sheetthe News, Views & Culture of the Eastern Sierra Maddy (Public House) said the bar is typically packed on a Thursday night. Seeing red (tier) would beat seeing red by a mile. Saturday, January 30, 2021 FREE Vol. 19, No. 5 A GOOD PUSH ALWAYS HELPS OUT OF ORDER By Page n Monday, January 25, ary 28, a case rate of 88.3 per the California govern- 100,000 residents and a 15% Oment opted to cancel positivity rate. regionalized stay at home A refresher on what the orders throughout the state, purple tier means: lodging can returning all counties to the tier open with restrictions on gym system according to Covid-19 and pool facilities, restaurants statistics. can open for outdoor seat- The stay-at-home order, in ing, most retail is open at 25% place since early December, capacity, and some personal had been largely ineffective in services (i.e haircuts, tattoo restricting the movement of shops) can reopen. people throughout the state In addition to rescinding the and a number of jurisdictions stay-at-home order, Newsom chose to lightly (or not at all) also altered the prioritization enforce restrictions on hotels list for Covid-19 vaccinations, and dining. basing it on age as opposed to Governor Gavin Newsom occupation or risk factors. said that he made his decision Locally, Mono County issued based on hospital ICU capacity a press release highlighting projections over the course of the changes from the stay-at- On Wednesday, The Sheet’s Owen Page encountered six stranded vehicles on his walk down Old Mammoth home order to the purple tier. Road to the Grocery Outlet. This driver of this Subaru was lucky enough to get a helpful push from a Cat the next four weeks. The state driver. According to Page, “He filled the bucket with snow and nudged the guy very gently. It was quite skillful.” chose to factor surge capac- The county opted to restrict ity into the ICU availability local lodging to 60% capacity metrics, which pushed the for operators with more than FROM 20 TO 60 IN A FLASH numbers above the necessary 10 properties and 18 nights/ By Page 15% needed for a given region month for operators with less he Eastern Sierra had its 6 inches of snow on Tuesday, Steinwand of the inyo County to reopen in the purple tier. than 10 properties, with a man- first (and hopefully not 40 inches on Wednesday, and Water Department said “as of Two regions were not subject datory 24 hour gap between Tlast) big storm of the year 34 inches on Thursday by 3:30 Monday, we were on track (in to the stay-at-home order at the stays for cleaning. this week, beginning Tuesday p.m. for a total of 80 inches so regard to snowpack) with 2014- time of its lifting: Greater Sacra- The Town of Mammoth night and projected to last far with more expected through 2015,” the driest year on record, mento had the order lifted on Lakes issued a press release through Friday morning. the night. at 22% of average for the season January 12 while Northern Wednesday veering from Mono As of press time Thursday, At the Inyo County Supervi- to date. California was never subject County’s edict, stating it would Mammoth Mountain reported sors meeting Tuesday, Dr. Aaron If the storms materialized to it. allow 70% capacity. (they have), “we might get to Both Mono and Inyo coun- Emergency Operations Com- 60%” he added. ties were placed in the purple mand Public Information Of- The cold temperatures tier, the most restrictive, upon ficer Stu Brown talked through brought the snow to the val- the state’s rescinding of the the new information from the ley floor, with Bishop and the order. Mono’s 7-day positiv- state, citing the change in met- Owens Valley blanketed by ity rate has decreased over the rics as the reason for the state’s Wednesday morning. Overall, past two weeks to the 10-12% actions. Forecasting out, the ex- Lunch guesses not quite a foot. range, down from a peak of panded ICU capacity in South- Weather forecasters warned 26% but still above the state’s ern California is projected to be of high winds through Friday 8% threshold to be reclassified at 33.3% in four weeks. morning, especially along the The state also issued new crest, creating difficult, whiteout into the red tier (which would permit in-person dining). The school guidance: grades K-6 driving conditions. may be in-person with 25 Local authorities were quick county’s per capita positiv- ity rate sits at 487 per 100,000 cases per 100k residents for five to close Highway 395 from the consecutive days while grades Nevada Border down to State residents, down from a peak 7-12 would have to wait until a Route 203 (Mammoth Lakes) of 1,300 per 100,000 little more county reaches the red tier. on Tuesday night. The high- than a week ago. Town Finance Director Rob way was expected to remain Inyo County listed 59 active Patterson, who also leads the closed in both directions into cases as of Thursday, Janu- Courtesy of California’s Department of Water Resources see COVID, page 9 see ORDER, page 8 Looking down range Hokey Pokey Clinic WallStreetBets Big tip Who gives a ‘stan? p. 2/ p. 15/ p. 10-11/ p. 14/ p. 4/ 2 I www.thesheetnews.com THE SHEET I Saturday, January 30, 2021 Ted Carleton ....... the Jack of all Lunches DON’T CELEBRATE TOO EARLY 760.937.4613 / [email protected] It was one of those weeks. I really don’t remember what I did. I think that when a bunch of letters come in (content!), one has a tendency to take the June Simpkins...Jack of everything else foot off the pedal. Especially when they’re good letters. So thank you to the 760.937.3967 / [email protected] Sheet community for picking up the slack. sheet Owen Page ..................... Writer As a counterpoint to much in this paper regarding getting towns and busi- News, Views & Culture of the Eastern Sierra [email protected] nesses open, here are a few notes of dissent. Clouds McCloud ......... Inyo County Public Health Officer James Richardson told Inyo Supervi- Ass-trologer sors Tuesday that if one of these new, more infectious Covid strains takes “Why would we lie to ourselves?” Spike Todd .......... -Bill S. Preston, Esq. Beverage Consultant hold, there is exponential impact. If a strain is 50% more infectioous, he said, you’ll have twice the num- ber of cases in two weeks and a four- to five-fold increase in cases within a JACK LUNCH P.O. Box 8088 PUBLISHER month. This courtesy of Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, one of the Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546 experts Richardson says he relies upon. For a subscription, visit the website, make a 760.924.0048/[email protected] The problem is the viral load in a new, more infectious strain. Places that donation and be added to the e-mail blast An adjudicated paper of general circula- may have been generally safe previously (like the grocery store, if everyone’s list. tion. © 2021 The Sheet, all rights reserved. masked), may not be as safe now, said Richardson. “some of the worst genomic surveillance on the planet.” As it stands, “Transmission risk is 20 times higher in an indoor setting,” he What is genomic surveillance? It’s essentially the detective work scientists said, do to track a virus and its various mutations. And so the issue you have, as Supervisor Jeff Griffiths said, is that the The first two paragraphs of an article which appeared two weeks ago on rescinding of the stay-at-home order sends a confused message. People will Nature.com: thinking the lifting of the order means its time to party - and the Super Bowl 2021 is shaping up to be the year of COVID-19 variants. In the past two is just around the corner. months, scientists have identified several fast-spreading variants that have “Gatherings are a huge issue,” said Richardson. “People are doing what prompted government restrictions in many countries — and new variants they want and ignoring basic guidelines.” are being detected more frequently. From Lipsitch courtesy of a January 8 story which appeared on vox.com: The pandemic has ushered in an era of genomic surveillance in which A 50 percent more transmissible virus, Lipsitch says, means “we need to cut scientists are tracking genomic changes to a virus at a speed and scale never our contacts down by another third compared to the already strong restric- seen before. But surveillance is patchy globally, particularly in the United tions [already in place] in order to get back to the same place where we States, which has the world’s largest COVID-19 outbreak, and in many low- were.” and middle-income countries. Scientists warn that worrying variants are Richardson isn’t the only one. Another public health official, speaking on probably spreading undetected in these regions. condition of anonymity, said, “You can learn a lot by looking around the ... The number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes that the United States has shared globe ... by getting your head up and looking down range once in awhile. on GISAID (a non-profit online database) is less than 0.3% of its total Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, the U.K. ... their numbers are down number of COVID-19 infections. That compares with nearly 5% for the but they’re all extending [strict]public health orders.