New Covid Cases Surging in California

And cases in Los Angeles shot up 240% month over month.

I was up in Burbank shopping on Sunday, and I forgot L.A. County reimposed the mask mandate. I stepped into the Barnes and Noble up there and the woman at the counter wouldn't help me without a mask. I'm darn lucky I had a couple in the car, but damn I had to huff it back out the the parking garage to retrieve one. The O.C., so far, ain't going with a new mandate, and thank the Lord for that, sheesh.

At the Los Angeles Times, "California coronavirus hospitalizations hit highest point in months as Delta spreads":

A spate of new coronavirus infections is striking California’s healthcare system, pushing COVID-19 hospitalizations to levels not seen since early spring — lending new urgency to efforts to tamp down transmission as a growing number of counties urge residents to wear masks indoors.

Statewide, the number of coronavirus patients in the hospital more than doubled in the last month, and the numbers have accelerated further in the last two weeks.

Even with the recent increase, though, the state’s healthcare system is nowhere near as swamped as it was during the fall-and-winter surge. And many health experts are confident that California will never see numbers on that scale again, given how many residents are vaccinated.

But with the continued spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, which officials fear could mushroom in communities with lower inoculation rates, the next few weeks are key in determining how potent the pandemic’s latest punch may be.

The recent increases confirm that nearly everyone falling seriously ill from COVID-19 at this point is unvaccinated.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And so, if you care about getting back to normalcy once and for all, please get vaccinated,” Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters Tuesday.

Still, L.A. County Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly said Tuesday that “the individual consequences of a choice not to get vaccinated can be dire for that person and his or her family and friends.”

Ghaly said seeing a continued stream of COVID-19 patients, the vast majority of whom are unvaccinated, triggers a range of emotions in healthcare workers who have long been on the front lines of the pandemic: frustration, sadness and “some level of disbelief that, after all of the pain and suffering that we’ve all seen … there’s still people who either don’t believe it or don’t believe that it can affect them.”

The highest-risk Californians — notably the elderly — have been vaccinated at high rates. But the numbers drop off for younger segments of the population, and children under the age of 12 still aren’t eligible to be vaccinated.

“I think sometimes the mentality is that people think, ‘Well, I’m not going to get that sick. I’m going to be OK. I’m not going to die from COVID; I’m young; I’m healthy,’ ” Ghaly said. “And I can tell you, hopefully that’s the case, but that’s not necessarily the case.”

From June 22 to July 6, the daily number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in California increased from 978 to 1,228, a nearly 26% bump, state data show...

Still more.