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SF COVID Cases Up 50% Since Thanksgiving

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Wear a fucking mask!

That’s a pretty striking headline isn’t it? I saw this info on the new publication Public Comment and had to share it. You should check them out.

The moral of the story though is that Americans are stupid and selfish and we keep doing idiotic things and then wonder why nearly 310,000 people are dead and our cities keep getting shut down. All the authorities said, “Do NOT travel on Thanksgiving” and millions of people thought “They must be talking to someone other than me” and now here we are.

As Annie Gaus points out in her Public Comment article, “San Francisco International Airport reports that about 170,000 people flew out of SFO between Nov. 20 and Nov. 29”. That’s some dumbfuckery. I know we all really want to see our loved ones, but by doing so we are putting ourselves and every single person we come in contact with in danger. It also leads to the shutdowns we are now experiencing.

We’re now at the point where only 12.9% of ICU beds in Bay Area hospitals are available which has led to a mandatory quarantine of 10 days for anyone traveling to SF from outside the Bay Area. Now the more self-centered people reading this may be thinking “If I don’t get COVID how does running out of hospital beds impact me?” Despite making you an asshole, it makes you incredibly shortsighted. Let me explain:

Let’s say your partner gets in a bad accident or your kid is hit by a car, and they need to be rushed to the hospital. Full hospitals mean your loved one may not get the attention they need as quickly as they should. Our healthcare frontliners are already overworked and the fewer ICU beds we have, the less likely it is that everyone who should survive a serious accident will.

Our collective actions or inactions have humongous ripple effects. It’s fucked up to think about but you traveling to see your family could lead to someone losing a member of theirs. These are the terrible results of our uniquely American brand of ignorance and stupidity.

And there’s a whole host of new restrictions on which types of businesses can be open and at what capacity. Alex broke down what the newest lockdown measures mean in his article yesterday.

So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t travel for Christmas or New Years. I know this sucks and 2020 has been horrible. But the vaccines are rolling out. Let’s be the best community members we can be until we can get vaccinated. Then we can make up for all our lost time.

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.