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By Soumya Karlamangla
New York Times
If you’ve been following the news about the coronavirus in California this week, you may have noticed a stark contrast in the way the pandemic is unfolding across the state.
As hospitals in central and northern California have called on National Guard troops to help staff COVID-19 departments, officials in Los Angeles and the Bay Area have begun to publicly discuss warrants to lift masks as transmission in their areas crumbled.
Of course, this disparity reflects the vastness of our state, but there’s one more takeaway here: a growing rift in how different parts of California are handling the pandemic.
During the first year that we lived with the coronavirus, many decisions regarding who we interacted with and the precautions we took were made by the state. (Do you remember the home orders?)
But as control has increasingly moved to the local level, there is much less uniformity in the restrictions we face and in our behaviors – and therefore in our experiences of the pandemic.
Get vaccinated. Seventy percent of Californians eligible for vaccines have received both doses, and there are statewide requirements for teachers, healthcare workers, and state employees.
Yet there are huge variations between counties. In Marin County, 87% of Californians aged 12 and over have had both vaccines. In Lassen County, 35% have done so.
To put that in context, the least vaccinated state in the country is West Virginia, where 47% of residents aged 12 and older have received both of their vaccines. Lassen and a handful of other counties in California have lower vaccination rates.
This has major consequences: Unvaccinated Californians are eight times more likely to contract the coronavirus and 16 times more likely to die from it than those who have been vaccinated, according to state data.
Much like states with low coverage, areas of California with low vaccination rates are also the ones that have seen the worst of this summer’s delta surge.
There is also some evidence that people who are not vaccinated are less likely to take other precautions, such as wearing masks and staying away from crowded indoor spaces.
As Kevin Malotte, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology at Long Beach State, explained, “They have low vaccination rates because they don’t think it’s that bad, so they don’t take any more. reduction measures.
But the trend does not end there. In recent months, California’s highly vaccinated counties have also been quicker to insist on masks, school testing, and vaccines for students and government workers.
On Wednesday, the city of Los Angeles voted to require proof of vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, gyms, museums, cinemas and living rooms starting next month. The measure is one of the strictest in the country.
With those rules, he joins San Francisco, Berkeley and Contra Costa County – places that also already have high levels of immunization.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Coronavirus COVID-19 Vaccines
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