Anza Dog Park
Last week, Ariel, her puppy Jo and I joined dozens of people at Anza Park to celebrate the opening of the new dog park over there. There were about 10 pups there to join in the celebration.
After a few of us spoke about the importance of new spaces like this, we cut the ribbon and the pooches were let free to explore their new playground. I save little bits of the ribbons I’m involved with cutting – some included the opening of the Tanzania exhibit at the zoo, the new flamingo exhibit and the Tiny Monkey opening. Now a dog park. I guess you can see where my heart is – critters, and providing new spaces for them to thrive.
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Thanks are due to Tom Fisher and Greg Jackson for helping this project along. And to Lara Hamwey and her parks department team for managing the work. TPD played a big role in advocacy, and the K9 unit was on hand to take part in the opening. And of course the West University neighbors who provided the vision for the new dog park. Activating the entire park with new sand volleyball courts, plans for new playground equipment, a renovated bathroom, and now the dog park will make this a much more inviting place for community members.
This is a shot my bride took during our recent visit to the zoo. Thanks to Nancy, Sue and all of the zoo keepers who accommodated us during the visit. The picture is one of their trainers working with what has become of the Tanzania Exhibit. Over a half million people visit annually. It’s all safe outdoor stuff. You can see all their upcoming activities at www.reidparkzoo.org.
COVID and Vaccines
Ahead of the “Prelude” section below, I’m framing that version of reality with current data. Jeffrey Duchin is a physician in King County, Washington. He wrote about the impacts of COVID and how vaccines affect transmission. For most of us, this simply affirms intuition. Here’s Duchin’s recent Facebook post:
Here’s some more data. It shows that as vaccinations increase, the COVID case counts decrease. There’s a pretty straight line correlation.
Finally, with the under age 18 cohort less likely to be vaccinated than those who are older, this NY Times graphic clearly shows how that’s affecting COVID rates. Below I’ll show how our overall COVID numbers may be at a plateau – that's not the case for unvaccinated youth.
Go ahead and keep all that in mind as you read from the social media luminary I’ve quoted in recent newsletters.
Prelude to the Vaccine Update
I continue to see Facebook posts that demonstrate the local COVID denial, vaccine hesitancy group is still feeding each other misinformation. But it starts with the whole ‘liberty’ line. These next three quotes are all from the same guy. First, he was quoted in the Star saying this about COVID and mandates:
“I know it’s a real thing. I don’t think it’s a hoax. I’m not against masks, I’m not against getting vaccines. What I believe in is individual sovereignty. I don’t think government should tell me as an individual what I should do with my body.”
The government already tells you what you should do with ‘your body’. Seat belts – smoking – required vaccinations for attending public school include Hepatitis B, Polio, MMR, Chickenpox and Diptheria/Tetanus/Pertussis. Oh, and with the new Texas law on abortion, these right wing groups will have that ‘my body’ inconsistency to deal with. But I digress – here's what the same guy had to say in a different Facebook post:
And then this – from the same guy on social media.
"It is cognitive dissonance if we continue to ignore and even deny that everything about this pandemic doesn’t make sense. The pore size of masks range from 20 to 100 microns while the COVID-19 virus is 0.1 microns. Vaccines prior to 2021 prevented you from getting viruses but the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent you from getting or spreading COVID-19. The drugs that have been proven to help patients diagnosed with COVID-19 are either banned or forbidden now by the pharmacies. We are living in some truly frightening times that have fascism written all over it."
So he has gone from exercising liberty to calling vaccine mandates fascist. This stuff is being spread all over local social media every week. It’s also peppered with news of gun shows and ‘the 2nd Amendment is absolute’ quotes. Sort of along these lines, maybe?
Vaccine Update
Last week I shared portions of the Attorney General’s reply to a complaint filed by a Mesa legislator (Kelly Townsend) in which she claimed our vaccine mandate for city workers violates state law. Brnovich said the law she was referring to doesn’t go into effect until September 29th, and our ordinance predated that law. The result is our ordinance is legal.
On Tuesday of this past week, the AG issued what might be most charitably described as a change of heart new opinion. Here’s the concluding portion in which he now finds our vaccine mandate “does violate” state law.
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One novel piece of that statement is where the AG says, “a Tucson employee could rely in good faith on the expressions of public policy...”. What he’s saying is that since the legislature passed a law, even though it hasn’t gone into effect, employees can act as though it is in effect since in 90 days it will be. And more importantly that we as M&C are bound by it even though it’s not a law yet. For Brnovich, a law’s a law, even before it becomes a law. Even for this AG, that’s an interesting political position – but it’s not a defensible legal one. Here’s the reference to the effective date of the legislation outlawing vaccine mandates – and it appears in his very same revised AG opinion:
If the state passes a law that says on say September 29th it will be legal to cross a double yellow line in the roadway to pass another driver, that doesn’t mean crossing a double yellow line in the roadway to pass another driver is legal today. It means the new law is the law, when it becomes the law. Until then, stay on your side of the double yellow line. Until September 29th, the city of Tucson has the right to mandate vaccines among our employees.
Another part of Brnovich’s opinion – and that’s all it is – that's of interest is he bases it on SB1824. That’s the state law we’ve joined many other jurisdictions in suing to have it overturned. In state law there’s what’s called the ‘single subject’ rule. It means bills coming out of the state legislature must be about a single thing, and not be all over the map. The purpose is so legislators can vote for the main theme of a bill and not have to support issues that may also be contained in the bill, but that have nothing to do with the main thrust. SB1824 has sections dealing with group home licensing, the state health plan fund, distributions from the medical marijuana fund, quorums for the board of examiners, a newborn screening program fund, sexual violence services, more and more, and our mandatory vaccinations. We think that violates the single subject rule. Brnovich is relying on it to toss out our program before their law(s) go into effect.
There is now a 30 day meter running on our response to the Brnovich opinion. We have legal recourse outside of the AG’s office, but our first step will be to respond to the opinion and try to get a rational re-interpretation on the books. Failing that, we’re likely off to court. What’s at stake are two things; one, a portion of our state shared revenues if we lose and do not rescind our ordinance. That could cost us up to $120M in revenues. And the other thing that’s at stake is the health and safety of our employees who have been vaccinated and who would otherwise be forced to work alongside those who choose to remain unprotected by the vaccine. For both of those reasons I’m inclined to fight for our ordinance, and in fact continue the discussion about next steps that’s now scheduled for our September 14th study session.
Also last week, President Biden issued some new rules for large private sector employers, and for federal workers and contractors. That action is what prompted the ‘fascist’ comment by my social media ‘friend’. The city is not a federal contractor and so the mandatory vaccination rules introduced by the president won’t directly apply to us. However, we have Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) in place with Raytheon to provide fire department support. Raytheon does qualify as a private sector employer with over 100 workers. We have several IGAs in place with various law enforcement federal agencies. I’ve asked our legal people to consider whether any of those agreements we’ve signed onto cause our police and fire workers to be subject to Biden’s new rules.
Data and Risk Level
With all of that as background, let’s look at the past week’s risk level maps. First, this is the graph for national COVID cases for the past few months. You can see the slight downward tilt that happened late August, signaling the peak may have occurred. But that peak happened before colleges and universities resumed classes, and in many cases prior to public schools starting back again. We’ll have to keep an eye on the numbers now that both of those have happened.
Here is this week’s national risk level map comparison. These risks are for unvaccinated people, and they come from NY Times data. First, this is what I had in last week’s newsletter.
Nebraska is blank because they’re still not reporting data.
And this is the updated map from this past week. Scroll back and forth between the two. Some areas improved a bit, while others got worse. It’s what’s to be expected at this stage of Delta spread. Overall though, the vast majority of the nation is in either the very high, or extremely high risk category.
In Pima County, our infection numbers, while still in the very high category, they’re better than they’ve been for the past 2 weeks.. This is the countywide data I shared in last week’s newsletter:
This current graphic shows the improvement.
Don’t just look at the numbers though. The comment says “the CDC recommends that even vaccinated people wear masks here.” Nothing about their ineffectiveness based on the size of the pores – to the chagrin of the social media ‘friend’ I opened with.
Our Pima County vaccination rates continue to improve. It’s worth noting that Maricopa County is still under 50% fully vaccinated for all residents. They’re in the extremely high risk level with 40 new cases per 100,000 population. And they’ve had over 665,000 people contract COVID since March, 2020.
La Paz, Yavapai and Mohave Counties are all under 40% fully vaccinated. And of those 3, only Yavapai has more than 60% of its “Age 65+” fully vaccinated. They’re only at 61%. There’s a lot of science denial going on throughout Arizona.
Here’s a listing of this week’s mobile vaccination sites being offered by the Pima County Health Department. There are plenty more options this week than there were in the holiday-shortened week we just had. No cost/no appointments needed.
And this is their list of standing points of vaccine distribution.
Go to the Pima County Health site if you want to find the list of pharmacies that’ll give you a dose, or if you’re a veteran looking to be vaccinated. Use this link - www.pima.gov/covid19vaccine. There is no reason anybody cannot find a vaccination option if they’re looking for one.
Our Pima County case numbers dropped a few hundred last week. That’s consistent with the mildly good trend we’re starting to see. We’re still too early to see the full impact of Labor Day activities, and the resumption of school. Here’s the week by week look I’ve been tracking since the end of July.
Week of 7/26 - 827 new cases
Week of 8/2 - 1,301 new cases
Week of 8/9 - 1,570 new cases
Week of 8/16 - 1,737 new cases
Week of 8/23 - 1,963 new cases
Week of 8/30 - 2,025 new cases
Week of 9/6 - 1,720 new cases
During the first week in June we had 130 new cases.
We got an update on the transmission rate from the UA folks last week. The previous rate had been provided before students began arriving back in town. You can see the UA area (85719 zip code) has bumped up since their return. It’s not alarmingly high, but it’s doing what anyone should have predicted since nobody is required to be masked or vaccinated in their large gatherings – or even to attend classes.
Note the UA area trend line for new cases. Unsurprisingly, it popped back up as students began to return at the first part of August.
Some colleges and universities are shifting back to virtual. A few examples from scattered locations around the country include; In Ohio, Eastern Gateway Community College and in Texas, the University of Dallas are temporarily going to all online courses. Lehigh in Pennsylvania, St. Lawrence University in New York and the University of Hawaii/Hilo are giving faculty the right to decide if they want to teach in person, or online. And Morehouse cancelled their homecoming activities, although their football game on that day will be played.
The schools that are returning to remote and/or giving faculty the option are in the small minority of colleges and universities across the country. The norm is full football stadiums, and full classrooms. But the numbers for Delta spread have seemingly stabilized, so we can at least hope this experiment in large social gatherings works out. I know lots of health care workers who prefer we don’t use football stadiums as experimental labs.
Sustainable Tucson
This month, Sustainable Tucson has two of our city/county employees coming to share with you the work they/we are doing on sustainability. Our not-so-new-anymore Parks Director Lara Hamwey will be joined by the County’s Manager of Sustainability Julie Robinson to talk about the work being done that fits the Sustainable Tucson mission.
In the past week, I’ve worked with Lara on establishing new landscape management protocols that use organic treatments. She’s totally on board with our being headed in that direction. She can expand on that, and other work we’re doing at the city level. Julie and her department are out in the broader region, working to preserve the beautiful, and now green Sonoran Desert that we all love so much.
Bring questions. The meeting starts at 6pm on Tuesday, September 14th. You can find the link at the Sustainable Tucson website at www.sustainabletucson.org.
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More Random Acts of Kindness
Last week I shared some examples of kindness that’s happening in midtown neighborhoods that is I feel is emblematic of how we are a caring and compassionate community. One more this week – from Rincon Heights, they’ve now expanded their Little Free library to include a Little Free Pantry.
While the homeless in our community certainly need this sort of a lift, we also have families who are still struggling due to job loss. Making sure their needs are touched in a positive way is the goal of the neighbors who are stocking and restocking these pantries. I walk into the office every day, and I see other examples of Little Free Libraries along the route. They’re in Blenman-Elm, Catalina Vista and in Miramonte. And they’re scattered throughout midtown – I see them while I’m out biking.
Thank you for caring, and for providing for neighbors. These are just small examples of who we really are as a community.
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Suicide Prevention Month
Last week I shared the early plans for the NAMI suicide prevention forum. This is suicide prevention month, and it’s the month school began again. COVID is still obvious in our school settings, and the return to that environment after in what was in some cases an extended ‘virtual’ school experience is causing some real emotional challenges for our youth. We want to provide a safe space, and the counsel of experts for anyone who is wrestling with how to cope.
That ‘anyone’ might be youth. Or it might be parents. Or friends. We also know lots of grandparents have taken on more child care duties. Everyone who is, or knows adolescents, or younger who may be having tough times is invited to this forum. Adolescents are the age group most heavily impacted by suicide throughout COVID.
The experts who’ll be on this call will be from Banner UMC and TMC’s pediatric health areas. And Shelly Jernigan from NAMI will join to offer the resources available through their organization. Mostly, this is a listening space. Please share this link with parents and youth. The forum is by zoom, so people can preserve their anonymity by turning off their camera and doing a name change on the screen.
The Zoom will take place from 6pm – 7:30pm. Here’s the link and other information you’ll need to sign in.
Meeting ID: 880 3881 4522
TEP Substation
In last week’s newsletter I gave an update on the M&C action with regard to the proposed TEP transmission line project. It’s the planned upgrade of electric power from the current 46kV to 136kV. The issue isn’t whether or not customers want good service from TEP. It’s how that service arrives at their home or business. Or to the UA or Banner.
This map shows all of the various routes TEP has considered. If you follow this newsletter, you’re familiar with it. The lime green route is 5A. It is to run down Euclid and through several midtown neighborhoods. Our vote last week was to reject that as an option. TEP had already done so, but in an effort to divide neighbors against one another, the week before our vote they tossed it back into the mix.
There are 3 remaining potential routes. TEP identified only 1B, but all of the Route 1s should still be up for discussion. They come down Kino/Campbell. When 1B reaches Banner, it turns and weaves through Jefferson Park neighborhood. That’s what TEP has suggested is their ‘preferred’ route. But the “1” routes can also simply continue up Campbell, stay along the arterial and turn up Grant. We have left all possibilities on the table, with one caveat; Kino is a Gateway Corridor. By ordinance that means the lines are to be underground.
TEP was to have gone before the Corporation Commission line siting committee on September 13th to argue for 5A, and failing that, for 1B. Based on our vote, they’ve asked for an extension on their case with the line siting committee. And last week the line siting committee granted that so TEP can continue working with the city, and other parties on where and how the transmission lines will go.
The new date they’ve got for making a presentation to the line siting group is February, 2022. That leaves us about 6 months to engage and come up with a better solution than has been offered.
We don’t need Tucson to be made up of this sort of viewshed.
Or this – a TEP simulation of what parts of Jefferson Park would look like under their preferred plan:
In their presentations they’ve said the smaller poles would come out ‘within 5 years, where possible’. There are therefore no commitments from the company to underground or remove anything.
My constituents are their customers. That’s the same as with the telecoms who are putting in the new 5G poles. Our neighborhoods don’t need to look like utility zones. We’re now having a new conversation about just that. In TEP’s case, we’ve got a 6 month meter that just started running. More to come.
New Variant Strains
The Mu variant (pronounced M,Yoo – not the noise a cow makes) is now in 49 states, and in 40 countries. It’s one of several variants of Coronavirus. This map shows where we’ve now seen Mu. As noted in the graphic, it began in Columbia.
Mu is still classed as a variant of interest. That means it hasn’t yet begun the wide spread that Delta has presented. The real focus of the vaccines and medical community is Delta. It’s why we’re in our 4th wave of COVID. So while Delta is still the devil we know, public health officials are increasingly watching Mu.
Dr. Joshua LaBaer is an ASU physician. He commented on Mu last week in an ABC15 interview. LaBaer confirmed that due to the variants, even vaccinated people can become infected. So why get vaccinated? Because the severity of the illness is significantly increased among those who have no vaccine protection.
The most vulnerable population is young people. They just returned to school, many aren’t old enough for any vaccine, and Ducey has his no-mask-mandate order in place. So what does a virus do? It changes (mutates into new variations of itself) and it infects new targets. In increasing numbers, that’s our school aged kids.
Dr. LaBaer has this advice:
“We should get vaccinated. When we’re indoors and in close quarters, we should wear masks. And then, of course, maintain social distancing where you possibly can.”
Locally, Dr. Cullen from Pima County health says we’ve had cases of Mu in our area for probably 2-3 weeks. She says it’s ‘spreading quietly’ and is a variant we need to keep an eye on. But Delta is still the variant that’s filling our hospitals. It’s too early to draw conclusions as to how transmissible, or how much more severe symptoms can become with Mu. For now all the advice from the legitimate medical community stays the same; get vaccinated and follow all of the CDC protocols Dr. LaBaer cited.
Harvard Global Health Institute
Looking at the national Harvard maps we can see more spread in the past week. Since the prior week showed a nearly all red risk level, the change is incremental. But what we’re not seeing yet is significant reversals of the COVID virus risk rate.
If we’re at a plateau, it’s high into the risk levels. This is the map I had in last week’s newsletter from the Harvard Global Health folks:
One week later it looks like this. Nobody calls this progress. And no, Nebraska isn’t really enjoying a green light. They’re simply not reporting data.
Last week Harvard had Pima County’s new cases per 100,000 population at 26.2, and our 7 day moving average for new cases was 274. This week they have us moved to the orange risk level – that's an improvement. It’s 2 weeks in a row of slight improvement.
Arizona on a statewide basis also improved. We moved from 43 new cases per 100,000 down to 38, and the 7 day average dropped from 315 to 276. All of that’s good news. What’s not yet reflected is the impact of school reopening, the return of UA students, the activities we saw over Labor Day weekend, and 40,000 people attending a UA football. People who attended the game told me they estimate fewer than 10% of fans wore masks. That’s because the athletics department didn’t mandate them, and UA leadership didn’t require proof of vaccination upon entry.
As an athletics department sidebar – last night was the first game with fans in attendance since COVID started. There’s a group of people who have been volunteering to keep stats at athletic events, some of whom have been dedicating their time for free for over 30 years. Not a single one of them received even a phone call telling them their service was appreciated, but not needed any longer. There were lots of very late nights for that crew. Heeke/Robbins and the gang owed them a note of thanks. But as I’ve also experienced, those sorts of formalities aren’t high on their list of priorities.
I’m hopeful that we’ll get lucky and continue seeing the good trend. And I know I join lots of public health people who are watching closely.
You can check what’s going on in your home county by hovering your cursor over it on the Harvard map. Use this link to access it:
COVID has killed over 650,000 people in the U.S. alone. In March of last year, someone predicting that would have been ignored. People who remain unvaccinated are still ignoring that reality.
COVID kills 19x more people than the flu. Please get your flu vaccination, get your COVID vaccination, wear a mask, and watch out for the misinformation that’s being spread.
Here’s this week’s statewide COVID map.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik Council Member, Ward 6 ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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