LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Following an emotional Friday morning hearing, a judge sentenced a Lucerne woman to state prison for a January drunken driving vehicle crash that claimed the life of her friend.
Judge Shanda Harry passed sentence on 31-year-old Patricia Martha Murphy, who was convicted after pleading out to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for the death of Justin Dale, 30, of Lucerne.
Harry accepted Lake County Probation’s recommendation and sentenced Murphy to an upper term of 10 years in prison, with 240 days of credit that includes time already served since her arrest on Jan. 16.
Murphy had a prior 2021 conviction for an alcohol-driving related offense otherwise known as a “wet reckless.” It is not technically a DUI conviction, but has the same effect, said Deputy District Attorney Danny Flesch.
The prior conviction involved Murphy driving under the influence and flipping her vehicle. She was found to have cocaine in her pocket at the time of that crash.
During testimony on Friday, the defense maintained that Murphy’s childhood — marked by an alcoholic mother who turned a blind eye to her boyfriend’s sexual abuse of her two youngest daughters and an alcoholic father who physically abused her, at one point threatening her with a butcher knife when was a teenager — were factors that drove her to use alcohol.
On the day of the wreck, Murphy and Dale had decided to make a visit to friends in Fort Bragg where they spent time watching the sunset on the beach and then in Willits on Jan. 16 and were returning home when the crash occurred shortly before midnight.
During their visits with friends, Murphy admitted that they had been drinking. At the time of the crash, she had a box of empty alcohol bottles in the back seat of her 2012 Volkswagen that she tried to put in the trunk afterward.
In tearful testimony given during the hearing, Murphy — wearing a black and white jail jumpsuit and handcuffed at the waist — recounted being upset that they couldn’t stop and see a friend in Upper Lake so she decided to keep driving.
She said she made a loop through Lucerne and was about to turn back and go home. Dale was asleep in the passenger seat, not wearing a seat belt.
“I reached for something in my car,” Murphy said. “When I reached for it I turned the wheel a little bit. Two seconds later I heard a big crash and I looked up and it was too late.”
The California Highway Patrol report said Murphy drove into the rear of a parked Ram 550 work truck on westbound Highway 20 east of Lake Street in Lucerne.
The CHP arrested Murphy at the scene and she’s remained in custody since.
Family gives impact statements
The Friday hearing included several victim impact statements from Dale’s close friends and family.
Flesch read a text message from Evan Dills, Dale’s friend and employer. “He was the best kind of friend I could ever have asked for,” with a heart of gold, and a smile and laugh that could change the atmosphere in a room, Dills said.
“Everybody that knew him loved him,” and he always had a smile on his face, even when doing hard work, said Dills. “Justin was a true asset to the community.”
He said Murphy made a selfish decision that resulted in Dale’s life being taken away.
Justin Dale’s mother, Amy Dale, spoke of the “unbearable” loss of her only son, who had a kind heart and loved to help people.
She said he helped care for his elderly grandfather and had told his mother that someday he would take care of her and his father. “That will never happen now that he has died.”
Amy Dale said her son loved children and wanted to have a family someday. She was grieving not just his loss but the grandchildren she had hoped to have.
“Patricia, you had very little regard for my son’s life when you got behind the wheel while you were intoxicated. My son is dead because you decided you didn’t want to stay home,” she said.
Amy Dale asked the court to give Murphy the maximum 10-year sentence, not out of vengeance but so she would have time to reflect on how precious life is and to turn her life around to be a good mother to her young daughter.
“You shouldn't have gotten behind the wheel while intoxicated. You hurt us so much. It’s a pain in my heart that’s unbearable,” Amy Dale said.
Also speaking was Justin Dale's uncle, Matthew Kendall, the sheriff of Mendocino County. On this day, Kendall was in civilian clothes, his voice breaking with emotion as he recounted that his nephew was a good man and someone who was an important part of his tight-knit family.
“The decisions that we make when we are young sometimes haunt us,” Kendall said.
He said his nephew had a heart of gold and loved to work. “He was a big portion of our lives and he always will be.”
Kendall said people have to own their mistakes before they can get through them. “We’re at a time now when a lot of folks aren’t owning their mistakes and therefore are repeating them.”
Based on his beliefs, Kendall said he has to forgive. “The only way that can occur is for the person responsible for this to be held accountable, and trust me, I've seen plenty of this in over 30 years.”
Over the objection of defense attorney Sterling Thayer, Judge Harry allowed Flesch to enter into the record an August 2021 Facebook post from Murphy in which she mocked the court system over her wet reckless conviction in July 2021.
She wrote that after almost three years of fighting in court she finally got her driver’s license back, and it only cost her $143, rather than the usual $10,000. She also maintained that she didn’t have a DUI conviction. “Take that, shady ass court system,” she wrote.
Flesch said Murphy also is associated with a known biker gang called the Winos. At his request, the court played an 18-second audio portion of a jail phone call in which she said she and a friend would routinely drive drunk but that she was the least drunk.
Thayer called Murphy’s sister, Ingrid Kerr, to the stand. Kerr testified about their abusive childhood and the sexual abuse her two younger sisters endured due to their mother’s neglect.
Kerr said the result is that they’ve turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism, a “numbing agent” that she herself has stopped using in recent years.
During her time on the stand, which followed her sister’s, Murphy referred to Justin Dale as “Gimli,” a dwarf from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” saga. With his short, stout physique and big auburn beard, Dale resembled Gimli, a loyal member of the Fellowship of the Ring.
She recounted inviting him over for biscuits and gravy on the morning of Jan. 16 and making the “random” decision to go to the coast.
Murphy described the crash and how afterward she tried to wake Dale up but couldn’t. Emergency medical personnel told her he died. “Then I lost control and I screamed.”
During questioning, Murphy said, “I went through every dysfunction you can imagine,” recounting the abuse and neglect by her parents.
When asked how she felt about the potential term of 10 years in prison, she said she was scared but that she expected it. “I don’t feel probation is a just response or a likely one.”
She said she hopes to go to a fire camp and become a firefighter, and then hopes to get back on track for a teaching career. She said she never planned to drink again.
Murphy said she didn’t get to say goodbye to Dale, and has lost almost every friend she had because of the fatal wreck. “I have to live without him as well.”
With her hands still cuffed, she unfolded a written statement which she read, telling his family she knows that saying she is sorry is not enough, and that it won’t “ the dark reality brought on by my bad choices.”
“I can’t ever know how I feel,” she said, adding the regret, guilt and pain will weigh on her long after the sentence is over. “He was the only person who cared enough to make sure I was OK.”
She added, “If there was anything I could do to fix this, I would do it without hesitation,” and she said she hoped they could forgive her for her poor choices.
During questioning by Flesch, Murphy admitted she failed to seek counseling after her previous case.
Flesch, who acknowledged her abusive past, said he knew Dale from around town, and that he was a happy go lucky guy. “She gets a second or third or fourth chance. Justin does not.”
Thayer asked for a lesser sentence, explaining that Murphy is willing and able to take responsibility for what she did. “It’s not anything that anybody wanted to intend. She made an incredibly stupid decision. She has to live with the consequences of her decision. She killed her best friend. If that’s not going to change someone’s life, someone's perspective on life, I don’t see what 10 years is going to do.”
Judge Harry said Murphy had taken responsibility and had a ““significantly unpleasant childhood.” However, her recent, previous case that also had involved driving and alcohol counted against her, as she didn’t take the lesson of avoiding driving while intoxicated.
In sentencing Murphy to 10 years in prison, Harry said she hoped Murphy will use the time to deal with her issues so she can be there for her daughter. “She needs a mother who can mother her.”
Harry also granted restitution to Dale’s family but waived all other fines.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Completing a nearly 30-year marathon, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has calibrated more than 40 "milepost markers" of space and time to help scientists precisely measure the expansion rate of the universe – a quest with a plot twist.
Pursuit of the universe's expansion rate began in the 1920s with measurements by astronomers Edwin P. Hubble and Georges Lemaître.
In 1998, this led to the discovery of "dark energy," a mysterious repulsive force accelerating the universe's expansion. In recent years, thanks to data from Hubble and other telescopes, astronomers found another twist: a discrepancy between the expansion rate as measured in the local universe compared to independent observations from right after the big bang, which predict a different expansion value.
The cause of this discrepancy remains a mystery. But Hubble data, encompassing a variety of cosmic objects that serve as distance markers, support the idea that something weird is going on, possibly involving brand new physics.
"You are getting the most precise measure of the expansion rate for the universe from the gold standard of telescopes and cosmic mile markers," said Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Riess leads a scientific collaboration investigating the universe's expansion rate called SH0ES, which stands for Supernova, H0, for the Equation of State of Dark Energy.
“This is what the Hubble Space Telescope was built to do, using the best techniques we know to do it. This is likely Hubble's magnum opus, because it would take another 30 years of Hubble's life to even double this sample size,” Riess said.
Riess's team's paper, to be published in the Special Focus issue of The Astrophysical Journal reports on completing the biggest and likely last major update on the Hubble constant.
The new results more than double the prior sample of cosmic distance markers. His team also reanalyzed all of the prior data, with the whole dataset now including over 1,000 Hubble orbits.
When NASA conceived of a large space telescope in the 1970s, one of the primary justifications for the expense and extraordinary technical effort was to be able to resolve Cepheids, stars that brighten and dim periodically, seen inside our Milky Way and external galaxies.
Cepheids have long been the gold standard of cosmic mile markers since their utility was discovered by astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt in 1912. To calculate much greater distances, astronomers use exploding stars called Type Ia supernovae.
Combined, these objects built a "cosmic distance ladder" across the universe and are essential to measuring the expansion rate of the universe, called the Hubble constant after Edwin Hubble. That value is critical to estimating the age of the universe and provides a basic test of our understanding of the universe.
Starting right after Hubble's launch in 1990, the first set of observations of Cepheid stars to refine the Hubble constant was undertaken by two teams: the HST Key Project led by Wendy Freedman, Robert Kennicutt, Jeremy Mould, and Marc Aaronson, and another by Allan Sandage and collaborators, that used Cepheids as milepost markers to refine the distance measurement to nearby galaxies.
By the early 2000s the teams declared "mission accomplished" by reaching an accuracy of 10 percent for the Hubble constant, 72 plus or minus 8 kilometers per second per megaparsec.
In 2005 and again in 2009, the addition of powerful new cameras onboard the Hubble telescope launched "Generation 2" of the Hubble constant research as teams set out to refine the value to an accuracy of just one percent.
This was inaugurated by the SH0ES program. Several teams of astronomers using Hubble, including SH0ES, have converged on a Hubble constant value of 73 plus or minus 1 kilometer per second per megaparsec. While other approaches have been used to investigate the Hubble constant question, different teams have come up with values close to the same number.
The SH0ES team includes long-time leaders Dr. Wenlong Yuan of Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Lucas Macri of Texas A&M University, Dr. Stefano Casertano of STScI, and Dr. Dan Scolnic of Duke University. The project was designed to bracket the universe by matching the precision of the Hubble constant inferred from studying the cosmic microwave background radiation leftover from the dawn of the universe.
"The Hubble constant is a very special number. It can be used to thread a needle from the past to the present for an end-to-end test of our understanding of the universe. This took a phenomenal amount of detailed work," said Dr. Licia Verde, a cosmologist at ICREA and the ICC-University of Barcelona, speaking about the SH0ES team's work.
The team measured 42 of the supernova milepost markers with Hubble. Because they are seen exploding at a rate of about one per year, Hubble has, for all practical purposes, logged as many supernovae as possible for measuring the universe's expansion. Riess said, "We have a complete sample of all the supernovae accessible to the Hubble telescope seen in the last 40 years." Like the lyrics from the song "Kansas City," from the Broadway musical Oklahoma, Hubble has "gone about as fur as it c'n go!"
Weird physics?
The expansion rate of the universe was predicted to be slower than what Hubble actually sees. By combining the Standard Cosmological Model of the Universe and measurements by the European Space Agency's Planck mission (which observed the relic cosmic microwave background from 13.8 billion years ago), astronomers predict a lower value for the Hubble constant: 67.5 plus or minus 0.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec, compared to the SH0ES team's estimate of 73.
Given the large Hubble sample size, there is only a one-in-a-million chance astronomers are wrong due to an unlucky draw, said Riess, a common threshold for taking a problem seriously in physics.
This finding is untangling what was becoming a nice and tidy picture of the universe's dynamical evolution. Astronomers are at a loss for an explanation of the disconnect between the expansion rate of the local universe versus the primeval universe, but the answer might involve additional physics of the universe.
Such confounding findings have made life more exciting for cosmologists like Riess. Thirty years ago they started out to measure the Hubble constant to benchmark the universe, but now it has become something even more interesting.
“Actually, I don't care what the expansion value is specifically, but I like to use it to learn about the universe,” Riess added.
NASA's new Webb Space Telescope will extend on Hubble's work by showing these cosmic milepost markers at greater distances or sharper resolution than what Hubble can see.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has new dogs and puppies waiting to be adopted this week.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Australian cattle dog, Catahoula leopard dog, German shepherd, Labrador retriever, mountain cur, pit bull and wire-haired terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
Male Labrador retriever
This 1-year-old male Labrador retriever has a short black coat.
He is in kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-3437.
Male German shepherd mix
This 3-year-old male German shepherd mix has a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 14, ID No. LCAC-A-3436.
‘Mako’
“Mako” is an American pit bull terrier with a short gray and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 16, ID No. LCAC-A-3387.
Chocolate lab mix
This young male chocolate Labrador, who is under a year old, has a short coat.
He is in kennel No. 17, ID No. LCAC-A-3385.
‘Willie’
“Willie” is a 1-year-old male pit bull terrier with a short brown and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-3301.
Female German shepherd puppy
This female German shepherd puppy has a short tan and black coat
She is in kennel No. 21a, ID No. LCAC-A-3211.
Male wire-haired terrier
This 2-year-old male wire-haired terrier has a cream-colored coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-3399.
Male German shepherd mix puppy
This male German shepherd mix puppy has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 25a, ID No. LCAC-A-3212.
Male German shepherd mix puppy
This male German shepherd mix puppy has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 25b, ID No. LCAC-A-3214.
‘Dexter’
“Dexter’ is a 1-year-old male pit bull with a short black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-3290.
Male American Staffordshire terrier
This 3-year-old male American Staffordshire terrier has a short gray coat.
He is reported to be a very friendly dog with a great temperament, good with cats and already neutered.
He is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-3398.
Black lab mix
This 1-year-old male black Labrador Retriever has a short coat.
He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-3418.
‘Rooster’
“Rooster” is a 5-year-old male mountain cur with a brown brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-3384.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
MIDDLETOWN, Calif. — The Middletown Area Town Hall, or MATH, hosted a candidates forum on Thursday, May 12.
The event featured the candidates running for the following seats:
• Middletown Unified School District Governing Board: Bryan Pullman and Charise Reynolds; • Assessor-recorder: Rich Ford (incumbent) and Hannah Faith Lee; • Treasurer-tax collector: Paul Flores and Patrick Sullivan; • District attorney: Anthony Farrington and Susan Krones (incumbent).
LUCERNE, Calif. — A Lucerne man who was squatting on private property in the paper subdivision area above Lucerne has been arrested for causing a wildland fire on Wednesday afternoon.
Cal Fire said its law enforcement officers arrested Robert John Moore for starting the Robinson fire due to a barbecue.
The fire was first reported at around 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday near Robinson Road and Foothill Drive, as Lake County News has reported.
Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit and Northshore Fire Protection District responded to the incident and were in unified command, according to radio reports.
When firefighters first arrived on scene, the fire was estimated to be approximately one-quarter of an acre and moving uphill, Cal Fire said. Not long afterward, it was reported to be an acre.
Northshore Fire Chief Mike Ciancio said the fire’s movement was very odd. It was a “backing fire,” which he said means that it was backing up the hill and not really progressing forward. He said it also was moving into the wind.
Cal Fire credited quick actions by firefighters — which included personnel and crews along with air resources such as air attack and Copter 104 — with containing the Robinson fire at 2.5 acres with no evacuations needing to be issued.
Ciancio said firefighters got lucky on Wednesday. “Another month and we’d still be fighting that fire,” he said.
Had it been drier and windier and throwing sparks in the wind, “We wouldn’t have been able to catch it” at a small size, Ciancio said.
As it was, on Wednesday winds in the area were close to 6 miles per hour, according to Lake County’s News’ weather tracking equipment.
Cal Fire said its law enforcement officers immediately began an investigation of the origin and cause of the fire, identifying Moore as having been responsible.
The agency said Moore started a fire in a small barbecue surrounded by dry vegetation, which ultimately caused the fire.
“The guy was using a barbecue in 18-inch tall grass. It wasn’t even cleared out,” Ciancio said.
During the incident, it was reported that a man was trapped in the fire area and unable to escape. Shortly afterward, incident command reported that he had reached the individual. Moore appears to have been that same person.
Cal Fire said its law enforcement officers determined Moore had a warrant for his arrest within Lake County. They placed Moore under arrest for the warrant as well as cited him for violation of California Health and Safety Code §13001, causing a fire through careless or negligent action.
Moore was transported by Cal Fire’s officers to the Lake County Jail to be processed, Cal Fire said.
Moore was not in custody in the Lake County Jail on Thursday, according to jail records.
Ciancio said Moore was squatting on the property where the fire began.
There appear to be more squatters in that paper subdivision and Ciancio said he’s reported the fire and the issue with squatters to Community Development Department’s Code Enforcement Division Manager Marcus Beltramo.
Ciancio said he had a good response from Beltramo, who has indicated he will visit the area to investigate the situation.
Over the past few years the hills above Lucerne have seen an influx of illegal dumping, including the abandonment of numerous vehicles, many of them dilapidated motor homes, and squatting.
Just hours before the fire, Beltramo had participated in the regular meeting of the Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Service Authority, which was held at Clearlake City Hall.
Beltramo, who has taken a proactive approach to dealing with the county’s illegal dumping issues, said during the meeting that his staff is seeing more abandoned RVs popping up throughout the county on a weekly basis and it’s starting to create an issue.
In a Thursday statement, Cal Fire Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit Chief Mike Marcucci said it’s important to exercise fire safety due to the severe drought conditions.
In the case of outdoor cooking, Cal Fire said it’s necessary to have a nonflammable 10-foot clearance around the cooking area and make sure there are no flying embers or sparks being produced. A water source and some tools nearby in case a fire starts also are recommended.
“Always remember that safe cooking practices not only help protect you from getting hurt and your property from being damaged, but it also helps protect your community and the people around you,” the statement said.
Cal Fire said it will take aggressive and prompt enforcement actions to prevent fires and hold those responsible for causing them accountable.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
He said he will direct suppliers of baby formula ingredients to prioritize delivery to formula manufacturers and control their distribution as necessary.
You might well wonder what babies going without formula has to do with defense production, which calls to mind big warships and weapons systems. While using the Defense Production Act to force companies to make baby formula would certainly be a novel use of the act, it would hardly be the first time the postwar law has been used beyond its originally intended purpose to support national defense.
And in fact, the law is used a lot more frequently than you might think. But as a business professor who studies strategies to maximize efficient allocation of resources, I believe when presidents invoke the act it’s often more about political theater – showing the public you’re doing something – than addressing the problem in the most effective way.
Sweeping authority
The Defense Production Act was passed in 1950 and modeled on the War Powers acts of 1941 and 1942.
In 1950, America faced war in Korea, and Congress feared that growing postwar demand for consumer goods would crowd out defense production needed to face China and the Soviet Union, which both backed North Korea in the conflict. There were also concerns about inflation during that postwar period.
The Defense Production Act gave the president – who later delegated this authority to Cabinet officials like the secretary of defense – broad powers to force manufacturers to make goods and supply services to support the national defense, as well as to set wages and prices and even ration consumer goods.
“We cannot get all the military supplies we need now from expanded production alone,” President Harry Truman told Americans in a radio address after signing the act into law. “This expansion cannot take place fast enough. Therefore, to the extent necessary, workers and plants will have to stop making some civilian goods and begin turning out military equipment.”
The original law focused on “shaping U.S. military preparedness and capabilities,” which limited the scope of the president’s authority.
Routinely invoked
Although the Defense Production Act makes news only when the president dramatically invokes it, the government uses the law – or just the threat of using it – routinely to force private companies to prioritize government orders. The Department of Defense, for example, uses it to make an estimated 300,000 contracts with private companies a year.
Congress has to reauthorize the act every several years and has amended it frequently to expand or limit its scope. Over time, this has significantly broadened the definition of national defense to include supporting “domestic preparedness, response, and recovery from hazards, terrorist attacks, and other national emergencies.”
The Department of Homeland Security invoked it about 400 times in 2019, mostly to help prepare for and respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters, such as by providing resources to house and feed survivors. And Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, for example, both used it to divert electricity and natural gas to California during the 2000-2001 energy crisis.
Biden, for his part, has also already used the act a number of times, mainly to fight the pandemic. For example, in March 2021, he invoked it to speed up vaccine production by ensuring extra facilities were up to snuff, as well as to expedite the production of critical materials, equipment, machinery and supplies. In March 2022, he issued a directive to increase the supply of materials for large-capacity batteries that are used mainly in civilian electric vehicles.
Biden’s use of the Defense Production Act to address the baby formula problem illustrates a limitation of it. It can be used to set priorities for ingredients and manufacturing capacity, but it’s not a magic wand. A president can’t by decree make capacity that doesn’t exist instantly appear. And it isn’t clear how much it will do to quickly end the formula shortage – given the main problem is manufacturing issues that closed production at a key plant, not just a shortage of ingredients.
The act is widely used and has been widely useful, but it is no substitute for advance planning and preparedness.
“How risky is being indoors with our 10-year-old granddaughter without masks? We have plans to have birthday tea together. Are we safe?”
That question, from a woman named Debby in California, is just one of hundreds I’ve received from concerned people who are worried about COVID-19. I’m an epidemiologist and one of the women behind Dear Pandemic, a science communication project that has delivered practical pandemic advice on social media since the beginning of the pandemic.
How risky is swim team? How risky is it to go to my orthodontist appointment? How risky is going to the grocery store with a mask on if no one else is wearing one and my father is an organ transplant recipient? How risky is it to have a wedding with 200 people, indoors, and the reception hall has a vaulted ceiling? And on and on.
These questions are hard to answer, and even when we try, the answers are unsatisfying.
So in early April 2022, when Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical advisor, told Americans that from here on out, each of us is going to have to do our own personal risk assessment, I put my head down on my desk.
Individualized risk assessment is not a reasonable ask, even for someone who does risk assessment for a living, let alone for the rest of us. It’s impossible to evaluate our own risk for any given situation, and the impossibility of the task can make us feel like giving up entirely. So instead of doing that, I suggest focusing on risk reduction. Reframing in this way brings us back to the realm of what we can control and to the tried and true evidence-based strategies: wearing masks, getting vaccinated and boosted, avoiding indoor crowds and improving ventilation.
A cascade of unknowable variables
In my experience, nonscientists and epidemiologists use the word “risk” to mean different things. To most people, risk means a quality – something like danger or vulnerability.
When epidemiologists and other scientists use the word risk, though, we’re talking about a math problem. Risk is the probability of a particular outcome, in a particular population at a particular time. To give a simple example, the chances that a coin flip will be heads is 1 in 2.
As public health researchers, we often offer risk information in this format: The probability that an unvaccinated person will die of COVID-19 if they catch it is about 1 in 200. As many as 1 in 8 people with COVID-19 will have symptoms persisting for weeks or months after recovering.
To embark on your personal risk assessment, as Fauci casually suggested, you first have to decide what outcome you’re talking about. People often aren’t very specific when they consider risk in a qualitative sense; they tend to lump a lot of different risks together. But risk is not a general concept. It’s always the risk of a specific outcome.
Let’s think about Debby. First, there’s the risk that she will be exposed to COVID-19 during tea; this depends on her granddaughter. Where does she live? How many kids at her school have COVID-19 this week? Will she take a rapid test before she comes over? These factors all influence the granddaughter’s risk of exposing Debby to COVID-19, but I don’t know any of them and likely neither does Debby. Given the lack of systematic testing, I have no idea how many people in my own community have COVID-19 right now. At this point, our best guess at community rates is literally in the toilet – monitoring sewage for the coronavirus.
If I assume that Debby’s granddaughter does have COVID-19 on the appointed day, I can start thinking about Debby’s downstream risks: whether she’ll get COVID-19 from her granddaughter; the chances that she’ll be hospitalized and that she’ll die; and the probability that she’ll have long COVID. I can also consider the risk that Debby will catch COVID-19 and then give it to others, perpetuating an outbreak. If she gets sick, the whole hierarchy of risks comes into play for everyone Debby sees after she is infected.
Finally, there are competing risks. If Debby decides to skip the party, there may be risks to her own or her granddaughter’s mental health or their relationship. Many skipped celebrations in many families could negatively affect the economy. People could lose business; they could lose their jobs.
Each of these probabilities is influenced by a cascade of fickle conditions. Some of the factors that shape risks are in your control. For example, I decided to get vaccinated and boosted. Therefore, I’m less likely to end up in the hospital and to die if I get COVID-19. But some risks are not in your control – age, other health conditions, gender, race and the behavior of the people all around you. And many, many of the risk factors are simply unknowns. We’ll never be able to accurately evaluate the whole volatile landscape of risk for a particular situation and come up with a number.
Taking charge of what you can
There will never be a situation where I can say to Debby: The risk is 1 in 20. And even if I could, I’m not sure it would be helpful. Most people have a very hard time understanding probabilities they encounter every day, such as the chance that it will rain.
The statistical risk of a particular outcome doesn’t address Debby’s underlying question: Are we safe?
Nothing is entirely safe. If you want my professional opinion on whether it’s safe to walk down the sidewalk, I will have to say no. Bad things happen. I know someone who tore a tendon in her hand while putting a fitted sheet on a bed last week.
It’s much more practical to ask: What can I do to reduce the risk?
Focusing on actions that reduce risk frees us from obsessing over unanswerable questions with useless answers so we can focus on what is within our control. I will never know precisely how risky Debby’s tea is, but I do know how to make the risks smaller.
Constantly assessing and reassessing risks has given many people decision fatigue. I feel that too. But you don’t need to recalibrate risks of everything, every day, for every variant, because the strategies to reduce risk remain the same. Reducing risk – even if it’s just a little bit – is better than doing nothing.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — A Southern California man has been sentenced to state prison for a sexual assault case involving a Lake County teenager.
On Monday, Judge Michael Lunas sentenced Trevor Noel Reynoso, 32, of Murrieta, to 16 years in state prison for furnishing a controlled substance to a teenage girl who he also sexually assaulted, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff.
Hinchcliff said the case was investigated by Lake County Sheriff’s Det. Jeff Mora and Deputy David Pike.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested Reynoso on June, 15, 2021, the same day that the mother of the 15-year-old victim contacted the sheriff’s office to report that her daughter had been sexually assaulted, as Lake County News has reported.
The sheriff’s office’s initial report on Reynoso’s arrest said that the victim told authorities she had met Reynoso on a social media app in February of 2021 and they had sex several times. Over the course of four months. Reynoso was reported to have provided narcotics to the teenager in return for sex.
Hinchcliff said the larger investigation revealed that in October 2020 Reynoso targeted a group of teenage girls on Snapchat while pretending to be a 21-year-old-male.
Reynoso offered to sell or provide the minors drugs and would meet the victim at Hardester’s parking lot in Hidden Valley Lake for the exchange, Hinchcliff said.
In January 2021, Reynoso began taking the minor victim to his residence near Hidden Valley Lake to hang out and do drugs. Hinchcliff said Reynoso sexually assaulted the minor victim on several occasions from February 2021 through June 10, 2021, while the minor was under the influence of drugs.
On June 15, 2021, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office worked with the minor to contact Reynoso through Snapchat and set a time for him to meet her in the Hardester’s parking lot to provide drugs and take her to his residence, Hinchcliff said.
Hinchcliff said Reynoso arrived at Hardester’s as planned and was confronted by sheriff’s deputies.
Authorities said Reynoso provided a false ID to the deputies and was taken into custody. The teen victim was able to identify him.
At the time of his arrest, the sheriff’s office said Reynoso claimed that he thought the victim was 18.
In addition to the Lake County sexual assault case, authorities said Reynoso was arrested on a felony warrant out of Texas for possession of child pornography, the sheriff’s office said.
Hinchcliff said Reynoso was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Richard Watson and represented by defense attorney Thomas Feimer.
Reynoso pleaded guilty on April 20 to furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, oral copulation with a minor, and five counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, which led to his 16-year sentence, Hinchcliff said.
The Lake County District Attorney’s Office commended the victim for having the courage to come forward and participate in the investigation into the abuses Reynoso had committed.
While this specific case is settled, Hinchcliff said investigators believe that Reynoso may have had contact with multiple other minor victims in the Middletown area between September 2020 to June 2021.
Anyone with further information is encouraged to contact Lake County Sheriff’s Det. Jeff Mora at 707-262-4224.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Continuing the collaboration that produced the COVID-19 Earth Observing Dashboard in 2020, NASA and its international partners in Europe and Japan have combined the collective scientific power of their Earth-observing satellite data in expanding the online resource to document a broad array of planet-wide changes in the environment and human society.
The expanded dashboard from NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, includes six new focus areas — atmosphere, agriculture, biomass, water and ocean, cryosphere, and the economy — that allow users to drill down into data-driven stories and interactively explore relevant data sets.
“At NASA, accessibility to data is a top priority,” said Karen St. Germain, NASA Earth Science Division director. “With our partners at ESA and JAXA, this is another important step to getting the latest information to the public about our changing planet, in an accessible and convenient way, which can inform decisions and planning for communities around the world.”
The dashboard provides an easy-to-use resource for the public scientists, decision-makers, and people who may not be familiar with satellite or Earth observation data. It offers a precise, objective, and comprehensive view of our planet.
Using accurate remote sensing observations, the dashboard shows the changes occurring in Earth’s air, land, and water and their effects on human activities. Users can explore countries and regions around the world to see how the indicators in specific locations change over time.
The agencies collaborated to identify the most relevant satellite data streams and adapted existing computing infrastructure to share data from across the agencies and produce relevant indicators and stories.
“International collaboration between our space agencies is key,” said Simonetta Cheli, director of Earth Observation Programs at ESA. “Our advanced Earth-observing satellite data provided by ESA, NASA and JAXA are used every day to benefit society at large and advance our knowledge of our home planet. After the success of the Earth Observing Dashboard, I am delighted to see how our resources and technical knowledge can be expanded and used to further our understanding of global environmental changes and other societal challenges impacting our planet.”
The atmosphere focus area demonstrates ways in which air pollution and climate change contribute to the biggest environmental challenges of our time.
In the agriculture focus area, users can explore satellite data that provides insights into agricultural production, crop conditions, and food supply.
The biomass focus area features a story describing how trees and plants remove substantial amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year.
In the cryosphere focus area, a story on the effects of global temperature rise on the extent of sea ice allows the reader to interact with a geographic visualization of a JAXA sea ice data set.
The water and ocean area focuses on Earth’s largest natural resource and enables users to discover a view of the ocean that is as rich and complex as that of land.
The economy focus area provides access to data sets that show how Earth's social and economic systems are connected to the environment.
In addition to the curated stories and data set offered in each of the focus areas, the Earth Observing Dashboard provides direct access to a data set exploration tool, which allows users to interactively explore the different indicators in detail.
"Following the collaboration with NASA and ESA on COVID-19, we expanded this dashboard to widely provide the stories on global issues about the environment and climate change to the world in the trilateral collaboration,” said Koji Terada, JAXA vice president and director general for the Space Technology Directorate I. “From the perspective of contributing to the understanding of the Earth's environment and systems and enhancing the values of Earth observation data, we at JAXA will continue to work on updating this dashboard.”
Last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced a concept for NASA’s Earth Information Center, which is an opportunity for the agency to leverage its data and modeling capabilities to work with trusted government and community partners with long-standing engagement in communities most affected by climate change. The expanded Earth Observing Dashboard complements planning that is underway for the Earth Information Center.
NASA, ESA and JAXA will continue to enhance the dashboard as new data become available.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control is making efforts to get new homes for the nine adoptable dogs in its care.
The City of Clearlake Animal Association also is seeking fosters for the animals waiting to be adopted.
Call the Clearlake Animal Control shelter at 707-273-9440, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to inquire about adoptions and schedule a visit to the shelter.
“Chai” is a female Alaskan husky mix with a gray and white coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49279552.
‘Captain’
“Captain” is a male border collie mix with a black, white and blue coat.
He is dog No. 49623709.
‘Big Phil’
“Big Phil” is a 13-year-old male American pit bull terrier mix with a blue coat.
He is dog No. 49951647.
‘Andy’
“Andy” is a male American pit bull mix with a short gray and white coat.
He is dog No. 48995415.
‘Bear’
“Bear” is a male Labrador retriever-American pit bull mix with a short charcoal and fawn coat.
He has been neutered.
“Colt.” Photo courtesy of Clearlake Animal Control.
‘Colt’
“Colt” is a male Rhodesian Ridgeback mix with a short rust and black coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49812106.
‘Fritz’
“Fritz” is a male Australian shepherd mix with a black and white coat.
He is dog No. 49278179.
‘Snowball’
“Snowball” is a male American Staffordshire mix terrier with a white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49159168.
‘Terry’
“Terry” is a handsome male shepherd mix with a short brindle coat.
He gets along with other dogs, including small ones, and is discovering that he enjoys toys. He also likes water, playing fetch and keep away.
Staff said he is now getting some training to help him build confidence.
He is dog No. 48443693.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The California Transportation Commission’s latest slate of allocations that are meant to repair and improve transportation infrastructure across the state included two Lake County projects.
The commission approved $700 million in projects at its Thursday meeting in Fresno.
Of that $700 million total, $272 million — or one third of the funding — comes from Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, the commission reported.
SB 1 provides $5 billion in transportation funding annually split between the state and local agencies.
In Lake County, $384,000 was approved for mitigation work at Bachelor Creek Bridge No. 13-4001 on Highway 20 near Upper Lake.
The second project approved in Lake County will see $3.9 million used for emergency allocations for embankment, guardrail and drainage repairs on Route 175/Hopland Grade near Hopland.
“This critical investment will help Caltrans continue repairing, maintaining and upgrading our state’s aging transportation infrastructure for improved safety and sustainability,” said Caltrans Acting Director Steven Keck. “It reflects both the CTC’s and Caltrans’ commitment to providing travelers and communities — as well as California’s dynamic and growing economy — with a world-class, multimodal transportation system.”
Other projects on the North Coast approved this week include:
• Approximately $8.7 million toward median and drainage improvements along U.S. Highway 101 from the Route 36 junction to Fortuna in Humboldt County.
• Approximately $3.9 million of emergency allocations toward guardrail, sign, fence and drainage repairs as well as the removal of hazardous trees near Willow Creek on Route 299 and Route 96 and Route 196 near Pecwan in Humboldt County.
• Approximately $6.5 million of emergency allocations toward guardrail, sign, fence, and drainage repairs as well as the removal of hazardous trees along Route 299 from Blue Lake to the Trinity County line.
• Approximately $5.9 million toward improvements at South Fork Eel River Bridge No. 10-0218 on U.S. 101 in Mendocino County.
• Approximately $1.1 million toward road signage improvements on Route 1 at Abalobadiah Creek near Fort Bragg in Mendocino County.
• Approximately $1.9 million toward construction of a retaining wall and roadway and drainage improvements on Route 253 near Boonville in Mendocino County.
• Approximately $5.2M toward emergency allocations for embankment, guardrail, drainage and road repairs on U.S. 101 near Willits in Mendocino County.
Road projects progress through construction phases more quickly based on the availability of SB 1 funds, including projects that are partially funded by SB 1.
More information about transportation projects funded by SB 1 is available here.