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California has been praised for acting quickly to contain the coronavirus last spring. Today, more than 31,000 people have died from the virus in the state. What did not go well?
California was the first to issue a statewide home stay order, and experts at the time predicted the pandemic would peak here in April with less than 2,000 lives lost.
But since November, deaths have increased by more than 1,000%. In Los Angeles alone, nearly 2,000 people have died this week.
Makeshift morgues have been set up statewide, intensive care units are full, oxygen is rationed, and ambulance teams have been urged not to transport those who do not survive the night because hospitals are too full.
Disneyland, which has been closed since March, is now transformed into a massive vaccination center, along with Dodger Stadium, in hopes of controlling what has become a super push.
Why is California in such a bad Covid Strait?
“Fatigue,” says Dr. Neha Nanda of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “It’s multifaceted, but fatigue is one of the main reasons.”
Southern California and Los Angeles are currently the hardest-hit areas in California and the United States.
Local and state officials have pleaded with Californians not to plan their Thanksgiving vacation until the New Years. But even the strict mandates are often not enforced.
Many companies have collapsed, the film industry for the most part is dormant. Productions that get the green light are often forced to close again due to coronavirus outbreaks on the set.
And most schools in California have been closed since March 13, with children isolated at home on computers, often with their parents at work or trying to work alongside their children on overcrowded Wi-Fi.
And like most places, Covid-19 has hit the poor in Los Angeles hardest.
Dr Heidi Behforouz, medical director of Housing for Health in LA County, says she thinks Los Angeles is a city accustomed to tolerating extreme inequality in a country that does the same.
“We’re kind of pulled by your kind of bootstraps country – we’re very individual and it’s hard for us to think of giving up what we think is our right to do what we want,” she says.
While Covid-19 can infect anyone, it is certainly more cruel to the poor than the haves.
For every case of Covid in Beverly Hills, there are six times as many in Compton. While two people from Bel Air have died, over 230 people have lost their lives in the working class of East Los Angeles.
And now the virus is breaking through Los Angeles’ vast homeless population. People who live in Los Angeles are used to walking past tens, hundreds or even thousands of people living on the streets every day.
At the start of the pandemic, they were largely spared from infection – likely because they are so isolated as a population.
Cities and counties are using caravans and motels to house homeless people with Covid-positive.
The Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles is normally packed with lively guests and residents. But in these days of a pandemic, it is calm, with most of its residents in isolation in quarantine.
Behind the building, a fabric tent meant to house the most vulnerable women on the streets is now a field hospital filled with men with Covid, maintained by doctors and nurses covered head to toe in equipment now familiar protection.
“The situation at Covid is the worst ever and it’s the most horrific battle we’ve ever had,” said Reverend Andy Bales, who heads the mission.
“It’s like playing chess with a monster genius – every move we make it is overcome by Covid.”
At the start of the pandemic in March, Mr Bales was relieved that the homeless population appeared spared from the coronavirus.
But in April, a beloved member of the mission staff, Gerald Shiroma, died from the virus. He was 56 years old.
Mr. Shiroma had overcome a methamphetamine addiction and life on the streets to become sober and was a beloved driver at the mission.
“He was a great guy,” Bales says. “Everyone loved him here.
As exhausted frontline medical workers continue their fight, the fear is that things will continue to get worse.
As the virus spreads, it probably mutates more than we know, says Dr Neha Nanda.
“Maybe the bigger the place, the more variation there is,” she says.
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