Cases: Exactly two weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday and its associated gatherings of family and friends, Los Angeles County is seeing a resulting increase in COVID-19 cases, the public health director said recently, calling the trend a possible start of yet another winter surge of infections.
In an online briefing, Barbara Ferrer said Thursday the increase was visible by Dec. 1, when the county’s seven-day average daily number of new cases topped 1,000 — a 19% increase from the previous week. She also noted a resulting increase in hospitalizations, with the daily number of COVID patients nearing roughly 600.
She said the county’s current average daily rate of new infections has risen to 13 per 100,000 residents, up from 8 per 100,000 residents a week ago. The seven-day cumulative rate of infections rose to 113 per 100,000, moving the county back into the category of “high” transmission as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The county was previously in the less-severe “substantial” transmission category. That category requires a county to have a cumulative seven-day transmission rate of less than 100 cases per 100,000 residents.
Ferrer said the county’s case increase was also reflected in schools.
Ferrer said infections among students are likely due to Thanksgiving gatherings, because transmission at schools remains low thanks to strict infection-control measures on campus, such as regular testing and mandatory mask-wearing.
She acknowledged that with the widespread availability of vaccines and the benefit of more experience preventing and treating infections, the county can be considered to be “much better off” than last winter. But she insisted, “all increases in cases are worrisome.”
COVID vaccines will likely limit the impact of a major winter surge on hospitals and the county’s overall health care system, Ferrer said, noting that while vaccinated people may get infected, they are less likely to become severely ill and require hospitalization. But she said more people need to get the shots to prevent strain on hospitals.
The county reported another 15 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, raising the death toll to 27,288.
Another 1,718 new infections were also reported, giving the county a pandemic total of 1,541,886.
According to state figures, there were 667 COVID-19-positive patients in Los Angeles County hospitals as of Thursday, the same as Wednesday. The number of those patients being treated in intensive care was 158, up from 151 a day earlier.
The rolling average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 1.4% as of Thursday.
According to the most recent figures, 83% of county residents aged 12 and over have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 75% are fully vaccinated. Of all eligible residents aged 5 and over, 77% have received at least one dose, and 69% are fully vaccinated.
Of the more than 6.15 million fully vaccinated people in the county, 84,931 have tested positive, or about 1.38%. A total of 2,798 vaccinated people have been hospitalized, for a rate of 0.046%, and 537 have died, for a rate of 0.009%.
While the county Department of Public Health has identified a total of four cases of the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 — and Long Beach has confirmed one additional case — Ferrer said the Delta variant remains the dominant strain of the virus in the county, accounting for more than 99% of cases that undergo genetic sequencing.
Ferrer said the county is now conducting sequencing of 25% of all positive cases to identify COVID variants.
Health officials from a number of California counties say they’re seeing early signs of a rebound in coronavirus cases related to Thanksgiving, an upturn some worry could be the beginning of the state’s fifth COVID-19 surge.
It’s still far from clear whether California will see a significant spike in cases this winter or if the combination of relatively high vaccination rates and various safety rules limit the scope of a surge.
But there are already warning signs.
Statewide, the daily average of newly reported infections has risen more than 30% since before Thanksgiving. The number of Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 also has climbed during that time, interrupting weeks of mostly steady declines.
And though the emergence of the heavily mutated Omicron variant of the coronavirus has dominated recent pandemic discourse, officials say they’re still contending with the highly infectious Delta variant, which continues to account for virtually all new cases statewide.
The U.K.’s Omicron wave: From the New York Times: Britain has been a bellwether for other wealthy Western countries during the pandemic, and the same may be true for its experience with the new variant.
Cases of Omicron are doubling there every three days, and as my colleague Megan Specia reports, the country is bracing for a new coronavirus surge. So far, officials are unsure if it will be a relatively minor event or a return to the dark days of earlier pandemic waves.
Britain has one of the world’s most robust systems for sequencing viral genomes, so it can identify and track new variants earlier and more thoroughly than other countries can. The country’s Health Security Agency released new data on Wednesday that it said “suggests that Omicron is displaying a significant growth advantage over Delta.” The agency warned that if the recent growth rate continues, the country expects “to see at least 50 percent of Covid-19 cases to be caused by the Omicron variant in the next two to four weeks.”
Worryingly, the data also showed increased household transmission risk, a key indicator of how fast the variant can spread.
In response to Omicron, Britain reversed course on some restrictions this week, urging people to work from home when possible, introducing new mask rules and requiring people to show vaccine passports at some venues.
The economy: The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plunged last week to the lowest level in 52 years, more evidence that the U.S. job market is recovering from last year’s coronavirus recession.Unemployment claims dropped by 43,000 to 184,000 last week, the lowest since September 1969, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week moving average, which smooths out week-to-week ups and downs, fell below 219,000, lowest since the pandemic hit the United States hard in March 2020.
Seasonal volatility likely contributed to last week’s drop as the Labor Department adjusted the numbers to reflect job market fluctuations around the holidays, said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities. Before seasonal adjustments, claims actually rose by nearly 64,000 to almost 281,000.
Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.8% in November compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, energy, housing and other items left Americans enduring their highest annual inflation rate since 1982. The Labor Department also reported Friday that from October to November, prices jumped 0.8%.
Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.8% in November compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, energy, housing and other items left Americans enduring their highest annual inflation rate since 1982.
Analysis: Why is inflation so high, and when will it ease?
Inflation has been intensifying pressure on consumers, especially lower-income households and particularly for everyday necessities. It also has negated the higher wages many workers have received, complicated the Federal Reserve’s plans to reduce its aid for the economy and coincided with flagging public support for President Biden.
Fueling the inflation has been a mix of factors resulting from the swift rebound from the pandemic recession: a flood of government stimulus, ultra-low rates engineered by the Fed and supply shortages at factories in the U.S and abroad. Manufacturers have been slowed by heavier-than-expected customer demand, COVID-related shutdowns and overwhelmed ports and freight yards.
The Covid malaise (from the New York Times): Offices remain eerily empty. Airlines have canceled thousands of flights. Subways and buses are running less often. Schools sometimes call off entire days of class. Consumers waste time waiting in store lines. Annual inflation has reached its highest level in three decades.
Does this sound like a healthy economy to you?
In recent weeks, economists and pundits have been asking why Americans feel grouchy about the economy when many indicators — like G.D.P. growth, stock prices and the unemployment rate — look strong.
The answer to this supposed paradox is that it’s not really a paradox: Americans think the economy is in rough shape because the economy is in rough shape.
Sure, some major statistics look good, and they reflect true economic strengths, including the state of families’ finances. But the economy is more than a household balance sheet; it is the combined experience of working, shopping and interacting in society. Americans evidently understand the distinction: In an Associated Press poll, 64 percent describe their personal finances as good — and only 35 percent describe the national economy as good.
There are plenty of reasons. Many services don’t function as well as they used to, largely because of supply-chain problems and labor shortages. Rising prices are cutting into paychecks, especially for working-class households. People spend less time socializing. The unending nature of the pandemic — the masks, Covid tests, Zoom meetings and anxiety-producing runny noses — is wearying.
While some of these disruptions are minor inconveniences, others are causing serious troubles. The increase in social isolation has harmed both physical and mental health. Americans’ blood pressure has risen. Fatal drug overdoses have soared, with a growing toll among Black Americans. A report this week from the surgeon general found that depression, anxiety, impulsive behavior and attempted suicides had all risen among children and adolescents.
Schools are a particular source of frustration. Last year, the closure of in-person school caused large learning losses. This year, teachers have the near-impossible task of trying to help students make up for lost time, which has left many teachers feeling burned out.
And school operations are still not back to normal. Students are sometimes forbidden to sit or talk with one another during lunch — or to eat indoors. Masks make communication harder, especially for students with learning disabilities. Positive Covid tests or worker shortages can cause schools to close temporarily.
After Jennifer Reesman’s local school in Maryland closed for a day recently, she told NPR, “Our community can no longer count on the public schools.”
Red and blue: As is often the case in our politically polarized era, the situation differs in red and blue America.
In Republican-leaning communities, the biggest Covid problem remains a widespread refusal to take the pandemic seriously. About 40 percent of Republican adults have not received a vaccine shot, according to the most recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll. As a result, the Covid death rate is far higher in heavily Republican counties than in Democratic ones.
Red America’s Covid denialism doesn’t seem to be abating, either. Fox News continues to spread disinformation, as Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post has noted. Many Republican politicians spend more time complaining about mask and vaccine mandates than trying to persuade conservatives to get a potentially lifesaving shot.
Blue America, by contrast, has taken Covid seriously. Fewer than 10 percent of Democratic voters have not received a vaccine shot. Political liberals also tend to be comfortable wearing masks to reduce the spread of the Covid virus.
Yet many Democrats, both voters and politicians, have been almost blasé about the costs of Covid precautions — the isolation, unhappiness, health damage, lost learning, inflation, public-transit disruptions and more. Democrats have sometimes focused on minimizing the spread of Covid, regardless of the downsides: Closing schools, for example, almost certainly harms children more than it protects them, given the minuscule rate of severe childhood Covid, even lower than that of severe childhood flu.
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Consider this recent data from Gallup on the relative happiness and anxiety of Democratic and Republican voters: |
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Maximizing health: There are few easy solutions here because trade-offs are unavoidable.
Although Covid presents relatively few risks to children and vaccinated adults under 50, it presents more to older people and some with specific immunodeficiencies. The current Covid surge has led to a modest rise in hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated and a much sharper rise among the unvaccinated. This surge justifies an increase in masking, testing and some other measures.
But it’s worth remembering that the point of those measures is to maximize people’s health and well-being. And maximizing health and well-being is not the same thing as minimizing Covid.
If that sounds strange, remember that society would cease to function if it tried to minimize every medical risk. Schools and offices don’t close each winter because of the flu. Families travel in cars even though crashes harm vastly more children than Covid does. People jog, play sports and ride bicycles even though thousands end up in emergency rooms.
The economic and social costs of our Covid precautions are real. In some cases, those precautions are clearly worth it — and in other cases they’re not. Figuring out how to control the virus while addressing the other Covid-induced crises is one of the great challenges of the pandemic’s next phase.