California COVID Crazy
Now and then, my wife and I go up to Solvang, a Danish-themed tourist town north of Santa Barbara. It does a lot of Christmas business, while the temperate climate there has always allowed outdoor dining and beer drinking. Gov Newsom's order last weekend to shut down outdoor dining over most of the state threatened the town's existence, so its city council promptly voted to except itself from the ban and requested that local law enforcement not enforce it, which of course California sheriffs have generally announced they will not do. There's another particular twist to Solvang's situation, because Newsom added an entirely new level of regional COVID enforcement based on hospital ICU capacity, over and above an existing county-level color-coded enforcement based on COVID statistics. The problem is that Santa Barbara County, where Solvang is, has been lumped into a new Southern California region for ICU capacity. Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo...