Business & Tech Fancy Las Vegas Gadget Convention CES Is Still On, Despite Omicron, and Absolutely Everyone Pulling Out Organizers of the usually trend-setting trade show CES are determined to play chicken with surging COVID-19 case rates, but their biggest brands and keynote speakers are dropping out minute by minute.
SF News San Francisco Offering Drop-In Booster Shots at Four Locations As Omicron appears to be driving a spike in daily new cases in the city and across the country, the San Francisco Department of Public Health is shouting from the rooftops to get everyone a booster shot.
SF News Omicron Almost Certainly to Blame As San Francisco Cases Surge; Two Studies Suggest Variant Is Less Severe As opposed to last year's holiday season, there is a mix of good and bad news with this Omicron surge, even though the virus seems to be spreading at a very fast clip.
SF News Court Rules Family Can Sue See’s Candies for Husband’s COVID Death Resulting From Wife’s Workplace Infection A new state appeals court ruling says that a household member can sue a company if the company’s negligence brought a fatal case of COVID-19 into the household, and See's Candies allegedly did just that.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Zuni Cafe to Start Requiring Booster Proof For Indoor Dining Next Week In a sign of things to come in San Francisco, Zuni Cafe announced that it is going to begin requiring not just full vaccination but also proof of a booster shot for indoor dining starting next week.
SF News Holiday Party In Larkspur Leads to 28 COVID Infections, Omicron Suspected A holiday party in Marin County ten days ago where all attendees were vaccinated led to an outbreak of at least 28 cases of COVID, and health officials believe the Omicron variant was to blame.
SF News Omicron Community Spread Apparent In 3 Mission Cases; Restaurants In SF and Oakland Temporarily Close Out of Caution A likely deluge of new COVID cases is on the horizon for the Bay Area, due to the Omicron variant and despite widespread vaccination.
SF News San Francisco Might Have at Least 30 Unconfirmed Omicron Cases The Omicron variant now makes up at least 3% of all new documented COVID-19 cases in the United States. Since the city reported its first case of the variant on December 1, another 30 unconfirmed Omicron infections might have already been recorded in San Francisco.
SF News Oakland Opens Mass COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Site at Frank Ogawa Plaza Need a COVID test or booster shot fast before the holidays? Oakland may be your best bet, as Frank Ogawa Plaza outside Oakland City Hall is performing them free through the holidays, though for rapid tests “cost may apply.”
SF News SF, Marin, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties Exempt From New State Mask Mandate San Francisco's rules that allow for no masks at gyms, workplaces, and places of worship get to stand, because we've all been so good up until now.
SF News San Francisco Remains the Safest Large City In the U.S. — When Comes to COVID Mortality Despite hysterical headlines about shoplifting and overdoses, San Francisco has suffered hundreds, sometimes even thousands fewer COVID-19 deaths than other major U.S. cities, relative to population size.
SF News Group of Mendocino Anti-Maskers Tries to Mob Stores In Protest of Mask Mandate California's renewed, holiday-season mask mandate for indoor public spaces is surely annoying people of many stripes in counties where they've gotten used to no masks again — not just the super Trump-y anti-maskers of yore. But there are still plenty of those!
SF News [Update]California Reimposes Broad Mask Mandate Until Mid-January California is reimposing a broad indoor mask mandate this week as the Omicron variant continues spreading, holiday gatherings proliferate, and as COVID cases and hospitalizations tick upward across the state.
SF News Marin County Parents Who Sent COVID-Positive Kid to School Could Face Criminal Charges Public health officials in Marin County are talking with prosecutors about the possibility of criminal charges for a couple who ignored a positive COVID test and sent their two children to school to spread the virus around.
SF News Marin County COVID Outbreak Seeded By Child Whose Parents Ignored Positive Test An outbreak at a San Anselmo school was the fault of parents whose child tested positive for COVID-19, but then they ignored that test and sent the kid to school anyway.
SF News Monday Morning Headlines: Early Reports Suggest Omicron Causes Less Severe Illness The owners of Hilda and Jesse in North Beach have apologized for turning away SFPD officers, a Black couple is suing a Marin appraisal firm, and Omicron might cause less severe illness (on average) than Delta.
SF News Predictably, SF's Infuriating Catholic Archbishop Is Not Vaccinated Color me unsurprised. San Francisco's homophobic gem of a Catholic Archbishop, who's more concerned with making abortion and gay marriage illegal again than with a silly pandemic, claims that his personal physician has told him he doesn't need a COVID vaccine.
SF News Bad News: Omicron Spreads Faster Than Delta; Good News: COVID Treatment Pills Should Arrive In Pharmacies By January The bad news coming out of South Africa Friday is that researchers are now able to say that Omicron appears to be quickly taking over as a dominant strain, and it appears to have an Rt that's 2.5 higher than the Delta variant.
Business & Tech Omicron Scare Likely to Push Back Bay Area Back-to-Office Timeline for Many Despite there being no immediate threat of an Omicron outbreak in the Bay Area and an overall lack of data on the new variant, the general uncertainty around it is very likely to cause big Bay Area tech companies and smaller offices alike to rethink their January return-to-the-office plans.
SF News Second and Third US Omicron Cases Found; Theory Forms That Mutations Occurred In Single Immunocompromised Person A second and a third American patient have been confirmed to be infected with the Omicron variant: an adult male in Minnesota who recently traveled to New York for an anime convention, and an adult female in Colorado who recently returned from southern Africa.
SF News Swift Sequencing of Omicron Sample at UCSF Highlights Challenges of Tracking Variant's Spread Perhaps the only reason the first U.S. case was found in SF is because of the caliber of the health system here, not because it isn't already in other places in the country.
SF News Breed, Colfax Say No New Restrictions Because of Omicron Variant, While Heckler Tries to Steal the Show Mayor Breed and Dr. Grant Colfax urged San Franciscans to “get your booster,” but announced no new restrictions in response to the Omicron variant arriving here, as a heckler tried to shout them down.
SF Politics Trump Could Have Given Biden COVID At First Debate, Tested Positive Days Earlier According to New Account Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows details how Trump initially tested positive for COVID last fall days ahead of his first debate in Cleveland with Joe Biden, but went ahead with his schedule anyway.
SF News First U.S. Case of Omicron Variant Found In San Francisco Wouldn't you know it, the first known case of the Omicron variant of COVID to arrive in the U.S., via South Africa, is in San Francisco, and the patient is already reportedly recovering.
SF News SF Mayor London Breed Again Seen Partying Maskless at Nightclub, Again Says She Did Nothing Wrong Some finger-wagging is going on over at the Chronicle once more after a new video surfaced of SF Mayor London Breed dancing and cavorting with friends without a mask on at a nightclub on Thanksgiving night.
