Southern California settles into first weekend of coronavirus shutdown

Southern Californians settled into their first weekend under a statewide stay-at-home order with domestic repair projects, cooking, gardening, online chats and doses of good humor, even as markets and food donation centers continued to overflow with a frenzy of customers trying to make sure they were not left without.

The lockdown, ordered to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, came along with an intense online discussion about the necessity of the unprecedented action. In the thick of the debate was a Stanford researcher who said that his doubts about the rate of transmission should not dissuade the public from the importance of maintaining social distance.

Sources at the Los Angeles Police Department, meanwhile, said that two of the department’s employees — a sergeant in the Pacific Division and a high ranking member of the command staff — had tested positive for the virus. The sergeant was hospitalized. A total of 14 LAPD personnel have shown potential symptoms of the virus.

In Anaheim on Saturday morning, police asked citizens to avoid the area around Honda Center, where a drive-through food distribution center in the parking lot had drawn large crowds, causing traffic gridlock.

In Chino, a pair of farm-fresh egg suppliers had long lines and expected to sell out by Saturday afternoon.

Despite having 64,000 chickens across three farms and additional supplies from neighboring farmers, owner Philip Maust said he could not keep up with demand.

“It’s been going just berserk,” said Maust of Maust’s California Poultry. “People want their eggs.”

Lines stretched the length of a football field from the Chino operation, while another egg farm across East End Avenue had a line of cars nearly half a mile long. Maust said he would close Sunday to resupply.

There was no way to get his chickens to lay faster. “No, we can’t threaten them with the soup factory or anything like that,” Maust said.

In downtown Los Angeles, a line of more than 50 people outside a Whole Foods Market continued the new normal for shoppers. Waiting in line, Jesse Robledo and his husband Ken Cazan said shoppers were remaining polite, and the market was well organized.

“I don’t think there is anyone more resilient than us and I don’t mean to sound America-centric,” said Cazan, who teaches vocal arts at USC. “But I feel like we have the ability to smile through stuff like this and pull together, survive and get through it.”

A few blocks away on Figueroa Street, the Original Pantry restaurant was closed to dine-in patrons for one of the few times in its nearly 100-year history. Still, the cafe was serving to-go orders Saturday morning to a slow but steady stream of customers.

“We are here for the community,” said operations manager Charlotte Chacon. “We are all in this together.”

Chacon said she speaks daily with the restaurant’s owner, former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. In a note to customers, Riordan said: “The well-being and safety of our customers and staff weighs heavily, not just in recent weeks but always. We hope that we can provide in-dining soon. Until then, please be kind and patient as we navigate these changes together.”

Most of the activity in an unprecedented time for Californians was going on in private places — backyards, kitchens and living rooms.

Martha Sanchez-Avila, an analyst for a real estate company, was spending hours with her 7-year-old daughter, baking new recipes and gardening. She was focusing on recipes from renowned California chef Alice Waters.

A new rotary clothes line had already gone up and the garden had been planted with potatoes, garlic and onions. “I gather there will be lots of gardens sprouting across the country considering this pandemic,” Sanchez-Avila said via email.

With many people riveted to televisions, phones and computers for the latest news, a posting by a Stanford researcher into the projections of the spread of the coronavirus caused a stir on social media.

The paper by John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of disease prevention at Stanford’s medical school, drew 2 million hits this week and was widely cited by conservative media as evidence the country is overreacting to the pandemic.

But Ioannidis said that was a misreading of his work.

“I did not say not to take measures,” Ioannidis said in an email interview Saturday. “I was clear we need to take measures and act swiftly.”

In fact, he said, “I am in shelter-in-place myself and I would never advise anyone to defy the law and break the shelter-in-place.”

He said he intended his March 17 paper as a call for more data from testing.

“I think that many of the originally presented estimates of some of the features of the epidemic are exaggerated,” he said.

Since he wrote the paper, Iceland has started massive testing of `”p`ractically random” samples of the population, which he said is what his paper proposed.

The latest data from a nationwide sample show that about 3,300 people have been infected in Iceland but only one of them has died so far and another is in serious condition, he said. The data also show that a large majority of infections are either asymptomatic or produce only mild symptoms, he added.

“If the infection rate is not higher than seasonal flu, the best strategy would be aggressive scaled up testing and protecting specifically the elderly and those with severe diseases,” he said. “We need data to decide.”

Times Staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.

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