've also been shocked by a lack of basic COVID-19 safety knowledge among staff, and the testing site had a enclosed room full of unmasked volunteers, county employees, and city employees - a perfect environment for a "mass contagion" event with a virus that is spread by aerosol transmission. A proper response from the city would have involved creating an emergency response team as we would in any other disaster. We have seen San Mateo Public Health officials ignore EPA, very little enforcement measures by police on parties (even when noise complaints are called in), little or nothing from City Council members or City Management messaging in Spanish. It was clear EPA was going to be hit hard by Coronavirus - but it did not need to be this bad. Holding city leadership accountable for this failure must be a priority - they did not take it seriously and the community is paying the price.

This story is filed under "ISSUES BEYOND PALO ALTO"!
- Would it not be possible to include the trip across a small bridge as close enough to Palo Alto to be filed as a new category: "CLOSE TO ALL" or something?

Why can’t police break up large social gatherings?