In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

One thing I'm seeing in this phase of the pandemic is that, although California continues to have unnecessary COVID restrictions, its vaccination policy has been extremely effective. It turned the troubling late 2020 case surge completely around, to the point that LA County statistics are now equivalent to those of a year ago March, at the start of the pandemic . The changes come amid a 97% drop in the number of new coronavirus cases reported each day. The seven-day average of new cases is now slightly under 400 per day, compared to 14,200 daily new cases on Jan. 5, county public health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a news briefing. “This is similar to daily case numbers reported one year ago at the end of March, at the very beginning of the pandemic,” she said. This reflects a statewide policy of aggressively vaccinating the populations most likely to be infected, including those in long term care facilities, their staff, and zip codes with the lowest incomes. Althoug...

A week ago yesterday, Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC chief, made her teary prophecy of "impending doom" from a new wave of COVID. Almost on cue, as shown above, the New York statistics, which had been leading so-called national totals, peaked and appear to have resumed a decline. There's nothing new about this. The Imperial College model in March of last year predicted that, by October [2020], more than 500,000 people in Great Britain and 2 million people in the U.S. would die as a result of COVID-19. The model also predicted the United States could incur up to 1 million deaths even with “enhanced social distancing” guidelines, including “shielding the elderly.” Imperial’s modeling results influenced British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose a nationwide lockdown and influenced the White House as well. I don't mean to minimize the effects of the pandemic. On the other hand, at this point, we can be confident that COVID is neither the Black Deat...

I'm continuing to look at the COVID trends for individual US states, because it's plain that the claims of people like Drs Fauci and Walensky that there is a "national" surge in cases are highly misleading. Any national increase is actually driven by a minority of states whose patterns don't reflect those of most others. Michigan's case, shown above, is a good example. CNN reports Michigan reported 8,413 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, bringing the state's total pandemic case count to 692,206, according to the state's health department. Saturday's daily case count is the highest the state has reported since December 7, when the reported case count was 9,350, state statistics show. Just eight weeks ago, state data showed the daily reported case count was as low as 563 cases. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said the Upper Midwest is beginning to see its fourt...

I must confess that, with a surname like Bruce, I have some Scots DNA, though it comes from a single great-grandfather who seems to have been an unpleasant guy who died young. Generally I don't take to that side of the family. But I once knew a Scots-Canadian professor who was extremely fond of a story about a Scotsman who would persuade himself to eat his oatmeal by promising himself that if he did, he could have shot of whiskey when he finished it. But once he finished the oatmeal, he'd tell himself, "Ha! I fooled ya!" He told this story so frequently, and with such loving attention to detail and accent, that I was convinced it reflected some deep part of his character, maybe Scots, maybe Canadian, maybe both. Anyhow, a Canadian visitor sent me a link to the Archdiocese of Vancouver, BC website that seems to reflect this side of what may be the Canadian character: As of March 29, all indoor worship has been suspended again. B.C. health officials...

While the Washington Examiner isn't quite legacy media, It's more Never Trump Republican, and I don't normally follow it. But yesterday I ran into a remarkably obtuse story on a supposed "new wave" of COVID by David Hogberg. Hogberg, I see, is a regular talking head and adjunct-freelance-whatever with a PhD in PoliSci. I spend about three hours a day writing and researching this blog, and I don't get paid a penny. I assume Hogberg supports himself with his variouis gigs and has convinced people he's an expert, with his PhD and all. But as a retired amateur, I'm a far better writer and researcher than Hogberg. Here's what he has to say about the current state of COVID play: The bad news is that the United States appears to be on the cusp of another wave of coronavirus infections. The good news is that hospitalizations and deaths may be much lower this time around. Daily confirmed cases had been dropping since January, when they reached a...

My own takeaway from yesterday's post is that, faced with a COVID surge as bad as has taken place anywhere, California somehow turned things around in a way that few other jurisdictions have. The question of why has been pestering me for some time. I was originally gonig to post on some Canadian craziness that a visitor sent me, but I found a discussion in an LA County health department press release we received in an e-mail that goes some distance to help me understand what's happened here. One direction my thinking had been taking was that, indeed, California vaccination policy had been aimed from the start at vaccinating the most vulnerable populations, where the outbreaks were most severe. My original sense was that this was just politcal correctness, but on reflection, while it was politically correct, it was also just good project strategy: fix the problem where it's both easiest and most visible. The press release indicates that this was in fact what the county did...

As of this week, LA County has qualified to leave the California "red" tier of COVID restrictions, and as of Monday, April 5, it will be placed in the less restrictive "orange" tier. From the time Gov Newsom imposed the multi-colored COVID tiers last August 28, LA County had been in the most restrictive "purple" tier. Its performance during the late 2020 surge had been a virtual Mt Everest on the chart, as shown above. But for reasons that aren't completely clear, the county's numbers began a precipitous drop in mid-January 2021 and, contravening trends in places like Germany, Canada, and the US northeast, have continued to plummet. The county left the "purple" tier, where it had been for over seven months, just on March 14, when it was placed in the "red" tier. However, it has blown through the "red" tier in the minimum time it was required to wait there, three weeks, and yesterday the state declared that it qualifi...