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California’s dreamin’

California is often cited as an example of a state that has handled the COVID crisis right. It has. But it looks like it may not hold:

California hasn’t seen the huge death toll from the coronavirus like New York and other hot spots, but the state is still struggling with a growing number of fatalities and confirmed cases.

COVID-19 deaths in California remain at a stubborn plateau. Mirroring a trend seen nationally, California has not seen a dramatic and sustained decline in deaths over the past month, a Los Angeles Times analysis found. During the seven-day period that ended Sunday, 503 people in California died from the virus — the second-highest weekly death toll in the course of the pandemic and a 1.6% increase from the previous week’s toll.

The trends have some health officials expressing caution about widely reopening communities — especially those in urban areas hard hit by the virus — amid concerns about a wave of new cases.

Silicon Valley’s health officer, Dr. Sara Cody, announced Tuesday that Santa Clara County has no immediate plans to weaken its strict stay-at-home order, saying she couldn’t take that step without increasing the risk to public safety.

“We’re not there yet,” Cody told the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. “The conditions really haven’t changed in our county. … We don’t suddenly have a vaccine. We have exactly the same conditions we had in March. If we did ease up, we would see a brisk return of cases, of hospitalizations, and a brisk return of deaths, to be quite blunt.”

At the same time, many rural counties with fewer cases are pushing to reopen. The state said Tuesday that seven counties — mostly rural — have met conditions for additional businesses to resume operations: Amador, Butte, El Dorado, Lassen, Nevada, Placer and Shasta counties.

Talks are underway with 23 other counties on whether they can expand reopenings, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday, but he noted that conditions are still too serious in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties to modify the guidelines for resuming business .Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will ‘with all certainty’ be extended for the next three months, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.

The Times asked UC San Francisco epidemiologist and infectious disease expert Dr. George Rutherford, a former epidemic intelligence service officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about why the plateau persists.

“As long as it’s going up, it has not ended. It’s got to come down for it to end,” he said.

Rutherford offered two reasons why the disease is persisting: a certain percentage of people are still going out, and people are getting fed up with staying at home.

Many people are going out because they have no choice. They are essential workers keeping the country functioning. And ,as we know, most of those essential workers are people of color and they tend to live in dense housing situations so there are many more of them being affected by this disease than others.

On the other hand, there are a lot of citizens acting as if they are immune and have no responsibilities toward anyone but themselves. And, of course, making political points.

Also a factor: People are getting fed up with the stay-at-home order and have been determined to enjoy the nice weather.

It’s a reason why disease forecasters are increasingly expecting the death toll to get worse than what was thought just a week ago. “They realized people weren’t really sheltering in place anymore and all the other states let their foot off the brakes,” Rutherford said.

Officials have expressed alarm at large crowds seen in San Francisco’s Mission Dolores Park, Orange County beaches and in the downtown L.A. flower district.

There has been a steep rise in coronavirus cases reported in Orange County following the large crowds on the beaches on April 25-26.

On the week of April 20-26, there were 438 cases in Orange County. The week after that, 669 cases were reported, and the week after that, 759 cases. Further investigation is needed to determine whether the beaches were a source of spread for an outbreak or if the increase could be explained simply by other factors, like increased testing.

“But you know, just us looking at it, there was a big jump in Orange County that was temporally consistent with possible transmission from that crowd event,” Rutherford said.

[…]

Pasadena officials have shown have dropping social distancing can have bad results: a cluster of at least five coronavirus cases tied to a birthday party.

The party was held after the city issued stay-at-home orders March 19 and was attended by a large number of extended family members and friends who did not wear face coverings or stay six feet apart, the city said in a news release.

“One person showed up to the party exhibiting symptoms and joking she may have the virus,” Lisa Derderian, spokeswoman for the city of Pasadena, said in an email. “The aftermath affected several others who became seriously ill because of one person’s negligent and selfish behavior.”

Through contact tracing, a Pasadena Public Health Department disease investigation team discovered more than five laboratory-confirmed coronavirus cases among attendees of the party “and many more ill individuals,” the city said. The team identified the woman as the index case, or the first patient in the outbreak identified with the infection, officials said.

Sutter and Yuba counties defied Newsom and reopened many businesses with social distancing rules last week.

But the counties’ health officials later expressed grave concerns that many customers and workers were not keeping six feet apart or wearing face covering.

“I understand that some of your customers may strongly object to a facial-covering requirement, but the long-term safety of our community is at stake. We do not want to take any steps back in our phasing-in efforts,” the health director wrote.

I would say that mask usage in my neighborhood among people jogging, dog walking and biking has dropped by 60% in the last couple of weeks. Younger people are gathering in groups and not observing social distancing on the sidewalks, even when they encounter elderly people. It seems to me that a whole lot of people have just decided they aren’t going to bother anymore.

I think the biggest danger we face is COVID fatigue. People want to live their lives and a whole lot of them aren’t being political when they ignore the rules — they just do not see the danger to themselves and can’t register something as abstract as social solidarity. They just don’t think that way.

And as long as there is controversy among the leadership of the country over how dangerous this is, the Trump cult will go out of their way to figuratively (maybe literally?) spit in our faces to make a political point.

Essential workers are left without protection by the government and the rest of the population is put at risk by impatient citizens and political players. America in 2020 is simply not constituted in such way that more than half of our citizens are capable of or willing to adapt. I don’t see how we will possibly avoid a major second wave. In fact, I’m not sure the first one will ever substantially recede.

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