BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody, who issued the nation’s first lockdown orders during the pandemic, is writing a memoir.
Cody, 61, of Palo Alto, went on unpaid leave in September 2023 so she could participate in a fellowship at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
Cody quietly returned to her department in Santa Clara County in June. Deputy Officer Dr. Sara Rodman covered for her during the fellowship, a county representative said yesterday.
Cody’s memoir will explore her “decision-making under great uncertainty; what enabled her to act quickly; the role of governmental structure; the impacts of her decisions; and the forces at play during a chaotic time in public health and history,” according to the Stanford Report.
A release date and book title weren’t available yesterday.
“I wanted to tell the story of what happened because the pandemic, in large part, was fought county by county and there’s over 3,000 counties across the United States,” Cody told the Stanford Report. “It was this absurd patchwork, and a local story is an important one to be told.”
Cody issued an order prohibiting gatherings greater than 1,000 people on March 9, 2020. Days later, she issued another order prohibiting gatherings of more than 100 people and restricting gatherings of more than 35.
“I was just thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Cody told the Stanford Report. “That means no weddings, no funerals, no celebrations, nothing. This has such a profound effect on people’s ability to live their life, but this is going to prevent more deaths.”
On March 16, Cody and six other Bay Area health officers announced a stay-at-home order that was eventually superseded by the state’s edicts.
Santa Clara County fined nearly 400 businesses totaling about $5 million for breaking the county’s rules — “a far higher rate” than neighboring counties, a consultant found.
Highest death rate
Santa Clara County also had the highest Covid-related death rate per capita in the nine-county Bay Area.
A total of 1,901 of Santa Clara County residents died due to the virus through November 2021, according to state records, or 96.6 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Cody became the target of protests, including outside her house, and a pair of sheriff’s deputies were assigned to her protection.
At one press conference, Cody told people to avoid touching their eyes, nose or mouth, but as she held a thick stack of papers, she unconsciously licked her finger to turn the pages.
One of her kids soon told her that she was the number one meme on TikTok, Cody told the Stanford Report.
Cody has a degree in human biology from Stanford, and her husband works at Stanford as a professor.
About the fellowship
Her fellowship started in September 2023. The research center sits in the hills above Stanford, where an estimated 2,000 books have been conceived, started or finished.
Cody was one of 36 people in the year-long program. Fellows spend their days planning, researching, writing and discussing their projects. They are required to go to lunch three to four days a week and attend weekly seminars, according to a program description.
Cody said the fellowship allowed her to slow down from her fast-paced job, which involves a lot of management and politics.
“There’s really not much time for reflection and contemplation and reading and any deep thinking about anything,” Cody told the Stanford Report.
Blend of studies
Cody said she sees public health as a blend between medicine and social sciences, but public health officials often focus more on medicine. Her fellowship has shifted her perspective.
“This has been an incredibly, incredibly rich environment for me to think about my recent work responding to the pandemic,” Cody said.
For example, Cody said she was struggling with questions about democracy and the authority that she used as health officer. So she met with a visiting historian who gave her a whole reading list on the issue.
