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DAILYREPUBLIC.COM | Well said. Well read.
Senators close to agreement on Russian sanctions bill Tribune Content Agency
Photo by Pablo Unzueta for CalMatters
Adan Hernandez, a fruit vendor inside the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles, completes a transaction,
Jan. 19. According to Hernandez, he has worked here since 1983 and has “never seen anything like this.”
Omicron slams California workforce. Was there a better way to handle it? By Ben Christopher and Grace Gedye CALMATTERS
SACRAMENTO — While Covid-19’s omicron wave appears to have crested, it leaves in its wake sick nurses and burned out bus drivers, short-staffed hospitals and canceled surgeries, school districts scrambling for substitute teachers and grocery store cashiers forced to choose between their health and their finances. Other countries met this variant with fresh lockdowns. Other states authorized state bureaucrats to moonlight as teachers. In New York City and Washington D.C., businesses are now required to check the vaccine status of their customers. Would any of that have kept California workers safe, curtailed the worst of the spread and avoided cascading labor shortages? And what can lawmakers
do now to prepare for the future of Covid – be it the next deadly variant or the low-level simmer of a pathogen gone endemic? Five waves and nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, this virus still doesn’t brook any easy solutions.
Did it have to be this way? If public opinion were no object, tighter mask mandates and increased vaccinations after the delta wave in the late summer would have blunted some of omicron’s impact, said Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley. But the variant’s transmissibility is so formidable that even with those measures, omicron still would have been a problem, he said. “Frankly, I think that California did a reasonable job trying to balance protecting people from
the virus and allowing people’s lives to function in a more normal fashion,” Swartzberg said. Broad shutdowns, he said, probably would not have made a manifest difference in how many people got sick, a sentiment shared by other public health experts contacted for this article. While other states and countries responded differently to omicron’s spread, case counts suggest that policy differences didn’t make a drastic impact on the course of this surge, said Jeffrey Clemens, a health economist and associate professor at UC San Diego. “There probably weren’t many steps that governments could have taken in real time in an effort to significantly blunt the wave,” said Clemens. It may take a couple of months to know whether local or state policies made a difference in how many people got severely ill or See Omicron, Page A8
Huge East Coast storm blankets residents with record snow totals Tribune Content Agency HARTFORD, Conn. — Parts of Connecticut were digging out from almost 2 feet of snow Sunday after a strong winter storm hit the state Saturday. The eastern section of the state took the biggest hit from the storm, with blizzard conditions reported in New London county Saturday. Norwich got 22 inches of snow, Groton and New London 21.5 inches and Moosup 24 inches, according to Gary Lessor, chief meteorologist at Western Connecticut State University’s weather center. A parking ban is still in effect in Norwich until Monday at 2 p.m. so snow may be removed from the streets. State police responded to 1,200 calls for service Saturday, including 90 motor vehicle accidents and 208 calls for disabled or abandoned vehicles or debris in the road. There were
Mark Mirko/Mark Mirko/TNS
A crew clears a stairwell and crosswalk Saturday morning during a winter storm expected to drop a foot or two of snow in most of Connecticut. no serious injuries or fatalities. State police reported that Interstate 84 westbound was shut down twice Saturday, in Tolland and in West Hartford, as was Interstate 95 north in East Lyme, due to tractor trailer accidents. Interstate 95 was also shut down in the East Lyme/ Old Lyme area Saturday morning because of multiple motor vehicle accidents. Gov. Ned
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Lamont had issued a ban on tractor trailer trucks on state highways Saturday, which expired at 11:59 p.m. Saturday. “We are fortunate the storm was not bigger, as staffing remains our ongoing challenge,” said CT DOT spokesperson Kafi Rouse in an email. “While there is a workforce shortage, we planned and responded to the weather event accordingly. As with every DOT across
the country, we are suffering from a shortage of CDL drivers in the workforce.” About 200 households experienced power outages Saturday during the storm, according to Lamont’s spokesman Max Reiss, much less than was expected given the forecast. Eversource spokesman Mitch Gross said Sunday that all of Connecticut’s storm-related outages were taken care of Saturday and that the company had sent crews to eastern Massachusetts to help with the impact of the storm on Cape Cod. Cold air flooded into the state after the storm, with wind chill of 3 degrees reported Sunday morning in Hartford, Lessor said. Warmer temperatures are on tap for the rest of the week, reaching into the 40s on Wednesday with scattered showers forecast for Thursday. But there could
WEATHER 65 | 41 Decreasing clouds. Five-day forecast on B8.
See Storm, Page A8
WASHINGTON — U.S. senators are close to agreeing on a Russia sanctions bill that could include some penalties even if President Vladimir Putin doesn’t send troops into Ukraine, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said. “There are some sanctions that really could take place up front because of what Russia has already done,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Cyberattacks on Ukraine, false flag operations, the efforts to undermine the Ukrainian government internally.” A Russian invasion “later on” would trigger “devastating sanctions that ultimately would crush Russia’s economy,” Menendez, D-N.J., said. Russia has denied it plans to further
invade Ukraine. The comments suggest the Senate is closing in on a deal that includes the threat of hard-hitting measures against Russia’s financial industry and personal sanctions on top officials. The White House hasn’t taken a position on the possible deal. A State Department official stopped short of endorsing the bill, saying deterrence works best when there’s an element of surprise behind the range of options the Biden administration is considering. “So we’ve said financial measures, we’ve said export controls, we’ve said new sanctions on Russian elites,” Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “But if we put them on the table now, See Russia, Page A8
State’s cannabis social equity programs leave many depleted Marisa Gerber LOS ANGELES TIMES
LOS ANGELES — The very thing that had once torn Ingrid Archie from her daughters and led to her incarceration now made her bubble with unbridled optimism. It was early 2019, a year after recreational pot sales began in California under Proposition 64, and politicians and activists were proclaiming that Archie and others who grew up in communities disproportionately criminalized by the “war on drugs” could now profit off the legal cannabis industry as entrepreneurs. Buoyed by that promise – “social equity,” as it became known – Archie, then in her late-30s, began the process of applying for a retail cannabis license. Years earlier, she’d been convicted of possessing pot for sale. Now, she dreamed of opening
a holistic community center in South L.A. that would sell edibles, hold homeownership seminars and provide mental health services. Finally, she thought, a pathway to generational wealth for many in her community. But Archie hit one bureaucratic hurdle after another. Other equity applicants hired attorneys with expertise in navigating the new cannabis regulations, but she couldn’t afford a $10,000 retainer. “My life was shattered for something that’s now legal, and now I have to jump through hoops?” she said. “I felt demoralized.” Five years after California voters legalized recreational cannabis for adults, many cities and counties have yet to adopt programs to boost the chances of success for hopeful Black and Latino cannabis entrepreneurs. See Cannabis, Page A8
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