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Cases Surging in San Francisco and L.A. Despite Having Strict COVID Controls

Cases Surging in San Francisco and L.A. Despite Having Strict COVID Controls

But…but…but…the masks and social distancing rules were supposed to stop the spread.

There are few places in the country that have lived with more stringent COVID-19 restrictions than Los Angeles and San Francisco. Between mask mandates, vaccine promotion, indoor gatherings, and other measures, these deep blue areas were once touted to be the gold standard of response.

In fact, the rate of vaccination in both cities is significant.

Here are the numbers for Los Angeles County:

As of Sunday, 78% of eligible county residents aged 5 and up have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 70% were fully vaccinated. Of the county’s overall 10.3 million residents, 74% have received at least one dose, and 66% are fully vaccinated.

San Francisco’s numbers are even more impressive.

Mayor London N. Breed announced that as of today 80% of eligible San Francisco residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, with nearly 70% of all San Franciscans fully vaccinated. San Francisco is the first major American city to achieve this milestone, and the City’s vaccination rates are among the highest in the nation and the world. In addition, 90% of all residents 65 and older have received at least one dose.

However, the newest wave of COVID19 is causing cases to spike dramatically.

Los Angeles County is reporting 6,509 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, which has more than doubled since Tuesday’s count and is “one of the steepest rises we’ve ever seen over the course of the pandemic,” according to Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

“This steep increase, one of the steepest rises we’ve ever seen over the course of the pandemic, reflects the increased circulation of omicron and the associated rapid acceleration of transmission associated with this variant,” she said.

Another 16 COVID deaths are being reported, and another 162 confirmed cases of the omicron variant.

San Francisco rates have also doubled in the past 5 days.

Case rates have doubled in San Francisco over just the past five days, almost certainly due to omicron spreading in the community, said Dr. Grant Colfax, head of the Department of Public Health. He said the city has now identified 32 omicron cases, but he expects there are many more.

..“It really picked up over the course of the last week. We went from very few to basically the majority being omicron,” [Dr. Ben Pinsky, director of the clinical virology laboratory] said. “I think nearly all of the cases will be omicron soon.”

But…but…but…the masks and social distancing rules were supposed to stop the spread.

Remember when Florida’s Ron DeSantis was “surge shamed” this summer? Well, now that omicron is here, the Washington Post offers this: Thousands who ‘followed the rules’ are about to get covid. They shouldn’t be ashamed.

Kelly Michelson, an attending physician at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, often takes care of patients who get sick for reasons they theoretically could have prevented. “My place is to just see the patient and help the patient, and not make assumptions about why people make certain choices in their lives,” she says, which is helpful advice to anyone who might judge others who test positive for the coronavirus. Doing so would be “making an assumption about some things that we just don’t know,” she says.

Feeling ashamed about getting covid-19 isn’t healthy or helpful, experts agree. Here are some tips on how to clamp down on those feelings.

Do you know who should be ashamed? Every “expert” and bureaucrat who ignored the assertions of reasonable scientists that lockdowns wouldn’t work, who promised people who got vaccinated that the surges would end, and who attacked the politicians in states who made different and more sensible choices.

Quite frankly, the numbers I will be interested in seeing are the death and hospitalization rates in the next 2 weeks to determine if it is as mild as projected.

A South African study suggests reduced risks of hospitalisation and severe disease in people infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant versus the Delta one, though the authors say some of that is likely due to high population immunity.

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Comments

Strictly speaking the controls still work on delta, which apparently is the one to worry about. The Rzero on omicron is so high that knocking it down a little doesn’t slow it down much (doubles in three days instead of two, e.g.) but can have a large effect on delta with an Rzero much closer to one.

    mbecker908 in reply to rhhardin. | December 23, 2021 at 3:09 pm

    If you’re under 70 and in even moderately good health there is NOTHING to worry about. Period. The survival rate is 99.7% overall, and if you’re under 60, the statistical probability of dying from the FauciFlu is effectively zero.

    This has nothing to do with “health” and everything to do with “control.”

    If you think the hysteria is insane now just wait until next August when the call goes out for mail in/internet voting because of whatever the current variant is at that time.

      Ben Kent in reply to mbecker908. | December 23, 2021 at 5:29 pm

      Zero deaths reported in the USA from Omnicon. 100% survival rate.

      99.999% survival rate for Delta – if under 70 years old and not obese / diabetic.

      WE DON’T MASK OR SHUT DOWN FOR THE COMMON COLD OR FLU. THE RISK TO THOSE UNDER 70 IS EQUIVALENT TO A BAD FLU SEASON FLU.

      WE DON’T STOP PEOPLE FROM DRIVING CARS – MORE DIE ANNUALLY FROM AUTO ACCIDENTS THAN FROM COVID.

      INSANITY DEFINITION – DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS.

      DaveGinOly in reply to mbecker908. | December 23, 2021 at 6:28 pm

      What we have to remember is that the survival rate is so high, that if the IFR was halved, that would mean an increase in the survival rate of less than two tenths of one percent. Vaccine mandates and billions of dollars are buying us this? It would be understandable if the IFR was 30 percent. Halving that to 15 percent would be a tremendous achievement for medical science. But we’re talking about a survival rate that is already so high that it’s hard to imaging improving it, and a fatality rate so low that even if it were to double it would still be under 1%. This is very obviously not about public health.

      Kepha H in reply to mbecker908. | December 23, 2021 at 8:23 pm

      I understand that for us geezers, the survival rate is still well over 90%. Someone I know agreed to major surgery with worse odds (don’t worry: it turned out well).

Leslie,

Not just the hospitalization rates but, more importantly, the rates among the vaxed. Once the data comes in and begins to be disimenated the covid party is over. IMO, the spread of omicron regardless of vax status is going to put the final nail into the panic porn of the past two years. I am not referring to the extremely risk adverse, blue checks who have been virtue signaling with their vax status and mask wearing. I am referring to the wider public who have been mostly compliant but have grown increasingly restless with lockdown, event cancellation, continued masking and vax mandates.

If the numbers in the US are anything like those in Europe where the vaxed are receiving treatment at a 2 to 1 or higher ratio compared to unvax then the basis for the current policies of lockdown, cancellation, vax and mask mandates will collapse. Heck just the comparison between CA and Florida should be dramatic enough to do the trick for many who now reluctantly support govt policies if not for the policy makers themselves.

    Olinser in reply to CommoChief. | December 23, 2021 at 3:12 pm

    Why do you think they’re so desperate to get their mandate in place now?

    They’re desperate to claim credit for the complete lack of covid issues next year, and are know that if they don’t get in a position where they can claim the vaccine did it, then they’re absolutely fucked.

      CommoChief in reply to Olinser. | December 23, 2021 at 3:24 pm

      Their motivation aside, when the vaxed are contracting, spreading and being hospitalized at higher levels than than the unvax and those with naturally acquired immunity people will eventually notice. IMO people have already noticed this.

      The admin pushing out home test kits in Jan is going to exacerbate the problem as the very risk adverse blue checks utilize them and discover they are positive despite a 2x or 3x vax, masks, mandates and event cancellations. Those are the most likely consumers of the test kits not those of us with a sense of proportion about an endemic virus.

        If 2/3 of the population are dosed (doesn’t really perform like a vaccine, does it?) then the majority of cases are going to be in the dosed population.
        I am not saying the jabs are useless, just that they act much more like a therapeutic, than a vaccine.

          DaveGinOly in reply to iowan2. | December 23, 2021 at 6:32 pm

          Actually, the rates of infection and hospitalization among the vaccinated are already catching, and in some countries surpassing, those rates for the unvaccinated. Note that’s the rates, and not just the raw numbers.

          CommoChief in reply to iowan2. | December 23, 2021 at 6:35 pm

          iowan2,

          That is exactly the point that many people who support the mandates and especially among the blue checks have not yet gotten. I am arguing that when this influential subset of the populace tests positive even though they are 2x vax +mask they are going to be disappointed that their virtue doesn’t count.

ARREST FAUCI.

China’s Xi has signaled the virus won’t be over until well into 2022.

So now Fauci and Biden have their marching orders.

Cases? No. Positive tests? I guess so, but they’re not the same thing. What certainly isn’t “surging” is serious (actual) cases, as hospital utilization in the areas of the two cities isn’t particularly heavy or unusual. Hospitals, like other “hospitality” businesses, are designed to run most efficiently at near-capacity. Their bed numbers are specifically calculated to serve their communities while not having an excess of beds that would cause them to operate inefficiently.

https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization

Subotai Bahadur | December 23, 2021 at 8:19 pm

Cases Surging in San Francisco and L.A. Despite Having Strict COVID Controls

You are saying that like it is a bad thing. If we are right, the disease is evolving into a less dangerous form. If they are right . . . there are more cases in San Francisco and LA.

Subotai Bahadur

Oklahoma has a weekly epidemiology report – https://oklahoma.gov/covid19/newsroom/weekly-epidemiology-and-surveillance-report.html

When you clink on the latest report, a pdf file is downloaded to your computer.

There was a new section this week- hospital discharge data from 1/1/2020 to 6/30/2021. Note that 82% of the hospitals had submitted the info, so it is ongoing review.

Key point – “There were a total of 35,773 COVID-19-associated inpatient hospitalizations which account for 5.8% of all inpatient hospitalizations
discharged between January 1, 2020-June 30, 2021 (Table 1). The majority of identified COVID-19-associated hospitalizations had a
Principle Diagnosis of COVID-19 (63.3%). These hospitalizations started increasing significantly in October 2020 and peaked in
December of 2020. Numbers decreased slightly in January 2021, followed by a steep decline in February that continued through June
2021 (Graph 1). Current hospital census data being reported to HHS, however indicate that hospitalizations are once again increasing
in Oklahoma. ”

There is a bunch of data in this report – Omicron was not reported as of 12/11. The 30-day report of hospitalizations has 85% being unvaccinated. And there is a very long list at the end of the report showing cases/deaths by long term care facility. The state tried to stop showing that info, but too many people objected to the removal since it was one way of checking on the facility that a family member was at….

The news seems to show long lines at the testing facilities in the northern states, but they never mention that tests are required to travel over the holidays. And, I’m sure that quick at-home tests would not qualify as a legit c-19 test for travel/entry purposes.

According to the state, they cannot test for Omicron using the quick test (not enough sample size) as well as many of the PCR tests since the sample size is also not large enough to do further testing. So, how did the CDC come up with 70%+ of the new cases are Omicron??? It’s a model and you know how accurate those are!!!!

It seems that COVID is morphing into a new form of the common cold or seasonal flu. However, i understand that Shaanxi province in China is seeing a sudden spike in plague cases.

    If Omicron turns out to be no worse than the common cold, shouldn’t we want no masks, no social distancing, and no restrictions, with everyone getting it ASAP?

      jlronning in reply to jb4. | December 26, 2021 at 10:55 am

      basically, yes – seems to be a superior “vaccine” – spreads quickly and naturally, costs ZERO, safer and more effective than the crappy EUA vaxes. More of a traditional “vaccine” as well (weakened version of the original)

    RandomCrank in reply to Kepha H. | December 24, 2021 at 11:13 am

    Bubonic plague?

Ha! Follow the science, not the cargo cult… and viable legal indemnity.

San Francisco has been exempted by Hair Gel for the state mandates. Before that, the homeless, rioters, looters and politicians were exempted as “essential” (apparently in their roles as designated super-spreaders).

Meanwhile, I continue to cower in my little cave quaking in fear the gruesome certain death that awaits me should I dare take off my mask or venture out in the world. God forbid I get the sniffles or feel a little tired. We’re DOOOOOOOMED!!!!

I take 4,000 IU of Vitamin D, a gram of Vitamin C, and 30mg of zinc per day. Pfizerized last March, boostered in September. We shall see.

The little “Hideout from the World’ game is over. Unless you want to live a “Boy in the Plastic bubble” existence you’re being exposed to the SARS-2 virus.

The Omnicron variant has literally picked up a piece of common Cold virus, and is spreading like crazy. in South Africa and the UK the cases are doubling every day.

Hospitalizations are NOT. All the folks with Delta are in their last stages mostly, so their are still deaths. the seventy plus age bracket are still dying. They are sadly screwed. SARS-2 is nature’s reaction to china (And the world’s!) overpopulation problem. It kills the old, sick, and the weak (Morbidly Obese worst.) shots or no shots.

In the UK 70% of the deaths over seventy are Double or Triple jabbed. If you’re younger and in good health the Omnicron Variant doesn’t infect deep in the lungs. If you get past that first infection without that, you are golden till you’re old or really sick,

So catch this one, before a nasty one like Delta (Or worse than that hits.) comes around, goes into your lungs and kills you or tears up half your lungs and you’re on Oxygen for life. Shorter life that is. Much shorter.

I’m not anti-vaccine. I urge you to get it, but I’d never force anyone to get it. If you’re vaccinated and it’s 6 – 8 weeks out from either shot you getting seriously ill is very low unless you are old (65+) or riddled with comorbidities.

The “Pandemic” is over now. SARS-2 is Endemic, and every human on Earth is catching it at this point. Stop hiding out, get over it, stay away from Granny and Grandpa while sick, and go on with you’re life.