A (Somewhat) Radical Proposal for Reopening Los Angeles

• The Covid-19 virus is quite deadly, at least for some part of the population. Besides the by-now well-known pneumonia that causes people to turn blue from lack of oxygen in the blood, there are, in addition, blood clotting disorders. A recent article in the New York Times claims that there have been a lot of cases in which people don’t even realize that they have it – they show up in the emergency room for some other problem, and are found to also have patches of Covid-19 pneumonia scattered through their lungs. 

• The social distancing seems to be helping in preventing new cases. It doesn’t work perfectly (at least the somewhat haphazard way we do it in the U.S.), but it has caused the epidemic to slow down. What I mean by this is that the case numbers are no longer doubling every few days. For a good look at how the curve has been slowing all over California, I recommend the Los Angeles Times tracking page and scrolling down to the graph called cumulative cases by county.   

• We are probably a long way (half a year? three years?) from having an effective vaccine, and we don’t really know if or when we will start to have truly effective treatments for late-stage disease. One antiviral is showing a bit of promise, but even there, it is just a matter of getting people out of the intensive care unit a few days quicker. 

If we were truly rational as a society and, in addition, if we had sufficient resources to keep people fed, clothed, and entertained indoors for additional months, then continuing sequestration would probably be the best approach in terms of saving lives. But for most of us, it is beginning to be quite the drag. We all want to get out, go to a restaurant, and even for me, to get a haircut.  You don’t have to be a radical-Trumpian to feel this way. The difference is that most of us have been sensible enough to avoid joining large crowds of protesters or citing the Constitution (quite incorrectly) as a rule against enforcing the public health. 

We might consider taking a careful look at how we can relax some of the strictures, but doing so without subjecting the population (or ourselves) to immediate increased risk. For example, we could allow some small businesses to reopen, doing so on a case by case basis. Perhaps some hairdressers would be OK to open, even if some have to remain closed. For example, there are probably some shops that are just too cramped to allow for safe usage, or lack proper facilities for washing up, or – and this is not getting the proper attention in the press – whether or not there is sufficient air flow to allow for safety. If we are all cramped together, breathing each other’s germs, that does not make for safety during an epidemic. 

But a well-equipped, modern shop with filtered air could probably run  safely. 

The problem of course is how to determine which shops are going to be safe and which need to be kept closed (or at the least, would require an update in the ventilation system, for example). This question comes down to what the rules are, but equally important, who is going to make the decision. There is no way that the city of Los Angeles, for example, could hire the thousands of inspectors it would take to figure these things out. 

So here is one possibility. We already have a fairly large group of elected people who are used to working as committees and being trained in government rules. I’m talking about the city’s neighborhood councils. There are currently 99 of them in the city of Los Angeles and together, they have nearly 2000 elected board members. They might manage to function as a sounding board for members of the public and for small business owners who are desperate to reopen. 

If the government were to establish a set of reasonable rules regarding all those safety issues – spacing, ventilation, plumbing, and even parking – then it is also likely that we would see a quick growth of professional consultants who could inspect and certify small businesses as being safe, and then write the application to reopen. 

The next step would be to filter completed  applications from businesses through some mechanism just to make sure that everything has been properly done. A couple of thousand neighborhood council volunteers (who are, in fact, elected officials under the city Charter) could act as that filter. 

We’ve seen a similar process in the past, even if it wasn’t at such a widespread level. Some City Council representatives invite developers to present their plans for new buildings to their local neighborhood councils. Most of the councils have something equivalent to a land use and planning committee. 

There are obviously some questions that would arise. What credentials should be required from contractors, civil engineers, or architects in order for them to make the requisite inspections and to provide their professional recommendations? How would such recommendations be filtered through a process that would ensure that everything has been done honestly? 

Note that if this sort of process were to be left to the county inspectors, it would never get done. 

Would this proposed process create more problems than it would fix? That’s a good question. The way I look at it is that there are three main possibilities for reopening businesses in the city of Los Angeles: 

No official process. Each business is on its honor to do the right thing. 

A quick official process using professionals to inspect and thousands of volunteers to certify. 

An extremely slow official process that requires certification by the same agencies that take months to get one new snack bar going. 

Addendum 

The New York Times recently exposed the anti-vaccine groups as an active force in the recent public protests. Remember that if the anti-vaccine people were to succeed in their fantasies, every year would be like this year of the epidemic, only worse. Think of three or four serious infectious diseases going around all at once. 

An additional scare 

Just a few minutes before this writing, Kevin Drum (quoting the New York Times) revealed a government study suggesting that the death toll will rise to 3000 per day over the next month, and that the ultimate U.S. death toll could be in the range of multiple hundreds of thousands. It’s too early to know whether this claim has any merit, but if the Covid-19 epidemic goes into a second, worse phase, then all bets are off regarding getting business and life back to normal.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected] )

-cw