Virus notes: July 8, 2020 -- Take care

MERCED (BLJ) – The Merced County Public Health Department on July 8 reported 1,702 cases of coronavirus (79 new since Tuesday), and 12 deaths.

California reported 289,468 cases Thursday morning (11,537 new) and 6,563 deaths (110 new).

The United States reported 3,109,500 cases (55,409 new) and 134,209 deaths (856 new).

The global count for the morning is 3.068,034 cases (270,831 new), and 550,159 deaths (6,564 new).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says community spread happens when officials cannot determine how or where people are being infected with the disease.  

For several weeks, County public health has operated on the following protocol rather than on contact tracing:

When a facility is determined to be in an outbreak protocol, the Merced County Department of Public Health works closely with the facility to mitigate the spread of disease. Affected close contacts are contacted by the facility/employer.

In other words, the health of the community is left up to managers and employers of largely private businesses. Who, if anyone, monitors how completely they do the job of contact tracing? Or, is the public health department saying (without quite saying) that community spread is so entrenched now that contract tracing is irrelevant?

For a complete update on the status of the virus in Merced County and what public health authorities are doing about it, see https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/inbox/id/AQQkADAwATE2MTQwLTk2YWUtOTIwNi0...

Concerns for public health do not mix well with concerns for private enterprise. The political system subordinates physicians and science to the needs of private enterprise and elected decision makers. These officials stand between medical science and free market ideology and frequently decide with the latter, as has recently happened in California, where toothless guidelines failed to prevent new outbreaks of the virus that thrives on rightwing political choices.

Germany, the fourth largest economy in the world,  on Thursday morning reported 198,765 coronavirus cases (174 new) and 9,115 deaths (11 new). Germany has more than twice the population of California (83,750,000 vs. 40,300,000).

California, the world’s fifth largest economy, reported 289,468 cases Thursday morning (11,537 new) and 6,563 deaths (110 new).

Something is terribly wrong here and people, particularly the elderly, need to be very careful because the government, which is the only social agency capable of handling an pandemic, has failed in California.