Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 20240712

The meeting is being called to order at 5 36 p. M. The meeting is televised on sf gov tv 2 or live streamed on the website. Members of the public who will be calling in, the number is 4155 4156550001, and then the number is 4156550001. The access code is 1466093005, pound and then pound again to connect. Again, the number the access code is 1466093005, press pound and then pound again to connect. You will hear the meeting in discussion, but you will be muted and in listening mode only when your item is addressed called dial star 3 to be added to the speaker line. Best practices are to call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. If when you dial star 3 before Public Comment is called, youll be added to the queue. When you are called through Public Comment, please mute the device you are listening to the meeting on when its your time to speak you will be prompted to do so. Public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker unless otherwise established by the presiding officer of the meeting. Speakers are requested but not required to state their names. S. F. Gov tv, please show the Small Business office slide. Today we will begin with the reminder that the Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses in San Francisco. The office of Small Business is the best place to get answers about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance with Small Business matters, particularly at this time, you can find us online or via telephone. As always, our services are free of charge. Before item no. 1 is called, id like to start by thanking Media Services and sf gov tv for coordinating this virtual hearing and livestream and special thanks to jim smith for assisting with the Public Comment line. Please call item no. 1. Item one, call to order and roll call. [roll call]. We have a quorum. Great, next time, please. Update and report on the San Franciscos reopening plan, strategy and local Public Health indicators, discuss in items. The presenter is dr. Thomas aradon, chief Health Officer of the city and county of San Francisco. Great. Dr. Aragon, welcome. Were so happy to have you back. Appreciate you spending some time with us. My goodness, a lot has happened since we last saw you, and its good to get the update. So were going to begin this item with your presentation, and then that will be followed by any questions we have and then any Public Comment and perhaps there may be a last round of discussion among the commissioners after that. Okay, great. Thank you for your time and please, you have the floor. Okay, thank you. Im assuming everybody can hear me fine. We can hear you just perfectly, thank you. Okay, great. So why dont we go ahead and go to the next slide. Yeah, if you can move it forward one. Madam clerk, are you in charge of the slides . I am, and it should be up. I dont know if my service is slow and thats why its not going. Right now its on the title card. I think hes looking to go to the next slide. I am on San Francisco covid19 data and report. So i think that my internet is slow. Hmm. And it might not be caught up. Do you want to give me access to can i have access to the yes, absolutely. I can just share from here. Okay, oh, great, i will try it. Sorry about that, dr. Aragon. I am a simple Civil Servant with simple Internet Access noo can you see it . Its kind of small. Okay, great. Lets see if this works. Hows that . Okay, so im going to cover four areas. I understand that i have up to 15, 20 minutes. Ill try to go through this insightfully, so im going to cover health indicators, talk about how Health Orders are done. Im going to mention some emerging health risks because i think its really important for everybody to really be up to date on the types of things we should be thinking about in terms of keeping things safe, and then im going to go ahead and address some of the questions that people send me. Lets just go quickly into health indicators. Right now we have almost 11,000 reported cases. Weve had 99 deaths, and weve done over 465,000 tests for covid. The types of things that we look at are going to be and im going to go into this a little bit later, is going to be the case rates, and then the tests percent positivity. Those two is what the state is using for its blueprint for a safer economy, which im going to cover, which is the new fourtiered system. You look at hospital trends, and then the other one we look at is going to be the effective reproductive number. We are and theres two areas of preparedness that were always concerned about, which is the Public Health and Health Care System readiness, and then of course businesses and School Readiness to be able to open up safely. So this slide here is a summary slide that compares San Francisco to other cities across the United States that are relatively comparable, and what youll see here for frisk is the case rate cases per thousand and then the other one is going to be death per thousand. So if you take the cumulative number of deaths, for example, and you divide by the total population, you get those metrics. And you can see that compared to other areas of the country, especially when you look at deaths per 100,000, that weve done better than other areas, and i may have mentioned last time that, you know, that our interventions prevented over 38,000 hospitalizations and close to 4,000 deaths. And so this is another way of looking at this historically. So the effective reproductive number is the average number of secondary cases thats produced by an infectious person. Any number greater than one means an epidemic is going to grow. Any number less than one means an epidemic is going to shrink. And so wed like to get it down to below one. Early on, early in march, you see that it was above 3. 5, which is a very high reproductive number which means that during an infectious period every case was producing between three to four additional cases, and you could just imagine that this iceberg was growing rapidly. Youll see that that started going down. We had started canceling large gatherings. The shelterinplace was initiated on march 17, and then you can see that continued to climb. And then youll see the other interventions that were done. After memorial day, you can see a few weeks later, San Francisco, like other parts of the country, and in california, had an increase in cases, and now were down over here in august, and see weve got our reproductive number less than one. We want to get it lower, but its right now its less than one, and thats good news. And then just a summary on the lefthand side is our epidemic curve of cases. So you see on the lefthand side we flattened the curve, and then you see there the increase in cases in july, started in mid june and then july, and you can see that it has been going down. So right now we have about 56 cases per day, and on the righthand side you see our hospitalization curve, the dark blue is the i. C. U. Admissions, and you can see our second surge that we have that peaked there at 114. The key difference between both of these curves is that we know a lot more about the virus now. We were able to manage the second hospitalization curve without shutting down the economy again, and thats the big difference. On the lefthand side, we didnt know how to control the virus. We learned how to manage it without shutting down. Thats important information. So now what the state has done, they used to have what they call the watch list, but they now have changed it and theyre looking at the case rate which is then adjusted, which ill say in a second, and then the percent positivity for the tests. So if the case rate after adjustment is greater than seven, or if the percent positivity is greater than eight, you will be in tier one, which is the purple tier. And that tier is basically the equivalent of the prior watch list. If you have metrics that are lower than that, you get assigned to three potential other tiers. One thing the state has done is that a case rate is we have our actual case rate, which i just call our epidemiologic case rate, and the state adjusts that down if youre doing a lot of testing. However, the actual risk in the community is really based on our actual rate. The reason why they had this adjustment is they wanted to discourage other counties from undertesting, because you can imagine some other counties may say, well, if i test less, im going to detect less cases and my case rate have going to be lower and theyre going to put me in a better tier. So they wanted to discourage that. So it turns out what theyre doing is that if your case rate is if youre testing im sorry, if youre doing a high testing, they will weight it down, and if youre doing low testing, they will rate it up. So in other words, you will stay in a higher tier if youre not doing sufficient testing, and thats an incentive to get counties to do more testing. So we were classified epidemiologically, we were in the purple tier, but we were assigned the red tier, tier two, because we were doing extra testing. So when you look at this is now the current map. Youll see the current map is here that were red. Even though epidemiologically were purple, and thats been really part of our strategy. Ill show that in the coming slides. So given that were epidemiologically purple but assigned to red, it means that we have more things available to us to open up. And what we did was that we looked to the purple tier and we said were just going to open up everything in the purple tier, and then within the red tier were going to be more selective by focusing on lowerrisk activities first and the higherrisk activities were going to push down to one tier, one tier, so we opened those up when its going to be safer. So we started out with outdoor activities, lowrisk indoor activities, which is a lot of the personal services. We have a highrisk indoor activities, which is going to be Indoor Dining that im going to get into some detail. Im going to focus on Indoor Dining, but conceptually the things im going to talk about really apply to other highrisk areas, with the exception of the need to remove a facial covering to eat or drink. And then we have the highestrisk indoor activities that right now nobodys really for example, the symphony, the opera, sort of these big events with mass gatherings. There are things that are so high risk right now that we dont see it really happening until things either change dramatically, we have a vaccine or we have much better cheaper tests where we can mitigate that ri risk. So i will briefly cover Health Officer orders and then i will get back into the Indoor Dining. Im putting that under the category of emerging health risk. So how the Health Officer heres how it works. So the federal government can collect taxes, wage wars and regulate interstate commerce. All other powers are vested in the states, and the state Police Powers are used for Public Health authority. So what happens in california is state Police Powers for health are dedicated down to the counties. We have 58 counties and some cities also have decided to become Health Jurisdictions and operate Health Departments. So we have 61 Health Jurisdictions. By law, every county or Health Jurisdiction must have a physician Health Officer to implement local health authority, and thats me. So the bottom line is you can look at the second bullet point here, is Health Officers are authorized to control contagious, infectious or Communicable Diseases and may take measures as may be necessary to prevent and control the spread of disease within the territory under their jurisdiction. Health officers have the Broad Authority to give us the flexibility to do what we think might be necessary to control a communicable disease. Of course the power is not unlimited, and this is why we work with a City Attorney to make sure that what were doing can be is were doing the least restrictive that we think can get the job done but still be within our larger Legal Framework of the constitution. We want to minimize doing anything that goes against the broader laws of the land and that can be defended legal ly. So the way we do the Health Orders is first we start with the california blueprint for a safer economy, and we start with what the state allows us. Ultimate authority is at the state level. So the state Health Officer can actually overturn anything thats done locally. It rarely happens, but they have the ultimate authority. We consult with subject Matter Experts and nail down what are the key Public Health principles that were going to be using. We work with the City Attorney to make sure that we have we can do we have the appropriate Legal Framework to implement our intent, and the legal attorneys will draft an order, and then we have directives. And think of directives as guidance but with legal authority. And the directives are more flexible because those get updated as new science becomes available, but the orders tend to be constant and points to the directive. And then we work with information and guidance where we have more subject Matter Experts that focus on developing guidance and tip sheets. Its really the combination of all these levels working together is how it all functions, and in general we tend to be more health protective than other counties. Some counties will just say, okay, the state has come up with guidance. Go for it. Just implement that guidance. We take the extra step of reviewing that guidance, looking at other guidances from across the country and really making sure that were implementing the most uptodate science, and then we translate that into directive. Emerging health risk. So this table here has risk factors for transmission of the coronavirus. I want you to focus on really column two. Youll see 14 different risks that are itemized mobility, network, contacts, and were thinking about people having close contact, so youre thinking about not just the number of people but the rate of contact, the distance, the duration, what activity is happening, eating, drinking, talking, singing, whether a Face Covering needs to be removed, handwashing. Indoor setting and then and then ventilation if youre in an indoor setting, and fomites are just inanimate objects. I went ahead and just itemized in the third column those things that are very specific to Indoor Dining. And so youll see that out of 14, nine of them apply to Indoor Dining. So mixing number of persons and frequency of contact. We now know that aerosols, whenever we actually just breathe, it creates aerosols. And the way to think about aerosols is that if you can smell smoke, if somebodys smoking and they are exhaling the smoke and you can smell it, youre breathing what they just exhaled. Thats how far aerosols can travel, and you know that you can smell smoke from quite a distance. Prolonged duration, as ive just mentioned, aerosol generation. The Face Covering prevents 75 to 85 of aerosols from being released. It really decreases it. Thats why its important for everybody to have Face Coverings on, and even then its not 100 that it prevents all aerosols. So even if everybody in the room is wearing a Face Covering, you still have aerosols as being generated and put into the air, so ventilation is really, really critical. And thats why doing Things Outdoor is very important. And if we think about whos going to be most at risk, its truly going to be the workers indoors who are seeing multiple customers over the day, day in and day out. Thinking about ventilation, air exchange and filtration is really critical. Indoor dining, indoor setting with possible poor ventilation, mixing with persons outside the household, Face Covering removal to eat and drink, physical distancing less than six feet when youre sitting at a table with people who may be outside your household, and then the duration of close contacts. So in one of the challenges that we have in the science of coronaviruses, we have been with this pandemic for six months, so theres still a lot of things we dont know. So study what the drivers of infection are really requires specialized studies, and basically the type of specialized study thats done in an epidemic setting is comparing people who became cases and people who did not become cases, and then identifying what risk factors are associated with becoming a case versus not becoming a case. And so and this is one of the first case control studies that has been done, done by the cdc, and if you can see there on the third, the third item where you see restaurants oops. Sorry about that. I will go forward here. You see there youll see here that restaurants is restaurants is associated with becoming the case of covid. So this really verifies what weve been seeing, which is outbreaks associated with restaurants and especially bars. And you can see here, for example, under bars you can see bars and coffee shops you can see here they are both elevated. So this is really the first hard Scientific Evidence that we have of restaurants being a causal factor. We have had that intuition because of outbreaks, but this is the first study to verify that. So even though ive been talking about Indoor Dining, the concepts really apply to any indoor space. As we start opening up churches and people start coming together, everybody really needs to think about you see at the very bottom it says their personal protective equipment, so people tend to focus on Face Coverings, which are really, really important, but the truth is that you have to focus on all four levels. If you really want to reduce risk, you have to think about you have to think about all of them. And so im going to just spend a couple of minutes really on engineering controls. So on the lefthand side, its just a reminder of what happens. So a person can be asymptomatic, have no symptoms, feel perfectly fine but be very infectious. So they are putting out aerosols. Aerosols are tiny, tiny droplets that float away, can travel farther than six feet, and can infect persons even who are at a distance. So this is a really critical thing when youre indoors and theres poor ventilation and the concentration of those aerosols are building up. If everybodys wearing a Face Covering, its going to reduce the amount of aerosols that are there. So you see there on the lefthand side, on the bottom depiction, youll see that the person on the left now has a Face Covering on, but it doesnt prevent all the aerosols from coming out, but it really decreases them, and so this is where ventilation comes in. So ventilation is really critical to really we want to dilute that even more, and its really its a really basic concept. I want to dilute the aerosols, and theres only really two ways of diluting, which is ventilation and filtration. Whats the easiest way to handle ventilation . Move the activity outdoors. If youre indoors, you have to think about, okay, how do i dilute it . I open up windows or i use a filtration system thats going to remove those virus particles from the air. If you have a filtration system, lets say you have recirculated air, in general you dont want to have recirculated air, but if you did have recirculated air youre going to want to have the appropriate type of filter to filter out the air so the air coming back into the room has now been cleaned. And so you will see, for example, that there are areas that use portable Filtration Systems. You can go online and buy these. They are made for the home. People are using them right now because of the poor air quality, but you can buy those that are sort of stronger and built really for business purposes, and so for example at the tuberculosis clinic, we have portable filters that we use to keep the to keep the patient rooms, to keep the because people have tuberculosis, they are being in clinic, we want to make sure that we minimize the risk, so we use those portable air cleaners. So the big items that we think about, again, is mixing with persons outside the household, ventilation, contacts, Face Coverings and activities. And the supplies to everybody, anything thats happening indoors and this applies to everybody, anything thats happening indoors. Im going to jump into some questions that i received. So some of the questions i received have to do with reporting requirements. Youll see there at the very bottom is a pdf file. That one has the nittygritty details. The bottom line is that if you have had three or more cases within two weeks, you absolutely need to report to the Health Department. You need to say if you become aware that three of your employees have come down with covid, you need to let us know because thats thats a requirement. But even if you had one case or two cases and you need more guidance or youre having challenges really understanding whats in that document, theres a telephone number you can call to help so that we can help you manage it. One thing to think about is that most infections have no symptoms or they have mild symptoms, so the truth is that if you have one case, you probably have more cases that are not even detected. So it really depends on the size of your business and how many people you have. Think of a case as either that person may be introducing it into my work site or its a tip of the iceberg. And so you dont always know, and its really hard to sort that out unless, of course, everybody were tested. And thats why its really critical, the Face Coverings is very important. We have a lot of Community Transmission happening now. So its the cumulative risk of somebody coming into your work site, whether its an employee or a customer, being infected is very high, and so thats why you want to have universal Face Coverings. And its hard to achieve because when people dont have symptoms and they feel well, they dont realize that they are infected. People let their guard down. One of the things that we notice is that workers really tend to infect each other. Oftentimes were worried about the customer, but actually its the workers who are in the break room eating something, removing their Face Coverings, and they are exposing each other. So you really want to think you really want to think about that. Can it be forced to close if i report . So the whole idea, we in general, were not in the we dont look to close down businesses. Usually if a business gets closed down, its usually because there are egregious violations of health standards, and its probably not related to covid. So we do for example, we do close down restaurants when theres other issues happening that are that have to do with serving food safely, but its rarely going to be because of covid. You may you may decide to close down just to clean just to clean the environment, and thats its good for the workers. Its good for customers and it increases Customer Confidence if you do them. What is the impact of ab685 covid19 imminent hazard to employees exposure notification and serious violations . So the state of the Assembly Bill does have new requirements based on osha regulations, and what im going to do is our person whos in charge for Occupational Safety and health for the Health Department is reviewing this bill and well develop some summaries just to let you know how thats going to apply, but there will be the ability based on osha standards to close a business for having egregious violations related to covid. This is going to be more specific to covid. I havent had a chance to read this more carefully. I did give this to our person, our expert who is going to go ahead and read it and summarize it because we actually have to be aware of this as well too, so well develop a summary so you have a better idea about that. So what is required for San Francisco to move to orange . So we were assigned to the red tier. You cannot move out of a tier until youve been in it for at least three weeks. So move out of a tier you have to be in the next tier for at least two weeks, so were close to were right now we have been assigned to the orange tier in terms of officially were in red, but our metrics after adjustments, remember that adjustment that i mentioned earlier, has put us into the orange tier, and its very possible that if things do not change that by next week we will be officially in the orange tier. And what weve done is those higherrisk activities like Indoor Dining that weve pushed down into the orange tier, that means that Indoor Dining will be able to open up. And what were going to do with Indoor Dining, were going to develop a directive. So remember i mentioned about the directive. It has legal authority, guidelines have legal authority. Were going to want restaurants to selfcertify that they are meeting minimum standards and thinking through all of these things so they can really reduce risk as much as possible indoor for their workers and their customers. So for example we want them to think about ventilation. We want them to have a plan of how to increase ventilation indoors. I think thats going to be really important. Did Labor Day Weekend lead to a surge in infections . Right now were seeing a slight increase. Were crossing our fingers and hoping that it doesnt increase anymore. It usually takes two to three weeks after. It was a really hot day, so lots of people stayed indoors because it was too hot to be outside, and im trying to remember if the air quality was bad that day. If it was, it means less people spent time outdoors. We dont seem to be having the type of surge that we had with memorial day. How can we work with dph to understand industryspecific risk . Thats a really great question, and were happy to work with any of you to figure out how we can make your businesses safe. The key principles, i think we now know the key principles, and its the ones that i just mentioned on the slide, and what i would say, the last comment i want to make sha i think is really important, not just for you, your family, your workers and your customers, but in Public Health we try to come up with guidelines that will reduce the average risk in the population to control an epidemic. But we know that actual individual risk may really vary. So you might be in an environment where theres poor ventilation. You might be in an environment where youre predisposed to have a severe complication because youre older, you have a chronic medical condition, and you may decide, i really want to reduce my individual risk even more. And so were going to be coming out with more specific information on how people can reduce their individual risk even further. An example would be people know about n95s. The general public, if they had to be outside with very poor air quality, an n95 is an option to reduce breathing in air that has poor air quality. Well, that same n95 can actually reduce your risk of becoming infected with the sars coronavirus if you were in an indoor higherrisk setting. And so things like respirators, n95 are options that will reduce individual risk even more when youre in an indoor setting, and were going to make that we want to make that information available, because people may want to take additional steps that go beyond our general requirements. At the back i went ahead and just put some a bibliography of recent citations that addressed the issues that i brought up. And so thats it. I hope i didnt take too much time and that we have plenty of time left over for questions. I think we will have plenty of time, and thats great, and appreciate this excellent presentation, so thank you. So with that, im going to turn it over to our fellow commissioners, and first up is commissioner adams. Thank you, president laguana, and thank you, dr. Aragon. This is an excellent, excellent presentation, and it explained a lot and helped me out a lot. My questions for you is about Office Buildings. And im not talking about the big corporations. Im talking about the Office Buildings where windows can be opened and that, like your older Office Buildings, where you do have a lot of Small Businesses in these, like attorney offices, accountants, c. P. A. S. Right now we cant even find anything on the city website other than only essential workers can go into the office. Is there going to come out with any directives on those soon . And i mean, i appreciate i know its only essential workers who cannot work from home, but i have tenants who are like individual Office Attorneys and c. P. A. S and stuff that want to come down, and i dont know what to tell them. Yeah, so i there is if you go to covid19. Ca. Gov you know what, were going to have to send you this link. There is a matrix, a pdf that has a matrix basically how the state has everything, including offices. And pretty much were following that matrix, except for highrisk things that i mentioned, the highrisk things were pushing down the level, but you can go you can find your there is a row there on offices, and you can just look right across, look at the color, and youll get an idea of exactly what were going to be permitted. So were just following with the state for those. Were following our assigned tier for everything except highrisk things, and highrisk things right now are movies and Indoor Dining and religious worship is one of the areas. So they are all going to be sort of open they are all going to be opening up together, but we pushed everything down by one tier. Okay. Thank you. Youre welcome. The chair okay, who else i got . Any other questions here from commissioners . My presentation was so clear that there are no questions. [laughter] the chair commissioner ortizcartagena. [speaking spanish]. [indiscernible] to help Small Businesses. You mentioned all the stuff youve been doing, so i want to thank you for that. We all appreciate you, especially in the restaurant community. One of the questions, and its not even a question, its more of a how can we partner and disseminate information in real time in spanish. All this stuff is great, but sometimes we dont get the directives [indiscernible] and sometimes the spanish is a little too technical for restaurant employees. What are your thoughts on that, disseminating . [indiscernible] that would be great [indiscernible] telling people that, i dont know, like, [indiscernible] or something. Okay. Well, can you do me a big favor . Can i assign you to bug me about this one . This is a really big one. I absolutely agree with you. Its we have to figure out how to get to the Latino Workforce in a way thats going to culturally resonate, and im glad youre bringing this up. Im definitely going to follow up on that, but also i want to follow up with you to make sure that, you know, whatever we do is connected to the Small Business commission. Because its really its not just the food industry. Its a lot of Different Industries where we have essential workers who are working behind the scenes, and we need to get the word out to them in multiple languages, so thank you for bringing that up. Thank you, doctor. The chair wonderful. Commissioner yekutiel. Thank you very much, dr. Aragon, for your second presentation. I watched your presentation for the Health Commission and i really appreciate that you kind of tailored this one specifically for us. Im sure that must have taken lots of time also. So i just had a couple of questions. One is regarding the framework in terms of for information dissemination. You know, this is very kind of similar, i guess, to what we were just talking about in terms of getting information out to people. One thing that i noticed when we were handing out p. P. E. Is that a lot of businesses just are not connected via email, and so people were, you know, giving me phone numbers or, like, you know, just this name of a person. It was just very difficult to kind of, you know, have a very streamlined method of communication. So im kind of curious as to what your understanding of how your Health Ordinances are pushed out and then disseminated . So i will tell you what i know, and im sure all of this can be improved. So you know, i work primarily with the office of economic and Workforce Development and their Communication Network to get information out, and so my assumption is that the Small Business commission and oewd are my assumption is that youre communicating closely, but thats been sort of the way that ive been that we we have let them sort of figure out how to communicate that out. I dont know if you know joaquin torres. If you have suggestions for improvement, if there are gaps, please let him know, and im sure theyll really work on improving the communications. Okay, because i do get the sense that, you know, when were listening to your presentation, you know, it makes a whole lot of sense. Like everything, i get it, i can see the Health Ordinances. Im able to go online and i can find what i need, but then when i talk to Small Business owners, theres mass confusion as to whats happening, when is this happening, who said what. And so i am just kind of understand, i guess, where you know, where that gap is and who we can really work with to close that gap for everybody. I know that in the Mayors Office theyve assigned a dedicated person i dont know who the person is, but in the Mayors Office. So andres power might be the person who knows who was assigned, or sean elseburg is going to know the chief of staff. So a dedicated person to focus on Communications Just for the reopening. And so i think thats going to be because youre absolutely youre completely correct. Its just you know, im in this every single day, and i get confused, so i cant even imagine what its like for somebody whos not doing this. Youre absolutely right. And the Mayors Office has recognized that communication is a really critical element. I think and then one of the questions that was in your Health Commission meeting last time i felt like i would love some maybe deeper understanding about it. They talked a lot about, again, the language, the legalese, and i think you had mentioned kind of like tip sheets, and i saw some of the tip sheets, and they still feel kind of like complex for a Business Owner who has, like, 20,000 things. Do you think there are opportunities to still be able to, you know, simplify those further and then be able to really tailor it to the workers as well . Yeah, this is sort of this goes along with the earlier one, which is we have to figure out and i will definitely follow up with the Communications Person because i think we have to figure out really how to take it to that next level. Yeah, because i even myself, i sort of tend to focus on how do i just get this done accurate, and then i hope that somebody else takes it and translates it into other language. I will ask, when we start interacting with the new Communications Person, i will follow up with this because its reaching the essential workers, both in written and we have to have written and nonwritten ways of communicating, and its a big area. I agree with you, and i promised to follow up and hopefully that ill you know, that Communications Person will mobilize resources in this direction. Thank you. I mean, i think having your support on that would be, you know, one of the big key things because knowing that youre putting so much effort and thought into tailoring something for San Francisco and then making and ensuring that that then is executed, you know, to the best of all our communities abilities, i think both of those things would be a really nice complement for us to be able to work on this together. And the other thing i tried to do in my slides, if you remember one of the last slides that i had that had the picture with the mask, and then the other one, i put those on purpose together in one slide so its almost as if you have to just take that material and translate it into what works for you. And theres a few key points there that if everybody can just really figure stay focused on those points, we will make a big difference. So that slide is an important slide because a lot of the content for preventing transmission is on that slide. Perfect. Thank you so much. Mmhm. The chair okay. And keeping your family safe as well. Because everything that i tell you, i apply with my family. The chair wonderful. Commission commissioner yekutiel . I want to say thank you so much for coming to a place where you could create a timeline for my community to reopen their businesses indoors. I have not been able to have anyone set foot in my business and to serve them for over six months. And you know, its emotional. Its we have talked about this before, but this is what were here to do. This is, you know, for many of the people in my community, this is our this is the fruition of, you know, a dream at times. So to have our business shudders indoors for so long is really, really difficult. I know you know that. I just want to first say thank you so much for coming to a place where youre giving us the ability to reopen our spaces inside, for trusting us. I just want to say on the outset of this that Restaurant Owners really want to do this right. They are begging, they are begging for the trust of you, thomas, and your team and the city and the entire Public Health committee to give us the opportunity to do this properly, and so i know that about my community. I know were just looking for an opportunity to do this right. My first question is about requiring Filtration Systems with indoor restaurants. Is that something that youre thinking about requiring Restaurant Owners to provide, indoor Filtration Systems . Well, were not requiring them to do a or b. Were saying were requiring them to address, to have a plan for how theyre going to improve ventilation. But are, like, are regular fans and windows enough or professional Filtration Systems do you think are whats going to be needed to create ventilation . Yeah, of course you could always do you could always theres a whole spectrum. You could always do more, of course. And we realize that and this is also true of schools. Theres a lot of old schools, and so thats why you want to sort of start with the obvious, which is can we open the windows . Can we open the doors . You start with that. Right. And then there are guidelines and were going to have to make sure these guidelines are available to you. And for example, in old schools you can get you can get portable air purifiers that will get the air exchange in the room, several air exchanges, and purify the air, and so you want to have those available to you because you may have a part of the restaurant where there isnt a good window and a door and you want to do something further. Right. We want everybody to think about it and to plan for it. Theres no way that we could go theres too many restaurants for us to know what everybody is doing, so we want to make sure that part of the selfcertification is that youve thought about this and you can explain to somebody else if somebody were to come to you and say what are you doing to improve ventilation, you can say were doing a, b and c. Right. So i just looked up in the [indiscernible] of this conversation what would it take for me to have a professional purification system for my business, and minimum 5k, but probably closer to 15k, just for the size of my restaurant. And so of course theres a balance here, right . We want to do this right, but the whole point of giving my industry the opportunity to open doors is to save them from financial ruin. If requiring them to spend tens of thousands of dollars on air purifiers is whats required for them to open indoors, it doesnt really make sense. Im glad to hear that the selfcertification, theres some flexibility. Just to be able to figure out a way to be safe and requiring ventilation. Commissioner dooley, i think youre unmuted, by the way. I heard you mention n95 masks earlier as being better at preventing spread. Do you think youre going to be requiring guests of restaurants to be wearing n95 masks for entry . No, no, no. Were not requiring people to wear n95 were not requiring folks to wear n95. What we want to do is we want to make people aware of, you know, again, in Public Health we focus on here are requirements to reduce the average risk. We want also to empower people with Additional Information. If they want to lower their own individual risk for whatever reason, because they find themselves in a location where they feel i need to protect myself, or they may be medically vulnerable and they want to take some extra protection. So that will be Additional Information people can use, but there wont be a requirement. Im just trying to make sure that theres going to need to be a rush on something for Restaurant Owners to open their businesses that we can start getting ready now to provide the things we need to do this right. The third question i have is about hours. I know its actually i know weve been flexible in changing up what all the requirements and the guidelines have been, but i think whats resulted from it now is i think a lot of people in my community of Restaurant Owners are confused about when they are allowed to open and close. Are you thinking for the inclusion of Indoor Dining that there will be a restriction on how late restaurants can be open . Not that im aware of. Im not aware of any restrictions around hours. Okay, and my final question around the reopening of Indoor Dining is about capacity limitations. Ive heard in different parts of the state there are capacity limitations from 10 to 25 to 50 and a cap on a total number. I know this is a process you guys are working through right now, but are you thinking about a particular the orange zone is 50 . Red is 25. So are you thinking 25 capacity . Yes, when we move into orange for restaurants, it will be it will be lets see here. It will be 25 capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer. Got it. Okay, so those are my questions on Indoor Dining. I just have a couple more. This is im also a religious jew, and i know youve heard a lot from the community, so restaurant hat off, religious jew hat on. Deeply religious. Of course high holidays are coming up. They have happened. We had rosh hashanah, happy new year to you, thomas. This is the most important time of the year for my community and my people. And people are really nervous and sad and scared about not being able to be in ekoemanical organizations or synagogues. Im hearing confusion around why large retail establishments like malls and places you know, Large Department stores are acceptable for people to come into but not large synagogues or churches. I imagine your answer is going to be because in churches you sing and you aseparate aspirate a lot, but im wondering what the reason is for the difference . Yeah, so if you remember, remember one of the slides i started with is that we start with what the state allows us to do. Right. And when we came on the watch list, the state closed all indoor restaurants and all indoor worship. And so thats that happened outside of our control. And now were giving were being given the opportunity to open things up, and so were using the state framework again. So the places i have been talking about Indoor Dining, but the places of worship, they when we mauve to orange when we move to orange, they will be moving to 25 of capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer. We are going to be opening up that significantly for indoor, and were also going to increase outdoor as well. I understand that. I just it seems like your department is comfortable conforming with the states guidelines on some things, but also coming up with own guidelines in other ways, and so im wondering kind of your personal opinion, what do you think is the reasoning between allowing for certain uses for indoor as acceptable but not religious . Yeah, i think you know, youre asking a really good question. Ill give you sort of my take on it from an epidemiologic perspective. Thank you. Until were able to do these case control studies, like the one i showed you, its really hard to identify what drivers of infection are. Okay . Mmhm. So when you ask people, you go to the cdc and you say what are the drivers of infection, they will tell you what their intuition tells them, and their intuition has really been driven by outbreaks, and so the outbreaks that we know about are primarily related to restaurants, religious services, bars, and so thats what people thats what people know, and so we dont have the Evidence Base we dont have the Evidence Base to be able to say, oh, you know what, this really welldesigned case control study showed that churches are not at all associated. Maybe there were outbreaks, but they are not all. So thats what were sort of left with, that intuition, and then were left with we have better evidence, and so thats what ends up being promulgated down, and we mix it with what we think is what we know, and thats sort of how things thats how things play out. Our commitment is to allow what is allowable and to do it as safely as possible and to let people know what is risky so that they can make the informed choice if they want to take those risks. I wonder if some of that has to do with the trickling down of the early news reports of all those cases coming from that south Korean Church where people were in close proximity and sweating and right next to each other, you know, maybe there was some early reports of that that are kind of been filtered into those guidelines. Can i ask a couple more questions . Is that all right . The chair yes. There has always been quite a bit of outbreaks associated with religious services, and the challenge is that the reason we notice the outbreaks is because its we can see a church, right . We can see a church, and so it becomes something thats easier for us to observe, and thats why were able to detect the outbreaks. Its possible that there are outbreaks happening in other settings, and even more, but we just cant see them. It doesnt mean that they are not happening. Right. I think my only point on that, dr. Aragon, is its the same thing probably with restaurants in that i think large religious institutions with lots of space, im thinking of temple emmanuel, for instance, they would love the opportunity to show that they can safely bring people inside, spread them out, require masks. Right, right. That kind of thing. Im now going to take my religious jew hat off and put my Event Planning hat on. If we were open in person i would love to invite you and have an audience. I think i probably did that earlier on before the pandemic. I think a lot of obviously the Event Industry and the independent Venue Alliance suffering so much, and unlike indoor restaurants, there really is no light at the end of the tunnel for that industry, except for perhaps your Office Coming out with guidance for medium to largesized outdoor events. But i guess my question to you on that is how do you think about indoor and outdoor gatherings where mask usage, other p. P. E. Usage is required and theres spacing and its very strict . It seems like from hearing you give your presentation now i think four times, one of the things that really worries you, and it makes sense, is when you are forced to do activities that when youre doing activities that force you to take your mask off. But were now getting into month seven of this shutdown, and there are effects, and i know it might be hard to hear this because youre thinking epidemiologically, and perhaps im thinking purely culturally, but the effects of not being able to attend events, culture, artistic, in my case civic and political in eight days will be the president ial debate. I will not be able to gather to watch these debates in communities. So forbidding these, even when theres a potential path to have gatherings where people are required to wear their masks and distance, i fear might be having downstream effects on just the general health, wellbeing and the mental and emotional and Spiritual Health of our city. So how are you thinking about gatherings, whether indoor and outdoor, that bring people together and create a framework where people can do that in a way that you feel is safe. So at the end of the day, its really about what is the prevalence of active infections in the community. So if the prevalence of active infection in the community is really, really low, we can go out there and play football, tackle football, right . No, seriously. I have never played tackle football, and i probably never will. But we can go to a drag show, you and i. And so, yeah, my point is that for the countries that have been able to keep the infection rate as low as possible, they were able to do riskier activities. And thats sort of the balance that we have. As a nation, weve never gotten to that level, and so now were because weve never gotten to that level, were now at the area where we are now trying to open up these highrisk things when theres infection in the community, our testing is not optimal. Theres a lot of gaps that make it hard for us, and so were moving cautiously because we dont want it we dont want remember i showed you that effective reproductive number . If it gets above one, it starts going like this, and then all of a sudden we start backtracking and shutting things down. I dont want to go backwards. If we can continue moving forward, then thats the best path, i hope. Okay, and dr. Aragon, i just have two more quick questions. One is a followup to what you just said, and this is coming off the comments of my fellow commissioner, there is a clear disproportionate number of cases of covid19 in parts of San Francisco. The ca so are you thinking of the different when you think about a reopening timeline, permitted activities, distribution of resources, im glad to see that finally at 16th and mission, a block away from my Small Business, theres finally Free Covid Testing and a full center for people to come and get tested, but have you thought at all about thinking about this timeline and whats permitted in different communities and areas depending on the prevalence of covid in that community . Or is that kind of not the way you think about it . Yeah, youre bringing up a really good question, and that is when indoor restaurants open, the risk is going to be different in different parts of the city. Thats just the way it is. And i think and we are trying to be treat everybody the same, but i think youre absolutely right. Theres certain parts of the city that have more Community Transmission. And so people going to have to take that into their own decisions that they make in terms of mitigating risk or taking or you know, eating out, for example. You have to have a really good solution. We dont weve tried not to we dont want to we dont want people to start discriminating against other people and not doing Business Activities in certain neighborhoods, but youre bringing up a really good point. I know its a touchy subject. And commissioners, this is my last question. I really appreciate you giving me this much time. And this goes kind of back to where we started, dr. Aragon, which is thank you for giving my industry the ability to reopen. We are all really scared as well because this you know, we did have postmemorial day, you know, a closing back of a lot of our activities. I remember when you released the timelines for reopening restaurants and i celebrated, my restaurant celebrated, we hired a bunch of people, and people are really nervous about a potential closing back of our reopening timeline. So i wanted to ask what are you going to need to see to decide that youre going to roll back the reopening that you have announced recently . Specifically for indoor restaurants, but in general. Is it the kind of thing where youre going to wait for two weeks of higher numbers or are you going to wait for the state to change our tier and then change our tier . How are you thinking about the rollback if [indiscernible] do it . Currently, our current thinking right now is to follow the state, is to follow the state tier system. Okay. Because yeah, so thats our current thing. And the other thing i want to say, when you said thank you to me, its really not me. Its the its all of us. Its the combination of this battle between the virus thats trying to replicate and all of us as a City Community doing everything we can to get it to go down, and thats why i think its really important. I think working with the Restaurant Industry is going to be really critical because we need to work with you to make sure that the work site is as safe as possible, that essential workers are not becoming infected. So all of us have to do that, because all that contributes to the rates going up, and then things have to shut down, and so we all have to Work Together. Thank you very much, dr. Aragon. Thank you, commissioner laguana for giving me that much time. The chair oh, please, ask. Commissioner adams . Can i get a copy or the commission get a copy of your presentation . Because it will help me because i get inundated with questions. Your presentation, i can really when im speaking to people, like, i can cite some of the stuff in there, if thats possible. Of course, yes. Yeah, they have my presentation. Great. And again, thank you, excellent presentation. Youre welcome. The chair commissioner dooley. Thanks for the presentation. It was really great. My question is more about Small Businesses are becoming a little lax about enforcing masks and i just wanted to ask as a community member, short of asking the Health Department to come out, can you suggest a way to encourage these folks to actually, you know, follow our guidelines so we dont start shooting up . Ive had photos sent to me of a few businesses that, you know, out on the sidewalk, no mask, drinking alcohol, singing and dancing, and as i say, our we dont want to shut anyone down, but can you give us a little guidance on how we might be able to connect with these owners . Youre asking a really good question. Yeah, i i know we do have an Enforcement Team that goes out and looks at the different complaints, and sometimes we will amend the orders to try to influence behavior. So one of the things we did was one of our orders was we have people who are eating and drinking when they are not actively eating and drinking. They may have finished and they just want to converse. We require them to put their Face Covering on, back on. And that actually came from complaints from the waiters. The waiters were saying theyre done eating and theyre just talking and theyre not wearing their Face Covering, and i dont feel safe [indiscernible] wearing their Face Covering. So we do do that. Its really its very hard because we cant its hard to regulate peoples behavior at that level. And so a lot of Public Health depends on social norms and social pressures, where if they see everybody doing it, and so we really depend on the owners. Heres an example where the owners want to open up, and so all of us have to do our part, and so they should really be encouraging the patrons to put their Face Coverings on. If theres a complaints please let us know, and we do have people that will go out and look into it. Yeah, i was just hoping there might be something a little less difficult for the owners, you know, than having the Health Inspector come out. Yeah. I dont know what it is because [indiscernible] a lot of violations here and there, and other patrons are upset about it. Yeah, i get emails from people who are upset, and sometimes a business can say, you know what, were not going to serve you here again because youre not following our rules. Right . Right. And im not in that situation. I dont know how hard it is to do that, so hopefully the Business Community can come up with something to help in that area. Thank you. The chair wonderful. Lets see, any other questions here . Okay, great. I get to ask questions now. Hooray. Dr. Aragon, first going back to your presentation, the fisher ten port study, i didnt see who the institution was that released that out, but that this was the study that indicated, you know, the degree of i guess comparative risk between restaurants and i think it showed a higher risk level for bars. This was the one with the air bars on the side. Okay, yeah, so thats a cdc, centers for disease control. Right. So i saw the press releases on that. I was curious, i dont believe that that study discriminates between Indoor Dining and Outdoor Dining. Is that correct . Correct. Yeah. So do we have any data or any guidance at all on indoor versus outdoor, comparative risk level on nothing . Not that im aware of. Im sure that this study will be replicated, and they will make those distinctions in the future studies. The chair hopefully, yeah. And i was going to say along those same lines, if memory serves, we opened up Outdoor Dining on july 15, but by that point our big postmemorial day surge was already in full effect, and there you know, please correct me if i have this wrong or i misunderstood, but there doesnt appear to have been a surge that is directly correlated with opening up to Outdoor Dining in mid july. Does that map to what youre seeing or what your gut is telling you . The truth is that in the absence of these types of studies we twoel dont nobody knows, to be honest with you, and i think one other comment, just the previous study, the fisher study, so because they didnt distinguish between outdoors and indoors, to the extent that some of that was outdoors, it actually underestimates the true risk. In other words, it dilutes it because probably outdoors is lower risk. The chair right. So that Statistical Association is an underestimation of the true risk, and so the truth and so the next question youre asking is that without these specific types of studies, we have no idea. We know what [indiscernible] we have suspicion. We know there was a lot of socializing, so youll hear people say we think it was a lot of the social gatherings, a lot of the small social gatherings. The truth is that we dont absolutely know until we do more of these studies. The chair okay. You know, i guess one thing we could say is, you know, since we have allowed Outdoor Dining we have slowly but steadily approached an effective rate of under one. Yes, thats true, absolutely. So even we know that these activities dont eliminate all risk, right . We know that. So there has to be theres some small numbers of infections probably happening, but in spite of that, weve got our reproductive number down below one, and so that means fantastic. Actually, i just wanted to let people know, if you do have a complaint about a specific business, you could always call 311, and theyll they will send out the Covid Command Center as a Community Education Response Team that will go out and investigate the complaint. The chair yes. So great, thats helpful information, but i guess the point im driving at is it does seem you know, something that could be reinsurine assuring t both the public and the community is that we could have an effective rate under one and still have, you know, some degree of business you know, service of outdoor Restaurant Service that its not mutually incompatible, that were not just forced to seesaw between the two extremes, either we have a pandemic or we have Outdoor Dining, but we cant we cant have under control and also have Outdoor Dining at the same time. It does appear that we can do that, and its thats what the evidence seems to show so far. I completely agree with you. Yeah, i youre bringing up a really important point, and that is when i presented that slide, i dont want to make it sound as if i believe that Outdoor Dining is risky. Thats a really important point. My point is that as for us to think about as we move into indoors, that we sort of we really take seriously how we mitigate risk for all indoor activities. The chair yes, i know our community of Small Business owners is really clear on this point, but i know its not always clear to the public. And so thats particularly with respect to shared spaces. Thats a source of tension. Theres a feeling that, you know, its being reckless or, you know, putting the public at risk. And i think we can discriminate between some marginal level of risk that just comes with being, you know, outdoors in the middle of a pandemic. Right, right. The chair and you know, the second and third order of Health Impacts of employees not being able to work and not being able to make a living, et cetera, versus, you know, more contained serious risks that, you know, sharing the same indoor same air indoors for long continues periods of time. Correct. The chair so i guess i wanted to talk about communications for a bit. First of all, i think youve heard, particularly from the restaurant community, but from Small Business you know, even just within the past two weeks since we made the request of this meeting, theres been a lot of changes that i think have been well received by the Small Business community, and that has been, you know, as manny expressed, theres been some gratitude for that and an ability to open, knowing full well that its an entire team that is trying to assess and decide. But you know, it does seem like theres you know, it leaves some possibility that, you know, fingers crossed we dont get there, but that things could backslide or that we have to, you know, perhaps the state sets us back a tier in the future. And so it does seem like the Communications Part of it is really important because i know that that was a pain point for many in Small Business. Ill offer one bit of feedback that ive heard repeatedly from several different folks, is that the working groups strategy for dealing with communications internally, coming into dph, that that felt like a really productive strategy, because part of the frustration is how do we get information to dph in a way that is being ingested and understood. So i wanted to let you know that the working groups approach is has been successful. Great, thats great. And theres probably other sectors besides restaurants that could possibly benefit from that approach, and certainly the commission and osw and oswd would be happy to work with you on fleshing out those working groups on who the right people are when and if we get to that stage. The second part, of course, is getting the information out to folks, and thats the more challenging part, partially because theres nobody that you know, i its hard to get information out to Small Businesses who arent necessarily paying close attention to oewd or even the Mayors Office, maybe they dont check their mails. Mail takes time to get to them, and thats expensive and time consuming. So you know, i have a couple questions around your process. So when you decide to make either a directive or an order, does dph have its own coms team . Or are you relying exclusively and entirely on the Mayors Office and eowd to get your message out . So every department has their own communications team. The chair mmhm. But the whole Covid Response is so its so massive that we really and theres so many moving parts in all the different aspects of covid, that the Covid Command Center, which is our Emergency Response center down at muscony, that they brought together the Communications People from all the different departments, and its called a joint information command, and thats really the center of our communication activities. Really everything goes through them. The chair okay. When you make, issue an order, and im assuming when when you generate a new order or directive, thats a conversation with a whole bunch of people and then you develop some degree of consensus on how youre going to move forward. Its not just you woke up from a nap and decided youre going to do something completely different that, you know, theres some sort of iterative process. But when you issue that order, do you contact the ert team and say this is the order thats coming out and youre relying on them to get it out . What is the actual process . Yeah, theres a whole list of things that we do, and i primarily work with the subjectMatter Experts and the City Attorney in crafting sort of the key principles, the information and guidance. They have a whole database that has guidances from around the country that are tracking whats happening in other areas. They look at what the state puts out, whats available, and then they put it together with what principles were trying to accomplish. And then you have early drafts, and then we actually get we have a process of getting the drafts out for feedback, and so whenever sometimes things move so fast that its not as ideal as it could be, but when theres plenty of time, it really works best we did that with the Outdoor Dining, is when we had a directive, we through oewd, they went ahead and asked folks does this make sense to you . And we got a lot of feedback and then we made adjustments and directives because we dont want to ask people to do things that cant be done and dont make sense on the ground. Its really that process. It takes several days before it goes through the whole process of review and feedback before it actually gets issued. The chair okay, but the process in terms of communications is you tell a staff member yeah, so the communications folks, they like to know what is happening along the way so they can start planning their Communications Strategy, and then because core materials have to be translated into the threshold languages. So theres this whole other process that has to happen, and so they want to know as soon as possible so they can start planning their Communications Strategy and also the translation of materials. The chair okay. But again, the process is youll so youre having ongoing conversations with Communications Staff so they can start to prepare the materials, and then theres some point where the trigger is pulled or, you know, were going to this is going to happen on, you know, two days from now or 72 hours but its not as its not as good as it should be, and thats why the Mayors Office has assigned a Communications Person, because people recognize is that this whole reopening area is so complex with the state with whats happening at the state level, the local level, all this other activity, that we needed to have a dedicated Communications Person that can sort of synthesize all this information and so that it can really improve communications. So hopefully next time i come back it will be different. Actually, yeah, maybe well even have the Communications Person come and talk how they are planning to make things better. But yeah, that its so complicated that we needed an additional person. The chair yeah, i want to emphasize, weve i think a lot of progress has been made even just within the past couple of weeks at getting a better rapport established, and i want to acknowledge the progress thats being made and just emphasize what appears to be still left to do. From the outside looking in. And we may be passed that point even now as we speak. So at any rate, i wanted to convey that. Let me lets talk about math for a second, because i think, you know, as you have correctly pointed out, the Business Community has an interest in keeping this virus as under control as possible. The more under control it is, the more open we can be as you pointed out. I noticed with interest this starbucks study. I think it was observational. All of the workers were Wearing Masks and the diners were not, and the diners got infected and the workers did not. And that seemed to suggest that masks could play a you know, i think just reading it from the outside looking in, the language has always been that masks are like a vaccine, they protect not the wearer but the people that might be breathed on by the wearer. But this seemed to suggest that the mask may provide some protective benefit to the wearer. And im curious if you have seen anything, any similar studies or if, you know, your spidey gut sense is telling you similar things based on your work and what youre seeing. So mask is one of the things that have been studied because theres been respiratory virus outbreaks for so we have sars before we had pandemic influenza in 2019, so theres actually been a lot of research around mask, and basically theres just two basic concepts, and one is barrier protection, so a face mask or face cover is a barrier protection, and thats really going to as a barrier, its going to protect things going out and going to prevent things coming in, especially big droplets. So thats just barrier protection, and so we know that a barrier protection protects others and protects me, and in addition, theres new theres hypothesis that it reduces the amount of virus that you get exposed to so that youre less likely to develop severe disease. There is that. And then you have when things become aerosolized and really small and can go around the barrier, then it really becomes about ventilation and filtration. And so then the filtration can both be engineered in a room, but it can also be respirators. N95 is an example of a felt ration device that filters that, that filters air, so it has to fit tightly around your face. Thats pretty much it. Theres a lot of evidence for both of those. They both work as barrier protection, but only one of them works in terms of airborne and as a filtration device. The chair so speaking of filters, we talked earlier about restaurant air Filtration Systems and how recirculating air is less desirable without the filters. I guess my understanding of viruses, and you can correct me if im wrong, that they are so small that its difficult to have a filter that really captures these. I guess n95 meets that criteria. With these air Filtration Systems, is ultraviolet light, has that proven to be helpful . I guess what im looking for, what are some things restaurants can do if they, you know, dont have and im not trying to pin you down. But i think they are looking for guidance these are great questions. I think these are fantastic questions, and there are theres two websites that you can go to, and well make sure that we can pass them on. One is from harvard that has a whole area to help people to understand how to improve the quality of air indoors, including practical things for schools. And then the state Health Department just put up a website dedicated to ventilation. I havent had a chance to look at it closely, but it addresses the practical issues, uv light, recirculated area, level of filter you need for your ventilation system. All of it is there so that people can go ahead and say what can what practical steps can do to improve ventilation in my indoor space. Yeah, it does seem like even if theres, you know, modest things we could do that, you know, lower the risk or lower the severity of the disease by even 5 , that you know, compound interest, cumulatively that accrues to the benefit of all of us. Absolutely. The chair so i think, you know, going back to the communications side of this, i think thats a really important critical point that certainly we as a commission would be delighted to assist you with and d. P. H. And r. O. W. D. And everybody else. But you know, we really want to make sure that the entire Business Community has the best practices and guidances, whatever they are, whatever they whatever is within their possibility or capability to do, because even if its just, you know, improving the odds even modestly, or marginally, thats better than not doing anything at all. Just, you know, the nature of the power law of the math just seems to push in that direction. So that invitation is outstanding. So with that, those are my questions. I appreciate you spending your time on them. I imagine well have some Public Comment as well. But before we jump to Public Comment, are there any last commissioner questions . Feedback or comments before we go to Public Comment . I dont see any, so do we have any public callers on the line . Yes, we do. We currently have five people on line in the queue. Wonderful. Please proceed. Good evening. My name is steven cornell. Are you hearing me . The chair we sure are, steven. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, and i too listened to the one on the health division. I would like to talk a little bit about the communications. I understand that the city only can communicate with a relatively few number of businesses directly, and i feel that if the Health Department and your office is making the rules out there and want to get them out, its up to you to get them out there. We out in the community, we really dont care if its this department or that department and how they work in just get the information out. And it seems like no department has the names and addresses of all the businesses. But one department does have it, and thats the Tax Collector. They are always out there. They are sending us bills. I think your department should just send the information to the Tax Collector and have them send it out. It is so important that all this information gets out directly to the businesses who are going to need it without it being filtered through a lot of other people. And thats and my second point is we need to have especially guidelines as early as possible, guidelines out there doesnt mean a promise that were going to open up tomorrow or in two weeks, but it gives us the opportunity to start preparing for what were going to do, or as manny said, if were going to have to put in five or 10,000 extra in filters, maybe we dont want to do that and we can pull the plug, or whatever we want to do. But that information is so important. If you look at our state, the state seems to be sending out guidelines weeks, even months ahead of time, and thats very helpful. I hope thats something you guys could achieve. Again, its the Health Department that wants to get it out. We want to be part of it. We want to open up, and everybody wants to survive. I appreciate your time. The chair thank you. Ill point that steven provides legislative advice to the council of district merchants, which is one of our largest storefront associations in the city. Next caller, please. Hi, my name is marnia. Im from a nonprofit studio in the castro. And i need some advice on what programs we can reopen now that all of our health and safety protocols are in place and we have a schedule to limit capacity. We have of course i scoured all the directives and all of the orders to see what pertains to us and what does not, but for example, we have Adult Education programs which are no longer in use. Weve canceled all our public programming. However, we do rent space to other businesses who have keys to our business, to our physical plant, for example. So i could use a little bit of advice, and im not sure who to contact about that. Who do i contact about questions on how i should interpret or how i am interpreting these orders . The chair so were not allowed to actually interact with Public Commenters. We can only listen. We are all many of us are taking notes on the comments, but were not allowed to interact. I dont know [microphone feedback] i think they have their speakers turned up. Theyll need to turn their speakers down. President laguana, if there are questions that do come up that do merit followup, perhaps a recommendation is to have them to send the questions to sfosb sfgov and we can follow up on that. The chair yes, and i will try to take notes on some questions and follow up as well, although i missed with what her business type was, but hopefully somebody else got it. Next caller, please. Good evening, commissioners, and dr. Aragon. Thank you for having this meeting tonight. My name is mario magano. Im the president of the San Francisco council of district merchants, as president laguana had mentioned, we represent some of the smallest and most important businesses on the San Francisco streets when it comes to engaging with people in covid19. Thank you for everything that youre doing. The biggest complaint or concern that i get from merchants is that every time something comes out as a mandate that they have to scramble to get operational and they do not know how long it will last, and i understand the clinical safety of the community is important but we also have to know how to work with people. Every time plans come up and businesses are trying to get their businesses operation, it can cost thousands of dollars and take weeks of time for merchants to get going. And a good, clean pipeline of communication, absolutely essential to keep these people from going to the tipping edge of frustration. I understand the rules are changing on all of us on a regular basis, but as soon as we can get information out to people, the sooner they can respond and the less theyll have to react, and i believe also just to be a little bit more comfortable in what comes up in being able to handle it without having to panic every time a new mandate or a new regulation seems to come up as a bit of a surprise. I understand theres a lot of moving parts here and theres even a little bit of politics, but if you could just, you know, please think about those people that those decisions impact the most and the sooner we can get them the information, the media can do the rest for the general public, which is always happy to hear everything. Thank you very much for everything that youre doing. Thank you. The chair thank you. Next caller, please. My name is dean erickson. Im calling on behalf of my small Family Business. Im also a member of the San Francisco fitness independent studio coalition. I first wanted to thank the thank sharky and dr. Aragon for the Small Business commission dph work with the industry of this past few months. Being able to open at a limited capacity is a lifeline for not only my Family Business but many other Family Businesses as well. The feedback coming back has been overwhelmingly positive as many cant since go outside since they need to keep with their fitness regiment with lowimpact machinery. To keep this in mind, the coalition is questioning what is dph doing to help the industry identify the next direction, like it has with the Restaurant Industry, in regards to Indoor Dining. What direction will it be taking and what direction will it be taking given Small Group Classes and allowing us Small Group Classes indoors, such as kick boxing and so forth, high cardio classes. The other point we would like to establish is what can be done to establish this Fitness Industry as essential like that of physiotherapy in case any surges cause them to shut down, will independent studios also be required to shut down even though physiotherapy studios are allowed to remain open . And finally, we would like to understand the rationale behind the 18yearold age limit allowed for anybody older than 18 allowed into the gyms for indoor workouts. With High School Sports shut down, were having a lot of demand for High School Students being allowed to come in and work out indoors in order to stay in shape for their High School Sports. So i just wanted to thank you all very much for your assistance thus far, and we look forward to further collaborating with the dph, the Small Business commission and all the board of supervisors moving forward. Thank you. The chair thank you. Next caller, please. Dr. Argon and Small Business commission, hello and thank you for a great presentation. Im the broker and owner of properties in the castro. As the president of castro merchants and faced with Lifestyle Changes resulting from the covid19 pandemic, we recognize that the wearing of the mask, social distancing and frequent washing of hands must be considered essential in order to keep our Community Healthy and safe. At the same time, as a business district, we all must Work Together to keep our businesses open and operating in a manner that will ensure the health and safety of all concerns. As Business Owners working with city agencies thus far has been challenging due to an inadequate guidelines and communications in general. Case in point, we have not been consulted and informed in any part of health order decisionmaking process. Yet we are required to deal with many pages of Health Orders that are difficult to understand by employees and customers. Much of such information has come by the way of the media. We should be included in the decisionmaking process. We should also be given guidelines that are clear to understand and can be administered and implemented in an orderly fashion. Thank you for your time. The chair thank you. Next caller, please . Hi, my name is tracy sylvester. Im the owner of a pillates in the mission. Im a board member of the Mission Merchants association and have been advocating for Small Business for over 10 years. I also am a delegate for the council of district merchants and on the legislative committee. I am also a member of the San Francisco fitness independent studio coalition, and today i just wanted to thank all of you guys for the hard work, dr. Aragon, commissioners, and i wanted to echo my fellow Business Owners in saying that communication is key. I am a very engaged citizen, and even with the new order that came out for my industry to be able to start operating at 10 capacity, i also found out through the media, and as prepared as i was and as much preparation over the last five months that ive put into this, i am falling down on the finish line. My clients and my employees and the trainers that i work with are demanding us to open, and im still digging through all of the information necessary to make sure that im fully prepared and in compliance. One of the big gaps in the communication is what to do with contact tracing, responsibilities for the Business Owners and how do we communicate if there is any infection or if trainers have a housekeeper that has been infected, how far do we go, where do we report, what protocols are in place to make sure that we are in full communication so that everybody in the city thats making decisions understands whats going on. I do echo steven. He mentioned that the Tax Collectors office might be a great way to get this information out to people, and again, as engaged as i am, theres probably many Small Businesses that are not plugged in to get the information firsthand from reginas department. I also wanted to talk a little bit about how we can be better engaged, an also as a Business Owner being brought to the table when decisions are being made, we can come up with a lot of Creative Solutions to keep everybody safe, and once again i just wanted to thank everybody and know that you have an army of people out here to help you for the city to be successful in helping the mitigation of the spread of the disease. The chair thank you. Next caller, please. Hello, good evening, dr. Aragon, this is janet clyde. I am one of the owners of the studio cafe in north beach, and first i just want to thank you for your work and the work of the department during this time. Its been pretty remarkable what the city has been able to accomplish on behalf of bars, restaurants and cafes, but the entire Small Business community is pretty amazing. I also want to thank the commissioners as well for your work. I listen to you regularly and speak very seldom, but i just want you to know that as the owner of a cocktail bar and the holder of a type 48 license, we are committed to stopping the spread of covid19, just like everyone else. Our staff is committed to that goal, and we are trying to reopen right now. Im the holder of a type 48 license without a kitchen, and i am calling you because id like you to work with the department to standardize the rules regarding food and Beverage Service for the outdoor tables. The type 48 with kitchens and without kitchens are treated differently than the other food serving businesses because the department used an existing popup rule to give us a way to operate, but the rules arent really fitting the current situation. We arent temporary popups, and we are partnering with restaurants, and we are expected to behave like restaurants. So what im asking is a standardization and that our businesses be allowed to use the same protocols that restaurants are using at this time. We cant really operate unless were, as a restaurant, or as a cafe, unless were allowed by the department to operate. I can get more in the weeds about this. Im very nervous when i speak in public, but i just dont want a situation where all this work has been done to standardize the behavior of people, you know, at restaurants outside and then we have to explain that we have to give them service in a different way. And so it would just be a big help if these rules were examined. It would be safer for my staff. It would be safer for the customers. And it would just be a much more predictable situation for us, and anyway, again, you know, thank you very much and id like some way to follow up on this, that we can be treated the same way as type 47s because we are doing the work that the same work that they are doing. So thank you very much and have a good evening. The chair thank you. Next caller, please . Hello, how are you . Can you hear me. We can. Please go ahead. Perfect. Im a new Business Owner in the mission, 2512 mission street. I just wanted to thank everybody for making Everything Possible for everybody to open up and for the economy not to tank more than this at this point. I just wanted to say that i am opening up a multifunction business, which is a retail store and a restaurant, and i know that everybody talks about businesses with one function, and i wanted to ask if in all these guidelines we can provide also how does the capacity work, how if we are able to open indoor, does the capacity include everybody who is in there or is it the like, the sort of retail separate from the restaurant . I am still in the middle of construction and remodelling, hoping to open in about two months, but i am completely new in this whole owning a business in San Francisco, and im confused and uninformed about how i should gear up to open at all. Thank you so much. The chair thank you. Next caller, please . Hi, my name is mya katsumat, im the owner of a vegetarian restaurant on valencia street. Thank you for taking my call. One of my biggest concerns through operating this and through our shared streets shared spaces street closures is that i feel that there is a lack of action by the abc, the alcohol beverage control. I know that all businesses are trying to be as safe as possible, but its proven that, you know, when youre in a bar or a restaurant with loud music in the background, youre going to talk louder. 90 of the time when youre seated at the table people are not wearing their masks because they are either eating or drinking. And the abc has been so sorely absent. In fact, they have kind of you know, its kind of the wild west right now. People are allowed to make togo cocktails. Theres no patrolling of irresponsible serving. Alcohol license holders are supposed to serve responsibly, and im not seeing that on friday and saturday nights, and that is a huge concern for me going forward. I know that through the shelterinplace, people are cooped up. They regardless of what, you know, what the pandemic is, people want to go out and have a good time, and they are coming out to do it on friday and saturday nights on valencia street, right in front of my very eye, and its very disturbing to me. Next caller. The chair next caller, please. Thank you so much. Good evening, thank you, commissioners, for everything you do. Thank you, dr. Aragon, for your guidance. Pi name is page scott. I am the general manager and vicepresident of the ice skating and bowling center. We are on the roof of the convention center, and we recently were very excited to hear that the adults are allowed to come back in to do their fitness. We have frozen fitness. And we are just deeply concerned about why the children are now being told they need to go outside. Our main concern is for children to stay mentally and physically fit. We are their outofschooltime programming, but we cannot move our activity outdoor. We have a sheet of ice. I could open all our doors, but then the ice may felt. So we just would like to give the children a reason while they are no longer allowed to skate and to explain to parents why we are not letting them in the building at this time . Once again, thank you all so much. I want to comment that dcyf and d. P. H. Did an excellent job of getting that new order to us, and they really are working very hard, and i commend them for it. Thank you again. The chair thank you. Next caller, please . That was the last Public Commenter who raised their hand. The chair great. And then before i move on, we have one other Public Comment which would be read allowed by commissioner ortizcartagena from the latin task force. Thank you. This is a statement sent to me from the latin task force Small Businesses and [indiscernible]. The latino [indiscernible] in San Francisco. [indiscernible] we know that latinos are 50 of the population and account for 50 of the covid cases in the city. We also know that as of today [indiscernible] general hospital. We are bearing the brunt of this. We need the citys support. [indiscernible] level of attention when it comes to reopening. [indiscernible] we expect better because we are better. We should be setting the bar for what other cities do [indiscernible]. The chair thank you. So dr. Aragon, before we continue, i thought this might be a Good Opportunity to talk about a few of the questions that came up. So something that we heard repeatedly in a number of contacts could be summarized in when can we do cardio again, whether its gyms or i surmised that indoor ice skating is also a form of cardio. Is that a state guideline . What is the boundary for cardio indoors . And perhaps thats related to what is the boundary for singing indoors. Perhaps that also has a component. Youre muted, dr. Aragon. Yeah, youre asking a really good question, and i think, you know, as we learn more about how the virus is transmitted and its aerosolization, we become much more concerned about anything that causes more aerosolization. [please stand by] okay. And then, related question. Somebody asked me this, and i forgot to ask this during the normal period. Where does yoga fall in this . Is that considered cardio or thats a good question. My wife does yoga every single morning. Shes been doing for almost 20 years, and i know its incredible for physical fitness. I dont have an immediate answer to that one. Thats fine. Thats fine. I understand. Several callers mentioned t. T. X. As being a possible pathway towards a as a better resource for communications with Small Business, and you or anyone in oewd or o. S. B. Had any conversation with using t. T. X. As a possible i have not. Yeah, so this is the first time that ive heard about this as a communication channel. I think thats a great suggestion. Well have to follow up on that. And then, one of the callers asked about how, you know, when we talk about 10 or 25 capacity, what the denominator was; in other words, what theyre supposed to be using . 25 of what, and i assume thats occupancy, but perhaps you could answer that more authoritatively. When you say 25 , im thinking of the customers that can be in a space, but thats my assumption. If normally you have 100 customers that you can fit in there, normally, now, it would be 25. Im thinking of the signs that hang on the walls that say fire occupancy is 60, and its 33 , just for ease of math, then 20 would be allowed. It sounds like we dont actually know for sure what the denominator is. I dont know. I was on a call with the state, was asked that question, and they didnt know that, either. So we have to nail that down because theres different ways of interpret that go. Mr. President . Yes. If i could add there are different businesses and restaurants. Im trying to remember the Fire Departments terminology. Its basically you can have one capacity when you have tables and chairs and one capacity when you have fewer or no tables and chairs. I think its called, like, concentrated and unconcentrated capacity. For instance, mannys has one capacity when we have our lounge set up, and one capacity when we have our [inaudible]. Yeah. And dr. Aragon, youre informed that youve got to think of both those problems when it comes up with the state. One caller was asking for type 48 for those that are calling in and dont understand the issues, type 48, this is the kind of alcohol license that bars have that allow them to serve mixed drinks. Under the current rules, and somebody can correct me if this is wrong, type 48 can serve outdoors if they are a Food Service Provider such that 50 of their sales are nonalcoholic consumables. So the question i think for type 48 providers, and i think this is what the caller was getting at is what does this mean for indoor usage. I know thats kind of an ongoing conversation, but i dont know if you have any new or emerging thoughts around that, you know, where d. P. H. Is likely to come down on that question . So were in discussion with the City Attorney to be able to nail down that question. So i dont have a answer now, but were actually discussing those specific topics. Okay. And were anticipate transgender may align with whats being allowed outdoors, but i dont have a final answer. And then, the last question, i meant to ask this previously, but if if the city were ever to take a stance that there would be citations for masks or, you know, one of the other callers spoke about concerns about whether people are behaving safely. Would enforcement of Something Like well, i guess the first question is where would a mask citation policy come from . Would that come from d. P. H. Or the Mayors Office or would it take an act from the board of supervisors. Do you have a sense of what the mechanism like that would be . Yeah. It could happen it could happen different ways. I know recently, the Health Department the Health Department outside of the Health Officer has been given more authority around enforcement, and the city has developed an enforcement plan that is going to be rolled out should be rolled out relatively soon because i know theres a lot of work going into this in the Covid Command Center. I think the general approach is to start with support, education, and to do any type of citation rooch really as a last a sightration citation approach really as a last resort. Ive noticed at several points during the pandemic that the city has taken an approach of trying to coach, guide, educate over punish and enforce, and i want to commend the city on that because i think that that has led to better outcomes. Thats a personal observation and a personal choice because it gets more buyin. And certainly things are harder right now. Right. We dont need to be adding injury to insult and misery. I think just guiding people is helpful. Do we have any other commissioner comments or questions . If we have anything, now is the time. Okay. Seeing none, dr. Aragon, thank you so much for your time. We really do appreciate you coming here. Its very helpful and here we go. Commission commissioner yakutiel, good timing. Sorry. Commissioner yakutiel. I thank you for your time this evening, and i wonder if you would be willing to come back before the board and give us an update on how the rollouts going so if you need to make some recommendations or ideas, we can distribute it accordingly to the Small Business commission oh, thats my purview. I am not allowed to do that. Excuse me, mr. President. Im going to take that back. When has that ever stopped you in the past, commissioner yakutiel. I was going to say, you can agree to come with me to a drag show,