PolitiFact s ruling: True
Here s why: San Francisco’s early and dramatic response to the coronavirus last year earned it praise as a model for fighting the pandemic. But during that time, was the city also experiencing a surge of fatal drug overdoses that far outpaced its COVID-19 deaths?
That’s what Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley of Rocklin claimed on social media this week. San Francisco had twice as many drug overdose deaths as COVID deaths last year. This true state of emergency is met with political indifference if not encouragement, Kiley wrote on Twitter on April 26.
Kiley has filed numerous legal challenges against Gov. Gavin Newsom over the past year, claiming the Democrat and former San Francisco mayor has overstepped his authority during the pandemic.
E-Mail
As state and federal authorities decide whether to continue reimbursing for telehealth services that were suddenly adopted last spring in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a new study out of UC San Francisco has found that clinicians in the San Francisco Health Network (SFHN) overwhelmingly support using these services for outpatient primary care and specialty care visits.
The results surprised the research team, which includes a number of clinicians at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG), since they witnessed firsthand the difficulties that many of their colleagues and patients experienced when they had to turn to telehealth overnight. ZSFG is part of the San Francisco Health Network, where the survey was conducted, which also includes clinics run by the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
San Francisco to reinvest $3.75M from police budget into Black businesses We have to invest our resources in a way that lifts up and supports African American small business owners
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The city of San Francisco has announced a plan to redirect $3.75 million from its police budget to Black-owned businesses.
Mayor
London Breed made the announcement in a statement Wednesday, May 5 saying, “Across this country, and in our city, we’ve seen how the Black community’s economic growth and prosperity has historically been disrupted and marginalized.”
“This funding is part our efforts to undo the harm of generations of disinvestment and economic inequities. As we work to recover and make San Francisco a better place to live, work, and do business, we have to invest our resources in a way that lifts up and supports African American small business owners, entrepreneurs, and the entire community,” said Breed.
Hospital leaders make pledge to improve healthcare worker safety
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CEOs from 10 hospital systems are working together to create a new safety standard for healthcare workers as the pandemic has highlighted the risks and inequities in the industry.
The group, formed early this year and known as the CEO Coalition, shared their signed declaration on Tuesday and said they hope to kick off a national movement to protect workers psychological, emotional and physical safety as well as promote health justice. We are taking collective actions to protect healthcare workers at every level to ensure they have the systems, tools and resources they need and deserve to feel safe and thrive, Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Tom Mihaljevic said in a statement.
Blighted San Francisco Diagnoses Its ‘Perilous Trifecta’ and Bungles the Cure
San Francisco is coming undone. In recent years, the city has manifested a series of visible and persistent inequalities, with a spoils-to-the-victor world for its technological elite, and a chaotic, brutalized world for its dispossessed. In the city’s Tenderloin district, men openly hawk drugs on the street corners, desperate addicts are crumpled across the sidewalks, and first responders dart through the chaos to revive overdose victims.
The city has become a web of contradictions. There are thousands of new millionaires, and, by the latest estimates, 18,000 people in and out of homelessness. The headquarters of Uber, Twitter, and Square are blocks away from the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SoMa. Wealthy families attending an art opening at the Civic Center have to cross through the tent encampments that line the sidewalks.