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after California instated stay-at-home orders for most of the state in early December, our mobility -- a measure of how much everyone is moving around -- dropped to the lowest level since May. that undoubtedly helped turn around our terrible surge
maybe the rules can be loosened as things are improving, but they're barely improving! there are still way too many people in the hospital and health care workers are still stretched so thin ... like, look at this graph
the worst-case scenario we talked about so much, the surge-upon-a-surge, was about what would happen if there was a Christmas or NYE surge on top of the Thanksgiving/fall surge. as in, what happens when cases are already really high and they start growing again...
lifting all the rules when cases are still high will give them room to start growing again! just because we're past Christmas/NYE doesn't mean we're out of the woods in preventing that terrifying surge-upon-a-surge. that's the so terrible, rationing care scenario
California has been consistently bad at re-opening, and this seems like it's going to be the next example. in the spring, Gov. Newsom created a framework for reopening but then, under pressure, allowed counties to skip a bunch of the steps. we all remember the summer surge
we wrote about California's botched summer reopening:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-17/gavin-newsom-contact-tracing-testing-coronavirus-covid-19-reopening-california https://www.latimes.com/projects/how-rushed-la-reopening-sparked-covid-19-cases/
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-17/gavin-newsom-contact-tracing-testing-coronavirus-covid-19-reopening-california https://www.latimes.com/projects/how-rushed-la-reopening-sparked-covid-19-cases/
In case you forgot, the summer reopening "set the stage for a resurgence of the coronavirus in June that ultimately killed more than 1,600 people" in LA County alone. https://www.latimes.com/projects/how-rushed-la-reopening-sparked-covid-19-cases/
and then Newsom unveiled the tiered system in August, which I actually sort of liked, but created a patchwork of policies across the state, which confuses people and makes it feel like policies are arbitrary since you can drive across county lines and have different rules
but then cases started surging and he instated the stay-at-home orders which were linked to ICU capacity. now those are gone and we're back to the tier system. but also the tier system feels so ... irrelevant right now?
in September we did a story about how all these counties, including LA, couldn't get out of the purple tier because they were logging more than 7 new cases of coronavirus per 100,000 residents each day. LA was really close! I think it was around 8 for a while. now it's 150
A bunch of these counties did get their rates under 7. But we're nowhere near that now. San Diego's rate is 97, Ventura's is 153, San Bernardino is 155, San Joaquin is 89, Contra Costa is 60 etc etc
California's confusing, contradictory and seemingly haphazard policies do not serve us well.
"The holiday surge has so far killed more than 18,100 Californians, more than doubling the state’s total death toll from the pandemic in less than three months." https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-22/how-winter-california-covid-19-surge-got-so-bad
"The holiday surge has so far killed more than 18,100 Californians, more than doubling the state’s total death toll from the pandemic in less than three months." https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-22/how-winter-california-covid-19-surge-got-so-bad
what is the point of a tiered system if we're all ... in the same tier .... and drowning in COVID cases
