I am 9 months into this grind. I'm too tired to pontificate except to say that if you, like MBGA, believe that masks are "worthless," or worse, "counter-productive," can you please just stay home and away from the rest of us? I'd really like to spend some quality time with my octogenarian parent before she dies. Thanks! Your friendly neighbor and ICU nurse

@Everything's Jake, he went after people wearing BLM shirts; the political climate has everything to do with his BS behavior. And I can think of a few places in the Bay Area where he would not have felt so entitled to act the way he did, drunk or not.

The first thing I thought about after reading your post, Joe, was the incident at Flights restaurant on the Ave this summer when the drunken dad of a cop verbally attacked a family with little kids because they were wearing BLM shirts. So we've more than just two adolescent episodes of hate in our community. That man wasn't a Burlingame resident but he felt comfortable enough in this community and emboldened by the political climate to pull that behavior here. There was swift backlash and public outcry to that incident and he faced just consequences but I can imagine that he might have been able to carry on with his life unaltered if people in this community hadn't been so vocal. What is it that you stand to lose by an organized anti-hate campaign? You'll never be the one targeted by racism. It really isn't about you at all.

YOU'RE a buffoon. Corrected it for ya, BD.

The quarantine got you feeling ornery, Joe? What's next: an All Lives Matter post? Trolling your readers isn't very neighborly.

I'm not the one saying they shouldn't exist because their parents can't buy them a new backpack every year. Make sure you stretch before taking leaps that long.

Think of all the poor kids who grew up to do great things with their lives and make the world a more interesting, richer place. What a loss we all would have suffered if they hadn't existed because their parents didn't meet some income requirement, Paloma. I'm also reminded of the sons & daughters of wealthy parents who do nothing to benefit the lives of others, who use their considerable resources to pull up the ladders behind them, build walls around their wealth, and strengthen the inequalities that gave them so many advantages. Some of them spin their privilege so far as to believe they're immune to and incapable of spreading a communicable disease. Talk about "absurd." Don't forget to VOTE!

What's with the "scare quotes," Holly? Cooling Centers are for any person without the luxury of central air who may be negatively impacted by extreme heat, homeless or not. Worsening heat waves are here to stay, so better get used to the idea that people will need to seek relief.

Anecdotally, I can tell all of you that COVID admissions to the ICU I work at are higher than ever. These, in conjunction with our usual load of critically ill and post-surgical patients mean that the last two weeks have seen our >30 bed ICU at near total capacity, limited only by the number of nurses available. We're not a public hospital and this is still summer. Get your flu shots, keep wearing your masks and washing your hands, and consider that worrying about outdoor restaurant seating is a luxury.

MBGA, I'm very scared of this virus not because of the reporting on it but because I've seen up close what it can do and have personally put a few of its victims in body bags. The bigger project is in making the general public doubt its lethality and transmissibility in order to protect the economy and it's coming from some of our highest, so-called "leaders."

Who's wishing anyone ill? Exposing yourself to the virus is the way to "get herd immunity going," is it not? And you're wrong about the potential severity of illness in people without pre-existing conditions, but that's not convenient for your argument. (Nor is ignoring asymptomatic spreaders and longterm, chronic illness in survivors.)

And the hospital I work at in SF has 7 in the ICU alone, Cassandra. Herd immunity may not even be achievable if reinfection is possible. It's not the flu, it's a killer. Want to prove all the Karens wrong? Go out to some event where like minded people aren't wearing masks, catch yourself a little COVID, and good luck. The RNC is on right now, try there.

Hard to say which is worse: reading regurgitated (sorry, Joe! QUOTED) ND threads or the tale of a tech exec decamping to her 4 car garage, Park City abode with access to the ski slopes while maintaining her gig all thanks to this little pandemic most people are suffering through. It's a bit "qu'ils mangent de la brioche” at this moment.

I can't think of a more Boomer thing than paraphrasing a Nextdoor thread on a blog, so congratulations, Joe. If nothing else, these comments will serve as a time capsule of pre-pandemic, trickle-down economics, Capitalism first Burlingame values: when membership to a community and belonging to a place was premised on the purchase power of the consumer and nothing else. How quaint. I appreciate the historian aspect of your work here, Joe, but maybe you should have called it Burlingame Gentry.

FYI reusable bags will be back at least at Trader Joe's, beginning next week, I believe.

Sign Me Up, you win. Bye!

As someone who has lived here more than three decades longer than you, Bruce Dickerson, I can tell you my extrapolation is based on a trend I have personally witnessed and experienced. Unless people here make the hard choice to include their low-wage, low-skill, non-tech ,hourly earning neighbors into their concept of community, beginning with basic needs like housing and transportation, the future will be ghettoization and a yawning income gap. I would include gentrification, but that happened a long time ago. Automation will not replace house cleaners, nannies, nursing assistants, elder care workers, or lots and lots of folks we've both encountered in the last two months including cooks, food delivery folks, and grocery store clerks... automation will not replace them all of them in your lifetime and probably not in mine. Why do we expect robots to take better care of others than we do already when we're the ones building them? In the meantime, I'd love to see Joe take on the topic of universal income that you mentioned. I'm sure the comment section will be a virtual hug box. As an aside, what in the world makes you say that building housing close to jobs is a "wrong reason" for doing so? Or is Bruce Dickerson a fan of hours long commutes and all its impacts?

A single family home cannot be bought in Burlingame or San Mateo and certainly not Hillsborugh for less than seven figures. It's a lovely place for all the folks who meet that income or inheritance threshold. Where do you propose that people who have deep connections to these communities or who work essential jobs, or both, who fall short of that bar live? Will you make the tired suggestion that they leave here move to more affordable places no matter how many decades they or their families have called this place home? What's the logical extrapolation of your idea? Less dense, affordable housing/ more single family, expensive properties ---> Fewer dwellings for teachers, hourly workers, low wage/low-skill (essential) workers ---> Longer commutes, disconnection from work/home environments for those workers ---> Ghettoization/ loss of community feeling so prized here ---> Widening gap between the economically blessed and the economically stressed What a dream.

Nice, JP. What are you doing to support your community during this crisis? PS, I'm a woman.

I care deeply, Joe. It's why I willingly risk my own health and postpone seeing my own family every time I go to work. What I don't care for is seeing my neighbors use this crisis to advocate for policies that make living here even more untenable for my fellow essential employees who are also risking their health for far less money to support your ability to SIP and stay virus free as you fear monger about the dangers of density. We had a housing crisis before coronavirus hit and the fact that it did does not mean we should give up trying to solve it.

I guess a nice thing about running your own blog is that you can claim "there's ample evidence" of something without having to actually provide any. Carry on.

LOL, JP. Are you implying that density is the cause of the explosion of cases in NYC? If that were so then cities as or more dense than NY would be experiencing the same number of cases, but that simply isn't so. It would also imply that outbreaks can't happen in less dense cities and towns but we know the opposite is true. We also know that transmission of this virus can be mitigated through modification of BEHAVIORS regardless of density. I"m a front-line healthcare worker providing direct care to COVID positive patients. And, sit down for this because it will shock and horrify you, I live in a setting that's denser than a single family home. Somehow I haven't infected my entire building. So come at me with anti-science accusations all you want but it rings hollow. And please tell me what you would propose as housing options for low-wage essential employees who are keeping the basic gears of our society running through this? Or have you not bought food, gas, and other items since SIP went into effect? And if you had to go to the hospital, would you not want the floors and beds disinfected and basic supplies to be stocked?

Has the science changed on COVID-19 now showing it can be transmitted through solid walls and doors? Can any of the folks Joe is quoting point to a single case where an outbreak of coronavirus can be blamed on an apartment building? I'm wondering where "Ann & Phelim", Linda, and Joe think low-wage essential workers should live during a pandemic: you know the ones who are stocking grocery shelves, delivering food, working at gas stations, and staffing the hospitals in non-clinical roles? Or maybe y'all will support a wage or housing cost schemes for those essential employees that would allow them to afford single family dwellings in areas like ours where prices begin in the 7 figures? Somehow I doubt it. It seems to me the people using this crisis to further their agendas along with a little good old-fashioned fear mongering are the people Joe is quoting, and it's pretty gross.

Getting back to the original topic of "Renters (getting) screwed," I can remember a year in which my rent increased more than 20% because I asked for a light switch change in the same month my smoke detectors were switched out. Actually, the request was made by an apartment sitter of mine and not myself because I know better than to request more than a single change in the fall months of the year when my annual rent increase letter is due to be slid under my door. Some years it's as low as 2%. One year it was especially painful and was $250/year; or around 20%. The point is, I never know how much it will be. I'm currently living with a broken stove and a leaking hot water faucet in the bathroom. I dare not ask for either to be repaired because I've already had the busted window blind repaired this summer and too much at once results in astronomical housing expense increases. So, I shut off the hot water in the bathroom at the valve beneath the sink. And I use an air fryer instead of the oven even though I love to cook and prepare my own meals as a way to save money. I'm completely ignoring the death knells my fridge is making. Last fall the building's washer/dryer was replaced and now it costs 25% more in quarters to do laundry even though it's twice as hard to get quarters for the task (my credit union has contracted). It's a pretty mundane list of grievances, yeah? Compound that list every year you've lived in your residence. Imagine being afraid to ask that both your sink AND your stove get fixed because both at once is surely too much, too greedy. Now imagine that stress every year when new things arise that need fixing. Sometime you ask for them to be addressed and you are punished. Sometimes you pretend they can be ignored and still you are punished. Rent control means a person can ask to have their stove, sink, and heat fixed in the same season and not be forced out of their home from punitive rent increases.

Joe, care to calculate the difference on property taxes for the last 30 year with and without Prop 13 and what that difference might have earned if invested conservatively? Would you still make the argument "there are no 'lucky beneficiaries' in California'? You and I have been paying the same sales tax and have been subject to the same income tax agendas but we're not on the same planet when it comes to paying for the privilege of paying for housing here. And yet I can practically hear you rubbing your hands together when you gleefully post about how us renters "are screwed" under Newsom's new legislation. Is that because you see the writing on the wall about Prop 13 despite how much that has benefitted you for so many years? I'm just curious how you are so eager to benefit from and even defend the wildly unequal tax benefits to long-time property owners of this locale but would be so quick to denegrate a similar scheme when offered to residents here? It all feels like a class issues writ small and it's gross.