Welcome to Shasta County, Northern California.

Until last week, Shasta had fewer cases of Covid-19 and fewer restrictions on daily life than all but a couple of California counties. But residents were still mad https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

Matt Pontes, county executive officer of Shasta, knows how to handle a crisis. He’s:

Fought wildfires
Run responses to fires, floods and mudslides

Yet even he describes the local response to Covid-19 strictures as “full-on anarchy” https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

Here’s a couple of things that have happened recently:

The sheriff announced he wouldn’t enforce pandemic restrictions on social gatherings and businesses
People who had never before attended board meetings were accusing local officials of treason https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

The county’s health officer was receiving so many threats that Pontes had to:

Bring in a threat-assessment team
Cut away bushes from her home
Install a security system and floodlights
Order police patrols

“She still doesn’t feel safe out there” https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

Every Tuesday, Shasta’s Board of Supervisors meets and allows citizens to voice their concerns.

Each speaker gets three minutes, before two well-armed bailiffs escort them back out to an outdoor plaza, and a roar of approval from a crowd of protesters https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

Most speakers turn up with outrage at the constraints on their liberties, along with some other specific complaint, such as the:

- County’s failure to secede from the state
- Order requiring nurses to get a flu shot
- Supervisors’ inattention to the Bible https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

It ends with a memorable speaker wearing a Grim Reaper mask.

He sat down, reached into a silver ice bucket that said CORONA down the side with a pair of tongs and grabbed a surgical mask. He then tried, without success, to light the mask on fire https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

The inconveniences caused by California's restrictions had attracted a new sort of person to politics. Take Elissa McEuen:

Six months ago, she couldn’t have told you where the Board met, much less what they did. Now she shows up to every meeting https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

Almost single-handedly, McEuen had organized a bunch of vaguely lunatic groups — the anti-vaxxers, the Second Amendment people, the chemtrail crowd — into a unified fighting force.

She also persuaded Carlos Zapata to come to a meeting https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

On Aug. 11, Zapata, an ex-Marine officer and restaurant owner, marched into the chamber and threatened to start a war.

“Right now we’re being peaceful but it’s not going to be peaceful much longer.” He called Covid-19 “the greatest hoax ever perpetuated”

Within a fortnight, Zapata’s speech had 20 million views on YouTube and he’d become a right-wing icon.

Well-armed men now drive from Idaho and Nevada to eat at Zapata’s jam-packed restaurant. He’s had nights when 1,000 people have showed up https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

There is only the loosest connection between the constraints on people’s freedom and their level of outrage about them –– Zapata’s restaurant is running as if the virus never existed.

But that is about to change: Shasta’s Covid numbers are now spiking https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

Just how many people will need to die before minds change?

Only weeks ago, one of the loudest protestors in Shasta had watched his mother die of Covid. In that moment, a political opinion was challenged by a fact; one of them needed to be altered https://trib.al/fq1kniG 

200,000 American deaths has been insufficient to create a shared American reality –– even on a personal level.

The protester called the coroner and demanded that the county change the cause of death https://trib.al/fq1kniG