While panicked politicians in the City of Angels debate new Covid mandates and restrictions, LA County health director (not a doctor) Ferrer, the county’s largest safety net hospital, LA County-USC, explained how their already very low COVID burden continues to decline.

Some highlights:

“Right now, by my count, we have approximately 45 COVID positives in the hospital of whom five were admitted due to COVID, none of whom have severe COVID. Half of those 45 are simply awaiting placement of one type or another and actually don’t need to be in the hospital at all…

“Most people have a test positive only because we test every human being who is admitted to the hospital. There is no medical reason that one would have gotten a COVID test on the vast majority of these people. So we wouldn’t see this spike if we were only testing people who came in for respiratory illnesses, which is a very small number.”