I walked through the new downtown Redding shortly after it opened in early 2021, and I created this virtual tour. It was all so new and clean. It was almost startlingly surreal at the time. Some of the businesses seen in these images have already changed since then.
Welcome to Pride Month in Redding 2022
A rare foggy day in Redding
City of Shasta Lake Civic Center
Covid again
“US response to Covid has ultimately been like our response to school shootings: Once we decided unimaginable loss was a price worth paying for an imagined ideal of freedom, the number of deaths ceased to matter. We’d trade a million lives for our need to do exactly what we want.”
Peter Manseau @plmanseau ·
This tweet is spot on. Same is true for human caused climate change brought on by land use change, meat production, and burning up as much fossil fuels as we can.
Back when the pandemic first hit in 2020, there was a panicky lockdown. It looked like it could get pretty bad, but nobody knew for sure. It did get bad, especially for frontline medical workers. But then it eased up with increased mask use, and the several excellent vaccines. And then Redding saw a second wave with a more contagious mutation named Delta. You can plainly see it in the graphs:
The new variant came, and quickly spread. More people died, hospitals filled up. But then the wave passed, just like the first wave in late 2020. So now there is a new mutation called the Omicron variant. Will it bring us another wave? Well it might, because despite the wide availability of a free and effective vaccine, many people refuse to take advantage of that protection. Health officials literally just shut down the free clinic at the Redding Senior Center because nobody was using it. You can still get vaccinated easily (again, free of charge) at any drugstore. But the local ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated population has remained about the same as it was before the last wave, with predictable results:
So the virus still has lots of opportunity to continue to spread and further mutate among the unvaccinated population.
“Once we decided unimaginable loss was a price worth paying for an imagined ideal of freedom, the number of deaths ceased to matter.” Yep. Oh, and there was another school shooting today, and 3 kids are dead. I suppose this is just normal life now. Get used to it.
New Covid-19 variant roars into town
So there’s a new Covid strain in town coined the Delta Variant, which apparently packs a virus load in the sinus that can be 1000 times higher than the original virus. It’s much more contagious, with predictable results in hospitalizations:
Recent hospitalizations are now more than the prior peak last Winter. I wrote here in Spring that things seemed to be improving, and so was the mood. Now infection rates are rapidly worsening, just as kids are now back in school. Back during that first spike in late 2020, we went into a lockdown to “bend the curve” and avoid overtaxing the hospitals. Now, there is no official response, and seemingly no politically acceptable way to re-impose a new lockdown. Worse, a free and widely available FDA approved vaccine that we didn’t have during that last spike is being shunned by a significant number of county residents.
My Facebook feed is festooned with hard core anti-vaxxers, not just the vaccine hesitant. Nobody can change their opinion.
So it looks like we are in for a rough ride, especially our frontline medical workers. Sorry!
A pandemic Spring in Redding
I last posted here during a grim Christmas season. Despite lockdowns and (frequently ignored) masking and sanitizing regimens, infection rates were on the rise with no end in sight. I could not escape a feeling of gloom and uncertainty about how bad it might get.
But it got better… gradually.
A promised vaccine materialized miraculously (THANK YOU scientists), and now my family members and I are vaccinated. Most local kids got back into school months ago, and thankfully in-person instruction proved not to be a serious source of infection. Rates fell fitfully but steadily, and we recently had a 9 day period when there were no Covid patients in an ICU in the Shasta region. Lately the numbers have started to tick back up again. Probably due to people letting their guard down. Nationwide rates are still fearsome, but California still looks pretty good. Now millions have gotten vaccinated, and vaccines are becoming widely available to all.
So things are looking up again. You can see it clearly in the re-openings, increased traffic, and people out and about enjoying our terrific Spring weather. I’ve never felt anything like the buzz I got after getting that final vaccine injection. Like a veil of impending doom was lifting. Almost giddy. It’s been a hard year on everyone. But that was then, and this is now.
ReallyRedding once again.
A pandemic Christmas for 2020 in Redding
Hello readers.
I see it’s been more than a year since I last posted at this blog. There are a couple of reasons for that. Our real estate brokerage, The Address Realty has been very busy. We are considered “Essential Workers.” Good for business, bad for blogging. Then too, much of what was formerly blog content has moved over to social media. Online life is very different today than it was when I began this blog more than a decade ago. Lots of changes, and not all of them for the good. So here we are.
I thought it might be important to post about life in the “Purple Tier” in Redding during a murderous Pandemic. I once posted about a tour we took of the Redding Cemetery. We saw so many of the tombstones were from 1918, when a prior pandemic christened the Spanish Flu swept through our town. It seemed evident that everyone in our small town of 1918 must have known somebody who perished from that flu. Now, I myself have lost 2 dear friends to Covid-19. In life, they were surrounded by a network of friends and family. In death, they died alone gasping for one last breath surrounded by beeping medical equipment. Ugh. Unlike 1918, we are promised a vaccine next year. Meanwhile, the virus rages, and we are all trying not to become victims. But it seems likely that before it is over, all of us remaining may very well know a victim or victims.
And many are very concerned. Others not so much. There is a facemask mandate that just seems to make sense. Such a minor inconvenience as a tradeoff for the safety of yourself and the others around you. Most stores have signs out front demanding that entrants be masked. But we see plenty of people out and about, defiantly not wearing masks. Even videos were posted of fairly large unmasked religious gatherings, which later became responsible for a local spike in the number of cases.
No question the lockdown has been hard on our small town’s economy. So much formerly local commerce shifted to online purchases. So many restaurants closed. I haven’t gone to a restaurant since early Spring, although we try to order takeout as much as possible. The federal government did some good things with stimulus checks at the beginning of the pandemic, but then seemed to lose interest. It’s easy to imagine many restaurants and small stores are going under for good. Lots of them are small family businesses with their entire life savings invested. Some are defying the orders to shut their doors, and one can sympathize. And pandemic fatigue has set in. People are eager to get back to normal life, even though that relaxing of pandemic discipline may well cost lives.
Also very hard on kids. School has been on again/off again. Rough for education and staff. Difficult for parents needing childcare arrangements and/or unable to help with schooling. Anyone whose tried to assist with “distance learning” knows how frustrating that can be. Worrisome too, for the long term damage to educational and socialization efforts.
Mental health seems in short supply too. All the uneasy tension or downright hostility between the masked and unmasked. The loneliness of isolation during lockdown certainly takes a toll. We are not hardwired to live like this. Society is frayed. People are too.
But hey, it’s Christmas! My grandkids will be opening gifts here at grandma’s house in the morning, and I will be of good cheer.
Redding’s lovely City Hall
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