Mortuaries fill, hospitals clog in rural California towns with low vaccination

In terms of cases-per-million they rank 34th in CA, according to my reckoning: https://covid-19.datasettes.com/covid?sql=select%0D%0A++RANK...

But I always worry that factors like prison populations could distort cases-per-million numbers when you consider how small the population of a bunch of those counties are.

Not to mention that comparing those kinds of numbers for counties with just a few thousand people to LA County (population: 10,039,107) doesn't make much sense at all.

We're past shock. Shock was appropriate in early 2020, when there was no meaningful defense and bodies stacked up in coolers. Today there are effective vaccines that, when applied broadly, preclude this outcome. But there are intransigent demographics that won't act in their own interest and this is exactly what one should expect.

Facts and science!

Facts and science!

Facts and science!

Check out the content in https://reddit.com/r/COVIDAteMyFace

It’s morbid, for sure, but eye opening (ignore the distasteful comments sections, focus on the post content; posted to provide some semblance of insight into the unvaccinated’s take on COVID after unsuccessful outcomes).

My ~90 year old grandmother refuses to get vaccinated due to misinformation on a major news network. She asked me if I get my flu shot, and why bother with a vaccine if it’s only good for 8 months. Local hospital ICUs are at capacity. No amount of data or critical thinking will change her mind. She is upset she can’t travel or cruise without getting a vaccine.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Northeast seems to be doing better than the rest of the country, but it's still not zero risk. The first major breakthrough outbreaks were in the Northeast, and we're definitely not 100% vaccinated up here. (There isn't even a vaccine that's approved for 100% of the population!)

Just looking out my window in Brooklyn, people in my neighborhood walk around outside with masks on. I gave that up a couple months ago, but I definitely feel like I'm on the losing side of that convention and people are probably judging me. (I still wear a mask indoors, of course, including in the common areas of my apartment building. The risk of transmission outdoors seems pretty low to me.)

I think it's very dangerous to point fingers and say "haha, that can't happen to us". In the early days of the pandemic, that's what people said about New York. And they were right for several months -- that first wave that hit New York hard barely registered across the country. But now, those people are getting hit.

COVID is spreading, and there is nothing stopping another variant -- perhaps one that doesn't care about vaccines at all, or one that kills kids. Now is not the time to glibly celebrate victory, or point the finger and laugh "look at how much worse those other states are than us". 600,000 Americans are dead from this pandemic, and the end is not in sight.