L.A. was uniquely vulnerable to this Covid catastrophe. Here is what went wrong
Way back when all this started and the paper came out from the Imperial College, counseling social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions, the idea was to make a priority of not overwhelming the hospitals. The thinking was that there was no reasonable way of stopping this, so the goal was to ensure as best as possible that no one died because they couldn&#x27;t receive the supportive care they needed: meaning, because there was no ICU bed available for them.<p>The lockdown mechanism was meant to be periodic and short-lived. We lockdown if we see hospitals are going to be overrun. Then, we open back up again. We don&#x27;t sacrifice our economy — and our sanity — by keeping things shutdown long-term. We swallow hard and realize that people are going to die. We protect the vulnerable by encouraging them to take extra precautions.<p>But what have we done instead? According to the article, we failed to take into account both the very real phenomenon of lockdown fatigue, and the phenomenon of simply kicking the can down the road: namely, avoiding more cases in the summer (via lockdowns) to then have them pile up in the winter.<p>So, here we are in L.A. and elsewhere. Now, despite the draconian lockdowns and damage to the economy and people&#x27;s sanity and general well-being, the hospitals are overwhelmed. Ambulances are circling, looking for an empty bed, while their patient-passengers gasp for air.<p>The moral here is that politicians (and much of the populace) panicked and turned into obsessive-compulsives, convinced that if they only did that &quot;one more thing,&quot; they could make everything right. And now we see how ridiculous that turned out to be.