SF Supes want to remove Zuckerberg's name from the hospital. Why?

Is this really an issue for now in SF?

Cases of COVID-19 are spiking in San Francisco.

A large number of the homeless population remain unhoused and more may be on the streets if, as proposed, hotel rooms are taken away.

The city’s economy, bed-rocked by tourism and entertainment, is in free fall with no help in sight.

So it is a relief to know that our city’s Board of Supervisors are concentrating on an issue that I’m sure concerns us all — changing the name of San Francisco General Hospital.

It is officially named the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg SF General Hospital, which has annoyed some members of the board no end. They want Chan and Zuckerberg’s names removed. Because, after all, what have they ever done to deserve it?

Well, in 2015 they donated $74 million to the hospital to build a new acute care and trauma center. It funded two additional trauma rooms, three operating rooms and doubled the size of the emergency department.

And yet, the un-Zuck SFGH movement has been a favorite hobby-horse for years. Back in 2018, Supervisor Aaron Peskin promoted removing the name because of Facebook privacy concerns.

And last week Supervisors Gordon Mar and Matt Haney took it up again. Mar said the move was in response to Facebook’s lack of action on hate speech and Coronavirus misinformation.

“The name should be condemned,” Mar said in a BOS committee meeting. The question is now supposed to go to the full board.

This baffles me.

The donation, and the naming agreement was approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2015. Zuckerberg, one of the richest men in the world, heard the call to give back and decided to do so in San Francisco. Instead of funding some vague World Organization for Wellness, he went with brick and mortar, donating to the only trauma center in the city. In an added touch, his wife Pricilla Chan is a doctor who worked there as a pediatric resident.

Also, it was $74 million. Is anyone saying that wasn’t helpful?

Haney’s response begins, “No one is criticizing the donation but . . . “

Supervisor, I am going to stop you right there. Because unless your next words are “it was stolen from drug dealers” or “it was raised by duping helpless widows,” I don’t think you’ve got an argument here.

First, is this making a point?

Is it the impression of Mar and Haney that it is a news-flash that Facebook is sparking concerns about privacy, messaging and conspiracy theories? Do you think people will be shocked to hear that?

Because I feel like I read a story about that every day. And if I read more tech blogs, it would be twice a day. I’ll bet we could find three people right this minute who are writing books about Facebook and its problems.

Zuckerberg has testified before Congress — repeatedly and once for ten hours. President Donald Trump has singled out Facebook for criticism.

So this move by Haney and Mar isn’t exactly a bombshell.

At best it is bandwagon jumping. I remember back in my early days covering politics when the BOS declared San Francisco a “nuclear free zone.” There were no nukes for miles, but we just wanted to make the point.

The Mar family, you may recall, have a history of self-righteousness. When Gordon’s brother Eric was a supervisor, he proposed a ban on McDonald’s Happy Meals. It was such an eye-rolling San Francisco moment that Jon Stewart’s Daily Show sent out a correspondent for one of those can-you-believe-this interviews.

Which brings us to the second question: will it make any difference?

I don’t see it. It isn’t as if Facebook, and Zuckerberg don’t understand they have a problem. Press releases have been sent. Over-seers have been appointed. False claims have been removed or flagged. Conspiracy groups and robot accounts have been removed.

No one is going to say Facebook has the privacy concerns under control. Or that they are 100 percent making the right moves. But it isn’t because they aren’t taking this seriously. The company is frantically trying to get ahead of the privacy/false facts controversy.

Where does removing Chan and Zuckerberg’s names advance any of that?

Now, that’s not to say that Chan/Zuckerberg General hasn’t had its problems. Back in January of 2019, a Vox reporter, Sarah Kliff, wrote a story that became known as the “$20,000 bike accident.” (The Chronicle’s Heather Knight followed up later that month.)

Kliff’s story reveals that the hospital was set up to accept patients covered by Medicare or Medi-Cal. The kicker was the facility did not accept private health insurance. So, when taken to the city’s only trauma center — as the woman in Kliff’s story was after a relatively minor bike crash — patients with private insurance didn’t realize they were going to have to foot the bill themselves.

In Kliff’s story, the woman ended up owing $20,243.

It was an outrage. And of course, some people immediately blamed Zuckerberg. But it was quickly pointed out that he had nothing to do with medical billing.

Which led to the question of who, exactly, oversees SFGH? And it turned out to be . . .

wait for it . . .

The Board of Supervisors.

The board met and with the support of Mayor London Breed and got the billing practices changed, so privately insured patients pay standard rates.

That’s the kind of thing the Board of Supervisors should be doing.

Not advocating a name change that smacks of a publicity stunt.

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It’s fine that Santa Clara shut down sports, but spare us the lecture Doc.

Santa Clara County basically blind-sided the 49ers (and Stanford and San Jose State) when it announced it was installing a ban on contact sports, college and pro, for three weeks.

And to be clear, Santa Clara has the right to do that. If they think it is the correct and prudent thing to do, fine, close it down. Follow the science.

But as I wrote in my Sunday Santa Rosa Press Democrat column it didn’t help when country health executive Dr. Jeff Smith got huffy when he heard that 49er coach Kyle Shanahan said it was “disappointing” not to get a head’s up ahead of time.

Smith basically said he couldn’t believe the 49ers found the shutdown unexpected. After all, he said, cases were spiking, ERs were filling up and the team should have expected this. He said they notified the team as they had notified “thousands of businesses.”

Really? And how many of those businesses were professional or college sports teams? Because, in the case of the 49ers who had to fly to Arizona on very short notice, a little advance warning might have made a difference.

And then, Smith thought it would be helpful if he delivered a little lecture to the teams about building teamwork.

“One might envision a reemergence of team-building,” he said, “if the teams spent their time building a COVID relief fund for the community, rather than trying to put the community at more risk.”

First, the NFL is a multi-billion dollar industry in the country. Second, the players aren’t ignoring the danger. They are acutely aware of it, and know they are taking a real risk to play.

Finally, I’m not sure what you are proposing here. To stop the season so the players can raise money for a relief fund? How would that work? Maybe stand on the corner and ring a bell?

Save the lectures, doc, everyone knows this is serious.

Ok, let’s admit it. These newsletters get a little long. And you may not read all of it every time. But if you send it to someone else, they’ll never know that. And I won’t tell them. Hit the button to share.

It seems pretty clear. The 49ers can’t lose another game.

Coming into the game with Buffalo, the premise was simple and direct. If the 49ers won the last five games of the year, they’d be 10-6. As I wrote in this week's version of Inside the 49ers ten wins is a perfectly acceptable number to make the playoffs.

But there were some optimists that said the 49ers could lose one of the last five and still make the playoffs.

They just lost that game.

The 34-24 defeat to Buffalo was convincing, lop-sided and demoralizing. And it also means they definitely have to run the table now. Ten wins will get you into the postseason most years. Nine wins is possible. But eight wins isn’t going do it.

The real question, as I discussed in the blog, is whether the brain trust will try to rush Jimmie Garoppolo back. Until now they’ve said he might be available for the last two games.

But with every game a “playoff” game in Kyle Shanahan’s words, there might be a tendency to rush Garoppolo back before he is healthy. He’s clearly the team’s best QB. GM John Lynch was on the air talking about the “terrific” practices Jimmie G and George Kittle have been having.

Was that a nudge to play?

Hope not. Sending Garoppolo out there when he isn’t healed is not good for him or the team, which needs to evaluate him for next year. As we’ve already seen, he’s not at his best if he’s hobbled.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Suggestions and compliments gladly accepted. Criticism not so much. Twitter: @cwnevius