Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-For most of 2020, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti lectured us daily on TV about Corona Virus Disease (“COVID”) and devised insane, unscientific orders like allowing us to walk on the damp sand of a shore but prohibiting us from lying on the dry sand of its beach while telling us he “listens to scientists” who gave no such warnings.
This, as Garcetti was repeatedly captured in public without a mask and not practicing safe social distancing, leading one national pundit to refer to him as a “neurotic megalomaniac.”
Garcetti’s hypocrisy and dishonesty aside, with the virus now reaching everyone from President Donald Trump to star NFL quarterback Cam Newton, it is a good time to point out some virus super-spreader risks among us.
For example, Costco members know that early on in the pandemic, the chain removed the seating and condiment areas of its snack bars to minimize contact risk. The problem is that the chain didn’t go far enough.
While Costco did a stellar job with those measures, along with putting barriers between customers and cashiers, it failed to mitigate the risks of the public coming into contact with its snack bar drink dispensers by trusting people to read its posted signs and follow its guidelines which say that if they want a refill, the store will gladly give them a new, clean cup.
In one of many documented instances, a man took an empty water bottle and placed its mouth against the drink dispenser’s water spigot. In another, a young boy trying to create a masterpiece mix of different soda flavors, repeatedly placed his cup on the various soda releases, sipped from his cup to get his mix right, got some more of another flavor, sipped again, and so on and so forth; a perfectly normal kid endeavor in any year before 2020. Note the warning sign prohibiting this is posted above the boy’s line of vision, but not of that of an adult like the one with the water bottle.
In other words, the drink dispensers and the bottle and cup are potential virus conduits if even one person who came in contact with the boy, the man or the drink dispensers has the virus.
That would seem to enable a whole lot of potential virus spread.
I reached out last week to Costco’s corporate communications people, and while the chain has yet to return the call, by the next morning, its stores in my area – and hopefully everywhere – immediately set-up barriers to the soda machines with employees manning the potables.
Sorry, I should know better than to use a sexist word like “manning”. . .Please don’t cancel me. . .
Speaking of men, a whole bunch of them (and women and children) gathered on a recent sweltering weekend for a car show that stretched for blocks along Van Nuys Boulevard. During any other summer, it would have been a typical Southern California scene, except that in 2020, when we can’t gather in the cavernous confines of Dodger Stadium, packing the streets and sidewalks with upwards of a thousand mask-less people seeking a summer escape didn’t sound like a particularly wise idea, either. Most of the people and their rides were gathered in a jam-packed side parking lot of a nearby supermarket, while everyone else was elbow-to-elbow on the sidewalks, where a plethora of gourmet-style food trucks – some as stylish as the refurbished classic cars the people came to admire and ogle – ran a brisk business.
The event was peaceful with no visible LAPD presence. I reached out to the agency to find out if the event was permitted, i.e. does Garcetti’s City Hall take into consideration the risk of densely populated events like this?
No such permit surfaced.
And then there’s the ongoing fecal funk, like the one in the Sherman Oaks area represented by LA City Councilmember David Ryu. His office has been non-responsive to homeless people blasting their stuff along a high-rent area of Ventura Boulevard, not only resulting in passersby and their dogs tracking the waste into local cafes and stores, but also into their cars and homes.
Perhaps the problem isn’t yet close enough to Ryu’s nearby office to warrant a response to protect his community and those who come to shop and dine there. Or maybe Ryu and his City Hall peers forgot that the typhus outbreak that happened a year or so before the pandemic was likely tracked into City Hall offices by the same type of foot-traffic-through-feces and by flea-infested rats.
But where there’s desperation, there are also rays of hope. On Sunday morning, near Ryu’s office, a couple who had been sleeping along a nearby storefront quietly and calmly woke up from that same filthy sidewalk. They put on their footwear, got up, stretched, and did one breathtaking thing that indicated a ray of hope in their spirits.
They checked their reflection in a nearby window.
They fixed their clothing a bit, smoothed out the hair, did the best they could with what they’ve got and went on their way. They weren’t screaming with delusion, as other nearby street residents sometimes do. Despite it all, they have hope that all of this will eventually pass and are just trying to keep it together as best as they can in the meanwhile.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Online Political Commentary and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams
