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Davis High girls basketball team wins consolation title
Comings & Goings: Western Feed & Pet Supply closes — Page A3
Let Libby lead you to literary love again — Page B4
— Page B1
enterprise THE DAVIS
SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 2023
2022: The year of bouncing back
COVID, strike, trials punctuated ups and downs
community wide PCR testing and residents began relying on rapid antigen tests instead while public health officials continued to urge everyone eligible to get vaccinated and boosted. Even during the Omicron wave, hospitalizations and deaths remained well below the winter surge of 2021, thanks largely to vaccinations and immunity from prior infections. As the year draws to a close, many aspects of life have returned to their pre-pandemic state. Masks are optional in most places (though still recommended in indoor public settings) and inperson meetings have become the norm again, including for local government agencies like the City Council and Board of Supervisors.
Enterprise staff After two years of dealing with COVID, 2022 was when we started to answer the question of what we would do “after.” Some things will never be the same, and some seem to be getting back to a semblance of normal, even if we haven’t fully defined what the “new normal” is going to be. Once again, the COVID fallout — the disruptions it caused, the inescapable need to deal with the consequences — was the dominant fact of life. But now at least the questions were “what can we do.” There was some sense of agency when dealing with a hitherto unstoppable juggernaut. It’s not in the rear-view mirror, not by a long shot, but the clouds ahead are beginning to part. Locally, we saw triumph and tragedy. The reckoning for the tragic deaths of three young people came due. Public-school teachers and grad-student workers demanded better pay and working conditions. And, Davis being Davis, the ongoing debate of who we want to be as a community found expression at the ballot box.
Courtesy photo/Enterprise file
Healthy Davis Together earned nationwide acclaim for its COVID-19 testing program and other public health interventions. And so we bid farewell to 2022, a year full of challenges and not a little heartbreak, with the top stories of the last 12 months, as selected by the journalists of the Davis Enterprise:
1. Dealing with COVID Davis entered 2022 in the midst of its worse COVID-19
wave, with the Omicron variant driving case numbers to their highest point since the pandemic began. The city, UC Davis and the Davis Joint Unified School District all reported record-breaking numbers of new cases in January 2022. Fall-out from the surge included UC Davis delaying resumption of in-person classes
until late January. By February, the surge was beginning to wane, though another began in early summer thanks to Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. Wastewater monitoring indicated virus levels in June were as high as they’d been in January. By then, Healthy Davis Together had wound down its
2. UC strike
Graduate-student workers across the University of California went on strike on Nov. 14, calling for an end to the University of California’s “unlawful behavior,” living wages to address “rent burden, increased childcare subsidies for parent scholars, sustainable transit benefits, and greater rights for international scholars.” At UC Davis, what followed was a more than a month of demonstrations, marches and teach-ins
See 2022, Page A5
Back in the saddle n Editor’s note: Davis loves its Aggies, and as they graduate, they gallop down their respective career paths which often takes them away from the community. That’s why The Enterprise has begun to wrangle these exceptional alumni to break down their UCD experience and what they’re doing now.
By Aaron Geerts Enterprise staff writer Hailing from Portland, Ore., Maddy Kent was used to overcast skies and rainy days throughout the year. When it was time to apply for colleges, her parents encouraged her to consider UC Davis — a college she’d never heard of before. However, her
VOL. 125 NO. 1
INDEX
Business �����������A3 Forum �����������������B2 Op-Ed �����������������B3 Classifieds ���������B4 Living �����������������B4 Sports ���������������B1 Comics ���������������B5 Obituary �������������A4 The Wary I ���������A2
Aggie alumni stories skepticism on whether or not she’d attend quickly evaporated upon her first visit to the pristine campus. The sunshine and California weather gave her the push to become a UCD Aggie. “I went to UCD from 2009 to 2013 and majored in exercise biology and minored in nutrition. It was definitely one of the hardest majors, but I learned a lot, it was interesting and liked how challenging it was,” Kent
See SADDLE, Page A5
WEATHER Today: Sunny and dry. High 56. Low 42.
Tamara Torti/Courtesy photo
Initially unsure about attending UC Davis, Maddy Kent was won over by a visit in person.
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