November 'surprise'? L.A. headed for lockdown again
PHOTO: Los Angeles County public health director Barbara Ferrer. Ferrer is not a medical doctor. She has a Ph.D. in social welfare from Brandeis, a master’s in public health from Boston University, and a master’s in education from the University of Massachusetts. As director of the department of health, she oversees a budget of more than $900 million and directs a workforce of 4,000 public health practitioners.
By Tatiana Prophet
California reached 1 million cases of the virus today, November 12, 2020. And according to most of the national media, things are getting out of control -- again. It's like Joe Biden's long dark winter was a prophecy!
Wait a minute ... let's zoom in on the details. We examine California first. And while we know things can crumble quickly with a contagious disease, the important thing is that intensive care admissions are not spiking. In fact they're quite low. Daily deaths from the virus are at the lowest they've ever been since the pandemic began, L.A. Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer was quoted as saying in the 16th paragraph of the Los Angeles Times article.
But she still cautions we're teetering on the edge of disaster, and what we do over Thanksgiving will have a lot to do with the outcome.
15th paragraph: "“While we’ve made impressive strides in caring for people who are ill with the virus, this much of an increase in cases may very well result in tremendous suffering and tragic deaths down the road,” Ferrer said.
Is she for real? You decide based on the data.
Hospitalizations as of November 11, 2020, in Los Angeles County.
A few things about Los Angeles: out of the roughly 10 million people living in Los Angeles County, the Covid-19 cases and deaths are overwhelmingly in poorer areas where people, often undocumented immigrants, are living close together. There’s also a correlation with deaths in the public hospitals. Deaths are overwhelmingly Latino, and the majority of those are found in the elderly.
This is taken directly from a California hospital data site. It was from the end of July. You can see the overwhelming number of deaths are in the elderly, and sadly, Latinos. Covid deaths for black Americans in California are 9 percent of all Covid deaths, which is below the proportion of the population in the United States.
Screen shot of the LA controller’s data, Oct. 13, 2020. These are total, cumulative deaths.
Opinion: We need to be going into these areas to contain the spread, as well as administer known therapeutics to the populations at risk in those areas. So far, we’ve seen very little media coverage of the population who have contracted Covid and what we’re doing to help them; and a lot of frankly pompous news conferences with the required sign language interpreter — which is great, but we need some actual facts, too.
Neighborhoods with the most cases in Los Angeles County.
We stumbled on Ferrer’s background. She has a Ph.D in social welfare from Brandeis University and a master of arts in public health from Boston University, plus a master of arts in education from the University of Massachusetts . I am wondering, if she understands both social welfare and public health, why does her policy appear to be not for the health of the public besides locking us down, nor is it for the welfare of our most vulnerable. Why she is not actively taking control of the areas where corona virus is really a big problem — and it’s not in West LA, Beverly Hills, or Santa Monica. If she has a doctorate in social welfare (she is not a medical doctor), why isn’t she more active for the welfare of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens in the areas above? If anyone has seen coverage of such things, please comment here.
In the meantime, keep calm and share complete facts. And watch this four-minute video explaining the situation with charts!
ICU patients in L.A. County as of November 11, 2020. Suspected patients are not lab-confirmed. Yes, that still happens, even for deaths. We’re testing a lot of healthy people, though, at drive-ins.
