Dec 4

Dec 4 Is Los Angeles' new Covid lockdown justified?

California and Los Angeles have both issued new Covid restrictions with the news that Covid hospitalizations nationwide have exceeded 100,000 and the Golden State’s Covid hospitalizations appear to be approaching 10,000.

We would like to look at different areas the entire state, but since Los Angeles has the highest concentration of cases, deaths and hospitalizations, we thought we would zoom in on the L.A. data first. Before we do, let’s interpret the state’s overall numbers.

Even as cases have zoomed past 1 million to reach 1.2 million in just a few weeks, because the state has conducted 24 million PCR tests, the positivity rate in California is just 5.1 percent. The World Health Organization stated in May that the positivity rate should remain below 5 percent for 14 days to be safe for an area to reopen.

It’s a curious thing as to why our elected officials and public health leaders tend to talk about cases more than any other metric — either that or the media is writing headlines discussing cases mostly (with a little bit of hospitalizations and ICU numbers at the end).

According to L.A. County DHS, 30% of the county’s 17,000 licensed beds are not currently staffed. There are also nearly 2,000 surge beds available across the county, which are roughly 13% occupied currently.

About those hospital numbers: It’s very hard to get hospital occupancy figures for non-Covid patients; but after weeks of searching, we finally did. The most recent data is 70 percent of the patients in staffed beds in the county are non-Covid. There are hundreds of beds available as part of that figure, so the Covid percentage occupancy in Los Angeles has ranged between 6 percent and 15 percent. Right now, it’s at 12 percent, in spite of the headlines screaming that the amount of hospitalized patients is higher than it’s ever been. If you add together ICU and general admission Covid patients, that’s true. But as a percentage, it’s not.

The real story, however, is that ICU patients have indeed spiked. But a caveat — they were extremely low to begin with: 232 for the whole county, and now more than 450. And for those who are discharged, the average length of stay is 2 to 5 days, with ages 0-17 staying an average of 2 days and 50+ an average of five days, and with 18-49 averaging three days in the hospital.

Source: Los Angeles County Department of Health Services

The length of stay appears to be shortening around the country, but we don’t hear about that.

In fact, we don’t get much good news at all.

And to answer the question in the headline: The answer is no. The numbers do not justify a lockdown.

Source: California Hospital Association. You did not read that wrong. There are 93 lab-confirmed patients in the hospital in San Francisco County, and 5 “suspected.”

There are currently fewer than 400 Covid patients hospitalized in Sacramento County — capital of the state..

Obviously the roughly 7,000 hospitalizations not in Los Angeles sound like a lot; but with the total state population at almost 40 million, and the vast majority of hospital beds occupied by non-Covid patients (70 percent of all beds including empty, in Los Angeles), the situation does not appear to be as dire as the headlines make it seem. After all, The Los Angeles Daily News published an interview in April with county Health Services Director Christina Ghaly, who said if we were to follow Italy’s path, we would have 20,000 hospitalizations by May in Los Angeles County alone. The number today is 2,668 lab confirmed, and roughly 300 “suspected,” which some call PUI, patient under investigation (awaiting a test or perhaps not needing one in the physician’s opinion).

Numbers as of Nov. 29, according to L.A. County Department of Health Services

The disease is indeed contagious, and we need to use common sense in avoiding large gatherings, washing our hands and wearing masks when coming in contact with those not in your “pod.” And the highest deaths are, sadly, concentrated in poorer areas where people are living shoulder to shoulder. See related article by Back to Facts.

OPINION:
No wonder much of the West side of L.A. seems to be leaving town now that school is effectively nailed shut again. They have almost no deaths, their hospitals are better equipped, and yet — whether they support the lockdown or not, they are continuing to travel.

The overwhelming number of infected, hospitalized and ICU patients in the county are Latino — and it’s been that way for months. Why isn’t the county concentrating on those areas for lockdowns?

And they don’t seem to be eager to find ways to minimize the harm of lockdowns to young people and their families. There is an alternative, laid out by the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by 12,586 epidemiologists and public health scientists and 37,517 medical practitioners, calling for an end to lockdowns, an immediate resumption of school and sports, and what they call “focused protection” for the vulnerable including grocery delivery.

“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” wrote authors Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University,and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, all epidemiologists. “The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.”

From the Stanford Center for Poverty and Inequality, 2011. OPM is the official poverty measure. CPM, developed at Stanford, takes into account the high cost of living in California.

Even if ending the lockdowns may be seen as cavalier, why aren’t the media at least presenting alternative recommendations, and instead, sounding like Chuckie admonishing us to wear our masks — or else?

The Great Barrington Declaration was published on October 4, and its authors warned: “Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”

Is anyone curious as to why media and social media have buried these warnings? Do we know why they continue to press ahead with children not in school and masks for everyone?