The COVID-19 vaccines have kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives, a new study says — and that estimate is most likely a conservative one, the researchers say.

The US is nearing the second anniversary of its first COVID-19 vaccinations, and although the coronavirus is still causing thousands of illnesses and deaths, the vaccines have made living with the virus more manageable.

To determine exactly how much the shots have helped, researchers from the Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health created a computer model of disease transmission that incorporated demographic information, people’s risk factors, the dynamics of infection and general information about vaccination.

Their study, published Tuesday, found that without COVID-19 vaccines, the nation would have had 1.5 times more infections, 3.8 times more hospitalizations and 4.1 times more deaths than it did between December 2020 and November 2022.

As it stands now, COVID-19 has caused at least 99.2 million cases and more than 1.08 million deaths in the US. Just in the past week, there were 2,981 new deaths and 30,253 new hospital admissions, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study estimates that the vaccinations were also a good financial bet, saving the US $1.15 trillion in medical costs.

If you factor in the cases of long COVID that vaccines likely prevented, the savings may be much higher, according to Alison Galvani, one of the study authors.

“Given the emergency of highly transmissible variants and immune-evading variants like Omicron, it is a remarkable success and an extraordinary achievement,” said Galvani, founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis.

“Moving forward, an accelerating uptake of the new booster will be fundamental to averting future hospitalization and death.”

Nearly 658 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States. However, uptake of the new boosters — which target the original virus strain as well as the Omicron BA.4/5 subvariants — has been slow since they were authorized this fall. Only about 14% of the eligible population has gotten one, and 1 in 5 people in the US are still completely unvaccinated, according to the CDC.

The Biden administration has been encouraging more Americans to get boosted, especially with holiday gatherings coming up.

“Don’t wait. If you wait, you put yourself at risk,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said Friday at an AARP event. “We’re entering the colder months of the late fall and the early winter. We’re all going to congregate with our families and friends for the holidays. If you are up to date, great. If you are not, get vaccinated now.”

COVID-19 case numbers have been trending upward, as have deaths and hospitalizations, according to the CDC.

About 14% of the US population lives in an area that meets the CDC’s criteria for a “high” COVID-19 community level, including New York City, Los Angeles County and Maricopa County, Arizona — a sharp increase from less than 5% last week but far below levels of prior surges. And at this level, the CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors.

“We are all sick of sickness,” AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said Friday. “Each of us has the power to significantly reduce our risk of getting sick.”

The CDC recommends masking for anyone who’s on public transportation. It also suggests wearing one in other public settings in communities where there is a high level of transmission. People who are at high risk of severe illness should wear masks even in areas with only medium community levels.

Other basic prevention measures still apply: Keep hands clean, and stay home if you’re sick.

Over the last year, many groups across the country have been developing and providing art therapy programs to use as a healthy coping mechanism for contending with the effects of the pandemic response. Through the help and training with mental health professionals offered by the CCHS, the ambassadors came to believe that art therapy helps youth and young adults with feelings of isolation and alienation caused by the pandemic response and that it lets individuals create an outlet for their expressions.

During the Oct. 22 event, CCHS will provide art therapy and mental health guest speakers. The program is for ages 15 to 24. The workshop will feature teach how to handle the emotional impacts of the pandemic and understanding how to use art to de-stress oneself. Participants will get to make their own art to take home with them.

The event will take place in the Antioch Community Center at 4703 Lone Tree Way from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Preregistration is required and can be done online at bayareane.ws/3S7anzY.

The COVID-19 Youth and Young Adult Ambassador Program’s primary role is to create messages for youth and young adults about the importance of protecting oneself and others from COVID-19. CCHS founded the group in March 2021.

The program began with a team of 17 ambassadors and three program coordinators. At one point, the team had more than 40 volunteer ambassadors. Today Okonkwo said that there are slightly more than 25 ambassadors.

Okonkwo said the ambassadors are still working on future programs and where they will be held. He said that a lot of the ambassadors’ contributions to the program can be found on the CCHS social media Facebook and Instagram pages.

Oaktober festival: The city of Oakley is changing the name of its annual Harvest Festival to Oaktober Harvest Festival and revamping some of its activities this year. The event will take place Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. at Oakley’s Civic Plaza.

New to the festival this year will be beer and wine booths, food truck vendors and entertainment. Performances on the event stage will include a pie walk at 1:20 and 2:45 p.m., a Project 4 Band performance at 1:30 p.m. and a magic show at 3 p.m.

As in previous years, the festival will feature a family-friendly costume parade for children and adults, a dog costume parade, a pumpkin decorating contest and more than 30 vendors. Many of the local nonprofit groups in attendance offer games and fun activities for children.

Roni Gehlke can be reached at oakleynow@comcast.net.

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley has experienced one of the busiest years in its 48-year history this year, because of the state’s first food waste law and the ongoing hunger crisis since the pandemic began.

On a recent day, 52 volunteers worked the morning shift in Second Harvest’s warehouse at 4001 N. First St. in San Jose, sorting through potatoes, carrots, lettuce and other fresh foods donated daily from grocery stores, farmers markets and restaurants. Carefully, the volunteers inspected the cargo, removing items no longer edible, such as apples with mold.

This food sorting process occurs in food banks, smaller food pantries and other food rescue organizations in the Bay Area every day. Organizations like Second Harvest serve as a vital link between businesses with surplus food and hungry people in need.

However, food bank officials say the new state law, Senate Bill 1383, has created unintended challenges that weigh down their ability to distribute food to needy folks.

Signed into law in 2016, SB 1383 went into effect on Jan. 1 of this year with the aim to achieve a 75 percent reduction in organic waste in landfills by 2025, as well as a 20 percent diversion of edible food. It requires grocery stores, restaurants and other food suppliers to donate surplus food to a food rescue organization.

While food banks recognize the intent to address food waste, some raise concerns about the challenges the law brings. The organizations are grappling with inadequate storage for the larger amounts and a need to procure more trucks and volunteers, the timely redistribution of donations and problems with receiving expired food.

“We are excited about the opportunity to get even more variety into the hands of our community,” said Tracy Weatherby, Second Harvest’s vice president of strategy and advocacy. “But it does require a lot of coordination and logistics and funding.”

Implementing SB 1383 is an opportunity to both reduce hunger and prevent food from turning into methane and other greenhouse gases in landfills, said Andrew Cheyne, the former director of government affairs at the California Association of Food Banks.

However, recovering food includes complex logistics and expenses that require rapid pickups and distribution to keep the food fresh. It can be challenging for food banks lacking storage and staffing.

The law divides food suppliers into two tiers. Tier One includes grocery stores and supermarkets, and Tier Two businesses are hotels and restaurants with more prepared food. Tier One businesses must comply this year; Tier Two has two years.

Second Harvest now has 36 tractor trailers that run all day to pick up large donations from grocery stories daily. The organization plans to expand its storage, volunteer work and add a new coordinator as the delivery pressure grows.

About 50 percent of the donated food is fresh produce, Weatherby said, which needs to be given out within the same day or two.

Second Harvest in Silicon Valley recovered 17 million pounds of food from January to June this year, enough for about 14 million meals for people in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

Like other large food banks, Second Harvest operates as a central hub. The organization not only distributes food, it also enables its 79 partner agencies to pick up food from suppliers independently.

More direct partnerships between donors and partner agencies could help ease some distribution challenges.

White Pony Express, a food recovery organization in Pleasant Hill serving Contra Costa County, has created an app-based food distribution system to connect businesses directly with local communities.

In February, White Pony Express established a food donation model in partnership with RecycleSmart, which provides solid waste services for central Contra Costa County. The application targets smaller potential donors, including hotels, restaurants and health facilities.

Once signed up, a business can signal when it has excess food, and a volunteer will pick up and deliver it directly to a matching organization.

Another pressing challenge is food banks are having to devise ways to maintain quality as more donated food comes in. If the food comes in fresh, it may be able to stay at food banks longer, and if the food is properly labeled and packaged, it will save food banks lots of work in determining if it is still useful.

“We don’t want to be hauling people’s trash,” said Pete Olsen, the food sourcing manager at White Pony Express.

He communicates a lot with donors about standards and occasionally has to terminate partnerships if their food is not edible and healthy.

Karen Collins, food resource manager of Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, said her organization was concerned about the uncertainty of future food volume and more food quality challenges.

“It’s our job to look for more food, but we have to … ensure we don’t become a dumping ground,” Collins said.

Her organization had clear requirements of what can be donated even before the new law went into effect. It requires an expiration date and a list of ingredients on each food package.

Olsen with White Pony Express said that local jurisdictions, such as the city of Antioch, have been actively reaching out to food suppliers and helping promote the organization’s food rescue app.

StopWaste, a public agency tackling waste in Alameda County, created an online guide to safe food handling procedures for different types of food donors.

“That might look very different for a restaurant compared to a grocery store,” said Cassie Bartholomew, StopWaste’s program manager.

No matter what, keeping a high standard of food quality is always essential, said Collins from the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano.

“The folks in our community that need help with food, they generally don’t work at places that offer sick time,” Collins said. “If they get sick from food, they could lose their job, or they don’t have health insurance to get additional help.”

Financial support from the government is also significant in helping food banks thrive.

To encourage food rescue programs, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) conducted a competitive grant program. The department awarded a total of $4.75 million to 22 California food recovery programs this year.

The funding is used to purchase equipment such as transport vehicles, increase recovery capacity, conduct education campaigns and construct larger storage or refrigeration spaces.

However, food banks are still calling for more state financial support.

Despite the challenge, food bank and county officials say the significance of food rescue work can’t be overstated.

“There is such high food insecurity,” Weatherby said. “The more food that we can get into our community, there is no concern about being able to find homes for this food.”

Dabney as a young woman earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of North Texas before accepting a position with the Air Force teaching U.S. dependents in Ankara, Turkey. Having met and married her first husband, Robert Dabney, the biracial couple lived in Europe during their early marital years.

“Growing up in Texas, I never dated anyone outside my own race before,” she says. “I just fell in love. He told me he was Cherokee, and it wasn’t until after I met his mother five years later that she said, ‘Is that what he told you? The Dabneys actually descended from slaves. We’re Black.’ ”

When the couple returned to the United States in 1966, they searched for a welcoming, progressive community and found it in Oakland.

“We never had a problem. We bought a house in Montclair after the Fair Housing Act had passed. We came to the Bay Area to avoid discrimination, and we were happy here for years.”

Dabney and her husband raised a daughter and son, and after the children were of school age, she transitioned from her former career as a music and English teacher to work in public relations and marketing in broadcast media and later in health care. Founding AD Communications in 1992, Dabney focused on topics related to health care, education, business, government and environmental issues. The couple divorced in 1985, and Dabney’s life followed additional twists and turns that eventually led to finding the enduring love of her life, Victor Royer.

“While doing therapy after a back injury, I met him at the Lakeridge Club in El Sobrante, where I lived for several years,” she recalls. “I looked into his eyes, and I knew. We began walking together in the mornings, and after I asked him two questions — Do you believe in God, and do you like classical music? — and he said he didn’t believe in God but he liked classical music, that was enough for me.”

Eventually, having moved back into the home she had rented to people who’d lost their homes in the Oakland hills fires, Dabney was joined by Royer.

“He had had a live-work art studio in Oakland but came to live with me during the last 14 of our 23 years together.”

Royer was a respected sculptor whose work received critical acclaim in the 1960s and included kinetic pieces held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California and more. His creativity extended to children’s books, teaching, building and playing a four-octave fortepiano and an enormous telescope nearly equal to his own height. Sadly, Royer ended his life in 2016 at age 79 after a short, intense battle with pancreatic cancer.

During the earliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic, still reeling from the loss of Royer and thrust along with people worldwide into isolation, Dabney searched for comfort and purpose. She found it in a writing challenge she set for herself that ultimately resulted in her book, “Year of the Plague Journal: Pandemic and Politics” (bayareane.ws/yearofplague). Set forth in short essays and modified 14-line sonnets, the book chronicles news and events from March 2020 to 2021.

“Writing makes me feel closer to Victor,” says Dabney. “I never expected to write a book of sonnets. It’s my therapy. I like the challenge of the meter, rhyming and saying things in 14 lines. I feel productive. Victor encouraged me so much, and that’s at the root of it. A few days before he died, he took all the sonnets I’d written and read them to me. I still feel close to him with that memory and his sculptures around me.”

Dabney’s journal was recently announced as a finalist in the 2020-22 International Book Awards competition for titles published from 2020 to 2022. In addition to the 120 sonnets and essays that establish Dabney’s voice as a clarion call for social justice, peace, courage and resilience, a dozen sonnets pay tribute to her relationship with Royer.

“I poured out my heart. One, I wrote while waiting for what was to be a 30-minute surgery and ended up being four hours. It’s what absorbed me and helped me to wait.”

As the pandemic restrictions lift, Dabney continues to protect her health and writes daily. Recent sonnets include writing about the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, Supreme Court decisions, global warming, the war in Ukraine, the Jan. 6 hearings and “any subject that moves me.”

Always, classical music plays in her home, and she says attending Montclair Presbyterian Church places her within a welcoming, social justice-oriented faith community in which some members claim “deep-seated” Christian beliefs and others hold their beliefs less firmly. She credits the church’s writers group with getting her through the darkest days of the pandemic and encouraging her to publish her book.

Dabney has written a 300-page autobiography that she plans to keep private and leave for her children. It includes signature elements from her life, such as her travels in Europe, greater details of her work and romances and transcriptions of 30 letters she sent to her mother while living as a young woman in Europe.

“The sights I saw,” she says, “in Turkey, Germany, France — the different cultures, the archeological marvels — were remarkable.”

Dabney concludes her book with a sonnet written for her by Royer in which the final lines read, “And so I write, and so do I declare: That Anna Henny is beyond compare.”

The words ring true, and the love embedded ensures Dabney’s life will continue to be remarkable.

Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Contact her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.

Countries selected one path or the other, and neither strategy was completely successful. The “flatten the curve” approach in the U.S. failed to prevent virus spread and resulted in large numbers of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 deaths while simultaneously damaging the economy and harming childhood education. The “let it rip” approach, employed by Sweden, produced marginally better results — roughly the same number of cases per capita as the U.S., less economic downturn and fewer excess deaths — but was hardly an unqualified success. (Deaths per capita are higher in Sweden than in the other Scandinavian countries.)

So, facing our next crossroad, as the sixth wave in the U.S. may be starting to wind down, how best to return to a “normal life”?

The COVID-19 virus has shown it is nimble in mutating, spreading and circumventing vaccine and acquired immunity. This makes the cost of attempting to suppress infections by once again closing schools and instituting lockdowns unacceptably high. Children have already suffered immeasurably, and lockdowns would further cripple the business sector. Nor would this likely work; even the draconian zero-COVID-19 measures of Communist China and North Korea have proved futile in the face of the current, extremely contagious variants.

Alternately, as new variants become more communicable but less severe (current COVID-19 mortality is 90% lower than it was in early 2020), we can hope this unprecedented rapid viral evolution results in a version of COVID-19 that resembles the common cold. Adapting to it would mean living with an illness we can treat and against which we can vaccinate and employ protective measures to help the immunocompromised, elderly and very young.

But this approach, while more practical, must not encourage individual complacency. A majority of the population may contract some form of the virus, but it is not a prospect to cheerfully anticipate. Besides the diminishing but still-present morbidity and mortality, the unresolved future repercussions of even trivial infections — long COVID-19 — remain a concern for those who become infected. We should still be careful how we live.

Right now, this makes decisions as routine as attending the theater or eating in crowded restaurants fraught with uncertainty. The government, which once advised the public on what to do and how to live, appears to have washed its hands of most responsibility and now seems to be leaving decisions largely to the public. But expert input would still be of immeasurable benefit in helping us live our lives.

In what venues should we mask? When should we test at home? What is the risk of attending a concert at Soldier Field? Granted, there is no consensus, and the recommendations will change over time, but we could still use some advice from the medical community about the COVID-19 risks of everyday life.

Meanwhile, there is certainly reason for optimism. Antiviral drugs will get only better, and new vaccines are being developed. A “universal” coronavirus vaccine could provide protection against the constantly changing COVID-19 variants.

While we await those advances, there is no role for complacency by the public. Those officials charged with COVID-19 management must improve case tracking to include the results of home testing, coordinate national and global surveillance of COVID-19 variants, and facilitate wastewater surveillance of the virus, which can be an early indicator of a COVID-19 variant or a generalized outbreak.

At the same time, the government should encourage home testing, optimize the path from testing to delivery of oral COVID-19 medications, fund the development of more comfortable and durable protective masks, and push for better ventilation in residential buildings, businesses and schools.

As we continue the battle against COVID-19 into the third year, recall the eloquence of Winston Churchill as the tide was turning in World War II: “This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this — a year ago our position looked forlorn, and well-nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, ‘We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.’”

Dr. Cory Franklin is a retired intensive care physician. Dr. Robert A. Weinstein is an infectious disease specialist at Rush University Medical Center. ©2022 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — After mass shootings killed and wounded people grocery shopping, going to church and simply living their lives last weekend, the nation marked a milestone of 1 million deaths from COVID-19. The number, once unthinkable, is now an irreversible reality in the United States — like the persistent reality of gun violence that kills tens of thousands of people a year.

Americans have always tolerated high rates of death among certain segments of society. But the sheer numbers of deaths from preventable causes, and the apparent acceptance that no policy change is on the horizon, raises the question: Has mass death become accepted in America?

“I think the evidence is unmistakable and quite clear. We will tolerate an enormous amount of carnage, suffering and death in the U.S., because we have over the past two years. We have over our history,” says Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist and professor at Yale who was a leading member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP.

“If I thought the AIDS epidemic was bad, the American response to COVID-19 has sort of … it’s a form of the American grotesque, right?” Gonsalves says. “Really — a million people are dead? And you’re going to talk to me about your need to get back to normal, when for the most part most of us have been living pretty reasonable lives for the past six months?”

Certain communities have always borne the brunt of higher death rates. There are profound racial and class inequalities in the United States, and our tolerance of death is partly based on who is at risk, says Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a sociology professor who studies mortality at the University of Minnesota.

“Some people’s deaths matter a lot more than others,” she laments. “I think that’s what we’re seeing in this really brutal way with this coincidence of timing.”

In Buffalo, the alleged shooter was a racist bent on killing Black people, according to authorities. The family of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, one of the 10 people killed, channeled the grief and frustration of millions as they demanded action.

“You expect us to keep doing this over and over and over again — over again, forgive and forget,” her son, former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, Jr., said. “While people we elect and trust in offices around this country do their best not to protect us, not to consider us equal.”

That sense — that politicians have done little even as the violence repeats itself – is shared by many Americans. It’s a feeling encapsulated by the “thoughts and prayers” offered to victims of gun violence by politicians unwilling to change policies, according to Martha Lincoln, an anthropology professor at San Francisco State University.

“I don’t think that most Americans feel good about it. I think most Americans would like to see real action from their leaders in the culture about these pervasive issues,” says Lincoln, who sees a similar “political vacuum” around COVID-19.

With COVID-19, American society has even come to accept the deaths of children from a preventable cause. Pediatrician Dr. Mark W. Kline wrote in a guest column for The Advocate newspaper that more than 1,500 children have died from COVID-19, and recalled a time in pediatrics when “children were not supposed to die.”

“There was no acceptable pediatric body count,” he wrote. “At least, not before the first pandemic of the social media age, COVID-19, changed everything.”

Gun violence is such a part of life in America now that we organize our lives around its inevitability, says Sonali Rajan, a Columbia University professor who researches school violence. Children do lockdown drills at school. And in about half the states, Rajan says, teachers can carry firearms. She notes that an estimated 100,000 people are shot annually and some 40,000 will die.

She sees similar dynamics in the current response to COVID-19. Americans, she says, “deserve to be able to commute to work without getting sick, or work somewhere without getting sick, or send their kids to school without them getting sick.”

It’s important, she says, to ask what policies are being put forth by elected officials who have the power to “attend to the health and the well-being of their constituents.”

“It’s remarkable how that responsibility has been sort of abdicated, is how I would describe it,” Rajan says.

The level of concern about deaths often depends on context, says Rajiv Sethi, an economics professor at Barnard College. He points to a rare but dramatic event such as an airplane crash, which does seem to matter to people.

Sethi notes there are more suicides from guns in America than there are homicides, an estimated 24,000 gun suicides compared with 19,000 homicides. But even though there are policy proposals that could help within the bounds of the Second Amendment, he says, the debate on guns is politically entrenched, causing “paralysis.”

“It divides us when people think that there’s nothing they can do,” says Dr. Megan Ranney of Brown University’s School of Public Health.

Ranney points to false narratives spread by bad actors, such as denying that the deaths were preventable, or suggesting those who die deserved it. There is an emphasis in the United States on individual responsibility for one’s health, Ranney says.

“It’s not that we put less value on an individual life, but rather we’re coming up against the limits of that approach,” she says.

In truth, she says, any individual’s death or disability affects the community.

Similar debates happened in the last century about child labor laws, worker protections and reproductive rights, while in the 1980s during the AIDS crisis, there a lack of political will to address it in an environment where anti-gay discrimination was rampant. Wrigley-Field notes activists were able to mobilize a movement that forced people to change the way they thought and forced politicians to change the way they operated.

“I don’t think that those things are off the table now. It’s just that it’s not really clear if they’re going to emerge,” Wrigley-Field says. “I don’t think giving up is a permanent state of affairs. But I do think that’s where we’re at, right at this moment.”

The news comes after a federal judge in Florida voided a mask mandate on mass transit and airplanes Monday, prompting airlines to roll back their masking requirements. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously extended the mandate through May 3. The CDC announced Wednesday it would appeal the ruling, declaring in a statement “at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health.”

But for now, airlines, airports, ride-sharing companies and many transit agencies have dropped their mask mandates as the legal and political showdown over masks continues to play out.

“In light of recent decisions by the federal government to lift mask requirements on public transit, VTA is strongly recommending, but not requiring passengers and employees to wear masks,” said VTA spokesperson Stacey Hendler Ross in a news release.

Ross emphasized that the lifting of requirements “does not signal an end to the COVID-19 pandemic” and that experts “still recommend wearing face masks in a variety of settings, including mass transit.”

The VTA in the process of taking down signs requiring masks.

Caltrain, BART and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency on Wednesday afternoon also announced they would no longer require riders to wear masks inside their vehicles and facilities. However, all three agencies encouraged riders to continue wearing masks.

“While masks are no longer required, guests can and are strongly encouraged to continue wearing them,” Caltrain said in a social media post announcing the shift in policy.

AC Transit, Golden Gate Bus and Golden Gate Ferry, and SMART train have made masks optional, as have Santa Cruz Metro. BART said in its statement Wednesday that the agency’s board would consider a mask-requirement policy at its April 28 meeting.

“I’m not quite sure what to do. I’ve got congestive heart failure, diabetes and I’m in a wheelchair and completely dependent on public transportation,” said Thom Mayer, a 73-year-old Sunnyvale resident who uses paratransit. “I take the light rail to church in downtown San Jose. I don’t want to miss church but I also don’t want to die right away. We all know we’re gonna die at some point but I don’t want it to be this week or next.”

Mayer, who said he will now have to make a choice between riding public transit with unmasked passengers or staying home, emphasized that wearing masks is “primarily to protect your neighbors.”

“I am double-vaccinated and double-boosted and I do have a life to live,” he added. “Public transit is sort of my window into it so I don’t know what to do at this point.”

Staff writer Jason Green contributed to this report.

“What’s it going to take to get me Ohtani?” a voice from across the table inquires. “I’m willing to overpay for that guy.”

A few feet away, a small group watches with great interest as numbers are traded and then punched into cellphone calculators. In the end, negotiations for another of the game’s biggest stars fall apart before it really gets serious: “I’d love Trout, but you’re just asking too much; people are starting to figure out he’s kinda overrated.”

No, this isn’t a scene from the baseball’s winter meetings. Welcome to the world of baseball card collecting 2.0.

Those colorful, cardboard treasures have existed in one form or another since the late 1800s. They were a pretty big deal in the early 1960s and a REALLY big deal in the early 1990s but were mostly forgotten at the start of this century because they were barely worth the cardstock they were printed on.

But if you haven’t collected since the days when chewing gum came with your packs, let alone before the age of serial-number autograph cards, you may be surprised to learn the hobby is enjoying a historic revival.

It’s one nobody saw coming – and was fueled by, of all things, the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The lockdown put us kind of all in a place where we had to sit down, stay home and do nothing,” recalled Keane Dasalla, a memorabilia collector and vlogger from Fremont. “It didn’t take long before everything kind of went crazy.”

Jim Bernardini opened Lefty’s Sports Cards in Burlingame in 1987 and has seen it through the Bash Brothers, the Loma Prieta earthquake, two Gulf Wars, the baseball strike, 9/11, the stock market crash and three Giants World Championships. But the pandemic era has been something else.

“We’ve had some ups and downs in our industry over the years,” said Bernardini. “This is an up. For the first time, we are debt-free.”

Vintage cards. New releases. Prospects. Everything took off, virtually overnight.

“Five years ago, I was telling people the hobby would be dead in 10 years,” said Ray Krause, who has owned and operated MVP Sportscards in Pleasant Hill since 1991. “Basically everybody who used to collect who were in their 20s, 30s and even 50-year-olds jumped back in.”

They were not alone.

CLEANING UP

Baseball card collecting began showing signs of life in the mid-2010s with the emergence of instant-impact rookies from big-market teams like Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge.

Then a couple of seemingly unrelated events brought the real heat.

The pandemic created an abundance of spare time during the lockdowns as well as an influx of spending money from stimulus checks. Around the same time, several prominent social media influencers started turning their attention – and their followers – from buying and selling sneakers to sports memorabilia.

The final element was nostalgia, which baseball is practically built around.

Extra time meant more screen time for many. But we all know people – or ARE those people – who during the pandemic began rummaging through closets and sheds to organize and declutter. For many, hidden – or simply forgotten – under those old sweaters and school papers were cardboard treasures.

Jennifer Starks from San Francisco said she was a big collector as a kid. Her dad gave her rookie Joe Montana and Jerry Rice football cards for her 16th birthday, but, “I kind of forgot about them.

“Then I decided to get my old cards out. Everybody else was doing it.”

Practically everyone has heard the collecting horror stories about someone’s childhood stash that might have been worth thousands – Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle cards almost always seem to be involved, right?  – that was thrown out or lost during a move or spring cleaning, or simply because the collector had outgrown the hobby.

Modern collections, by and large, didn’t meet the same three strikes and you’re out fate. Millions of cards have been safely stored away because parents and kids alike swore that  “one day these will pay for college or a down payment on a house.”

During the pandemic, some of those bold financial claims actually came true. Or at least helped pay some bills and cover some Starbucks runs.

“I saw (some of the prices vintage cards were getting) and said, ‘Wait, I have a stash of cards in the closet, let me look into those,’” Vanson Nguyen of Alameda said of his return to the hobby, which included rediscovering a Mookie Betts rookie card worth more than $100.

“I was a collector in the early 2000s, and I got back in during the pandemic because I was looking for a community. I found it. I’m a kid again. But to be clear, I’ve always been a kid.”

BIG LEAGUE BUSINESS

Interest in the hobby was surging by the late spring of 2020. By the end of the year, eBay reported that more than 4 million sports cards had been sold on the site, an increase of 142 percent from the previous year. Card shops couldn’t keep up with demand.

It wasn’t just the volume of cards being bought, sold, and traded that was off the charts. Prices for cards, and especially unopened materials, suddenly made the Bay Area housing market appear reasonable.

At least two dozen baseball cards are believed to have been sold for more than $1 million since the spring of 2020, including a legendary Honus Wagner T-206 card that went for a record $6.6 million.

But it wasn’t just vintage or rare autograph cards that were getting huge bucks.

Take Trout’s 2011 Topps Update card for example. It has been one of the most valuable baseball cards since the Angels star debuted and was going for about $500 in February 2020. A year later, collectors were asking for – and getting – $2,500.

“The hobby was just on fire,” said Dion Noriega, a card dealer for The Card Attic and promoter from Vallejo.

Even the popular grading services that for a fee will determine and log the overall condition of a car, which can increase value significantly, weren’t ready for the boom. The two largest, PSA and Beckett Grading Services, suspended operations temporarily when they faced a backlog of more than 11 million cards. Cards submitted last year still haven’t been processed.

When the pandemic hit, card shop owners were understandably concerned. In the 1990s most towns had multiple card shops. There are about 1,000 left nationwide, including about a dozen in the Bay Area. The pandemic wiped out many small businesses, but card shops largely survived. Many thrived even though customers couldn’t come inside the doors for most of the card boom.

But owners had to hustle. Krause of MVP Sportscards stayed in touch with customers via email and delivered orders to doorsteps. Bernardini and his staff at Lefty’s would pack up phone and online orders, spray the plastic covering with disinfectant and then leave the cards at the front of the store for the customers to pick up. As it did for everyone else, mail and delivery orders became a lifeline.

As prices soared – it wasn’t unheard of to “flip” a $40 box of cards for nearly 10 times that – new products became scarce.

Not only were kids and adults being priced out, hoarding was a big problem. Almost overnight, the retail store displays that for years were overflowing with boxes and packs of sports cards were reduced to empty wire racks.

“It was like the toilet paper problem all over again,” Starks said with a laugh.

NEW SEASON AHEAD

The hobby was at its hottest last August, when prices for some of the most valuable cards on the secondary market doubled – or much more – from just months earlier. Demand for new products was so high that finding unopened packs of cards was virtually impossible unless collectors were willing to spend like the Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Yankees. Major retail stores stopped selling packs of cards because fights were breaking out in the aisles and parking lots.

“They’d cut in front of you and start taking everything off the shelves,” said Dominick Rodriguez of Newman, describing one of his card-purchasing experiences. “Then you go outside to the parking lot, and they try to sell it to you for twice as much!”

Tempers – and prices – have started to cool, leading some investors to leave the hobby. But it wasn’t only finances that had people flocking back to the hobby. There’s more reason to believe the card market will remain healthy.

“The joy of opening the packs, we enjoy doing that together,” said Jeff of San Mateo while attending a card show with his youngest son, David, adding that he wasn’t a big collector growing up, but, “I wish I had kept them; Mom kind of threw them out.”

Collectors have never had more access to cards – just type in “Buster Posey Topps rookie card” on eBay and see how many results pop up. Even social media sites like Instagram and Facebook are places fans can buy and trade cards online. And there are the old standbys – neighborhood hobby shops and card shows, which are beginning to pop up again as COVID-19 guidelines loosen.

Hundreds of collectors gathered for a two-day show on the concourse at Serramonte Center in Daly City in January, with the tables bustling with activity as names big and small were bought, sold, and traded.

One of the first big shows in the region was staged last April in Fairfield by Noriega. He figures about 3,000 collectors showed up for the 75-table event. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, only 100 people could be in the building at a time, and the wait to get in for some was 2 ½ hours.

“They weren’t happy to wait that long, but they all stayed,” Noriega said. “You couldn’t find product anywhere else.”

Collectors are still on the hunt. Topps released this season’s Series I cards in mid-February and, with budding superstar Wander Franco’s rookie card as the centerpiece of the set, the site was sold out within 24 hours.

“I still get new people to the hobby about every day,” Krause said. “A lot of people who got into the hobby during the pandemic had fun and will stick with it. The guys who were trying to become instant millionaires without actually doing any work are all starting to leave.”

Many returnees to the hobby are now parents. They want to share their card memories as well help make new ones by chasing after cards of the stars of this generation like Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatís Jr. and Ronald Acuña.

Will the cards of today pay for college tuition and down payments down the road? Is another bust like the post-90’s era on the horizon? Who knows? Why worry?

“Collectors who love the hobby are going to stick with it no matter what,” said Union City’s Craig Queyrel, owner of Vintage Cards & Collectibles in Newark. “My advice has always been buy what you like.

“Then, you can never go wrong.”

The Nigerian-born actor came to the United States with her family when she was about 3 years old. As the youngest of six, she had little memory of her native country and her language.

“I felt the least connection to Nigeria of all my family,” Mojekwu says, “and I really wanted to hold on to my country of origin, if that makes sense. At times, I thought about becoming a U.S. citizen, but I wasn’t ready.”

Then came the pandemic and the year that wasn’t. While the world struggled with COVID, the U.S. also was undergoing a sort of self-revelation. Bandages were being pulled off old, unhealed wounds, revealing the festering scars of racism and injustice. Mojekwu was moved by the Black Lives Matter protests and the visceral images of killings of Black men and women by police and vigilantes. She felt a strong need to be part of the collective voice saying, “No more.”

“I’d never felt such a strong pull,” Mojekwu says. “I realized I was very much American, but there was a lot I hadn’t contributed to and more that I could do.”

At a time when the nation’s deep divides were making some people question where they belonged, Mojekwu took a step toward finding her place and embracing a new country. With “The Cursed Child” on hiatus, finances were a concern, too. So when she learned that the citizenship application fee – $725 in 2019 – was soon set to nearly double, she took the plunge.

For someone so full of life and exuberance, who speaks in long, excited sentences bursting with joy, and who is accustomed to taking center stage, literally, the task of studying for her citizenship exam might have been doomed during the isolation of lockdown. In those first weeks and months, Mojekwu seldom saw or interacted with anyone. One day, she even counted the number of words she had spoken aloud — 227, all delivered to her lovable beagle.

Her naturalization journey soon became a community project, with the cast and crew of the “Cursed Child” offering help with the application fees and support for the hours of study involved in passing the exam. When her friend, Brittany Zeinstra, the thespian who now plays Delphi in the production, offered to help, Mojekwu bought citizenship flashcards and had an identical set sent to Zeinstra for what became weekly Zoom study sessions.

“I don’t think I could have made it without her,” Mojekwu says. “We were two actors, just taking our time and studying.”

Zeinstra says that during a time that had the least meaning, she knew she could count on seeing her friend every Friday for their study sessions.

“We’re both Ravenclaws,” Zeinstra says, “so the process was a blast. With all our silly hand gestures and songs, we joked we should have a podcast for other new citizens studying for the exam.”

Mojekwu approached her studies much the same way she learns her lines and motivation for a role. The two women tied civics facts to movements and gestures — baby shark hands for speech, prayer hands for religion, big circles for the right of assembly. They used mnemonics and adapted songs to recall other facts.

“We sang ‘We The People’ to the tune of Destiny’s Child’s ‘Independent Women,’” Zeinstra says. “We had several references to Hamilton – thanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda – like singing the names of the Federalist Papers’ authors or laughing through ‘I was chosen for the Constitu-tion-al Con-ven-tion!’”

In the process, Mojekwu discovered historical facts even American-born citizens are unlikely to know. Among them, the 27th Amendment was written in 1789, but it wasn’t ratified until more than 202 years later, thanks to a University of Texas sophomore’s discovery.

By the time her exam date was set in early January, Mojekwu was in the thick of rehearsals for the revamped play and had just been cast in one of the lead roles. That’s when she really channeled Hermione, the brainy Gryffindor witch she plays on stage. She set up more study sessions and reviewed her notes over and over. Even the stagehands took to quizzing her.

Mojekwu might have been singing and dancing her answers to the oral exam, she says, but she was dead serious about passing it. And she did.

COVID restrictions meant no guests could attend her naturalization ceremony in February, but that didn’t dampen the excitement. Flowers and well wishes poured in from all the cast and crew. The woman who takes care of the cast wardrobe altered a dress for her, and the make-up artist did her hair and makeup for the ceremony.

“I felt like Cinderella,” Mojekwu says.

When she returned to the Curran theater afterward, a U.S. flag hung on her dressing room door, and an apple pie was waiting for her inside.

Now that she is a citizen, she has a bucket list of things to do. (She’s now ready to make her first citizen’s arrest, she jokes.) Top on the list is getting her passport – she’s already got the perfect photo for it – and, of course, voting in her first election later in April.

And court clerks, take note.

“I’ve never served on a jury,” Mojekwu says. “I’m curious about that process.”

If You Go

“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” runs through Sept. 4 with performances at 7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday and 1 p.m. weekend matinees at the Curran, 445 Geary St. in San Francisco. Tickets are $40 to $299; sf.harrypottertheplay.com.

Council ultimately voted 3-2, with Vice Mayor Kookie Fitzsimmons and Councilmember Mary-Lynne Bernald opposed, to keep meetings virtual due to safety concerns and some councilmembers’ unwillingness to risk spreading COVID-19. The split vote came after the second discussion of the issue in the past month and includes council, commission and committee meetings.

“For me it comes back to requiring the commissioners [and] volunteers, not knowing their comfort level, to come and meet in a conference room every single meeting. That is my very big concern, my sense of responsibility,” Mayor Tina Walia said.

Council spent a lengthy amount of time discussing the topic at the March 2 meeting where they reached a similar conclusion to have meetings remain virtual.

The item was included in the consent calendar of the April 6 meeting agenda, which typically groups together smaller items to be voted on all at once. Bernald motioned to remove the item from the consent calendar for further discussion.

Council has been meeting virtually since the start of the pandemic. COVID-19 cases are declining, and Santa Clara County no longer requires masks in public spaces.

City clerk Britt Avrit said that next month, seven cities across the Bay Area will be meeting at a hybrid or in-person level, and eight will be meeting only virtually.

Bernald motioned to bring meetings back in person by May 18 with a hybrid option. Councilmember Rishi Kumar said he was not comfortable with in-person meetings because of the risk of spreading COVID-19, and made his own motion to keep meetings virtual, which the council put to a vote.

Fitzsimmons also brought up council’s upcoming plan to host an in-person dinner with the Neighborhood Watch group May 18 before that evening’s council meeting, and said the optics of meeting in person for a dinner but virtually for the meetings was inconsistent.

“I think if this plays out that city council will continue to meet virtually only, that if we all show up for the dinner on May 18 with the Neighborhood Watch people, you know how that looks?” Fitzsimmons said. “That city council is okay to grab dinner with the public, sit shoulder to shoulder for however long, but they’re not willing to sit in a theater that accommodates 300 people? It’s inconsistent; it doesn’t feel right. It’s mixed messages.”

Walia offered to make the dinner a virtual meeting to be consistent, and Kumar said that he would not feel comfortable meeting in person for the dinner.

Cities are allowed by state law, AB 361, to meet remotely based on either an emergency proclamation made by Gov. Gavin Newsom or if local public health officials are recommending social distancing.

Under AB 361, the council must address the issue every 30 days to reaffirm that meetings will be held virtually or resume in-person meetings.

After the vote, the rest of the meeting moved quickly. Council terminated an agreement with the county for weed abatement services and authorized a contract with Union Pacific Railroad for the Blue Hills Elementary Pedestrian Crossing.

Council also gave direction to staff on the Capital Improvement Program and fee schedule for the budget for fiscal year 2022-23, which will go to a public hearing June 1 and is set to be adopted on June 15.