Hello My Fellow Californians:
The state is on fire. It’s hard to concentrate on the pandemic. I hope you are all safe.
Up here in the North, we had the worst air on the planet today. We have been told to be ready to evacuate on a moment’s notice. All of us, everywhere. Where will be go? The whole state is on fire. Where can we go that’s safe? Nowhere. 11,000 lightning strikes spawning 364 fires.
Have a plan if you are asked to evacuate. The Sacramento Bee published one today that’s a good start. I went right off and did it. Capital Public Radio also has a good list.
Here is a map of the fires also from Capital Public Radio. The map updates frequently. You can check out Cal Fire’s website also for updated information.
So many testing sites have been closed, so many people are on the move, we will not have a read on how we are doing with the pandemic for a while. Stay safe.
BY THE NUMBERS
The state is doing better -- lower cases and hospitalizations — because Los Angeles is doing better. The rest of the state is a mixed bag.
The new cases are somewhat skewed by collection problems in July. Still, trending down.
Hospitalizations are down 19% from two weeks ago, suggesting that cases started decreasing about 2 weeks ago as well.
How is your County Doing?
We’re aiming for 100 cases per 100,00 of population. Using that metric, most counties aren’t doing great yet. Better, but not great.
LA Cases
Cases in LA are DOWN. Cases started to drop in the 2nd week of July after the second shutdown started to take effect.
Hospitalizations in LA County started to drop about 3 weeks later.
LA Hospitalizations: trending down.
Mortality is always the lagging indicator. Mortality will remain high until late August.
LA Mortality: still high, trending down.
One of the most welcome results of the plunging case rate is that cases among Black and Latino residents are finally declining. Better testing and PPE to essential workers have been a factor. Sometimes, things are really simple.
During the peak of transmission in July, Black residents “had a rate at four deaths per 100,000 people,” the county said in a statement. That rate was three times that of white residents during the same time period. The mortality rate for Black residents is now 1.7 deaths per 100,000 people, which is slightly higher than that of white residents.
Latinos have seen deaths per 100,000 people decline from a high of six in July to 2.4. “While decreasing, this is still 2.5 times higher than white residents,” the county said in a statement.
The “positivity” rate of tests is down as well: 6.6%. Good. Statewide, the rate is 6.5.
Outside of LA, which drives the state’s statistics, the picture is a lot more complex. Using hospitalizations as the most reliable metric — since it doesn’t depend on labs that forget to send in their test results, quite a few other counties are seeing hospitalizations increase, a sign that new infections were not coming down as of two or three weeks ago.
At least five counties — Alameda, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo and Sonoma — have seen increases in hospitalizations above the state’s safety threshold for at least three days, according to the California Department of Public Health’s watchlist.
Nearly a dozen other counties, including Orange, Ventura and San Francisco, reported slight increases Tuesday in hospitalized patient counts, but those numbers were far below the state’s compliance level of a 10% increase or lower.
Here is your Bay Area summary. Santa Clara and Sonoma are still trending higher in new cases. That will mean more hospitalizations in a few weeks.
It’s not clear why Sonoma County’s cases are stubbornly high. 51% of the cases are in the Latinx community in a county where they make up 26% of the population, and the County still has work to do in terms of outreach and testing. The situation has been complicated by recent ICE raids in Sonoma which have instilled fear in the community and driven people away from health services. Just when you think Trump could not be more evil, he continues to find ways.
TESTING NEWS
- Another day, another state university announces a COVID saliva test: the University of Utah just announced that starting in mid-September they will offer COVID saliva tests at their 4 testing sites, which handle 25% of Utah’s tests. They just published peer-reviewed research showing the saliva tests were as accurate (almost) as the standard up-your-nose-and-into-your-brain PCR tests. The number of states using saliva tests now is growing. Not included: California. Why? Ask the Governor. No, don’t. You will get a rambling 2-hour soliloquy and bend up far more confused than you are now.
Anyway, don’t get too excited, Because: Saliva tests have to be administered by health care workers to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Why? No one knows.
- Does the FDA think we swab better than we spit? Having lived in the Bronx, I give them a clue: No. We spit hella better than anything.
The FDA will not approve an at-home spit test, but has already approved the less accurate at-home nasal swab tests (e.g., letsgetchecked.com or picturegenetics.com, used by Northwestern University to pre-screen returning students). Go figure.
For decades, most LDTs [lab-developed tests] were relatively simple and available on a limited basis, so the FDA did not require them to undergo review. But the tests are now increasingly used to diagnose serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions that can affect public health decision-making — including the coronavirus — leading the agency to take a stronger regulatory stance.
The worry is that these big lab corporations will rush to introduce shoddy and unregulated tests, making everything worse. Ya think? Too bad no one in Trumpworld believes in, you know, science.
- Is it COVID or is it the flu? They are similar in early presentation so things could get very awkward in flu season. One test that tests for both has already been approved, fortunately, and more are in the pipeline. Stay tuned.
- How consequential are these delays in getting test results? Bad.
A recent study in The Lancet Public Health journal found that once test results are delayed more than 3 days, even a perfect contact tracing system can’t stop the growth of the outbreak. The same study found that with a more modest 2-day delay in test results, you need swift and thorough contact tracing to put a meaningful dent in virus transmission.
www.webmd.com/...
MASK WARS
www.latimes.com/...
- I look at the California COVID stats every day, and have been wondering why the virus kept percolating along even after the Gov issued his mask ordinance. We all suspect the answer: because too many people ignore the order.
The LA Times did its own little survey of mask wearing and what it found was not pretty. They checked out Venice (LA), Long Beach, and Huntington Beach. Guess which one was the absolute worst. If you said anything except Huntington Beach, you have to move back to Kansas.
- The Navy Seal who allegedly took out Osama Bin Laden has been banned from Delta Airlines for refusing to wear a mask and posting his ugly maskless face on social media, declaring he was not a pussy. We should all at least be glad he’s out of the military, since he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the people he was sworn to serve.
IN THE NEWS
- In Los Angeles County, there have been 13,120 COVID-19 infections among healthcare workers and first responders. Two-thirds of them are women, nearly half are Latino, and more than half are between the ages of 18 and 40. More than 37% were nurses.
- Cases among children and teenagers in California were up 150% last month, and now account for almost 10% of total cases. Which makes you wonder about opening up schools. As the percentages rise, an Orange County teenager became the second California teenager to die of COVID. Both of them had an unspecified underlying health condition.
www.kcra.com/… Prison Protestors outside the Governor's house in Fair Oaks.
AND FINALLY….
He did it again. Trump blamed California’s fires on the state’s failure to rake their leaves. Again.
Two years ago Trump claimed that the Prime Minister of Finland had told him Finland doesn’t have forest fires because of rakes. It created one of the great twitter hilarities of all time under the hastag #rakingamericagreatagain. We could use some hilarity right now, so definitely check this out.
