Sonoma County business, health leaders propose plan to reopen economy during coronavirus pandemic

A group of Sonoma County business and health leaders are putting forward a plan for the county to relax its restrictions on businesses and community life, motivated by the profound toll stay-home orders have had on the local economy and overall health.

The group is proposing the county work with an alliance of local employers and health professionals to develop standards for how different types of businesses and agencies might operate while stemming the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

Called “Sonoma County COVID-19 Roadmap to Health,” the plan is a response to the broad and punishing impact of the six-week-old stay-home order, which created classifications of “essential” businesses allowed to operate and “nonessential” businesses temporarily shuttered. Those categories ignore how job loss and isolation are also integral to public health, said Peter Rumble, one of the organizers and chief executive officer of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber business group.

“We’re picking winners and losers by calling some businesses essential and others nonessential - it’s arbitrary,” Rumble said.

Keeping people at home has been credited with drastically reducing infections of COVID-19 in the county and across much of the state. But the cost has been enormous. Over the last six weeks, more than 3.2 million Californians have filed jobless claims. In Sonoma County, one in 10 workers - nearly 25,000 people - filed applications for unemployment benefits last month.

Calls to relax restrictions are mounting in Sonoma County, where prominent sectors such as food, wine and tourism have been hard-hit by restrictions. A local economist predicted unemployment could soar to 11%, a level not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The Santa Rosa Metro Chamber has so far given out $100,000 in small grants to roughly 70 small businesses impacted by the public health order in the county, where nearly 90% of businesses have 20 or fewer employees, according to Rumble.

The pain is broadly felt. A poll conducted by the Bay Area Council reported that 60% of businesses have already laid off workers or will be forced to do so under the current restrictions. Of those businesses surveyed, 71% think stay-home orders should be lifted in the next 30 ?days.

About two weeks ago, Rumble began drafting a blueprint for allowing businesses to reopen with West County Health Centers Chief Executive Officer Dr. Jason Cunningham, Friedman’s Home Improvement CEO Barry Friedman and Chris Denny, founder of The Engine is Red creative agency.

Before opening the economy, the roadmap acknowledges that first the county must be able to test widely for COVID-19, track cases and prevent further transmission, and prepare medical facilities for a surge of patients needing hospitalization.

With those measures in place, the plan calls for committees made up of health professionals and business representatives to develop best practices for keeping customers and employees safe from the new virus, with specificity for different kinds of operations.

They are encouraging the county to involve business sectors and avoid making blanket orders that set arbitrary limits. Rumble gave the example of restaurants being required to reduce capacity by half, when the actual number of customers that could safely dine depends on the layout of a room.

Cunningham compared the concept with harm-reduction programs aimed at limiting the negative consequences of drug use - give businesses the virus prevention tools to create individualized programs to operate safely.

Crucial to the implementation of any program is transparency from the government about what is expected of the public and what benchmarks will be used to decide if restrictions must be tightened again, Rumble said.

Real-time data must be published for all to see, said Cunningham, a family physician who oversees a network of nonprofit health clinics in Sebastopol, Forestville, Guerneville and Occidental.

"Let’s make sure our community can stand behind it," Cunningham said. "We don’t want to open up too fast, or too slow."

Cunningham said he believes the county needed to keep people at home after the first cases of COVID-19 began appearing here in order to prevent a surge of patients needing hospitalization all at once. But now the county must address all the other ways this pandemic is harming communities and exacerbating mental health struggles, domestic violence, neglect, suicidal ideas and other problems, he said.

“We’re seeing a real uptick in what I consider the disease of isolation,” Cunningham said.

They’ve shared the concept widely and requested feedback from county supervisors, state lawmakers, the business community and Public Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase.

No local plan for allowing broad categories of industry to reopen are possible under California’s current public health order, which has authority over local public health rules.

While states like Georgia, South Carolina and Alaska have begun loosening restrictions, Gov. Gavin Newsom has said California will take a gradual approach and stay vigilant on data for COVID-19 transmission and hospitalizations.

But the governor signaled Tuesday the state could begin loosening some of its restrictions - within the month - if the prevalence of coronavirus cases continues to stabilize.

State Sen. Mike McGuire said he believes the collaborations proposed by Rumble and Cunningham are exactly what the state wants counties to prepare for when restrictions are relaxed. He said the health and business sectors must work together and the “well-researched” roadmap proposal has already put Sonoma County “ahead of the game.”

“We need to establish a process that will allow the business community to gradually reopen, even if people work with modifications to keep people safe,” McGuire said.

Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins called the ideas “fantastic” and said she believes the county must shift to include economic health in its decisions about protecting the community from a surge of coronavirus. She’s increasingly hearing from constituents who are facing dire financial consequences and is pushing for the county to address this secondary crisis.

“How about the essential paycheck? How about the essential vocation of a person who wants to go to work, earn a living? These are people’s lives,” Hopkins said.

Mase said she has looked at the group’s proposal briefly but that it was premature because there’s no leeway at the moment for counties to reopen beyond what the state allows.

“A lot of what’s proposed in that document can’t happen,” Mase said.

She said she and the county’s health department will “put out similar ideas” based on methodology and evidence-based criteria - but not before the state relaxes its rules. The health department is partnering with the county’s Economic Development Board to craft plans for allowing more businesses to operate.

“Stay tuned,” Mase said. “Once the governor’s order is relaxed, we will pursue that.”

Rumble and Cunningham said they and their collaborators aimed to create a blueprint from which the county might draw ideas about how to involve business sectors and local health clinicians in a plan to reopen that puts more onus on each business to comply with guidelines.

“The spirit was one of helping and providing a better path forward than what we saw happening,” Rumble said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.