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Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for Jan. 19, 2021

The Battle of Los Angeles

The nation's biggest county has the biggest COVID outbreak. Plus, a
memorial to the dead

 

Sunset in Los Angeles from Dodger Stadium, which last Friday became a
COVID vaccination site. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo)

Housekeeping

Just a reminder: this is the last edition of Unsanitized, though it's
not the last time I'll be writing a daily report. In fact, you'll
get another one tomorrow. We are rebranding Unsanitized as First 100, a
look at the first one hundred days of the Biden presidency, with a
special focus on the pandemic, his greatest early challenge. It was
important to me to chronicle the coronavirus crisis as a first draft of
history, and there are still many chapters to write in that story. But
they are intertwined with a new presidency, which deserves its own
story. So goodbye but not farewell, and hello again tomorrow.

**Read all of our Unsanitized reports here**

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Meanwhile, for our first response today...

This Ain't No Disco, This is L.A.

I've been a Los Angeles resident for about 18 years. I've never seen
my city hurting more than right now, experiencing a severe blow from the
pandemic. For a time last week, one person in the city was dying every
six minutes

from COVID, though I believe this has tapered off to one every seven
minutes. A separate study showed the infection rate at one out of every
three people

in the county, which covers 88 cities, not just L.A., and is home to
over 10 million residents. The official toll of cases is over 1 million
,
but that estimated infection rate would put the number at three times
that.

The deaths are coming so fast that the South Coast Air Quality
Management District lifted the usual limits for cremations

for the first time ever, so crematoriums can work through the backlog of
bodies. There are roughly twice as many deaths happening here than
usual. Mortuaries have turned away families
,
just as

More than half of the deaths in L.A. County have come just since
Thanksgiving, as the outbreak accelerates. And this is at a time when,
at least in theory, there's been a stay-at-home order in place for a
couple months.

Oh yeah, and although hospitalizations have fallen

over the past week, we're hitting that false dawn moment. The B.1.1.7
variant and another more transmissible mutation seen in Denmark have
both been detected

here. The Denmark mutation, known as L452R, is becoming dominant in the
state.

Los Angeles is uniquely positioned to suffer from a particularly bad
COVID outbreak. The city is dense, yes, but more important it's
crowded, with lots of small apartments or detached homes with multiple
people living inside. If one person leaves the home to work everyone's
at risk. The city has high concentrations of Latino residents, who are
dying at elevated rates
.
It's a much older population than portrayed on television; with the
warm climate and a level of poverty meaning many can't retire to some
other haven, the elderly often stay put. And jobs that take people
outside the home-landscaping, for example-keep people circulating,
whether they want to or not. The large essential workforce

includes factory jobs, which still exist here, and even meatpacking. The
significant homeless population has seen outbreaks as well.

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In other words, the city's extremes are working against them: extreme
variations in wealth, and a service economy where the poor cater to the
rich. These lessons must be remembered once the virus becomes a memory:
the way we allow people to live in Los Angeles is what is allowing
people to die.

On the other side of the tragedy, the vaccine rollout has been
particularly poor, in Los Angeles and California as a whole. The chair
of the county board of supervisors, former U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda
Solis, ordered

that vaccines be made available to everyone 65 and over starting on
Thursday. Dodger Stadium was recently converted into a vaccination site,
and five other large-scale centers

are rolling out. The city school superintendent has offered to convert
schools

into vaccination sites. But so far, supply problems and a lack of staff
have made the process unpredictable

and far too slow
.
Venerable local columnist Steve Lopez said he was easily able to
schedule a time to get the vaccine, but only in Anchorage, Alaska
.

The struggles of Los Angeles are a microcosm of the struggles in the
pandemic, only with a magnifying lens. And it reflects the struggles of
a country to care about each other, to communicate with each other, to
understand each other. I hope we learn as we hit the other side.

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A Memorial

It's hard to believe, but tonight's COVID memorial event
,
with 400 lights inside the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln
Memorial, is the only formal event and just about the only recognition
of the dead from our government during this pandemic. Fittingly, it
doesn't come from the guy on the way out but from the President-elect;
the memorial is part of the inaugural program.

We just hit 400,000 dead Americans

from this virus, and for close to a year, no leader in the country has
stopped for a moment to say they're sorry for all the loss. The lack
of empathy hasn't been the worst part of the Trump presidency; I am
given to look to substance over style. But symbols do matter, and the
symbol of the last year is of a pathetic, selfish wretch who leads a
selfish movement, one that has never bothered to think about 400,000 of
their fellow citizens who've been lost because they're too busy
fuming about the personal sacrifice of having to wear a mask in a 7-11.
I'm pleased that we'll throw that symbol in the garbage starting at
noon tomorrow. And let's make remembering those lost in this tragedy
more than a once-a-year event.

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Number of Vaccines Given

14.7 million

as of Monday, up from 14.3 million on Sunday. The holiday weekend
appears to have slowed up vaccine delivery, which is appalling. What
would have fit a national day of service better than vaccine
distribution?

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* The vaccination rollout in the United Kingdom has actually been quite
successful
,
relative to the rest of the world. (Financial Times)

* Those Norwegian fatalities had nothing to do with the vaccine
.
(Bloomberg)

* Andrew Cuomo is being a bullying buffoon again, trying to jump the
line on vaccine allocation
,
and the Biden team just smacked him down. (CNBC)

* Another Trump sabotage effort: lifting the travel restrictions

on Europe and Brazil. Biden's going to reverse that. (New York Times)

* The World Health Organization is speaking out

about the lack of vaccines for Palestinians, amid quick inoculation in
Israel. (Washington Post)

* Movie openings delayed once again
.
(Wall Street Journal)

* Fascinating discussion of e-commerce, physical retail
, and the pandemic.
(Virtual Elena)

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