7-23: Huntington Beach a "symbol"

✅Coronavirus Hospitalizations Plateau in Orange County After Sharp Rise

Voice of OC

     The number of people hospitalized with coronavirus in Orange County has plateaued at around 700 current patients – after rising sharply for several weeks starting in mid-June.

     Doctors and hospital officials say they’re cautiously encouraged that hospitalizations are not rising, while also urging the public to wear masks and physically distance.

     According to experts, the local hospital system can manage the current volume of patients, with several local hospitals converting regular patient rooms into intensive care rooms as part of their separation of COVID and non-COVID patients into separate wings of a hospital.

     Yet at the same time, the pandemic is taking a toll on nurses and other staff, whom hospitals say are stretched thin, and some hospitals have paused non-emergency surgeries to help conserve protective gear.

     “We’re at a sort of tipping point right now, where if things get worse, we are going to be in a situation where the hospitals are going to need help to deal with increased COVID hospitalizations,” including bringing in outside staff, said Dr. Saahir Khan, an infectious disease specialist who works at the intensive care unit at UC Irvine Medical Center, speaking about the overall hospital system in Orange County.

     “So this is really a critical time for people to be responsible and maintain adherence to all the guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” he added.

     “We’ve been able to handle what we’ve got. If we disregard social distancing, wearing a mask, if we start opening up in an irresponsible fashion, we’ll flood the system…you can see that in the states that did that” like Florida and Arizona, said Dr. Todd Newton, the Orange County medical director for Kaiser Permanente, which has two hospitals in Orange County….

TODAY'S NUMBERS

✅California shatters another record for new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations -- Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that 12,807 new coronavirus infections had been reported statewide in the past 24 hours — a record high — bringing California’s total to 413,576. Luke Money in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 7/23/20

 

✅California State U. Board Approves Ethnic-Studies Requirement That Dismays Ethnic-Studies Professors
CHE

✅California’s online community college still has much to prove
EdSource

     California’s online community college still has much to prove -- Calbright College, California’s online community college, may have survived elimination in the state’s budget, but the pressure is on to prove its value to the state. Ashley A. Smith EdSource -- 7/23/20

     …Phil Hill, an online education consultant, who has helped the state’s community college system with its Online Education Initiative, enrolled in Calbright last year as a student on his own to see how it measures up to similar online college programs.

Hill said he wasn’t paid by the system or the college to test Calbright, and he doesn’t describe himself as a critic or advocate of the online college. As an online education expert and California taxpayer, he was curious. But what he found was a poorly-designed and confusing class that could hinder students’ and Calbright’s success…..

‘I don’t believe it’: Huntington Beach a symbol of mask resistance as doubters abound -- As Brad Colburn whisked his metal detector over the tan sands of Huntington Beach, a rejection of Orange County’s spiking coronavirus infection rates surfaced. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe the rates are rising,” Colburn said. “They’re inflated. It’s another way of shutting everything down … of the Democrats trying to get what they want.” Jake Sheridan in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 7/22/20

 

✅COVID-19 Roundup: Colleges Tilt Toward Online Openings

Inside Higher Ed

 

✅Trump details ‘difficult’ cognitive test he says he aced

Politico

     “Joe should take that test because something is going on, and I say this with respect,” Trump said. “I mean, [it’s] going to probably happen to all of us, right? You know, it’s going to happen. But we cant take a chance of it happening.”

✅Dems rebuke culture of sexism in defense of Ocasio-Cortez

Politico

     Ocasio-Cortez recounted the confrontation with Yoho — which was witnessed by a reporter — in a speech Thursday morning, lamenting the incident as an outgrowth of a toxic and sexist culture that some lawmakers still perpetuate on Capitol Hill.

     “These are the words representative Yoho levied against a congresswoman,” Ocasio-Cortez said, saying aloud the words that Yoho was overheard saying to describe her: "F---ing b----.”…. 

 

The Epitome

Mariane, c. 1950

     GOSH it’s been a nice day.

     Late this afternoon, Teddy and I did as we always do; we walked down to my sister Annie’s place, where we found her tending the plants of her big landscaping project, which involves maybe a thousand square feet of a knoll covered with Live Oak and Eucalyptus trees, plus some cool native cactus. We hang out there a lot, Teddy included.

     Annie dashed over to her studio and got the boy his usual “fish prizes” (pricey cat food); then, she and I sat in some lawn chairs and consumed our official covid-era snack, a few strips of vegan jerky (Primal Spirit) that I buy online.

     So here’s the thing. Annie told me that, earlier, she had called “Tante [Aunt] Mariane” (we pronounce this as Germans do: TAUN-ta Mehr-ee-AH-nah)—who lives, with her husband Hermann (“HAIR-mahn”) in a little seaside town (White Rock) south of Vancouver, British Columbia. Hermann and Mariane moved up there from the city of Orange about thirty years ago, avowedly to “take advantage of far-superior Canadian healthcare.” They never regretted it.

     I always liked the utterly warm and friendly Mariane, who was my mom’s best friend (we only call her “Aunt”). In 1945, when the remnants of my mom’s Pomeranian family—both of my mom’s parents were dead—fled west, via rail, to evade the advancing Soviet Army (the train was strafed by Soviet fighter planes), her little group ended up in a town south of Hamburg. As a “displaced person,” mom and the others were hated by the locals, who did not want to share what little they had; nevertheless, Mom, who was 12-years old, met the very sweet Mariane, also 12, and they became close friends. They remained so until my mom’s death from Alzheimer’s about a year ago.

Hermann and Mariane, Trabuco Canyon, c. early 80s

     That’s a 74-year friendship!

     Mariane, who’s in her late 80s, is as sharp as a tack. (I’ve spoken with her a couple of times in the last year or so.) The dementia-related deaths of my parents really weirded her out. She seemed positively freaked by my mom’s zaniness during attempted conversations over the phone those last few years. Sometimes, I joined in to serve as a kind of intermediary/translator. One of mom’s Alzheimer’s-derived lunacies: she was fond of Donald Trump.

     I’m glad Mariane has felt the need to stay connected to us “kids” after my folks’ deaths. I love that old gal.

     “So, how are they doin’?” I asked my sis.

     “They’re doin’ great!” said Annie. Annie enjoys being the one who has managed something desirable, such as a conversation with an old family friend.

     “How are they copin’ with the Covid thing up there?”, I asked.

     “Pretty well.”

     After a pause, she continued: “–I think they’re really worried about us, though. Turns out, the only thing people talk about in BC is the craziness goin’ on in Orange County!”

     I thought about that. “Wow. Really?”

     “Yep.”

Mariane and my mom, Orange, 1963

     Mariane and Hermann lived in Orange County for maybe thirty years (like my parents, they moved from Germany to Canada and then, finally, to the U.S. circa 1960). They seemed to fit in fine when they were down here, livin’ in rednecky Orange, not far from downtown. Since they’ve moved back to Canada, though, they seem to have adopted the Canadian Weltanschauung. At this point, I think, they see Americans as benighted and dangerous.

     The world is a big place and there’s a lot to try to keep track of. So, inevitably, people embrace simplifications; that is, one embraces caricatures of the realities of “other” places. So lots of foreigners—lots of Canadians, I think—look at the good old U.S.A. as a bunch of slack-jawed rubes. Who else would vote for a guy like Trump? Obviously, we do the same or worse to Canadians.

     “I hate Trump,” declared Mariane, over the phone, talking to Annie, or so Annie said. I don’t recall ever hearing so simple a declarative sentence coming out of Tante Mariane's mouth. She’s way too nice for that.

     “I hate Trump,” she declared, and then added, “He’s a terrible man and an idiot.”

     Well, OK then. One grows tired of explaining to one’s foreign friends and relatives that, no, not everyone in this country approves of Mr. Trump—that, in truth, most people (maybe even most people in OC) view him as a loutish idjit and daily hope for some shred of evidence that his disastrous reign might soon come to an end. For instance, he could just drop dead one day. That would be wonderful.

     Maybe Tante Mariane understands all this. No doubt she knows we're anti-Trumpians.

     But this notion that Orange County, California, is some hot spot of Trumpian lunacy, some hellmouth of stupid and hateful knuckle-draggery—that British Columbians pursue their days with that thought, however simplistic, pleased me.

     It is a curious fact that Orange County often comes up when one traces the origins of the lunacies and idiocies of our times. For instance, I’m told that some of the convoluted financial contrivances that led to the crash of 2008 had their origins in Orange County.

     Seems plausible. I really don’t know.

The grassy knoll

     I do know that the “birther” movement (remember Orly Taitz?) owed a great deal to Orange County. And the notion that it is right and proper to torment “wetbacks” on the Mexican border?—that definitely owes much to Orange County trailblazers. As we all know, the OC was a locus of Bircherism back in the day; John Birch conspiracy theories rival Trumpian contentions for sheer idiocy. And, back in the 1920s, the KKK dominated the Anaheim City Council.
     –You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty special.

     Since 1979, Orange County has been home to the foremost Holocaust denial organization in the country. The no-holds-barred “dirty tricks” tradition in American politics—that, too, depends a lot on Orange County innovators of half a century ago.

     Still, I’M an Orange Countian, and MY FRIENDS are mostly Orange Countians, and we’re not like that at all; we’re sworn enemies of this hideous hayseed right-wingery and this assault on reason and ethics.

     So, anyway, if my Tante Mariane is to be believed, British Columbians see the world like this: Trumpian inanity has a strangle-hold on the USA, threatening to set the world afire, and the epitome of abject Trumpian folly is, in fact, good old Orange County, CA, that shining shit-pile on a hill, where government officials believe that this Covid thing is somehow a Chinese and/or Democratic conspiracy and that surgical mask-wearing mandates are acts of “terrorism” against God-fearing, freedom-loving citizens and their goddam kids.

     Just a little perspective for you.

That's my mom, sister Annie, and me, c. 1958
(British Columbia)

White Rock, British Columbia