Governor Newsom triumphed in the California recall. He counseled other governors to face the Covid crisis head-on. Good idea. Humboldt County, as it happens, is in California. A lot of politicians seem to forget that. And this county needs help.
There were four Covid deaths announced today. There was one yesterday. There were three on Monday. This county does not have a lot of people, so these are high numbers. Infections and hospitalizations are still high.
Meanwhile, our county Public Health office has cut back on some of its activities, including contact tracing. Their announced reason is staff cutbacks because of cuts in state funding. That doesn't sound like facing the crisis.
This is after billions were allocated by the federal government. This state had an immense budget surplus. Why is Public Health being starved? Our local governments seem hard pressed to invent ways to spend this money, but they seem to be spending it on everything but public health.
The state needs to address this. Public Health funding was already shockingly low. Public Health should be a major budget priority.
We need the most precise information possible. That information will be important for future public health crises. Not paying to have it gathered is foolhardy, not only for today.
In the midst of this Delta surge, the longest and most lethal of the pandemic, we are still not getting timely and relevant information from Public Health or anyone else on where and how people are getting infected. There have been media stories on aspects of the pandemic. But nobody seems to be on this one.
With this persistent danger, we need more information. The Public Health director recently stated to somebody that the reason he is not more specific on where and how people are being infected is because the virus is everywhere. That's not very helpful in making decisions. How dangerous is it, in a given locality, to shop for groceries, to wait for take-out in a restaurant? What about the schools? The public events? There has to be better information on relative risk and safety, apart from the generic advice on masks and social distancing and of course, vaccination.
We need it to make informed decisions. All we get is a useless dashboard.
If the Humboldt Public Health officer doesn't have more press conferences, and continues to avoid providing information, he should resign. Even if our media is too timid to demand them.
As a recent national article observed, headlines have claimed for months that our healthcare system is on the verge of collapse--but that's not really where we are. It has collapsed. People are dying in droves from Covid, and they are dying from other health problems because Covid is soaking up the medical attention and resources.
In Humboldt this is a crisis on top of a crisis, for we are dangerously short of doctors and medical capabilities. People are being sent hundreds of miles at their peril for procedures that should be done here. Even routine medicine--including dental and all kinds of simple medical specialties, like dermatology--are in woefully short supply or non- existent. The only effort to address this I've seen mentioned lately is a former public servant, now a paid advocate for Humboldt State University, who wants to get more medical care for the students that HSU plans to import in quantity.
The most remarkable aspect of this Delta phase has been how everybody acts like everything is normal, and the way to deal with it is to ignore it. It seems to take no time at all for two deaths a day to go from shocking to normal. Now it will be four deaths a day.
Meanwhile, more Americans have died in this pandemic than in the post-World War I flu pandemic, the worst in our history, though history mostly has ignored it. This time, we're not waiting for history to ignore it. The silence of the lambs.
