Wrong Element
Sentient Onion
- Joined
- May 5, 2002
- Posts
- 24,909
Cases only matter if people are getting seriously sick. Other than that, it’s useful as an indicator of acquired immunity. Hospitalizations and deaths that follow are what matter. The whole point of lockdowns was to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. 507 people are hospitalized out of nearly 40 million residents. Most LA County residents are going out to restaurants and bars and socializing without fear, and without masks except where they are required. You are frightened, and that’s fine.
40 million is the population of California total. LA County is closer to 10 million, I think.
Hospitalizations and deaths are lagging indicators, but if the experience of the UK tells us anything, the recent spike in cases is not going to have the same impact on the health care system that previous spikes did. The UK began to see cases go back up around the start of June, and they've been over 10,000 cases a day for weeks now (more like 50,000 a day more recently). But the number of deaths nationally is still something like a few dozen a day, not the +1000 a day we were seeing in January.
The British have vaccinated more people and particularly more old people than we have, so we may fare somewhat less well. But in areas with decent levels of vaccination, I doubt we're going to see overwhelmed hospitals in the near term.
Now, winter is a potentially different story, since we're likely to see a resurgence of the flu to go along with Covid.
