In Rolling Hills Estates, Million Dollar Homes Slide Down the Canyon (VIDEO)

Terrible.

At the Los Angeles Times, "In pricey Palos Verdes, the ocean view is great — until your house slides into a canyon."

Submersible Passengers Died in Implosion (VIDEO)

We all know now.

But this was the big breaking letdown for so many yesterday. I personally saw no hope of survival, and the more we saw the more my initial intuition proved correct.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Search crews found debris from craft on ocean floor near Titanic shipwreck."

There's more at NPR (a great piece), "James Cameron says the Titan passengers probably knew the submersible was in trouble."

And an incredibly lucid and scientifically-informed interview with Cameron, at CNN with Anderson Cooper:

The interview continues here, "James Cameron on the 'surreal irony' of Titanic wreck and Titan implosion."

Reliance Aqua-Tainer 7-Gallon Spill-Proof Water Jug for Any Emergency

See, Reliance Products Aqua-Tainer 7 Gallon Rigid Water Container, Blue, 11.3 Inch x 11.0 Inch x 15.3 Inch.

Also, Emergency Mylar Blankets: NYKKOLA Emergency Mylar Blankets - 84" X 52"(4 Pack) - Designed for NASA - Essentials for Outdoors, Hiking, Survival, Marathons or First Aid, and Black+Decker MATRIX Wide-Mouth Storage Bag: BLACK+DECKER Tool Tote Bag for Matrix System, Wide-Mouth, 21-Inch (BDCMTSB).

Resqme Quick Car Escape Tool

At Amazon, RESQME Family Pack of 6, The Original Emergency Keychain Car Escape Tool, 2-in-1 Seatbelt Cutter and Window Breaker, Made in USA, Black, Yellow.

Massive Sinkhole Opens Up in Chatsworth as Heavy Rains Pound the Southland (VIDEO)

The Los Angeles Times has continuing rain and flood reporting here, "Southern California faces another day of punishing rains: ‘We are definitely not out of the woods yet’."

And at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Many of Hurricane Ian’s Victims Were Older Adults Who Drowned

I thought about this as soon as the first fatalities were announced. Were folks crushed to death by collapsing homes or building, or struck by debris rocketing through the air at 150mph? Not really, though there may have been some of that.

People drowned, especially older people.

At the New York Times, "The storm, Florida’s deadliest since 1935, has been linked to the deaths of at least 119 people in the state, many of them older residents who lived near the coast":

A 57-year-old woman in the Sarasota area developed hypothermia and died after her roof caved in and she became stuck in floodwaters. A 96-year-old man drowned after getting trapped under a parked car in Charlotte County. In Fort Myers Beach, the body of an 85-year-old woman was found in a tree several days after the storm.

After Hurricane Ian punched Florida last week, shredding beachfront towns and flooding large swaths of the state, the storm was blamed by state and county officials for at least 119 deaths, more than any other hurricane had caused in Florida since 1935. Officials in North Carolina linked four deaths there to the storm as well.

Though the circumstances of many of those deaths remained unclear, information released this week by state and local governments provided a distressing portrait of a hurricane that at times overwhelmed both residents and emergency responders.

At least 54 of the victims died by drowning, records showed. Nearly two-thirds of the dead were in two counties on Florida’s southwest coast, Charlotte and Lee, that faced monstrous storm surge and winds exceeding 150 miles an hour. And many of those who died were older. Of the 87 people for whom an age or approximate age has been released so far, 61 were at least 60 years old. Eighteen of them were in their 80s, and five were in their 90s.

A review of medical examiners’ accounts, law enforcement reports and 911 audio obtained through open-record requests, as well as interviews with relatives of those who died, revealed a chaotic, harrowing response to a storm whose path forecasters had struggled to pinpoint.

Calls poured into emergency dispatch centers by the thousands as the storm bore down. Residents who stayed put despite evacuation orders scrambled for safety as their homes filled with water or blew away. Some died when the power went out and they were no longer able to use oxygen machines.

The suicides of two men in their 70s who killed themselves after seeing the damage in Lee County are also included in the official count of storm-related deaths.

In Fort Myers Beach, Daymon Utterback, 54, decided to ride out Ian at home, as he had done in previous hurricanes, according to his uncle, Terry Goodman. Mr. Utterback, a machinist with a manufacturing company who was known for a sharp sense of humor, did not expect the storm to be very severe, his uncle said.

As storm surge flooded their house, Mr. Utterback’s fiancée stood on top of a grill to keep her head above water, according to a next-door neighbor, Steve Johnson. She survived the hurricane, but Mr. Utterback became trapped while trying to open a window, and drowned.

Mr. Johnson said he escaped the storm by trekking through chest-high water, against powerful winds. When he returned to his house the next day, after the floodwaters receded, he saw Mr. Utterback’s body. He put a towel over the body, he said.

“It was just so sad to see him there,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Utterback was one of at least 53 people who died because of the storm in Lee County. In neighboring Charlotte County, the sheriff’s office said 24 deaths there had been linked to the storm, though only two of those had been reported to state officials as of Friday.

“Everyone, I know, tries to do the best they can,” said Mr. Goodman, adding that he did not blame anyone for what happened to his nephew. “It’s just — decisions that individuals make sometimes don’t work out the way they want them to,” he said.

Though Ian’s devastation was most severe in southwest Florida, the storm also caused flooding and dangerous travel conditions in other parts of the state and the region. Officials in 15 Florida counties each reported at least one storm-related death, including a 22-year-old man who died when his vehicle hit a fallen tree in Polk County, near the middle of the state, and an 85-year-old man who fell off a ladder while putting up a tarp in Putnam County, in northeast Florida.

In New Smyrna Beach, on the Atlantic coast, Alice F. Argo kept calling and calling for help when the storm hit. At first, her husband, Jerry W. Argo, was refusing to go to a shelter, and the couple wanted help to get to safer ground across the street. As night fell, Ms. Argo’s calls for assistance grew more frequent and more urgent. Her husband, 67 years old and 250 pounds, had fallen and hit his head, and she could not lift him.

A Volusia County dispatcher told Ms. Argo that at least 400 people had called for help and that rescuers would get to the Argos when they could. “You’ve got to do your best to wait it out,” the dispatcher said, according to a 911 recording.

Ms. Argo, 72, was insistent.

“Well, hurry up!” she said. “If he dies, you’re going to be in trouble!”

The county was waiting for special vehicles that could drive through floodwaters, the dispatchers said. Police records show that Ms. Argo called for help a total of 10 times over the course of nearly 12 hours. The last time was at 10:38 p.m. By then, Mr. Argo was already dead.

“I feel if they had gotten there sooner, he might have survived,” said Lisa Mitchell, Ms. Argo’s daughter. “My mom said when they got there, they picked him out of water, put him on her coffee table, gave him CPR, shocked him and everything, and couldn’t revive him. Of course not — because he was there an hour and a half already.”

Andrew Gant, a spokesman for the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, said that the sheriff, Mike Chitwood, had ordered a review of how the case was handled. The county has six vehicles that can navigate floodwaters, and the National Guard later brought five more to the county.

“The review of the incident (and the entire storm) is just in its initial phases, but I believe one likely outcome is acquisition of more of the high-water trucks,” Mr. Gant said in an email...

Still more.

 

Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall in Southwest Florida with 'Catastrophic' Winds and Surge (VIDEO)

At the Miami Herald, "Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Cayo Costa Florida at 3p.m. Wednesday. The storm was already “causing catastrophic storm surge, winds and flooding” in southwest Florida early Wednesday afternoon, the beginning of what promised to be a damaging path across the peninsula."

As Train Bears Down Full Speed, Last Second Rescue of Single-Engine Cessna 172 Pilot (VIDEO)

This is your ultimate nightmare.

At CBS 2 Los Angeles, "Train Slams Into Downed Single-Engine Plane on Pacoima Tracks."

Frightening cell phone video of first responders pulling a pilot to safety seconds before a train slams into the plane that crashed onto the tracks near Whiteman Airport in Pacoima. @CBSLA #BreakingNow #news #crash #kcal 📸 Luis Jimenez https://t.co/NWGu2HhBUM @composerluis pic.twitter.com/D4VhNPGYID

— JASMINE VIEL (@jasmineviel) January 10, 2022

Foothill Division Officers displayed heroism and quick action by saving the life of a pilot who made an emergency landing on the railroad tracks at San Fernando Rd. and Osborne St., just before an oncoming train collided with the aircraft. pic.twitter.com/DDxtGGIIMo

— LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) January 10, 2022

Grim Scale of Destruction in Kentucky (VIDEO)

The governor says it'll take years to rebuild.

At NBC News, "‘I’ve got towns that are gone’: Kentucky struggles to count dead after tornadoes."

At at the New York Times, "In Kentucky, Tallying the Grim Scale of Destruction":

MAYFIELD, Ky. — Darryl Johnson didn’t know what his sister did at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory or why she worked nights; he knew only that her husband dropped her off on Friday evening and that they never heard from her again.

He stood in a gravel lot next to the giant ruin of metal and wood, which just days ago was the candle factory where his sister, Janine Johnson-Williams, had clocked in for her shift. The factory where he works, 45 miles up the road, shut down when the storms were approaching, Mr. Johnson said. He could not find anyone in Mayfield to tell him anything.

Late Sunday evening, Mr. Johnson finally got word. His sister was dead.

Sunday was a day of wrenching discoveries across the middle of the country, where an outbreak of tornadoes on Friday night, including one that traveled more than 220 catastrophic miles, left a deep scar of devastation. But as work crews dug through ruins and small-town coroners counted the dead on Sunday, there was at least a glimmer of hope that the death toll may not end up being as enormous as initially feared.

On Sunday evening, Troy Propes, the chief executive of Mayfield Consumer Products, which runs the candle factory that was demolished by the tornado, and which many dread may account for the largest number of deaths in the storm, said in an interview that only eight people had been confirmed dead at the factory and another six remained missing.

Bob Ferguson a company spokesman, said that of the roughly 110 workers who were on the late shift at the factory on Friday night, more than 90 employees had been accounted for.

Still, Gov. Andy Beshear told reporters on Sunday that the state had not confirmed those figures and said that search operations were still underway at the site.

“There have been, I think, multiple bodies,” Mr. Beshear said. “The wreckage is extensive.”

The death toll from the tornado swarm includes people who had been killed in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee, but the greatest loss of life was unquestionably in Kentucky, where Mr. Beshear said that at least four counties had tolls in the double digits. A dozen people were killed in Warren County, several of them children; in Muhlenberg County, there were 11 victims, all in the tiny town of Bremen. One was 4 months old.

“We’re still finding bodies,” Mr. Beshear said. “I mean, we’ve got cadaver dogs in towns that they shouldn’t have to be in.”

In Edwardsville, Ill., officials released the names of six people who were killed while working at an Amazon delivery depot that was hit by a tornado. “At this time, there are no additional reports of people missing,” the Edwardsville Police Department said in a statement on Sunday.

More than 50,000 customers were still without power in Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, and more than 150,000 were without power in Michigan, which was also affected by the sprawling storm. Mr. Beshear said that there were “thousands of people without homes” in Kentucky, though the sheer amount of devastation made precise figures, at this point, impossible to come by.

“I don’t think we’ll have seen damage at this scale, ever,” he said.

But even as the accounting of the storm was slowly being made, much was still dreadfully unknown.

In the town of Dawson Springs, where Mr. Beshear’s father was born and where his grandfather owned a funeral home, the list of the missing was eight pages long, single-spaced, the governor said in an interview on CNN.

On Sunday, slabs lay bare on the ground where houses once stood along the streets of Dawson Springs. Mattresses hung in trees and were strewn about the housing lots. Teams hunting for victims and survivors left spray-painted symbols on walls that remained standing.

Families bearing bruises and scrapes from Friday night walked among the wreckage, looking through the rubble for medicine, insurance information and food stamps.

Lacy Duke and her family were searching for two missing cats. In between calling out names, they described 22 seconds of deafening horror on Friday night as they huddled in a storm cellar, and an aftermath that was almost apocalyptic. Their house had folded like an accordion. A mobile home had disappeared. A teenage boy had injured his arm so badly it had to be amputated. The boy’s grandmother had been stuck under a car.

“This year’s been rough,” Ms. Duke said. She had been in a car accident, her son had been sick with Covid-19 and, at the auto part supplier where she had worked, everyone in her department had been laid off. “And then this happened.”

The storm system’s devastation exposed all along its path a late-night world of warehouses and factories on the outskirts of towns and cities, where people worked handling the seasonal traffic of packages or making scented candles for $8 to $12 an hour. A current of anger ran through the communities that were hit badly in the storm, as people demanded to know why so many were still on the job after alarms had sounded about the approaching danger.

At a Sunday morning church service in Granite City, Ill., when the pastor asked for prayers for the loved ones of the six who died in the Amazon warehouse, Paul Reagan, a retired steelworker, raised his hand...

Deadly Devastation: More Than 70 Killed in 'One of the Toughest' Tornado Events in Kentucky History (VIDEO)

Terrible.

Just biblical destruction and death. 

Watch the most dramatic images here. 

Story from the Lexington Herald-Leader, "‘One of the toughest nights in Kentucky history’: 70 or more feared dead in tornadoes":

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The “most severe tornado event in Kentucky’s history” is believed to have claimed the lives of at least 70 people, Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference in Graves County late Saturday morning.

He said the death toll “may in fact end up exceeding 100 before the day is done.”

Beshear said earlier Saturday that four likely tornadoes wreaked havoc on the state with one traveling for more than 200 miles in Western Kentucky, “something we have never seen before.”

More than a dozen Kentucky counties have reported damage from the storms, he said.

Deaths have been reported in multiple counties.

The hardest hit appears to be Graves County in far Western Kentucky, where Mayfield, the county seat, has been devastated, the governor said.

A collapsed roof at a Mayfield candle factory with about 110 people inside resulted in mass casualties and will account for the largest loss of life in the state as a result of the storms, he said.

As of just before noon, Beshear said about 40 of the 110 people inside the plant had been rescued. The last successful rescue there was at about 3:30 a.m., Beshear said, though he said “we still hope and pray that there’s some opportunity for others.”

Eleven people died in Muhlenberg County, Coroner Larry Vincent said. Other counties reporting deaths and injuries were Hopkins, Marshall, Warren, and Caldwell, Beshear said Saturday.

Up to 10 counties may have casualties, he said. Widespread damage was reported in Bowling Green. A Bowling Green police spokesman said Saturday morning that the number of people hurt or killed was not yet known, as first responders were still working to find people amid the wreckage.

The National Weather Service in Louisville said evidence of damage from an EF-3 tornado with estimated wind speeds of 150 mph had been found by its survey team in Bowling Green.

The weather service office in Paducah said in a tweet that crews were out doing storm damage surveys Saturday, but that it will take some time to get a rating on the intensity of the tornado that hit Mayfield.

More than 75,000 Kentucky customers remained without power as of 1:17 p.m. Saturday, according to the website PowerOutage.us.

Keep reading.  

Also, via Reuters, "Six Amazon workers killed after tornadoes reduce warehouse near St. Louis to rubble."

Oh, the humanity. 

More at Memeorandum. 

Ted Cruz's Cancún Blunder

Following-up from yesterday, "Ted Cruz Flew to Cancun with His Family Amid Power Crisis in Texas (VIDEO)."

I wanted to highlight this NYT piece on Senator Cruz, which is kinda shocking in its details. What's so interesting is the text messages Cruz's wife sent out before the trip, to some of her neighbors and friends in Houston, which were later leaked to the press, which I guess seems both naturally appropriate and gross and sleazy at the same time.

See, "Ted Cruz's Cancún Trip: Family Texts Detail His Political Blunder":

Like millions of his constituents across Texas, Senator Ted Cruz had a frigid home without electricity this week amid the state’s power crisis. But unlike most, Mr. Cruz got out, fleeing Houston and hopping a Wednesday afternoon flight to Cancún with his family for a respite at a luxury resort.

Photos of Mr. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, boarding the flight ricocheted quickly across social media and left both his political allies and rivals aghast at a tropical trip as a disaster unfolded at home. The blowback only intensified after Mr. Cruz, a Republican, released a statement saying he had flown to Mexico “to be a good dad” and accompany his daughters and their friends; he noted he was flying back Thursday afternoon, though he did not disclose how long he had originally intended to stay.

Text messages sent from Ms. Cruz to friends and Houston neighbors on Wednesday revealed a hastily planned trip. Their house was “FREEZING,” as Ms. Cruz put it — and she proposed a getaway until Sunday. Ms. Cruz invited others to join them at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancún, where they had stayed “many times,” noting the room price this week ($309 per night) and its good security. The text messages were provided to The New York Times and confirmed by a second person on the thread, who declined to be identified because of the private nature of the texts.

For more than 12 hours after the airport departure photos first emerged, Mr. Cruz’s office declined to comment on his whereabouts. The Houston police confirmed that the senator’s office had sought their assistance for his airport trip on Wednesday, and eventually Mr. Cruz was spotted wheeling his suitcase in Mexico on Thursday as he returned to the state he represents in the Senate...

Now who was it who leaked those texts to the New York Times? I mean, if you can't trust your "friends and neighbors," who can you trust (that is, if you should be trusting these same "friends" and "neighbors" with this kind of bombshell "vacation" planning in the first place)?

That said, for the second day this story's headlining at Memeorandum, so you know hated-addled leftists can't get their fill of their hateful demonic schadenfreude. *Shrugs.*

ADDED: Via Ashley Parker on Twitter, and yes, it is funny. "Cancún-gate," lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

 

What Was Great About 2020

I have to admit, it wasn't my best year.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapuntit, "JEFF JACOBY: What was GREAT about 2020."

Ontario's Finance Minister Tells People to Stay Home for Christmas -- While Hiding the Fact He's Secretly Jetted Off to St. Bart's for Christmas

At AoSHQ.

BONUS: "[Alberta Premier Jason] Kenney orders MLAs not to leave Canada unless on government business after minister's vacation: Tracy Allard, who travelled to Hawaii earlier this month, called trip 'lapse in judgment'."

Putting Aside the Attacks on Trump, This Is an Interesting Piece

From self-declared mean person, Kara Swisher, of (you guessed it) the New York Times, "Goodbye, Twitter Trump! And Other Predictions for 2021."

It's the other predictions that are interesting, such as:

Speaking of media companies: While the reverberations of the Warner Bros. decision to put all its 2021 movies on its HBOMax streaming service are sorting themselves out, the shift is permanent — whether offended filmmakers like it or not. Creators who adapt will benefit, especially if they devise new models of payment.

The longtime entertainment business model was built on powerful gatekeepers that made most of the money and relied on a vast network of middlemen. But in the new world, those who can assemble a fan base that they directly service will profit. Imagine the future relationship between creators and fans as a subscription business, and the economics get much more interesting. Hollywood will have to become much more nimble and entrepreneurial.

So, too, will more Americans in general, since the pandemic has accelerated the introduction of what will be permanent changes in how we work. Last December, I urged tech to be at the forefront of this major overhaul:

“And rather than accept that poor pay and poor protections for gig workers are inevitable and that the pressures of a global work force are too hard to push back, tech companies should figure out how to creatively and humanely deploy talent across the world to show that they are interested in dealing with the consequences of their inventions.”

This was pre-coronavirus — an exogenous circumstance. Now I am often asked when will work go back to normal, which is really a question of when will we get back to physical workplaces. That will certainly happen in the coming year, but in all kinds of new ways.

The coronavirus has forced the kind of work experimentation that would have taken a decade to eventually happen: limiting business travel, cutting in-person office time, questioning every cost associated with the analog workplace. Technology is making doing business cheaper and more efficient and, as it has turned out, more productive.

These changes have proved nearly useless and even dangerous when it comes to education, where physical presence is much more of an asset than we thought. More consideration will be put into how to make technology and schooling mesh better and how to provide students with the kind of experience that they are not getting, as well as a bigger focus on universal connectivity for those who are without it.

While pandemics are short term, the looming climate disaster is not. So, lastly, I’ll repeat my 2019 declaration that the “world’s first trillionaire will be a green-tech entrepreneur.” President-elect Biden, who is championing green technology, will be more successful if his efforts are seen as job creators, and not so much as giant government programs...

 

California Struggles to Contain Coronavirus Pandemic

And to think, it started out so wonderfully! (*Eye-roll.*)

From A.P., "Once a model, California now struggles to tame COVID-19":

Ambulances waited hours for openings to offload coronavirus patients. Overflow patients were moved to hospital hallways and gift shops, even a cafeteria. Refrigerated trucks were on standby, ready to store the dead.

For months, California did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge from the pandemic. But by the time Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Dec. 15 that 5,000 body bags were being distributed, it was clear that the nation’s most populous state had entered a new phase of the COVID-19 crisis.

Now infections have been racing out of control for weeks, and California has routinely set new records for infections and deaths. It remains at or near the top of the list of states with the most new cases per capita.

Experts say a variety of factors combined to wipe out the past efforts, which for much of the year held the virus to manageable levels. Cramped housing, travel and Thanksgiving gatherings contributed to the spread, along with the public’s fatigue amid regulations that closed many schools and businesses and encouraged — or required — an isolated lifestyle.

Another factor could be a more contagious variant of the virus detected in Southern California, although it’s not clear yet how widespread that may be.

California’s woes have helped fuel the year-end U.S. infection spike and added urgency to the attempts to beat back the scourge that has killed more than 340,000 Americans. Even with vaccines becoming available, cases are almost certain to continue growing, and yet another surge is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Year’s...

Still more.

Is There Any Solution?

It's Bill Schneider, who used to be on CNN back in the day, with Bernard Shaw and Judy Woodruff. He's an okay guy who can turn a phrase, probably more of a weak "Cold War Liberal" than anything (but now maybe "woke"). I never really heard what happened to him at CNN, whether he was fired (unlike Jeffrey Toobin). 

In any case, this is interesting, although I doubt I'm alone when I say I don't care if there's a solution, since the left will create problems just to find solutions, and f*ck the regular people in "flyover country." 

So screw 'em either way. 

FWIW, at the Hill, "How the American system failed in 2020: Pandemic politics":

Is there any solution to the deep and bitter polarization in American politics? There is. But it’s not working.

The solution is supposed to come in the form of a crisis. In a crisis, Americans pull together and rally behind a common cause. Right now, the United States is experiencing the biggest public health crisis in over 100 years. More than 320,000 Americans have died, and the death toll continues to rise. Nevertheless, the country seems more divided than ever.

American government usually works well in a crisis — when an overwhelming sense of urgency breaks through blockages and lubricates the system. Under the right conditions, barriers fall away, and things get done. We are seeing it happen now with the economic stimulus bill.

Back in 1957, the country was shocked when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first space satellite. It led the federal government to become deeply involved in education — something that had always been regarded as a local responsibility. It also happened after the 9/11 crisis. The devastating terrorist attack overwhelmed the country’s deep political divisions. The evidence? For nearly a year after 9/11/01, a majority of Democrats approved of the job George W. Bush was doing as president.

The era of good feeling came to an end a year later, in September 2002, when the Bush administration announced the “rollout” of the invasion of Iraq. With the decision to go to war, all the old divisions came roaring back. It was Vietnam all over again.

Politicians are always hyping issues to try to turn them into crises — an environmental crisis, a debt crisis, an education crisis, an energy crisis. Or they declare “wars” on things — a war on poverty, a war on crime, a war on drugs, a war on inflation, a war on terror. Without a crisis or a “war” to rally public opinion, the system won’t work. It wasn’t designed to.

The pandemic certainly qualifies as a crisis. Thousands of Americans are dying every day. The economy has come to a standstill: no travel, no dining out, no public entertainment, no gatherings with friends and neighbors. Why is that not a crisis?

The answer is: because President Trump has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the crisis — and so have his supporters...

Blah, blah...

It's the same old stupid bull. "Never let a crisis go to waste," some idiot once said.

And to think, I used to respect this guy.

Sweden Ends Its Pandemic Experiment

Now Sweden decides to lock down, eh? 

I guess building up national herd immunity was taking too long. Too many dying. It's bitch, girl. 

At WSJ, "Long a Holdout From Covid-19 Restrictions, Sweden Ends Its Pandemic Experiment: Government imposes mandatory measures after failing to contain new surge in infections":

Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment is over.

After a late autumn surge in infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, the government has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures.

Like other Europeans, Swedes are now heading into the winter facing restrictions ranging from a ban on large gatherings to curbs on alcohol sales and school closures—all aimed at preventing the country’s health system from being swamped by patients and capping what is already among the highest per capita death tolls in the world.

The clampdown, which started last month, put an end to a hands-off approach that had made the Scandinavian nation a prime example in the often heated global debate between opponents and champions of pandemic lockdowns.

Admirers of the Swedish way as far as the U.S. hailed its benefit to the economy and its respect for fundamental freedoms. Critics called it a gamble with human lives, especially those of the most vulnerable. With its shift in strategy, the government is now siding with those advocating at least some mandatory restrictions.

When the pathogen swept across Europe in March, Sweden broke with much of the continent and opted not to impose mask-wearing and left known avenues of viral transmission such as bars and nightclubs open, leaving it to citizens to take their own precautions.

As late as last month, Swedes enjoyed mass sporting and cultural events and health-care officials insisted that the voluntary measures were enough to spare the country the resurgence in infections that was sweeping Europe.

Weeks later, with total Covid-19-related deaths reaching almost 700 per million inhabitants, infections growing exponentially and hospital wards filling up, the government made a U-turn.

In an emotional televised address on Nov. 22, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pleaded with Swedes to cancel all nonessential meetings and announced a ban on gatherings of more than eight people, which triggered the closure of cinemas and other entertainment venues. Starting Monday, high schools will be closed.

“Authorities chose a strategy totally different to the rest of Europe, and because of it the country has suffered a lot in the first wave,” said Piotr Nowak, a physician working with Covid-19 patients at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. “We have no idea how they failed to predict the second wave.”

Last week Sweden’s total coronavirus death count crossed 7,000. Neighboring Denmark, Finland and Norway, all similar-sized countries, have recorded since the start of the pandemic 878, 415 and 354 deaths respectively. For the first time since World War II, Sweden’s neighbors have closed their borders with the country.

“We don’t like to say that Sweden has been the black sheep, but it has been the different sheep,” said Vivikka Richt, spokeswoman of the Finnish health ministry.

Dr. Nowak said medical personnel had never shared the optimism of the country’s public-health agency about so-called herd immunity—population-wide resistance to a pathogen acquired through gradual exposure—and had repeatedly warned that the virus couldn’t be controlled with voluntary measures alone.

One reason Sweden stuck to its approach for so long despite the warning signs is the high degree of independence and authority enjoyed by the health agency and other similar state bodies under Swedish law.

The public face of the country’s pandemic strategy was Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist.

Dr. Tegnell declined to be interviewed this week, but in earlier conversations with The Wall Street Journal and other media he said lockdowns were unsustainable and unnecessary. His agency has continued to discourage mask-wearing just as the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, a European Union agency whose headquarters are located near Dr. Tegnell’s office in Stockholm, recommends wearing them.

Still more.

On the Way: More Sweeping Stay-at-Home Order for Los Angeles County

Are you surprised? You're certainly not entertained. 

At LAT, "A more sweeping stay-at-home order is likely if L.A. County can’t slow COVID-19 spike."

I work in Los Angeles County, so this directly affects me, as my college will remain closed, not just because of the county, though it's that, but because of the state government's panic too. Where're all the economic relief payments to families and businesses (already!) devastated by these catastrophic shutdowns? My goodness. 

Hundreds of New York City's Bodies Still Stored in Pandemic Freezer in Brooklyn

This is just gross. 

Horrific too. But just gross, disrespectful to the dead and their families, and a damning indictment of New York's "award-winning" leadership in this catastrophe. 

At WSJ, "NYC Dead Stay in Freezer Trucks Set Up During Spring Covid-19 Surge":

The bodies of hundreds of people who died in New York City during the Covid-19 surge in the spring are still in storage in freezer trucks on the Brooklyn waterfront. 

Many of the bodies are of people whose families can’t be located or can’t afford a proper burial, according to the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner. About 650 bodies are being stored in the trucks at a disaster morgue that was set up in April on the 39th Street Pier in Sunset Park. 

Before the pandemic, most if not all of the deceased would have been buried within a few weeks in a gravesite for the indigent on Hart Island, which is located in the Long Island Sound near the Bronx. 

But Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged in April that mass burials wouldn’t take place following reports that New York City was considering the use of temporary graves on Hart Island. 

Officials at the chief medical examiner’s office said they are having trouble tracking down relatives of about 230 deceased people. In cases like these, a spokeswoman said, it isn’t uncommon for the deceased to have been estranged from families and for next-of-kin details to be dated or incorrect. When next of kin have been contacted, officials said most bodies haven’t been collected because of financial reasons 

New York City increased its burial assistance to $1,700 from $900 in May. That is still short of the average $9,000 cost of a traditional service with burial in New York, according to the New York State Funeral Directors Association. A typical cremation with service costs about $6,500, according to the group. 

Every family has a right to request a free burial on Hart Island. Some families are confused about what to do, according to Dina Maniotis, the chief medical examiner’s office’s executive deputy commissioner, who oversaw the unit’s pandemic response. 

“This has been traumatic,” Ms. Maniotis said. ”We are working with them as gently as we can and coaxing them along to make their plans. Many of them will decide they want to go to Hart Island, which is fine.” 

The chief medical examiner’s office wasn’t built to deal with a global pandemic that killed tens of thousands of New Yorkers in a matter of months. Its forensic-investigations department has 15 staff members tasked with identification of bodies. A further seven people are responsible for contacting next of kin. 

The unit is set up to handle about 20 deaths a day, said Aden Naka, the office’s deputy director of forensic investigations. During the peak of the pandemic it was inundated with as many as 200 new cases daily. Scientists from the laboratories of the chief medical examiner’s office were drafted to reinforce the investigations team and speed up the identification process, Ms. Naka said. 

Family members deluged the office with calls seeking information about relatives who might have died as well as advice on requesting a death certificate, viewing a loved one’s body and making funeral arrangements. Officials of the chief medical examiner’s office said the city’s health department redirected more than 100 staff from other fields to manage the volume of calls, which soared to 1,000 a day from the usual 30 or 40. 

Ms. Naka said many of the callers were struggling with problems of their own. Some were recovering from the virus themselves or had lost their jobs because of the pandemic. Others were dealing with the second or third family member to die of Covid-19...

Still more.

California is Toast

At WaPo, "Warmer. Burning. Epidemic-challenged. Expensive. The California Dream has become the California Compromise":

SAN FRANCISCO — The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.

There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.

San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this.

California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place they have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived.

Monica Gupta Mehta and her husband, an entrepreneur, have been through tech busts and booms, earthquakes, wildfire seasons and power outages. But it was not until the skies darkened and cast an unsettling orange light on their Palo Alto home earlier this week that they ever considered moving their family of five somewhere else.

“For the first time in 20-something years, the thought crossed our minds: Do we really want to live here?” said Mehta, who is starting an education tech company.

It would be difficult to leave. They love the area’s abundant nature and are tied to Silicon Valley by work and a network of extended family members, who followed them west from Pittsburgh. But Mehta says it is something she would consider if her family is in regular danger.

“Yesterday felt so apocalyptic,” Mehta said. “People are really starting to reconsider whether California has enough to offer them.”

This is the latest iteration of the California Dream, a Gold Rush-era slogan meant to capture the hopeful migration of an old nation to a new, rich West. For generations, the tacit agreement for California residents resembled a kind of too-good-to-be-true deal. Live in the lovely if often drought-plagued Sierra, or beneath the beachfront Pacific Coast cliffs, and work in an economy constantly reinventing itself, from Hollywood to the farms of the San Joaquin to Silicon Valley.

But for many of the state’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with a rapidly changing climate, a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes and a pandemic that has led to more cases of the novel coronavirus than any other state.

During the course of his term, President Trump has singled out California, a state he lost by 30 percentage points, as an example of Democrat-caused urban unrest, irresponsible immigration policy and poor forest management, even though nearly 60 percent of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government. Several are burning today, with millions of acres already scorched.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has responded specifically in some cases, but in others, he has invoked the California Dream, an aspirational noun attached to no other state. In his January 2019 inaugural address, Newsom warned that “there is nothing inevitable about” that dream.

“And now more than ever, it is up to us to defend it,” he said.

As the state’s climate has shifted to one of extremes, soaking wet seasons followed suddenly by sharp, dry heat and wind, no region has been safe from fire. This year — even before peak fire season has gotten underway — widespread fires have forced evacuations, from San Jose in Silicon Valley to the distant hamlet of Big Creek along the western slopes of the Sierra.

More than two dozen major fires are burning around the state and have consumed a record 3.1 million acres of land, more than 3,000 homes and at least 22 lives. Los Angeles has reported the worst air quality in three decades as a result of fires surrounding that city, already notorious for orange air and seasonal dry cough.

Wine Country has burned four straight years, with a number of vineyards lost. Homes have been destroyed far to the south in San Diego County, and more than 200 campers had to be airlifted to safety amid the Creek Fire, still burning hot and fast between Fresno and Mammoth Lakes...

Keep reading.