WE ARE NOT HAPPY! From the New York Times: As you’re probably aware by now, Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations are plummeting in California — the first pandemic-related good news in months.
And while there’s no way to know what the coronavirus will do next, many hope the Omicron surge was the last big one, since the variant’s extreme infectiousness means that millions of Americans now have an added layer of immunity.
Californians, however, aren’t feeling all that hopeful.
A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California released this week uncovered the lowest levels of optimism about the pandemic since last spring.
The survey found that 67 percent of Californians believe that the worst of the pandemic is behind the United States, compared with 86 percent who felt that way in May 2021.
Forty-two percent of Golden State residents say they are somewhat or very concerned about catching the coronavirus, a jump from 28 percent in May, the poll found.
There are a few things to keep in mind here. The survey data was collected in late January, when Omicron was peaking, so it may reflect an artificially high level of anxiety among Californians that has already begun to dip.
But, probably more meaningfully, the way we think about the pandemic (or at least the way I do) has also fundamentally shifted since last spring.The initial rollout of the vaccines in late 2020 brought the promise of a tidy ending to Covid-19: Once we all got our shots, the virus would be a thing of the past.
In the spring and early summer last year, as cases plummeted in California after a giant winter surge, life felt especially rosy.
But then the Delta variant emerged, and Omicron months later.
Those outbreaks made it increasingly clear that the coronavirus was most likely going to become endemic, and that we have to learn how to live alongside it.
So while it’s true that Omicron may mark the beginning of a return to our prepandemic lives, we’re now uncomfortably aware that there are no guarantees.
Cases: The week ending Saturday saw three days on which Pasadena reported fewer than 100 new COVID cases as a winter surge apparently fueled by the Omnicron variant appeared to wane.
Local officials urged Pasadenans to continue to follow safety rules and not to let their guard down.
The City reported 40% fewer new coronavirus cases this week than on the same days last week, as confirmed cases fell to 750 from 1,262.
Huntington Hospital is treating a significant number of patients who test positive for COVID. As of Friday, the hospital reported 70 such patients, of whom 44 percent were unvaccinated. The hospital’s ICU was treating 22 COVID-positive patients.
As numbers fall, LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said that residents should “continue the common-sense protective measures that we know can slow COVID-19 transmission.”
County Supervisor Kathryn Barger — who represents Pasadena — said the lax adherence to the mandate should lead to a reevaluation of whether it should remain in effect. But Board of Supervisors Chair Holly Mitchell said the rule will stay in place until transmission rates fall to a safer level.
Ferrer on Thursday unveiled metrics for a possible relaxing of masking orders, saying the mandate will be dropped at outdoor “mega-events” and outdoors at schools and child-care centers if COVID-positive hospitalizations in the county fall below 2,500 for seven consecutive days.
According to state figures, there were 3,233 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals as of Friday, with 652 of them being treated in intensive care. Those numbers are down from 3,398 patients and 670 in ICU on Thursday.
The county reported another 85 COVID-related deaths on Friday, bringing the overall death toll to 29,280. Another 15,427 new infections were also confirmed, although about 6,800 of them were attributed to a backlog in testing results from a single lab. The new cases gave the county a pandemic total of 2,710,362.
The rolling average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus continued to fall, reaching 6.9% as of Friday, down from 7.9% on Thursday.
COVID death toll in U.S. hits 900,000: The total comes more than 13 months into a vaccine drive beset by misinformation. Propelled in part by the highly contagious Omicron variant, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000. The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of San Francisco, Indianapolis or Charlotte, N.C.
The milestone comes more than 13 months into a vaccination drive that has been beset by misinformation and political and legal strife, though the shots have proved safe and highly effective at preventing serious illness and death.
Just 64% of the population is fully vaccinated, or about 212 million Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The milestone came as Omicron is loosening its grip on the country.
The number of new cases recorded per day has plunged by almost half a million nationwide since mid-January, the curve trending downward in every state but Maine. And the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has fallen 15% over that period to about 124,000.
Deaths are still on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they die.
But the trends are giving public health officials hope that the worst of Omicron is coming to an end, though they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge
And: More governments across the world are saying they’re ready to “live with the virus.”
Australia, a nation that once imposed lockdowns in response to handfuls of cases, now says that it’s done with all that — even as cases soar. New Zealand plans to reopen to travelers, if gradually. Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway and other European countries are also beginning to treat Covid more like the flu.
On Tuesday, Denmark essentially declared an end to the pandemic in the country, lifting most of its remaining Covid restrictions and making it among the first E.U. members to abandon rules in favor of treating the virus as endemic.
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The Economy: Unemployment claims rose in California last week, stubbornly stuck above precoronavirus levels. California workers filed 55,300 initial claims for unemployment during the week ending Jan. 29, up 1,100 from the 54,200 claims filed in the week ending Jan. 22, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.
Jobless claims statewide have remained above 50,000 for the last five weeks, a sign the state’s job market is still struggling to overcome economic ailments unleashed by the pandemic.
Nationwide, workers filed 238,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits last week, a decrease of 23,000 from previous week. The nationwide numbers are adjusted for seasonal volatility while California’s are not.
In California, jobless claims remain above typical numbers seen before the coronavirus pushed lawmakers to order lockdowns and business restrictions.
In January and February 2020, before the start of the lockdowns in March 2020, unemployment claims averaged 44,800 a week in California. The state’s most recent jobless claims of 55,300 last week are 23% higher than the average for early 2020.
Across the United States, continuing claims for state benefits fell to 1.63 million in the week ended Jan. 22.
However:
In a surprising burst of hiring, America’s employers added a robust 467,000 jobs last month, a sign of the economy’s resilience in the face of a wave of omicron infections.
The government’s report Friday also drastically revised up its estimate of job gains for November and December by a combined 709,000. It also said the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% to a still-low 4%, mainly because more people began looking for work and not all of them found jobs right away.
The strong hiring growth for January, which defied expectations for only a slight gain, demonstrated the eagerness of many employers to hire even as the pandemic raged. Businesses appear to have regarded the omicron wave as having, at most, a temporary impact on the economy and remain confident about their longer- term prospects.
January’s hiring gain and sharp upward revisions to previous months mean that the United States has 1.1 million more jobs than government data had indicated only a month ago. The solid hiring, along with steady wage gains, are boosting consumer spending, which has collided with snarled supply chains to accelerate inflation to a fourdecade high. Adjusted for price increases, Americans’ paychecks on average don’t go as far as they did a year ago, even though many workers have received raises. Many households, especially lower-income families, are struggling to afford necessities like gas, food, rent and child care.
Those trends will give the Federal Reserve more leeway to raise interest rates, perhaps even faster than it had planned, to cool inflation. The Fed has indicated that it will begin raising rates in March, and it could do so again at its next meeting in May. Faster rate hikes could reduce borrowing and spending and possibly weaken the economy.
Across the economy, most industries hired workers last month, including retailers, which added more than 61,000 jobs, and restaurants and hotels, which gained 131,000. Shipping and warehousing firms added 54,000. Many companies in those industries likely held onto some of the workers they had hired over the winter holidays, economists said, rather than laying them all off.
Omicron did leave some fingerprints on the report: The percentage of Americans who were working from home rose to more than 15%, up from 11% in December. And the number of people out sick last month soared to 3.6 million, up from fewer than 2 million in the previous January and about triple the pre-pandemic level. This forced many companies, from restaurants to retailers to manufacturers, to reduce their hours or even close because of staff shortages.
A greater proportion of Americans are also now working or looking for work, the report showed, a trend that makes it easier for companies to find workers. It suggests that concerns about long-term labor shortages may have been overblown, at least in some industries.
The nation gained more jobs last year, adjusted for the size of the workforce, than in any year since 1978. Much of that improvement represented a rebound from record job losses in 2020 that were driven by the pandemic recession.