LOS ANGELES IN COVID MELTDOWN - THE ME FIRST, ME ONLY ATTITUDE ISN'T WORKING - California began the new year reporting a record 585 deaths in a single day

How California became the COVID-19 epicenter: Poor contact tracing, lifting restrictions too early and travel are blamed for perfect storm that led to record deaths on New Year's Day and hospitals at capacity

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9104461/Once-model-California-struggles-tame-COVID-19.html

• California began the new year reporting a record 585 deaths in a single day
• State now has the highest number of daily new cases per capita
• The southern half of the state has seen the worst effects, with LA hit hard 
• California thought it did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge

Los Angeles Superspreader Task Force Detains at Least 900 at NYE Parties

file/Getty Images

KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ

2 Jan 20211,761

1:51

The Los Angeles County Superspreader Task Force detained at least 900 people after shutting down five New Year’s Eve parties.

The task force also arrested or issued 90 citations and recovered at least six guns at the parties, three of them being in downtown Los Angeles, Malibu, and Pomona, KTTV reported.

The Malibu party was held at an upscale home after it had been promoted on Instagram.

The sheriff’s department showed up in the middle of the party, warning the crowd via loudspeaker, “This is the LA County Sheriff’s Department. This superspreader party is now over. Anybody who refuses to leave will be subject to arrest.”

Hundreds of people were ordered to leave immediately or face arrest or citation.

There were at least two arrests and two guns confiscated at the Malibu party.

The downtown Los Angeles party was held in a large warehouse with hundreds of people. The sheriff’s department also broke that party up.

The third New Year’s Eve party was held at a Pomona DoubleTree hotel. The sheriff’s department’s Response Team unit showed up to bust that party, citing and arresting dozens of people.

The crackdown on superspreader events in the county comes as it reports an increase in coronavirus cases.

As of Friday, Los Angeles County reported 20,414 additional cases of coronavirus and 207 additional deaths, although 40 of the deaths were associated with a backlog and reporting delays from over the holidays.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has arrested 235 people in December in connection with superspreader events.

Prediction: 150K Coronavirus-Related Deaths in Next Month

JOSE JORDAN/AFP via Getty Images

HANNAH BLEAU

2 Jan 2021279

2:33

A projection from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation indicates 150,000 coronavirus-related fatalities will occur over the next month, with the U.S. death toll exceeding 341,000 since the start of the pandemic.

The model predicts 150,000 additional fatalities in the next month, topping the 77,000-plus reported in the U.S. in the final month of 2020. Officials and public health experts have warned that the next month could be one of the worst in terms of cases and fatalities due to the individuals partaking in holiday gatherings in the last few weeks, including Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. All the while, the new strain of the virus hailing from the United Kingdom, which is reportedly more transmissible, has been detected in at least three U.S. states: Colorado, California, and Florida.

Overall, the model’s current projection estimates 567,195 coronavirus-related deaths by April 1, 2021.

This prediction coincides with President-elect Joe Biden’s (D) recent warning that “our darkest days” of battling the pandemic lie ahead.

“One thing I promise you, about my leadership during this crisis: I’m going tell it to you straight. I’m going tell you the truth, and here is the simple truth,” Biden said in a gloomy holiday message last month:

Joe Biden / YouTube

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“Our darkest days in the battle against COVID are ahead of us, not behind us,” he continued. “So we need to prepare ourselves, to steel our spines, as frustrating as it is to hear. It’s going to take patience, persistence,  and determination to beat this virus.”

Pictures and videos out of Wuhan, China, showed revelers flocking to the streets to ring in the new year — a stark contrast to the scene in Times Square, which remained relatively lifeless. However, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) managed to dance with his wife in the plaza in virtual solitude as partygoers remained home because officials shut off the area to the general public.

The U.S. has reported 19,663,976 cases of the virus and 341,199 related deaths according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data last updated December 31.

How California became the COVID-19 epicenter: Poor contact tracing, lifting restrictions too early and travel are blamed for perfect storm that led to record deaths on New Year's Day and hospitals at capacity

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9104461/Once-model-California-struggles-tame-COVID-19.html

• California began the new year reporting a record 585 deaths in a single day
• State now has the highest number of daily new cases per capita
• The southern half of the state has seen the worst effects, with LA hit hard 
• California thought it did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 07:55 EST, 1 January 2021 | UPDATED: 19:17 EST, 2 January 2021

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Ambulances waited hours for openings to offload coronavirus patients. Overflow patients were moved to hospital hallways and gift shops, even a cafeteria. Refrigerated trucks were on standby, ready to store the dead.

For months, California thought it did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge from the pandemic. But by the time Governor Gavin Newsom said on December 15 that 5,000 body bags were being distributed, it was clear that the nation's most populous state had entered a new phase of the COVID-19 crisis.

Now infections have been racing out of control for weeks, and California remains at or near the top of the list of states with the most new cases per capita. 

It has routinely set new marks for infections and deaths, and began the new year reporting a record 585 deaths in a single day.

In March, during the early days of the pandemic, Governor Gavin Newsom was hailed for issuing the nation's first state stay-home order.

But Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious diseases professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said that while the state managed to flatten the curve of rising cases, it never effectively bent the curve downward to the point infections would die out.

When cases rose in June and July, California was never able to do enough contact tracing to isolate infected people and those they may have exposed before they spread the disease - often unwittingly - to others, he said. And public health directives were never adequately enforced.

Hospital doctors and nurses treat Covid-19 patients in a makeshift ICU wing on the West Oeste at Harbor UCLA Medical Center on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020 in Torrence, CA

'What California did was to maybe delay the peak,' Riley said. Infections 'really just never got low enough. And we started lifting the restrictions, and that just allowed the transmissions to just continue to increase. We never really saw a real decline.' 

Newsom, a Democrat, eased business restrictions in May, and when a broader restart led to another surge, imposed more rules. In early December, with cases out of control, he issued a looser stay-home order. 

He also closed businesses such as barbershops and salons, halted restaurant dining and limited capacity in retail stores. The latest restrictions apply everywhere except in rural Northern California. 

Experts say a variety of factors combined to wipe out the past efforts, which for much of the year held the virus to manageable levels. 

Cramped housing, travel and Thanksgiving gatherings contributed to the spread, along with the public's fatigue amid regulations that closed many schools and businesses and encouraged - or required - an isolated lifestyle.

Another factor could be a more contagious variant of the virus detected in Southern California, although it's not clear yet how widespread that may be.

California's woes have helped fuel the year-end U.S. infection spike and added urgency to the attempts to beat back the scourge that has killed more than 340,000 Americans. 

Even with vaccines becoming available, cases are almost certain to continue growing, and yet another surge is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Year's.

On Friday, the number of confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million, nearly twice as many as the No. 2 country, India, and nearly one-quarter of the more than 83 million cases globally, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

In California, the southern half of the state has seen the worst effects, from the agricultural San Joaquin Valley to the Mexico border. 

Hospitals are swamped with patients, and intensive care units have no more beds for COVID-19 patients. Makeshift wards are being set up in tents, arenas, classrooms and conference rooms. Some hospitals are having difficulty keeping up with the demand for oxygen.

California Governor Gavin Newsom examines a vial of COVID-19 vaccine last month. Newsom imposed harsh restrictions on businesses, but they failed to stop the spread of the virus

Medical workers remove a stretcher from an ambulance near medical tents outside the emergency room at UCI Medical Center, in Irvine, California on December 17

Hospitalizations statewide have gone up more than eightfold in two months and nearly tenfold in Los Angeles County. On Thursday, the total number of California deaths surpassed 25,000, joining only New York and Texas at that milestone.

'Most heartbreaking is that if we had done a better job of reducing transmission of the virus, many of these deaths would not have happened,' said Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director, who has pleaded with people not to get together and worsen the spread.

Crowded houses and apartments are often cited as a source of spread, particularly in Los Angeles, which has some of the densest neighborhoods in the U.S. 

Households in and around LA often have several generations - or multiple families - living under one roof. Those tend to be lower-income areas where residents work essential jobs that can expose them to the virus at work or while commuting.

The socioeconomic situation in LA County is 'like the kindling,' said Paula Cannon, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Southern California. 'And now we got to the stage where there was enough COVID out in the community that it lit the fire.'

Home to a quarter of the state's 40 million residents, LA County has had 40 percent of the state's deaths and a third of its 2.3 million cases. The virus has hit Latino and black communities harder.

Cannon said there's a moral imperative for people who can follow stay-home orders to help prevent spread that is harder to contain in other areas.

More than 99% of California's population is now in counties were COVID is 'widespread'

An unidentified patient receives oxygen on a stretcher, while Los Angeles Fire Department Paramedics monitor him outside the Emergency entrance, waiting for admission at the CHA Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles on December 18

'What you can't do is say to people, `Can you stop living in a house with eight other people, five of whom are working essential worker jobs?´' she said. 'This is the structure that we can´t change in LA. 

'This is, I think, contributing to why our levels have suddenly got scarily high and looks like they´re going to keep going up and keep staying that way.'

California's health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said if state and local leaders had not made difficult decisions early on that saved lives, the current surge might not be the worst the state has seen.

He acknowledged the exhaustion many people feel after enduring months of disruptions to their lives. Public health officials, he said, need to find a way to reach people who have given up or not followed rules on social distancing and masks.

Across California, local officials have reminded people that the fate of the virus lies in their behavior and asked for one more round of shared sacrifice. They reminded people that activities that were safe earlier this year are now risky as the virus becomes more widespread.

'You can practice safety and low-risk behavior from March to October. But all that is erased. Nothing matters except what you are doing to fight the virus right now,' said Corinne McDaniels-Davidson, director of the Institute for Public Health at San Diego State University. 'This pandemic is an ultra-marathon. In our culture, we are used to sprints.'

 

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U.S. COVID-19 cases surpass 20 mln, deaths spike

 California has become a leading 
 US flash point of the pandemic 

U.S. COVID-19 cases surpass 20 mln, deaths spike

Sat, January 2, 2021, 12:29 PM PST

A day after the United States reached a sober milestone of 20 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus, California’s Public Health Department on Saturday issued an urgent call for blood donations as it grapples with the crisis.

California has become a leading U.S. flashpoint of the pandemic… with a soaring COVID-19 caseload pushing hospitals in and around Los Angeles in particular to their limits.

Medical experts attribute rising cases in recent weeks to the arrival of cooler weather and the failure of many Americans to stay at home and avoid unnecessary travel.

There's been a spike nationwide in the number of daily COVID-19 fatalities since Thanksgiving with 78,000 lives lost in December.

The recent emergence of a more transmissible variant of the coronavirus - which officials have so far identified in California, Colorado and Florida - could make a swift rollout of immunizations all the more critical.

U.S. Senator Mitt Romney on Friday urged the federal government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics and others in an all-out national campaign to administer vaccinations, and to establish a clear order for Americans to receive their shots according to priority groups and birthdays.

The Republican - calling for greater action as the Trump administration fell far short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans with the first of two doses of a vaccine by the end of 2020.

As of January 1st - an estimated 2.8 million vaccine doses have actually been given.

Video Transcript

[CHATTER]

- A day after the United States reached a somber milestone of 20 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus, California's public health department on Saturday issued an urgent call for blood donations as it grapples with the crisis. California has become a leading US flash point of the pandemic with a soaring COVID-19 caseload pushing hospitals in and around Los Angeles in particular to their limits.

Medical experts attribute rising cases in recent weeks to the arrival of cooler weather and the failure of many Americans to stay at home and avoid unnecessary travel. There's been a spike nationwide in the number of daily COVID-19 fatalities since Thanksgiving, with 78,000 lives lost in December.

The recent emergence of a more transmissible variance of the coronavirus, which officials have so far identified in California, Colorado, and Florida, could make a swift rollout of immunizations all the more critical.

US Senator Mitt Romney on Friday urged the federal government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics, and others in an all-out national campaign to administer vaccinations and to establish a clear order for Americans to receive their shots according to priority groups and birthdays. The Republican calling for greater action as the Trump administration fell far short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans with the first of two doses by the end of 2020. As of January 1st, an estimated 2.8 million vaccine doses have actually been given.