COVID Outbreak At Warner Bros. In Hollywood Now Largest In Country
This is sad, but not surprising. I say “sad” because contracting the virus, dying, or developing some kind of permanent disability from Long COVID doesn’t have to be inevitable, if you’re wearing a proper mask and limiting time with indoor crowds. But, of course, people are either selfish or stupid (or, for most Americans, both at the same time), and they refuse to face reality. I had to go to Target tonight to buy a mop, and of the ~50 people I saw, only two were masked (one poor employee, and one older customer). News on the Warner Bros. outbreak via Deadline:
The sizable Covid-19 outbreak at Warner Bros. has led to a dozen more infections since Deadline first reported it on Monday. At that time, there were 31 Covid-positive employees hit by the outbreak. By today, however, that number had grown to 43, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health web site. The cluster is the largest of the pandemic at a studio or network, per Deadline’s tracking, and the fourth-largest at any non-residential setting in the county at the moment.
The outbreak comes at a time when the BA.5 variant is pushing daily cases and test positivity to levels not seen since January. And experts say the current numbers are vast undercounts, given that many Angelinos now use at-home test kits, the results of which are not officially reported.
As a result of the surge, L.A. is on the verge of entering the CDC’s “High” community Covid level tomorrow, which indicates a worrying level of stress on the healthcare system. If the county stays at that level for two weeks, health department officials have said they will reimplement indoor public masking requirements.
[Deadline]
There are easily over 1,000,000 new infections in the U.S. every day right now (even higher than the massive Omicron surge last winter), but only about 100,000 are being reported. Perhaps people will start freaking out if the hospitals start filling up again in a few weeks, but I doubt it.
