- Rancho Las Positas Elementary School known cases on site: 112
- Livermore cases: 12,898; overall vaccination rate: 77.9%
- Alameda County cases: 243,200; deaths: 1,754; overall vaccination rate: 83.0%
- U.S. cases: 79,555,000+; deaths: 968,000+; overall vaccination rate: 65.4%
The post-holidays surge has mostly petered out–finally. During that surge another ~141,000 people died. The state lifted the indoor-masking requirement on March 1 (excluding high-risk settings). The county followed suit and the school system and the Lab lifted indoor-masking requirements on March 14.
Yet, the nation is still recording ~1,000 deaths a day. And a newer, even more contagious variant is being tracked in Europe.
The news around COVID has mostly disappeared due to the combination of losing its novelty (no one cares anymore how many people are dying) and Russia invading Ukraine back at the end of February.
It will be interesting to see what happens public-health-wise when there’s another big surge. I suspect the political will to do anything is gone and we’ll see recommendations from public-health officials that will be largely ignored.
It’s too bad health-care demands don’t end in between surges. There are a whole lot of medical professionals that could use a couple of months off. I think the two biggest failures of our country in response to COVID (beyond federal leadership denying it was a problem for months) were 1. Failing to enact mandatory paid sick leave and 2. In no way addressing the intense demands placed upon healthcare workers during an extended public health crisis.
Maybe this will be the last post in my COVID-19 series. It sure would be nice if everything settled down and when next January rolls around there’s no post-holiday surge that kills another 100,000+ people.