Federal agencies call Costa Mesa’s opposition to sending coronavirus patients ‘premature’ and disruptive
In responses filed Sunday to Costa Mesa’s request for a temporary restraining order that a judge issued Friday, blocking state and federal agencies from using the Fairview Developmental Center as a coronavirus quarantine site, the agencies called the city’s objections “premature,” “speculation” and lacking a basis for “extraordinary disruption and intervention.”
Federal defendants named in the city’s filing Friday — including the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, Air Force and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — said the city overstepped its bounds by interfering in the agencies’ handling of a public health crisis.
The city also named as defendants the state of California and its Office of Emergency Services and Department of General Services, and the Fairview Developmental Center, which is state-owned.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is evaluating Fairview as a possible location to send people currently quarantined at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California.
“There is an urgent need to house evacuees who test positive for COVID-19,” according to the federal defendants’ filing in U.S. District Court. “Home isolation does not provide the same level of monitoring and care.”
The Fairview Developmental Center, at 2501 Harbor Blvd., opened in 1959. At its peak in 1967, it housed 2,700 adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities but is now virtually empty. Like similar facilities around the state, it is slated to close soon.
Costa Mesa’s move to pursue the temporary restraining order came soon after city officials said they were notified about plans to send patients with the COVID-19 virus to Fairview — news that they said blindsided them and sparked worries about public health.
The virus, which originated in China, has spread to more than two dozen countries, including the United States, and has resulted in more than 78,000 confirmed cases and more than 2,400 deaths.
The restraining order was granted Friday night by U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton, preventing the transport of anyone infected with or exposed to COVID-19 to any location in Costa Mesa before a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. Monday at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana.
The federal defendants, however, said Costa Mesa’s action was unwarranted and intrusive.
“Fear of COVID-19 does not justify such unprecedented intrusion into federal quarantine decisions by the specialized agencies responsible for this area,” the filing said.
In the state’s response, it called the potential for transmission of the virus to the community around Fairview “negligible” and said patients would not be able to interact with the community from the secured site.
The state said local authorities are trying to impede state and federal actions based on “speculation” that “is not only incorrect but contrary to public health protection of the very community involved.”
Statements from the California Health and Human Services Agency earlier this weekend said Fairview is “one of the possible locations under consideration.” As of Sunday, it had not been determined whether Fairview is the ultimate choice.
“Using such a site would be better for public health than the alternatives, which consist of using hospitals or home isolation,” according to the federal defendants’ court filing.
In a court declaration filed Sunday in support of the state’s response, Mark Ghaly, secretary of the Health and Human Services Agency, said the agency has considered several other facilities, including the Sonoma Developmental Center, Army National Guard Camp Roberts and closed youth correctional facilities.
If Fairview were chosen, the filings said, patients would be transported via air or ground ambulance in federally approved protective equipment and the federal government would be responsible for security, sanitation, food, medical care, case management and logistics.
“Patients housed there would be restricted from interacting with the surrounding community,” Ghaly said in his statement.
“There is no clinical indication that the health of the community in Costa Mesa would be jeopardized by housing COVID-19 patients at Fairview,” he said .
The city’s filing for the injunction stated that “this highly communicable and deadly disease has no known vaccination or cure and has killed thousands. The ... state and federal governments have not sought to include local officials and emergency personnel in the planning and execution of their efforts.”
The city sought to prevent transporting people infected with the virus to Costa Mesa “until an adequate site survey has been conducted, the designated site has been determined suitable for this purpose, all necessary safeguards and precautions have been put in place, and the public and local government have been informed of all efforts to mitigate risk of transmission of the disease.”
Mayor Katrina Foley said Friday that “our biggest concern is that we’re being left out of the discussion in terms of what the plan is. We don’t know how many people. We don’t know the level of illness. We don’t know how long. We don’t know what the treatment regime will be.”
The federal agencies’ response Sunday said “there is no requirement that a federal agency consult with and incorporate local government any time the agency makes decisions; indeed, such a requirement would cripple the federal government.”
Foley said in a statement Sunday that “federal and state officials failed to follow CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] established protocols regarding the identification of appropriate quarantine and isolation sites. ... FDC [Fairview Developmental Center] is ... not an appropriate use, as they are not prepared to handle infectious disease. We will continue to protect the public health and safety of our community.”
Costa Mesa’s emergency services manager, Jason Dempsey, said in court documents that representatives of the California Office of Emergency Services, the Orange County Emergency Management Division and the county Health Care Agency called him Thursday evening and told him the buildings at Fairview would be cleaned up by Sunday in order to place 30 to 50 infected people.
Any California residents diagnosed with the coronavirus at Travis Air Force Base would be sent to Fairview, he said. If they needed hospital care, they would be taken to an Orange County hospital.
Dempsey notified the City Council, which held an emergency closed session Friday afternoon in which it voted unanimously to file for the temporary restraining order.
Sixty-seven California residents, including some from Orange County, are among the Americans evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan and quarantined at Travis Air Force Base, the federal agencies said. They have tested negative for the virus but are under quarantine because they could still fall ill, according to the court documents.
Housing them at the base “would pose a greater potential disruption to facility operations than the lesser resources and personnel needed for a group with no confirmed positives,” according to the filing.
The Fairview campus is surrounded by several group homes for senior citizens or people with disabilities.
Neighbors expressed concerns Saturday about the possibility of infected patients coming to stay close by.
Eddrick Watson, 24, a caregiver at a ResCare home, said his biggest concern is for his clients, who are already vulnerable to illness.
“Any type of virus going around … could be fatal for them,” Watson said.
Mary, 36, a neighborhood resident who did not want to give her last name, said: “Right now we’re [uneasy]. Shall we stay? Shall we run? What should we do?”
In a brief filed Sunday supporting Costa Mesa, officials from neighboring Newport Beach emphasized the health and welfare of Newport residents and the potential economic consequences of coronavirus patients staying nearby.
“The city of Newport Beach contends that this ill-advised plan could result in the spread of the coronavirus, not only throughout California but throughout the world,” Newport City Attorney Aaron Harp wrote.
Newport Beach is a tourism magnet, drawing more than 7 million people a year to its beaches, harbor, hotels and high-end shopping, the city said.
“Even the hint that coronavirus is nearby could have significant economic ramifications clearly not considered by the state or federal government in their decision-making processes,” according to the brief.
Before this legal battle broke out, Costa Mesa officials had touted a positive working relationship with the state. In January, Foley and other city officials visited the governor’s office and the state Department of General Services in Sacramento to discuss the future of Fairview, among other things. City Manager Lori Ann Farrell Harrison later said the meeting was “good” and “very collaborative.”
In September, the City Council formed an ad hoc committee to work with state officials about the Fairview property. A month ago, the committee presented its ideal vision for Fairview: a mixed-income community complete with houses, businesses and open space.
During a news conference Saturday at City Hall, Foley questioned why officials would choose Fairview as a quarantine site when the Department of General Services had informed city officials recently that the center was “inadequate to put a homeless shelter.”
In a revised budget proposal in May, Gov. Gavin Newsom called for designating $2.2 million “to complete a site evaluation of disposition options” for Fairview, including “identifying constraints and opportunities ... in the reuse of the property, particularly related to meeting housing and homelessness needs.”
Review: In 'Premature,' a young New Yorker explores love, language and herself
The dialogue churns, pulses and all but dances in the absorbing romantic drama “Premature,” but it also knows when to grind to a meaningful halt. The talk begins flowing in a crowded subway car, where Ayanna (Zora Howard) and her girlfriends are immersed in a conversation that — more than any turns of the plot or moves of the camera — seems to propel the story along on its own fleet, funny rhythms. It follows them off the train, down the street, into someone’s apartment and onto a nearby basketball court, merging with the sights and sounds of a New York summer evening.
The chatter stops and silence sets in only sometime later, when Ayanna finds herself hanging out with a new friend, Isaiah (the charismatic Joshua Boone), whose watchful eyes say pretty much everything worth saying. Which isn’t to say that Isaiah isn’t a good talker himself; far from it. He might actually be too good, given his tendency to rhapsodize at length about the body’s molecular vibrations and the potential for transcendence in art. But his idealism and creative aspirations only endear him more to Ayanna, herself an aspiring poet whose spoken-word verse occasionally floods the soundtrack.
Directed with bristling immediacy by Rashaad Ernesto Green (“Gun Hill Road”), “Premature” could be classified as a love story, a coming-of-age drama, a cautionary tale (the title offers a clue) and a portrait of young black women and men finding their way in contemporary New York. But it also strikes me as a movie about the uses and occasional uselessness of language, with stop-and-go verbal cadences that seem particularly attentive to what its characters say and don’t say. Ayanna’s initial wariness aside, she and Isaiah fall for each other hard and fast — and the movie, knowing that the first flush of love can render words especially superfluous, fills in the gaps with some of the more sensual and emotionally communicative love scenes in recent movie memory.
The two barely acknowledge the differences between them — he’s a music producer in his 20s, she’s 17 and about to start college — or the challenges that might ensue as a result. Those challenges do rear their head eventually, often in quick, buzz-killing bursts — an ex-girlfriend who comes knocking, an argument that takes an angry turn. One development sends the movie spinning in a direction that might have come across as dramatically forced or clumsy, but is instead played with sensitivity and understatement.
Ayanna’s tendency to guard her innermost thoughts and feelings is not a defense against Isaiah alone. She can riff, banter and hold her own with anyone, but it’s instructive to see when and why she clams up around her friends (warmly played by Imani Lewis, Alexis Marie Wint and Tashiana Washington), and especially around her mother (Michelle Wilson), with whom she has a close, sometimes combative relationship. A lot of the time she simply looks on and listens — to her friends and Isaiah as they heatedly debate the challenges of being black in America (and whether men and women bear those challenges equally), or to Isaiah and his colleagues as they wax poetic about their artistic calling.
These discussions sometimes feel like topical asides — hardly irrelevant to the main matter at hand, but clearly borne of an impulse to say something smart and meaningful. What’s remarkable about “Premature” is how much Howard says with her silences alone. It’s worth noting that she co-wrote the script with Green, and their restraint on the page finds a skillful complement in Howard’s performance on the screen. To watch Ayanna quietly think her way through each situation — whether she’s taking pleasure in a new experience or weighing the consequences of a difficult decision — is to watch a person coming into being, not a moment too soon or late.
Indie romance ‘Premature’ challenges Hollywood by portraying black love, not black pain
Rashaad Ernesto Green and co-writer/star Zora Howard of "Premature," photographed at 1 Hotel West Hollywood.
The black romantic drama is currently enjoying something of a genre renaissance after nearly two decades of stagnation.
From prestige films like Barry Jenkins' "If Beale Street Could Talk" to midrange studio fare like Stella Meghie's "The Photograph," varied depictions of black love are starting to reemerge on a large scale for the first time since the genre's heyday in the '90s and early aughts.
The genre reemergence is largely due to the efforts of filmmakers like Meghie and rising talent Rashaad Ernesto Green, whose ascent through the ranks of Hollywood coincides with audiences' growing appetites for love stories specific to the black experience.
Like Meghie, Green cited genre classics "Love & Basketball" (2000) and "Love Jones" (1997) as cinematic inspiration behind his latest offering, the indie romance "Premature," which he cowrote with its breakout lead actress, Zora Howard.
"Those films that we grew up on helped us begin to understand ourselves in love," said Green. "We didn't really feel like we had seen one in a while, and especially not one set in New York. We decided to write what we knew: We both had been in love in Harlem before and could pull from those experiences."
"Premature" which premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival and is now playing in limited release, is in equal measure a portrait of young black love and a love letter to the New York of yore, before gentrification altered the identity of the city and before technology corrupted the practice of dating.
The 90-minute movie follows Ayanna, a 17-year-old poet, as she experiences a life-changing summer romance with Isaiah, a 23-year-old music producer new to the city (played by Joshua Boone).
Both New York natives, Green and Howard say they wrote the story partially in response to the dearth of representation for born-and-bred New Yorkers, a demographic that is steadily dwindling as the city is overtaken by transplants.
"We don't often see our side of Harlem expressed onscreen," said Green. "And we were very interested in telling a young black love story before Harlem changed forever and became something other than what we remembered it to be."
"An extended Upper West Side," said Howard.
"And we wanted to do it on film, specifically," Green continued. "To record these beautiful young black bodies on celluloid. When you watch films that were shot on film, there's an automatic sense of nostalgia that you get. We wanted to present something that would have lasting power, that wouldn't be specific to a time and place but had a forever quality to it."
On the other hand, the filmmakers also wanted to make a movie about black life divorced from the racism and violence present in both headlines and media at the time.
"It felt like if you wanted to see black people in the theater, [all you would see was] assault, violence and aggression on the black body over and over again," said Howard. "And I just remember walking out of a couple of theaters like, 'Whoo ... Now where do I go to restore?'"
"So we wanted to present our lives in a way that anyone could relate to," said Green. "We very much wanted to promote black love instead of black pain."
"Premature" originated as a short that Green wrote and directed in 2008 while attending NYU Graduate Film School. It starred Howard as a 14-year-old girl dealing with an unexpected pregnancy.
"I had met Zora when she was 11," said Green. "I was very blown away by her wisdom. She was talking about things I was just beginning to think about in my early 20s.
"I was thinking about who I could cast that would be able to portray something that they hadn't necessarily experienced, and I thought of my young friend Zora. She was 14 at the time and came in and absolutely murdered the role."
The short did well on the festival circuit; it went on to win a short film award at the American Black Film Festival and was distributed by HBO. But it wasn't until 2016 that Green and Howard teamed up again to cowrite a feature-length story under the same title.
Despite being longtime friends, the pair struggled at first to figure out a writing process that worked for both of them.
"We've collaborated artistically before but it's something completely different to know someone as a writer," said Howard. "You've got to get into the depths of the pain, psyche and emotional life of your cowriter. We couldn't just start writing, we had to talk some things through. We shared a lot, things we didn't know about each other in over 10 years of friendship."
"We would basically talk for hours without any real direction about our lives, how we feel about love and our experiences," said Green. "We'd just riff off of each other, and then we just took all of that and compiled it on paper. We basically asked ourselves what we felt was missing in black cinema and went from there."
"Once we knew what the foundation of this was — the blackness of it, the love and the Harlem of the story — we just did a deep dive into a lot of art that inspired us individually," said Howard. "Listened to a lot of music, watched a lot of films shot on film together and talked a lot.
"Raa and I talked about our first loves and histories with love and heartbreak, but we also talked about us presently trying to figure out how to love," she added. "That's an ongoing thing, a forever thing, so we wanted our characters to reflect that."
The film was shot on 16mm on a shoestring budget, with production lasting just under three weeks "in a very, very contained two- to three-block radius," said Green.
"We shot in my apartment, friends' apartments, the park around the corner and the restaurant and laundromat up the street. There were a lot of favors."
"It's difficult for black creators to actually reflect their truths because there's a whole lot of other stuff to get through," said Howard. "Because Rashaad for the most part self-financed a lot of it, I think we were able to stay true to the story we were trying to tell. On a different project with a different budget with a different producer at the top, there's compromises you have to make. We were able to dramatize small, intimate and what in other stories might even look mundane moments because it was Ayanna's story."
"We didn't want it to be formulaic or the same kind of story that you see all the time," said Green. "We also wanted to make sure that even if this relationship weren't to work out, it wasn't because the man was scandalous. We wanted to present a love that was absolutely real for both of them and that pushed them both to grow from the experience."
While Green is protective of both of his lead characters, the story is deliberately told from Ayanna's perspective because of the lack of onscreen representation for black female protagonists.
"There are too many films that have the male gaze and male perspective, in my opinion, especially when it comes to love stories," he said. "Both characters are very much going through something that's changing them, but to house it within one perspective gives us an insight into her world and how she's growing from it. I thought [that] would benefit the film and folks' takeaway from it."
"What is most often the case in film, media in general and the world is we're pitted against the young black woman," said Howard. "Even though Isaiah is going through some very real things and we feel for him deeply as well, we never doubt who we are on this ride with, and that was important to us."
"It became a very fine balancing act in order to draw him in such a way where we don't dislike him despite him presenting behaviors that are complicated and real," said Green. "Both people grow from the experience because love sometimes helps us discover who we are and the people that we will be. It's those experiences that help shape us."
"A lot of this film is about finding love in another person for the first time, but there's also Ayanna learning how to love herself and what it really costs us to love ourselves," said Howard. "How much continuous work it takes. We never stop learning, and that's what we see Ayanna go through — how to choose herself."
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