Late June 2020 finds San Diego County surrounded by regions that are suffering spikes in the numbers of COVID-19 cases.
From Orange County to Imperial County to the Tijuana border – the numbers are all going up. What does all this portend for our secluded paradise?
Let’s check out some of these other regions.
There are troubling signs that hospitalizations may be starting to rise again in Los Angeles County. Tuesday, June 23, LA County had a 28% increase in daily coronavirus hospitalizations since mid-June with 2,259 people hospitalized. Some of the rise could be caused by more widespread testing, but officials said the jump in the case numbers is also caused by granter transmission of COVID in recent weeks.
L.A. County’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, stated this week: “The numbers do tell us that we’re seeing an increase in community transmission.” Nearly two weeks ago, only 5.8% of coronavirus tests were coming back positive over the previous week in L.A. County. But on Monday, June 22, that number had risen to 8.4%.
Over the past two weeks, Los Angeles County has recorded 22,522 new cases, failing one of the governor’s performance metrics. In that time, it has reported 439 deaths. Los Angeles has the highest number of coronavirus cases among the state’s 58 counties and the most deaths. The county has reported cases in 333 cities or communities. East Los Angeles has the most cases with 2,144.
Then there’s Orange County. It recently recorded its deadliest week in the pandemic, with 48 deaths reported in the seven-day period that ended Sunday, June 21. The county has seen three consecutive weeks in which the death toll has been higher than the previous week’s. Orange County also saw an average daily increase of 32 hospitalized patients from Memorial Day to last week.
Over the past two weeks, Orange County has recorded 3,279 new cases, failing one of the governor’s performance metrics. In that time, it has reported 101 deaths. Orange has the fourth highest number of coronavirus cases among the state’s 58 counties and the fourth most deaths. The county has reported cases in 41 cities or communities. Santa Ana has the most cases with 2,332.
Also in that same time period, between the week of Memorial Day and last week, Riverside County saw an average daily increase of 85 hospitalized patients for confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19.
Over the past two weeks, Riverside County has recorded 4,994 new cases, failing one of the governor’s performance metrics. In that time, it has reported 60 deaths. Riverside has the second highest number of coronavirus cases among the state’s 58 counties and the second most deaths. The county has reported cases in 65 cities or communities. Riverside has the most cases with 2,173.
Next door to Riverside, San Bernardino County saw 70. Over the past two weeks, San Bernardino County has recorded 3,814 new cases, failing one of the governor’s performance metrics. In that time, it has reported 20 deaths. San Bernardino has the fifth highest number of coronavirus cases among the state’s 58 counties and the fifth most deaths.
Imperial County recorded 21 deaths last week, its highest weekly death toll, and more than double the previous week’s 10. Over the past two weeks, Imperial County has recorded 2,163 new cases, failing one of the governor’s performance metrics. In that time, it has reported 29 deaths. Plus, Imperial has the sixth highest number of coronavirus cases among the state’s 58 counties and the 11th most deaths.
In general California has seen a 29% increase in confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations over the past 14 days and an 18% increase in virus patients being treated in ICUs. The rate at which coronavirus tests are showing up positive over the past 14 days is now 5.1%; two weeks ago, it was 4.6%.
According to CNN, California obliterated its previous single-day high with 7,149 cases reported on Tuesday, June 23, according to state Department of Public Health. The previous record, set the day before, was just more than 5,000. Hospitalization and ICU rates due to the virus are also at an all-time high in the state.
What’s going on these days in Tijuana? According to Sunday’s San Diego Union-Tribune:
About a month ago, Tijuana had more deaths attributed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, than any other city in Mexico and a mortality rate that was twice the national average. State health officials documented only five new coronavirus cases in Tijuana during a 24-hour period from Tuesday to Wednesday — a sign, they say, that the city is finally emerging from the pandemic.
The picture is not the same across Baja California. “Tijuana is emerging from the epidemic curve. Mexicali is at the apex, Ensenada and San Quintin are still on their plateau,” said Baja California health secretary Alonso Pérez Rico.
And across this country, there is a coronavirus resurgence wiping out two months of progress and sending infections to dire new levels across the South and West, with hospital administrators and health experts warning Wednesday that politicians and a tired-of-being-cooped-up public are letting a disaster unfold.
The U.S. recorded a one-day total of 34,700 new confirmed COVTD-19 cases, the highest level since late April, when the number peaked at 36,400, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
What this all means for San Diego County residents is that – except for our obvious western front at the ocean – we’re surrounded by a resurgence, a “second wave,” – call it what you will – of the coronavirus. And we’d have to have our collective heads immersed in the sands at the beach to not realize that the spread will continue from the north, the northeast, the east and the south.
We may be done with the virus, but the virus ain’t done with us.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Unfortunately this is NOT the 2nd Wave. This is still the 1st Wave, and it wouldn’t have looked like this if people would not have gotten stupid. I am really not looking forward to the 2nd Wave when it hits the world in what is looking like September. Think this is bad? As we’ve heard so many times before, YOU AIN’T SEEN NUTTIN YET! Oh my hell.
And the infection rate is NOT going up because of testing. I’m already tired of hearing that Trumpette tripe! It’s going up because nobody is listening any longer, except maybe to Trump, and do you really want to do that? Oh, I forgot, he’s our resident JEAN-YUSS…
Just because one doesn’t look for the wasp nest doesn’t mean they suddenly appeared out of nowhere when you run into one with your face. It was there all the time, you just weren’t paying attention, or refused to heed the warnings of those who knew better. The medical people who have studied pandemics their entire careers, infectious disease specialists who travel the world and put their lives on the line fighting different outbreaks…why are so few in this country listening?
My analogy of little kids on a long drive that I posted in another Rag covid article a while back…sure seems like I had that correct? ‘I don’t wanna, are we there yet, I’m hungry, YOU CAN’T MAKE ME’ say the children of the USA who are supposed to be adults.
That the medical people are finding out that more and more people are infected even with the absolutely ridiculous low numbers of tests in this country along with the extreme lack of contact tracing (as opposed to South Korea per capita testing and tracing) is indicative of just how widespread it already is in the overall population not just how fast the new infection rates are happening though those are most definitely going up, too. But there are 330,000,000 people in this country, a huge number compared to so many other countries, and we should be radically increasing funding for both. But now the Trumpettes are closing fed testing spots last I read! So I will hazard a guess that potential testing count is either actually going down dramatically or will be with only the strapped finance tax base to pay for all this by state or local funded sites.
Dramatically slash the crap out of the war budgets of $1.4 trillion (this includes ‘homeland’ security, the DEA, and most certainly the nuclear bomb budget that is listed in ‘Energy Dept.’ to hide it), and start UBI and Universal Health Care. Might want to re-think the eviction of 20 million people expected to be evicted in the next month or so also don’t you think? Imagine 20 million people dumped on the street…
We are undergoing a seismic shift in this country (and the world). There is NO GOING BACK to normal. Besides, normal wasn’t all that great for the majority of the working class people in this country if you want to get right down to it.
And folks, don’t buy Bolton’s book. Why give your money to a corrupt demented assh**e who knew exactly who he was working for when he took the job? All he wanted to do was nuclear bomb Iran since our War Crime-committing country had already destroyed Iraq and Libya thanks to Wbush and Obama/Hillary. Though Obama failed at ‘neutralizing’ Venezuela and, so far, Trump has failed, too. But Trump did manage to fund the vicious murdering coup that overthrew the perfectly legitimate election in Bolivia through the OAS and put in another right wing dictatorship… Make America Great Again, baby!
Expect a ‘national emergency’ during the 2nd Wave that puts ‘on hold’ the elections. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Would it surprise you?
sealintheSelkirks
Unfortunately you can’t fix stupid and people are going to be stupid. Are fate is sealed.
Can he LEGALLY put the election on hold?
Of course, Faith. Power of the Executive has been increased to the power of a King. All a ‘president’ needs do is write up an ‘ACT’ or declare a ‘national emergency’ for a good reason…or a bad one. Or make up any old reason for that matter. Hell, fake evidence or no evidence and one can go bomb the crap out of a country just by yelling loudly that ‘Saddam has nuclear bombs’ or ‘was involved in 911’ both of which they absolutely knew was a lie. Drumbeat a public frenzy of the horrors of the beastly ‘other’ in the captive press to get the message out to the public, inflame emotions with stories like ‘Saddam throws babies out of incubators’ which got great press in the US though it was complete bullcrap, and shame anyone who disagrees or threaten them as a traitor with job loss or physical attack on them or their families, and there you go! Instant obedience to whatever the rulers want. These are tactics that have always been used by Empires to enforce obedience.
But who makes that decision? Not us! Who decides the criteria on what is or isn’t a national emergency? Not us! Even back during the War Against Slavery when Lincoln decided to suspend habeas corpus, the foundation of our system of law, it was just fine because…that’s what rulers do. The government could imprison anyone they didn’t like at will with no recourse to the courts, and there was absolutely nothing the one thrown in prison or their families and supporters could do about it except join them if they spoke out. Same with the Espionage Act back in WWI. Don’t support the war? Go to Prison for years if you said anything against it because that became treason. Obama used that law to jail more government whistleblowers than all other presidents combined. The people that proved the lies of the corrupt government were the only ones to go to prison. Imagine that!
The Bill of Rights is just a list of Temporary Privileges (hats off to George Carlin). If it can be taken away like my born in USA citizen stepmom thrown into a concentration camp in 1942 for being of Japanese ancestry, it isn’t a Right. We don’t seem to learn this lesson and yet it has happened over and over and over in the short history of the US.
Which shows that this country has never really been ‘free’ for the vast majority. If those in power want to ruin your life, they can. If they can’t find a law to throw at you, no problem. Just write a new one.
But I’m thinking we have been transitioning from a totalitarian state (one where the power to control your info and hence your thinking) to an inverted one in which the powerful don’t care if you see what they’re doing because you can’t do anything about it since they own the judges, too. Then it goes to a blatantly violent police state which tends to happen when the lies and myths of the totalitarian state start falling apart and people start rebelling. The step becomes obvious as the powerful desperately try to hang on to their power. Nobody gives up their power willingly. Remember that.
Violence and fear, divide the working class into unconnected groups, infiltrate with corrupt agents of the state who start riots and burn buildings down and create the conditions for ever more violent suppression, those work and always have for the powerful. Black bag work by the ruling class enforcers. That’s what we are seeing now.
And if Trump does declare a national emergency due to this Pandemic that is obviously going to slam this country right through the summer without letup and blend into the expected 2nd Wave in Fall…there’s a perfect excuse for cancelling the election. Notice how mail-in voting is being discounted and spat upon? Who wants to go vote when 90% of the polling places are closed and the lines are 4 hours long? Who wants to risk death or the list of life-long illness that this Pandemic is increasingly showing it is doing to everyone? I mean, 20 year olds having strokes and heart attacks from it? Hell no, stay home!
But, as was said by one of the famous unionizers in the last century, if voting mattered it would be made illegal. It doesn’t matter if it’s Trump or Biden in terms of the general direction and policies of the US government; we’ve seen that since Reagan was put in office. When the supposed ‘liberal democrat’ and ‘first black guy’ president publicly states that Reagan was his hero…you know there isn’t much difference. The wealthy will always make out since they control both faces of the Corporate Party. R or D isn’t a choice, it’s a confusing sham that benefits only the few.
So what are we going to do? Act like Good Germans? Revolt and be shot down? I don’t have an answer to this.
sealintheSelkirks