Eyes Wide Shut: Covid Summer in Humboldt (with Updates)

Update 8/31: August is over now, recording 22 deaths from Covid Delta in Humboldt County, nearly a third of all deaths due to Covid since the pandemic began in March 2020.  There were more than 2,000 infections confirmed in August and 98 hospitalizations.  The August positivity rate was nearly 16%, more than triple that of California as a whole and a third higher than the national rate. There are currently 37 hospitalizations, including 8 in intensive care.  

Lacking official information or professional reportage, we hear that our largest hospital is in near chaos, with nurses and other staff devastated, and patients with other conditions not receiving the usual care, which some claim has already led to early deaths.  They won't be counted in these statistics, but they are victims as well--primarily of the unvaccinated, many of whose misguided stubbornness and at times hostility result not only them and their families paying a price with their own health and lives, but causing pain and harm to innocents, as well as the very people tasked with taking care of them... Someone online quoted (without attribution or specific identification) an ICU nurse as saying, " 'You don't know what the fuck you're talking about'--- several patients have said this to me, and it's the last thing they ever said to anyone."

August is over, but our summer is not, and this Delta surge is not.  The county fair that was permitted to go on is just over, children are returning to school, and so it is feared that it will continue.   

original post Aug. 26:

The North Coast and much of Humboldt County has quietly escaped some ravages of this summer.  There are pockets here and there that have suffered from fire, smoke, excessive heat and the drought, but most of us have been spared. 

 But that isn’t the case with Covid.  The Delta variant is cutting through this county like a scythe—with the grim reaper behind it.  Of the 65 total deaths of Humboldt County residents officially attributed to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, there have been twelve just this month, which is not yet over.  A fourth of the total number of infections and a fifth of the hospitalizations have also occurred this month.  That’s more than 1600 positive tests in August.  This week alone is certain to be more than 500.

 On Wednesday, the daily tally was three dead, including someone in their 20s, and a patient in their 70s who had been fully vaccinated—the first in the county to die. (He was weakened by serious illness, and his daughter confirmed his continued support for the vaccines.)   Every day, here and elsewhere, the Delta version of Covid-19 proves itself capable of infecting, sickening and killing people of all ages.

 As of Thursday there were 33 patients hospitalized, with 11 in intensive care.  The county Public Health director Dr. Hoffman told a county supervisors meeting that hospitals are transferring patients out of the county, including some who are critically ill with other conditions.  While hospital capacity is at its highest of the pandemic, Hoffman said that the most pressing problem was shortage of staff.

 Humboldt County has a very high positivity rate, which on some days reaches 20% (on Thursday, nearly 30%), but in general is about three times the California state rate, and a third higher than the national rate.  Positivity measures the proportion of Covid positive infections out of the number of people tested.  I’m not sure what that really means, since even at this late date there is so little testing capacity that only people who have symptoms or have been exposed to infected people are even getting tested.  Why after all this time—and all that money allocated by Congress—do we still not have abundant testing?

 This Covid Crisis is exposing the costs of our vulnerabilities in Humboldt County.  One is the fragile medical care system, with dangerously low numbers of physicians in all fields.  The last of those who made a life in this community for years are retiring, and no one is taking their place.

 Another is the dearth of timely information, due in part to our barely existing news media.  The few outlets that keep going have dangerously small numbers of reporters, and even many of them are also doing other jobs, like talking on the radio. 

 Meanwhile, the new Public Health director is not taking media questions as regularly as his predecessor.  In fact, hardly ever.  Yet apparently no one in the media is complaining, or even taking notice.  So we don’t really know where all these cases are coming from, or really any information that can guide people in making choices to safeguard their health, other than the general ones.  And are those even enough?

 The only information we typically get is the Public Health daily press release, which is either printed as is, or slightly rewritten, perhaps augmented with numbers from another data base, in a cut and paste article.   There is sometimes more (including some effective reportage) but there isn’t nearly enough. 

 I can guess at some reasons why we aren’t getting more information, other than we don’t have news media insisting on it.  Apart from legal and privacy concerns, Public Health doesn’t have adequate staff.  Why doesn’t it?  Wasn’t some of that federal money supposed to support local public health?  What about state funding?  What about some money from the county, who found the funds to support the county fair this year, where breeding Covid infections could have been entered? 

 The staffing problems may in part be more than a matter of money.  In this horrible matter of a pandemic, this county as in too many other places in this country does not operate as a community or a civic entity, but as two warring factions. One of them refuses vaccinations and effective measures like wearing masks.  They guarantee therefore that overworked and exhausted medical workers, already traumatized by the relentless and overwhelming tide of suffering and death, will see only a future of more of it.

So when exhausted and discouraged medical personnel move on, we all suffer from less effective medical care--not just for Covid but for everything.  When people can't work because of illness or won't because of fear of it, or for other reasons related to the pandemic, supply lines fray, and we all must deal with shortages and delays.  So even apart from the increased dangers of becoming infected by the feckless anti-vaxers and anti-maskers, everyone may pay a price, beginning perhaps with their children.  

 But that isn’t their only kind of attack.  Some of those in this faction harass and threaten the safety and the lives of medical workers, public health officials, and anybody else who doesn’t bow to their fanaticism.  And they threaten their families as well. 

 Together with the pandemic fatigue all of us feel, this fanatical pressure has evidently cowed our political leaders.  While our news media mostly turns its coverage to other subjects (a national as well as local trend), I see expressions of alarm in some online comments about lax or nonexistent precautions in schools starting to reopen.  We might understand the fatigue, and the fear, but why as a matter of public health policy can it be that there are fewer precautions now than earlier in the pandemic, while there are many, many more infections, hospitalizations and deaths? 

 For what we have now clearly is a local epidemic within the pandemic.  Averting our eyes won’t make it go away.

Update: The week ended with six Covid deaths announced on Friday, at least double the number of deaths announced on any earlier day of the pandemic.  They included two people in their 50s and over 80, and one in their 30s and 60s.  That's 10 deaths this week.  There was no accurate number of infections, due to staff shortages and reassignments.  There are now 37 people hospitalized for Covid.  Humboldt's largest hospital announced it was cancelling all non-emergency procedures, including cancer and heart operations.  Six local residents have been sent to out of county hospitals.

At this point the Public Health daily report is raising more questions than it is answering.  And still there is silence from what passes for the local Fourth Estate.