Cases: As COVID-19 infection rates fall and hospitalizations decline, some Los Angeles County residents may wonder if they’ll soon be able to shed face masks indoors and in other settings, but the public health director said Thursday that virus transmission remains substantial, and loosening restrictions too early could prompt another dangerous winter case surge. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the latest numbers show the county has seen a roughly 18% drop in the number of average daily new COVID-19 cases and a 14% drop in hospitalizations over the past week. Average daily deaths have finally fallen below 10, reaching about eight per day.
In the early days of the pandemic, between 15% and 30% of people who contracted COVID-19 wound up hospitalized, but that rate is now about 5-6%, reflecting the impact of vaccines, improved outpatient care and more widely available testing, Ferrer said. She said most of the COVID-19 infections now occurring are “relatively mild or moderate, especially for people who are fully vaccinated.”
Of course you know alpha, beta and delta (in Prince-like fashion, the virus previously known as B.1.617.2).
But do you know delta AY? And epsilon, gamma, iota, lambda, mu and theta? These variants of SARS-CoV-2 have all been logged in
Southern California, and dozensmore versions of the virus are circulating around the globe, battling for world domination like tiny Dr. Evils in an Austin Powers movie.
So, what happened to the “original” virus? The first one that jumped from bats or labs — or wherever — into human beings who were immunologically powerless against it, eventually leading to the deaths of nearly 5 million people and grinding world economies to a near halt?
No one can say with 100% certainty that it’s gone, however, Noymer said. And Rutherford adds this caution: “God knows what’s going on in bats.”
Welcome to this friendly tutorial on viral mutation and why your life may depend upon it. The SARS-CoV-2 that surfaced in Wuhan, China, in 2019 was likely not the original one, researchers say. And the version that swept through the United States in fall 2020 was already a mutation of the Wuhan version. And the one that steamrolled through the United States this summer was different still.
Scientists have logged scores of versions of the virus that causes COVID- 19 around the world, and thanks to genetic sequencing, they can pinpoint which are circulating where. Sometimes, those genetic changes are of little consequence. Sometimes, they make the virus much better at infecting humans or evading treatments and thus more dangerous.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists just the highly contagious delta B.1.617.2 and AY lineages as “variants of concern” here in the U.S., while the World Health Organization also includes alpha, beta and gamma on its “variants of concern” list.
Up and coming mutants to watch? The WHO is keeping its eye on lambda and mu.
The Economy: In California, new coronavirus cases are at their lowest point since the start of the pandemic, schools have fully reopened and the more generous unemployment benefits from the federal government have expired — all signs of what should have been a robust economic recovery in September.
Instead, California is now tied with Nevada for the highest unemployment rate in the country at 7.5% after adding just 47,400 new jobs last month.
That number that would have been considered huge before the pandemic but now signals that the state’s economic recovery might be slowing down.
Last week, new unemployment claims rose sharply in California to more than 80,700, accounting for 31% of all claims nationally.
Though job postings nationally were 19.2% higher than before the pandemic, in California they were just 2% higher, according to Michael Bernick, a former director of the California Employment Development Department who is now a lawyer with the Duane Morris firm.
Southern California
Los Angeles County’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 9.8% in September, down from a revised 10.1% in August, according to figures released Friday by the EDD. The rate in September 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, was 13%.
In Orange County, where seasonally adjusted numbers were not available, the September jobless rate was 5%, down from 6% in August.
With gains through most sectors of the regional economy last month, the combined unemployment rate for Riverside and San Bernardino counties in September was 6.6%, down from 7.6% in August, according to EDD figures.
Good news for California
After a setback during a surge of new infection cases and lockdowns in December and January, California had averaged more than 100,000 new jobs per month since February — a relentless pace fueled mostly by new jobs in hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions as coronavirus restrictions were lifted.
But new statistics made public Friday by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed California’s job gains were behind Texas (95,800 jobs) and Florida (84,500 jobs). They are Republican- led states whose leaders have been highly critical of California’s pandemic approach, as has California with their approaches.
Of the more than 2.1 million jobs lost in California at the start of the pandemic in March and April of 2020, the state has regained just over 1.7 million of them, or 63.5%.
But there were some encouraging sign in the latest unemployment report. The new data also showed that another 30,500 people began looking for work last month, which usually indicates an improving job market.
Since September of last year, California’s civilian labor force has increased by more than 627,000 people. But it’s still about half a million people fewer than it was before the pandemic.
Nine of California’s 11 industry sectors gained jobs in September, led by leisure and hospitality based on what state officials said was strength in performing arts and spectator sports.
September’s hiring slowdown appears to have not impacted California’s finances. California gets most of its money from taxes on personal income, sales and corporations
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Friday that the tangled supply chains and shortages that have bedeviled the U.S. economy since this summer have gotten worse and will likely keep inflation elevated well into next year.
The Fed is not yet prepared to lift its benchmark interest rate, he said, though he suggested that the economy may be ready for a rate hike next year.
There is now greater risk of “longer and more persistent bottlenecks and thus to higher inflation,” Powell said at a virtual conference hosted by the South African Reserve Bank.
Powell, echoing many economists, has previously said that shortages and higher prices are mostly a result of the pandemic’s impact on supply lines, with factories in Asia temporarily closing amid COVID-19 infections and dozens of cargo ships anchored offshore.
He said Friday that he still thinks those supply problems will be resolved over time, but the Fed will be vigilant and take steps to push inflation back down to its 2% goal if necessary. Consumer prices, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge, jumped 4.3% in August from a year earlier, the fastest such increase in three decades.
The Fed chair said he is ready to taper, or reduce, the central bank’s $120 billion in monthly bond purchases, which are intended to lower longer-term interest rates and encourage borrowing and spending. Powell is widely expected to announce the tapering after the Fed’s next meeting Nov. 2-3.
But he added that it would be “premature” to raise the Fed’s short-term interest rate, because the job market needs more time to recover. Powell noted that there are still 5 million fewer jobs in the U.S. than before the pandemic.
I Quit!: From the New York Times: At first, everyone tried to make the best of a bad situation: gathering on Zoom, launching projects in the kitchen and cheering on health care workers, and ourselves, with daily quarantine clapping.
Pretty soon, though, we began languishing, and then had moments of existential burnout that left us feeling drained and rudderless. Now, many are calling it quits on aspects of life that seemed indispensable before the pandemic.
Over the last 19 months, an outsized number of Americans have left cities, their marriages and organized religion. Some have recently tried dumping social media. It seems that many see 2021 as a year to finally leave prepandemic lives behind and embrace the idea of a fresh start.
Perhaps the most pronounced example is what economists are calling “The Great Resignation.”
In August, a record 4.3 million Americans left their jobs — the highest number in the two decades the government has been keeping track. Across industries including health care, education, retail, food services and child care, people are saying goodbye to their employers, sometimes even walking out in the middle of a shift.
There are several reasons for the mass resignations. People have lingering fears of getting Covid at the workplace, better unemployment benefits, and savings built up during the pandemic that make it easier for them to turn down jobs they don’t want, or which don’t pay a living wage. For the first time in decades, many workers across the income spectrum have some leverage, and they are using it to demand better pay and superior working conditions.
“It’s like the whole country is in some kind of union renegotiation,” Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan economist, recently told The Times. “I don’t know who’s going to win in this bargaining that’s going on right now, but right now it seems like workers have the upper hand.”
The psychology of the pandemic may be playing a role. Surveys suggest that the crisis led many people to rethink their priorities. Behavioral scientists say times of disruption and transition create new opportunities for growth and change.
Staying the course, whether in an unfulfilling job or an unhappy relationship, can also cost you, my colleagues Lindsay Crouse and Kirby Ferguson in Opinion wrote this week.
Despite what many of us were taught in childhood — that quitters are losers — there can be significant penalties to passively remaining in place, particularly in the form of missed opportunities. For example, research has shown that one of the best ways for women to increase their salaries is to quit their job and find a new one.
Thoughtful quitting, Lindsay and Kirby argue, may actually increase your power, as was the case with Simone Biles, the U.S. gymnast who started a global conversation about mental health after withdrawing from the gymnastic finals in the Tokyo Olympics.
“I’m not saying quit everything. Lots of great things require perseverance — our relationships, our health, our careers,” Lindsay said. “But think about it: perseverance shouldn’t be a default, it should be a choice.”