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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | SEPTEMBER 2020 21 The Landscape Committee has been having monthly Zoom meetings on the third Tuesday of each month to keep up with the community's landscaping issues. In July, we resumed our weekly walks with masks and social distancing. Each week we observe a different area with the goal of keeping our common areas maintained and looking beautiful. We are in the process of removing and replacing many dead and dying plants in the areas where the HOA maintains the front yards and walkways. Most of these areas were planted and landscaped over 15 years ago so it may be necessary to make changes to bring them up to date. For those of you living in those areas, please let us know of problems in your front planters so we can observe and make necessary improvements. We cannot authorize cost for removal of healthy plants or trees, but we certainly will take action on removing and replacing dead, dying and unhealthy plants and trees. Any problems or issues with your front landscaping or common areas should be directed to Shannon Alfaro, our HOA Landscape Committee liaison. This can be done in three ways: completing the form available in the FirstService Residential office in the RCN, calling Shannon at (951) 769-6358, or emailing her at Shannon.alfaro@ fsresidential.com. She will take action to correct the problem or will bring it to the committee for observation and/or action an "add-on" to our weekly walks. ~ Bonnie Makela, bmakela@hotmail.com Landscape Committee Check with your committee chair to confirm meeting place, date, and time. Your Social Committee continues to stay on hold at this time as we are waiting patiently for our world to open up. We look forward to the future when everything begins to return to a sense of normalcy. In the meantime take care of yourself, your family, and your friends. We will continue to keep you up to date on any changes. ~ Joyce Hogue, jhogue54@gmail.com Social Committee The Board of Directors has required everyone entering our facilities to wear a face mask. There are varied opinions on this topic so I looked online and found this interesting article written by two doctors, UC San Francisco epidemiologist George Rutherford, MD, and infectious disease specialist Peter Chin-Hong, MD. As states reopen from stay-at-home orders, many, including California, are now requiring people to wear face coverings in most public spaces to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization now recommend cloth or paper masks for the general public; but earlier in the pandemic, both organizations recommended just the opposite. These shifting guidelines may have sown confusion among the public about the utility of masks. But health experts say the evidence is clear that masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and that the more people wearing masks, the better. Rutherford and Chin-Hong wrote about the CDC's reversal on mask-wearing, the current science on how masks work, and what to consider when choosing a mask. The original CDC guidance was partly based on what was thought to be low disease prevalence earlier in the pandemic, said Chin-Hong. "So, of course, you're preaching that the juice isn't really worth the squeeze to have the whole population wear masks in the beginning – but that was really a reflection of not having enough testing, anyway," he said. "We were getting a false sense of security." A recent study published in Health Affairs, for example, compared the COVID-19 growth rate before and after mask mandates in 15 states and the District of Columbia. It found that mask mandates led to a slowdown in daily COVID-19 growth rate, which became more apparent over time. The first five days after a mandate, the daily growth rate slowed by 0.9 percentage points compared to the five days prior to the mandate; at three weeks, the daily growth rate had slowed by 2 percentage points. "What you want is 100 percent of people to wear masks, but you'll settle for 80 percent," said Rutherford. In one simulation, researchers predicted that 80 percent of the population wearing masks would do more to reduce COVID-19 spread than a strict lockdown. The latest forecast from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests that 33,000 deaths could be avoided by Oct. 1 if 95 percent of people wore masks in public. So… when you are in public or any of our facilities remember to rock your mask! Safety meets the first Tuesday at 10 am. ~ Kaye Harvey, teachharvey@ yahoo.com Safety Committee

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