The Buzz 05.14.20

OVERHEARD

“It’s me, Brian!” “I didn’t recognize you with the mask, sorry!”

-A masked man addressing a masked woman waiting in line to enter Whole Foods in Monterey, followed by her reply after a long pause.

FREE SPEECH

A lot of policymaking on how and when to reopen the economy comes down to testing for Covid-19. Given that, you might expect a uniform reporting methodology for how many tests have been done. But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control are barely keeping up. The CDC’s data shows 558,293 tests as of May 11. Compare that to the Covid Tracking Project, which relies on journalists to collect data from public health officials, press conferences and government social media updates in every U.S. state and territory, and reports that 9,382,235 tests have been done. The project began at The Atlantic, which teamed up with Related Sciences, and now relies on hundreds of volunteers working long hours to keep the website (covidtracking.com) up to date as the definitive source on data points like testing and fatalities. One of the 15 team leads is Kevin Miller of Monterey, and Monterey County volunteers includeEmily Gottlieb and Liz MacDonald (also a Weekly freelance contributor). They’re looking for more volunteers.

GOOD WEEK / GREAT WEEK

GOOD:

A long time ago in Carmel Valley, Robert Darwin had a housekeeper named Ampelia DeLeón, who was, as a recent press release put it, “a delightful young Mexican immigrant woman.” DeLeón, who went by Polly, worked oh so very hard, and “proved to be very cheerful and trustworthy.” With the help of her unwavering resolve, Polly managed to send her daughter to college and eventually to law school. “That’s what I call success,” Darwin said in a statement, announcing that Polly’s hard work had inspired him to donate more than $1 million annually to CSU Monterey Bay for student scholarships. It’s the largest gift in the history of the 25-year-old university. Since 2015, the Foundation of CSUMB has been on a mission to collect $100 million in charitable donations. Thanks to Darwin and others, the Vision 2020 campaign goal is more than 95-percent complete.

Editor's note: The "Good Week" has been updated to reflect the following clarification. Darwin's gift will exceed $1 million annually, not $1 million in a one-time gift.

GREAT:

Out of crisis comes opportunity, and advocates for renters are seizing the moment. That includes the local grassroots level, where the group Monterey Peninsula Renters United is gaining traction with the idea of a potential regional rental assistance program. At the state level, State Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, is the principal co-author of SB 1410, which would establish the Covid-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program, providing rental assistance to households that can’t pay rent from April 1 to Oct. 31 due to the pandemic. The bill has been referred to the Senate Government and Finance Committee. In a statement, Caballero praised Gov. Gavin Newsom’s temporary moratorium on evictions, and said, “Some renters need a pathway to avoid displacement once we move into the next stages to reopen our economy.”