The Health Department blames Lakers and Dodgers fans for the uptick (Link: https://www.si.com/nba/2020/10/27/lakers-dodgers-fans-drive-uptick-los-angeles-coronavirus-cases). But, in the same statement, they return to the same excuses that we have become accustomed to hearing: testing delays, data processing errors and late recognition of case increases. Or, as Dr. Barbara Ferrer stated:

“We’ve been seeing, first, very low case numbers a couple weeks ago and then in the last few days very high case numbers,” she said. “Now that we’ve processed the backlog of cases from the state, and analyzed the numbers by episode date, it is clear that our cases increased. This increase is not as steep as what we saw in July, but this is a cause of concern.”

In the national press, California is busy patting itself on the back about its underwhelming COVID-19 response. A recent Los Angeles Times article has suggested that if the county mirrored San Francisco’s response, that 170,000 lives would have been saved. It went further saying “San Francisco did everything right” (Link: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-25/san-francisco-slow-coronavirus-reopening). This is clearly not the case as there have been a total of 140 deaths in San Francisco, a population of about 880,000. In South Korea, a population in excess of 51 million, there have been 460 deaths. Comparing oneself to worst in class response is disingenuous and promotes a false sense of satisfaction.