SF News New Study Suggests Updated Booster Shots Protect Against XBB.1.5 Infection There is now good evidence to suggest that the new, bivalent boosters from Moderna and Pfizer cut infection risk by half from the so-called "Kraken variant" of Omicron, XBB.1.5.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Struggling SF Bar Owners Say People Aren't Drinking Like They Did Pre-COVID Is it true that people are going out to bars less often now than they did three years ago? That may not be true in many parts of the country, or even in parts of San Francisco, but for some neighborhood and after-work bars, things still haven't gotten back to normal.
SF News SF Emergency Room Physician Opens Up About Leaving Twitter Over Rampant COVID Misinformation A local doctor dedicated to debunking COVID-19 conspiracy theories is giving up that fight, on Twitter at least, claiming that misinformation is running wild on that platform. And the data backs up that claim.
SF News Wastewater Shows COVID Cases Spiking In SF as Hospitalizations Continue Ticking Up The triple-demic that experts were warning of months ago is taking shape in hospitals across California as it is elsewhere, with a COVID surge and new variants coinciding with a spike in influenza and RSV.
SF News In Possible Harbinger, Zuni Cafe Has Closed Temporarily Amidst Staff COVID Outbreak Uh-oh, we may be seeing more of this kind of news again — Zuni Cafe has temporarily closed until Wednesday, December 7 as the restaurant’s staff is largely sidelined by a COVID-19 outbreak.
SF News COVID-Restriction-Flouting San Jose Church Wins Appeal for Flouting COVID Restrictions San Jose’s Calvary Chapel gained notoriety for defying COVID-19 restrictions throughout the pandemic, and the California Supreme Court just shot down $217,500 in fines the church had racked up.
Business & Tech Musk Drops Twitter's COVID Misinformation Policy, Because Of Course He Did In another stellar move celebrating unfettered free speech in the Twitterverse, Elon Musk has jettisoned another redeeming guardrail that was keeping the rabid anti-vaxxers in check.
SF News Experts Cautiously Optimistic About Weak Winter COVID Wave As Hospitalizations Begin to Tick Up It may be too soon to tell what the holiday season has in store when it comes to the tail end of this three-year pandemic. But there is reason to hope that we won't have a very severe winter surge of new COVID infections, especially if more people get their updated boosters.
SF News Next Omicron Subvariant Arrives In Bay Area; Not Enough People Are Getting Updated Boosters It is high time for people to get their bivalent COVID booster shots, with widespread availability and a looming potential winter surge of a new Omicron subvariant.
SF News SF's COVID Numbers Didn't Drop That Low This Month After All, DPH Says Some sort of data snafu at the California Department of Public Health — the latest of many since the pandemic began — meant that San Francisco's COVID case count was looking a whole lot lower than it actually was in September.
SF News Friday Morning Constitutional: Bay Area Officially In CDC's 'Low' Tier For COVID BART had similar Transbay Tube electrical problems this morning as it had on Sunday, a noted SF stalker/creeper is back and harassing women, and the Bay Area is now in the CDC's "low" tier for COVID transmission once again and finally.
SF News Dr. Wachter Is Going Back Inside Restaurants, Which Maybe Means the Pandemic Is Finally Over? Barring further, unforeseen variants, COVID-19 may finally be relegated to still-sometimes-deadly seasonal nuisance — now that President Biden proclaimed that "the pandemic is over," and now that our own UCSF soothsayer Dr. Bob Wachter is ready to go back to indoor dining.
SF News San Francisco Marks 1000th COVID Death, 29 Months In While San Francisco has had it relatively good when it comes to COVID mortality in this pandemic, we were hardly spared. And on Saturday, San Francisco marked its 1000th death from COVID-19.
SF News Friday Morning Constitutional: Moderna Now Suing Pfizer and BioNTech For Copying Vaccine Technology New and updated COVID vaccine boosters are coming in September, Moderna is now suing Pfizer for stealing its mRNA vaccine technology, and protesters continue to fight a plan to cull 100 geese from a flock in Foster City.
SF News San Jose Church That Defied Pandemic Public Health Orders Wins Appeal Based on Supreme Court's Rightward Shift The evangelical Calvary Chapel in San Jose was ordered to pay over $200K in contempt-of-court fines over its defiance of county public health orders in 2020, but a state appeals court has just overturned that and ruled in favor of the church, because of Amy Coney Barrett.
SF News Napa Quack Set to Be Sentenced In Case Involving Phony COVID Pills and Vax Cards, But First She Tried to Vacate Her Plea Napa-based naturopathic doctor Juli A. Mazi, the loon who was nabbed by the feds last year for prescribing bogus COVID-19 immunization pills and handing out fraudulent vaccination cards, just tried to vacate her plea agreement after firing her lawyers. But the judge wasn't having it.
SF News UC Berkeley Researchers Think They May Have Developed a Nasal Spray Thats Stops COVID There could be a miracle COVID-19 treatment coming out of the labs of a UC Berkeley toxicology department, as Bay Area researchers may have developed a nasal spray that prevents the spread of COVID-19.
SF News COVID Cases In This Summer's BA.5 Surge Most Concentrated In San Francisco's Southern Neighborhoods According to data from the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH), Bayview/Hunters Point continued to be a hot spot of COVID infection — and re-infection — in this summer's surge, and the highest concentrations of cases were in the southern part of the city overall.
SF News Current COVID Surge Likely As Large or Larger Than Winter Omicron Surge According to wastewater testing in the Bay Area, the amount of COVID virus in circulation in July is up at levels not seen since January — the numbers just aren't being reflected in official case counts because no one is getting PCR-tested.
SF News COVID Hospitalizations Climb Back to February Levels In Bay Area and California; Cases May Be Headed For Another Peak Hospitalizations continue rising, driven by the May and June surge of Omicron variants in the Bay Area and beyond. And case counts, though unreliable, still paint a picture of continued or accelerating surging.
SF News BA.5 Omicron Sub-Variant So Infectious It’s Dispensing With the Notion of Immunity for the Vaccinated and Recently Infected We’ve always thought that fully vaccinated and recently infected had a “hybrid immunity” that shielded people from reinfections, but the BA.5 Omicron sub-variant is so infectious that its throwing that adage out the window.
SF News Mayor London Breed Has COVID, Will Be Sidelined For SF Pride Festivities Mayor London Breed has tested positive for COVID, like nearly every elected official in the last couple of months, and this means she will be quarantining on Pride Weekend.
SF News Early June RSA Conference at Moscone Reportedly a ‘Hotbed for COVID-19,’ Attendees Call It ‘Super Spreader Event’ The “risk professionals” at a recent SF security conference may not have factored in the risk of a largely maskless event at the height of an Omicron surge, as hundreds of attendees say they caught the virus while networking to battle computer viruses.
SF News Humpday Headlines: California Marks One Year Since Pandemic 'Reopening' Depressingly, it's been one year since California "reopened" and declared the pandemic nearly over; an hours-long standoff ended in five arrests for child endangerment in Campbell; and two Bay Area counties see their COVID numbers spike again.
SF News San Francisco's Daily COVID Case Numbers Begin to Fall, But Test-Positivity Rate Remains High This latest Omicron-subvariant surge may have peaked in SF in the last week or so, as was predicted by infectious disease modeling. But the city's rate of new COVID tests coming back positive was the highest it's been since January.
