California's Bad Flu Season
We have commenters and readers here from California who have been weighing in on conditions in their state. I've been wondering when we'd get some transparency from California--not on strictly political matters, which is hopeless, but on the nearly related issue of Covid. We still don't have that transparency, but Steve Hayward at Powerline has offered some interesting perspective--Covid Bed Check . Read this excerpt in conjunction with the reports we've seen recently of Covid "defeating" the Flu:
Politico noted a few days ago that California, which has tried to impose some of the most stringent lockdowns in the nation, is not doing so well. This paragraph especially jumps out:
America’s most populous state has become one of the nation’s worst epicenters for the disease, setting new records for cases, hospitalizations and deaths almost every day. Things are so bad in Southern California that some patients are being treated in hospital tents, while doctors have begun discussing whether they need to ration care.
I don’t doubt that hospitals are badly strained at the moment. But is this really unprecedented? Check out this Los Angeles Times story from January 2018:
California hospitals face a ‘war zone’ of flu patients — and are setting up tents to treat them
. . . The huge numbers of sick people are also straining hospital staff who are confronting what could become California’s worst flu season in a decade.
Hospitals across the state are sending away ambulances, flying in nurses from out of state and not letting children visit their loved ones for fear they’ll spread the flu. Others are canceling surgeries and erecting tents in their parking lots so they can triage the hordes of flu patients. . . Many hospitals also say they’re too full to accept any more patients or ambulances.
ADDENDUM: In other California related news:
As noted at Big Scoop News:
At the time of this writing, no one from the Biden team or from Nunes’ Russian handlers has disputed B.S. News’ potentially accurate report, so it must be true.