The Season of Sickness Has Arrived; Election Deniers’ Very Bad Week–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Nov. 14, 2022

Indy Digest: Nov. 14, 2022

Hey, everyone. We’ve been through a lot—A LOT—together over the last three years.

Some of you have been with the Digest since it became a thing in March 2020. Some others joined along the way. I would hope that, no matter how long we’ve been together, you’ve learned to trust me, and believe me when I say that there’s something serious happening, and that we all need to pay attention.

Friends, today, I am saying: There’s something serious happening, and we all need to pay attention.

On Nov. 3, I mentioned in this space that we were “on the cusp of what looks like it will be an awful season for respiratory illnesses.” Well, in the 11 days since, it’s become painfully clear that we’ve fallen off that cusp (?) into what is, right now, a truly awful season for respiratory illnesses.

Andrew Pekosz is a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. On Friday, he Tweeted out this graph of “2022-23 influenza testing at the Johns Hopkins Hospitals compared to the previous five influenza seasons.”

The 2022-23 line is so atypical that it looks like a mistake. But it’s not.

Next up, here are the graphs from Indio’s Valley Sanitary District of the wastewater testing they do for influenza and respiratory syncytial virus:

Also … not good!

When it comes to SARS-CoV-2 levels, VSD testing shows them to be hanging steady:

However, the city of Palm Springs’ wastewater testing shows the trendline is definitely increasing:

You may also be interested in knowing that the San Diego Union-Tribune on Friday ran a story headlined “Uptick in flu cases prompts hospitals to use overflow tents in parking lots to ease ER burden.” Here’s the story’s start:

San Diego County’s early flu season has begun to put enough pressure on local emergency departments that patient care is sometimes spilling into parking lots.

Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas, Jacobs Medical Center at UCSD Health in La Jolla and Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa all reported Friday that they have begun using overflow tents outside their normal emergency department buildings to handle a current increase of respiratory illness.

The worsening of the overall situation is plain to see in the numbers.

About 9 percent of emergency room patients had flu symptoms last week, up two percentage points from two weeks ago, with COVID-19 symptoms also increasing, though not as quickly, according to the county’s weekly respiratory illness report.

It tells only part of the story as it does not include the current increase in activity of respiratory syncytial virus, a cause of the common cold which is a particular threat to very young children and seniors.

I could keep on posting graphs and story quotes, but I think the point is made..

Folks, do with this information what you will. I hope that as many of you as possible out there have gotten your flu shots and updated COVID-19 boosters—and if you haven’t yet, please do so. I also hope some of you will consider breaking out the face masks again, at least when you’re in crowded indoor spaces. I am going to start doing just that.

If you’re immunocompromised … I am really sorry. Please be safe.

The virus situation out there is bad. As a result, the medical-care system is again being challenged. Something serious is happening, and we all need to pay attention.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• A labor dispute has led to some chaos at University of California schools today. The Los Angeles Times says: “About 48,000 unionized academic workers across the University of California’s 10 campuses—who perform the majority of teaching and research at the state’s premier higher education system—walked off the job Monday morning, calling for better pay and benefits. The systemwide strike includes teaching assistants, postdoctoral scholars, graduate student researchers, tutors and fellows, as well as workers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and it has already caused multiple disruptions to scheduled classes, just weeks before final exams. The strike marks the largest work stoppage of the year so far, and union leaders say it will also be the biggest at any academic institution in history.”

• Election deniers in battleground states had a bad week last week. The Washington Post reports: “Voters in the six major battlegrounds where Donald Trump tried to reverse his defeat in 2020 rejected election-denying candidates seeking to control their states’ election systems this year, a resounding signal that Americans have grown weary of the former president’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud. Candidates for secretary of state in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada who had echoed Trump’s false accusations lost their contests on Tuesday, with the latter race called Saturday night. A fourth candidate never made it out of his May primary in Georgia. In Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s most prominent election deniers lost his bid for governor, a job that would have given him the power to appoint the secretary of state. And in Wisconsin, an election-denying contender’s loss in the governor’s race effectively blocked a move to put election administration under partisan control.”

• In a related vein, The Associated Press looks at how calm this election has been so far—calmer than almost anyone anticipated: “There was no violence. Many candidates who denied the legitimacy of previous elections lost and quietly conceded. And few listened when former President Donald Trump tried to stoke baseless allegations of electoral fraud. For a moment, at least, there’s a sense of normalcy in the U.S. The extremism that has consumed political discourse for much of the last two years has been replaced by something resembling traditional democratic order. The post-election narrative was instead focused on each party’s electoral fate: Republicans were disappointed that sweeping victories didn’t materialize, while relieved Democrats braced for the possibility of a slim House GOP majority. At least for now, the serious threats that loomed over democracy heading into Election Day—domestic extremist violence, voter intimidation and Republican refusal to respect election outcomes—did not materialize in any pervasive way.“

• When no candidate on Nov. 8 received 50 percent of the vote on Election Day, Georgia’s U.S. Senate race headed to a runoff—something that is not done in most places. The reason the state has a runoff is depressing, Time magazine reports: “The Georgia Senate race has led to a runoff—set to take place Dec. 6—between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, but historically runoffs in the state were created to suppress the Black vote. Georgia is one of only two states, along with Louisiana, that requires a runoff in all general elections if no candidate achieves at least 50% of the vote; and experts say Georgia’s history shows how an electoral system that demands the majority’s support can be manipulated to exclude the minority vote. Nearly 60 years since the runoff system was implemented, critics argue that prolonging the election to a second day still enables barriers against minorities and other vulnerable voters—even when the two candidates are Black.”

• The San Bernardino Sun, sort of, offers good news about the rent situation in Southern California: “Inflation, rising interest rates and changing migration patterns make it hard to predict the future, USC’s Casden Multifamily Forecast the Casden report said. The report, released Thursday, Nov. 10, predicts smaller rent hikes and higher vacancy rates through the summer of 2024. That’s good news for tenants who saw lease rates for vacant apartments rise by as much as 18% over the past year and a half. According to the forecast, apartment rents will rise just 2.4% annually over the next two years in Los Angeles County, 3-4% a year in Orange County and 5-7% in the Inland Empire. ‘Seventeen percent rent growth is not going to happen year after year after year. It’s not possible,’ said Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.” JUST a 5-7 percent increase. Yay?

• The Twitter meltdown has reached a point where SFGate has started a “live updates” page to follow all the messes. Here’s one particularly hilarious/stupid/tragic update from today: “In his thread groaning about how slow Twitter for Android is, Musk proclaimed that he would get rid of any ‘bloatware’ that made the service lag. ‘Part of today will be turning off the “microservices” bloatware,’ he tweeted Monday morning. ‘Less than 20% are actually needed for Twitter to work!’ It seems that may not be the case. According to multiple reports on Twitter, the ‘microservice’ required for two-factor authentication appears to have gone kaput. Two-factor authentication, which relies on a third-party service like email, text or an app to verify your identity, is recommended by security experts (and Twitter itself) to prevent illicit access to social media accounts. Musk has not acknowledged the apparent breakdown of the feature in his quest to make Twitter faster.”

• Oh, and if you have not heard about the Twitter/Eli Lilly debacle, buckle up and grab some popcorn before reading this Washington Post piece: “The nine-word tweet was sent Thursday afternoon from an account using the name and logo of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co., and it immediately attracted a giant response: ‘We are excited to announce insulin is free now.’ The tweet carried a blue ‘verified’ check mark, a badge that Twitter had used for years to signal an account’s authenticity—and that Twitter’s new billionaire owner, Elon Musk, had, while declaring ‘power to the people!’ suddenly opened to anyone, regardless of their identity, as long as they paid $8. But the tweet was a fake—one of what became a fast-multiplying horde of impersonated businesses, political leaders, government agencies and celebrities. By the time Twitter had removed the tweet, more than six hours later, the account had inspired other fake Eli Lilly copycats and been viewed millions of times. … By Friday morning, Eli Lilly executives had ordered a halt to all Twitter ad campaigns—a potentially serious blow, given that the $330 billion company controls the kind of massive advertising budget that Musk says the company needs to avoid bankruptcy.”

• And finally, former Independent columnist Anita Rufus passes along some sad news about an amazing person: “Cathy Greenblat left a tenured-professor position to travel the world documenting ‘state of the art’ care for people with dementia. With almost indefatigable energy, she photographed and filmed facilities that met her high standards, and shared that work with international influencers who could make a difference in how those with dementia are cared for and treated. She was the inspiration for the monthly Dementia-Friendly Cafe that has been held in the Coachella Valley for the past nine years. I was privileged to have had Cathy as a friend. She died recently in her Palm Springs home.” Read Anita’s column about Cathy, from 2014, here. Our sympathies go to Cathy’s loved ones and friends.

Support the Independent!

Thanks, as always, for reading the Independent. We’re hard at work on our Best of Coachella Valley issue, which will hit the streets and CVIndependent.com next week. And we have some very exciting things in store for 2023. Please help us do all that we do by clicking the button below and becoming a Supporter of the Independent.

Read this Indy Digest at CVIndependent.com!