Well we did. California officially ranks first in a race no one wants to win. As of Saturday, the state has the highest number of new COVID cases per capita in the U.S.:
Last week, the state reported the fourth number of daily COVID-19 cases per country per 100,000 residents over a seven-day period, but California came in first when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they updated their case tracker on Saturday.
According to Saturday’s CDC update, California has reported an average of 100.5 daily cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents over the past seven days, placing it comfortably ahead of Tennessee’s second-place finisher. an average of 89.6 daily cases per 100,000 residents during the same time period.
California’s daily per capita figure is actually lower than last week’s 109.3 figure, which is probably due to the notification of delays caused by the Christmas holidays.
The winter increase in California is about twice as bad as we had in the spring / summer depending on the number of people hospitalized.
As of Monday, more than 19,750 patients were hospitalized with confirmed cases of the virus in California, including 4,228 treated in intensive care units. Both totals are now officially more than double the peak observed during the summer hike, when some 7,200 were hospitalized with 2,050 in intensive care.
The availability of ICU beds is still 0% in Southern California and the Central Valley. Officials have not yet said the three-week closure will be extended, but it certainly is. At a news conference today, Governor Newsom said the decision will be announced tomorrow. The framework for ending the blockade is the same as for entering it, that is, with an ICU capacity of 15%. So at the moment the entire southern half of the state is nowhere near that. What we don’t know is how long the blockade will last.
All of this raises a question that Politico highlighted last week. Why is this happening? California has taken this virus seriously from the beginning. It was the first state to close in the spring and has had a halt in the hardest hit areas for most of this month. But so far it seems that these measures have not really worked.
The rotation has confused leaders and health experts. They can point to any number of reasons that contributed to California’s rise in recent weeks. But it is difficult to identify a single factor, and equally difficult to find a silver bullet …
In Los Angeles, officials have said all along that people met too often. They blamed the post-season celebrations and parties when the Dodgers and Lakers won championships this fall.
Some have blamed themselves for the strict rules, saying undercover Californians couldn’t take longer and decided they had to live their lives. Others have said that congregating environments remain a severe concern in a state with housing restrictions, especially in low-income communities where residents live in narrow areas and must continue to work in person to survive …
Assembly member Jordan Cunningham (R-Templeton) argued that the state’s attempt to “shut down the types of human interaction without seeing if it is effective” was creating a kind of backlash: people to more risky activities, ”such as meeting at home, rather than places like restaurants.
There is some data to support this idea that people are pushing back against blockades. Data from cell phones earlier this month seemed to support the idea that Californians in the Bay Area don’t follow the rules as strictly as they did in the spring:
Data company Unacast, a company that collects cell phone location data from millions of phones for private companies, created the “Social Distance Booklet” that shows which counties in California and beyond are seeing compliance for getting people to stay home. Each county and state is classified on a scale A to F based on three criteria: change in average mobility based on distance traveled, change in non-essential visits and difference in meeting density …
… Data extracted Dec. 17, nearly two weeks after five counties in the Bay Area first adopted the order to stay at home in the state, show that only one county receives an “A” grade.
If I had to point out one factor that could convince people not to take it so seriously this time, it would be the hypocrisy of Democratic leaders who have preached social distance and then been caught up in fancy dinners indoors. Both Governor Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed were caught doing this and I think it suggests to most people that they can shy away from things instead of being strict about it. Hypocrisy is what has made California the epicenter of winter flooding.