COVID protection insanity - Sarah Cody

Santa Clara County, which is mostly the megapolis of San Jose, is making its COVID policy through its County Health Officer Dr Sarah Cody, and if there ever was an example of the Peter Principle - Petra Principle? - then she is it.

Witness Friday's announcement about loosening restrictions in Santa Clara:

Santa Clara County loosened some guidelines Friday while keeping others tightly in place. It now says if you're six feet apart, and outdoors, masks are no longer required.

According to Twitter, up until now, many residents of Santa Clara had no idea that they had to wear masks while outdoors and 6+ feet away from anyone else. This is not surprising because it is completely insane. Technically, if you were jogging on a public trail last Thursday with no-one within 100 yards, you were violating these restrictions. There is no evidence that COVID spreads outdoors between people 6ft+ apart - none! Yet Cody found it necessary to impose the restrictions nevertheless.

I've played the ball (the restrictions) so now I feel justified in playing the man (Cody).

Cody was appointed in 2013, succeeding her boss - she had spent the past 15 years working as a Deputy Health Officer at the Santa Clara County Public Health Department. If I saw that promotion profile on a resumé I'd have absolutely no confidence that the promotion was earned. It was either for convenience - the leadership didn't really bother advertising and interviewing - or diversity, where she was the only female candidate. The latter seems a bit unlikely because public health officials tend to be female, so I'm leaning towards "convenience". Definitely not "competence".

Cody has comprehensively screwed up Santa Clara's response to COVID, mounting increasing strict restrictions which have had no differential impact on the spread and effect of the virus compared to elsewhere. She invents random priorities for vaccination just to show that she's involved and hip to minorities - rather than taking hard-won experience from other countries and implementing as-is. She is astonishingly out of her depth. I'm sure she's a competent middle-of-the-road medic, but she apparently has no idea how to consider the business and other aspects of her random pronouncements.

I would like to see every restaurant in San Jose, having suffered 3 months of shut-down indoor dining and 2 months of any dining at all despite their investments in outside facilities, post a picture of Sarah Cody - and her minions - in their front windows. Text underneath: "BANNED: not to be served at this establishment". Hope she likes McDonald's and KFC.

That said, Cody doesn't get the full blame; when the local population is full of neurotics, pandering to them is very tempting.

"It feels good, but at the same time it's nerve-wracking not wearing it, see, that's why I still have it on, you never know, boom, here we go,” said Monica Hernandez of Cupertino.

Monica Hernandez should shut herself in a closet in her apartment if she's that afraid. Let the rest of us try to restart the economy that Dr Sarah Cody has throttled to death.