The High and the Low

Graph: LA Times

To stop the spread of the coronavirus California has been dictating lockdowns and business closures for the past nine months.

It all seems so futile, as the recent growth of infections has made the Golden State "the nation’s coronavirus epicenter":

With hospitals across California at capacity and COVID-19 cases skyrocketing, the state has become the epicenter of the nation’s latest coronavirus surge despite aggressive measures to restrict movement and save hospital space.

As of Wednesday, California reported 99.3 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days, far exceeding all other states, according to data compiled by the New York Times.

To make an increasingly restive population hunker down, California has resorted to fear, blaring that there is zero ICU capacity throughout the State. But a closer look tells a more nuanced story. [bold added]

The complicated answer is that the state uses a very complex algorithm to come up with that number. It’s based on a whole bunch of different factors that they put into an equation to come up with that percentage.

But in the most simple lay terms, every hospital has a certain number of intensive care beds that are licensed by the state. The state licenses your intensive care beds and you have to have the staff and the equipment for that bed to be deemed appropriate for intensive care.

But each of these hospitals also has systems in place, and they have these in place all the time, for a busy flu season, for a busy summer season if they get a lot of car accidents. So, it’s beds that can be used for so-called surge capacity, where they put patients if they do run out of room with these licensed ICU beds.

What this 0% means is they have essentially used up all of their licensed beds, and they are now into this surge capacity. It varies a lot from hospital to hospital. In Southern California, you have some hospitals that, I think, they are at 200%. So they are doubling up patients in rooms, they have patients in the emergency room that are getting intensive level of care. And we're seeing this across the region in Southern California and in the San Joaquin Valley.

But some of those hospitals may have a few beds. It’s not necessarily saying that every hospital is at 0%. It just means that, for the whole region, there are enough of those hospitals at overcapacity that it takes away from the total number for the region, and that’s the same for the state.

Right now, the California Department of Public Health keeps telling us that we are at 0% availability for ICU beds in the entire state. We know that’s not true because we know the Bay Area, for example, has a fair amount of ICU beds still available. We’re worried about it; we’re worried about the strain. But we still definitely have ICU beds available. What that means is just that so many hospitals in these hard-hit parts of the state are so far overcapacity that it’s eating into the statewide technical availability.

To sum up, "zero %" capacity means there are no more licensed ICU beds in the State overall. If an LA hospital converts one non-ICU bed to handle the surge, the State algorithm subtracts one available bed in San Francisco.

The headline is dishonest and meant to scare us into compliance. Unfortunately, this selective disclosure of information doesn't come as a shock, and it's no wonder trust in the government--no matter what one's political persuasion--is at an all-time low.