Edhat StaffBy edhat staff
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department reports 396 new cases of COVID-19 on the final day of 2020.
There are currently 1,456 active cases within the community. Of those, 135 are hospitalized including 34 are in the intensive care unit (ICU).
There were 3 deaths reported on Thursday. The individuals resided in the regions of Santa Barbara and unincorporated Mission Canyon, Lompoc and the communities of Mission Hills and Vandenberg Village, and the City of Santa Maria. Two individuals were over 70 years of age and one was between 50-69 years old. Two individuals had underlying medical conditions and one death was associated with an outbreak at a congregate facility.
There was an additional death reported on Wednesday. The individual was over 70 years old with underlying medical conditions and resided in the Unincorporated areas of the Goleta Valley. The death was associated with an outbreak at a congregate facility.
There have now been 160 deaths in 2020 directly related to the COVID-19 virus.
The Public Health Department continues to state that the majority of infections, and subsequently the deaths, are due to people ignoring the rules and gathering outside of their household. This allows the virus to spread which is then contracted by someone who cannot fight it off, and dies.
Santa Barbara County’s ICU availability is 4.4%, meaning there is a nominal amount of space available for the inevitable amount of people who will get sick in the coming weeks due to unprohibited gatherings during the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Public health officials, doctors, and scientists vigorously urge everyone to stay home, wear a mask, and wash their hands to prevent spreading and catching this contagious and deadly virus.
For more information on data visit https://publichealthsbc.org/status-reports/
Hey everyone, stop being jerks and stay home.
The silver lining is that all these new cases have pushed down the morality rate for SB County, as fewer people recently testing positive are dying. On November 1st the mortality was 1.45%. Today it’s only 1.07%. That’s even better when you consider that the number of asymptomatic cases has also decreased. The percentage of people without symptoms was 10.3% on November 1st. Today it’s only 8.3%. So more people testing positive today are reporting symptoms than 2 months ago, yet a smaller percentage are dying compared to 2 months ago. Regardless of the cause, it’s important to point out some of these positive developments because they shouldn’t be overlooked when staring at such frightening daily case numbers.
CSF-thank you once again for a dose of truth and for being positive instead of a doomsdayer! A rare find these days.
Happy New Year.
Yup. Those carts to “bring out yer dead” haven’t showed up yet, so we should all party.
420722, I take the virus seriously, but there’s a sad contingent of commenters that feed on negativity and seem to enjoy scaring people. This group deserves some pushback from time to time and I’m glad the are at least a few rational people left who haven’t succumb to the hysteria. A very Happy New Year to you as well!
9:30 & 11:29 PM :
I don’t think you understand the severity of the pandemic.
Do you think 346,000 deaths in the USA alone are faked?
International death totals are faked?
Other countries are in on the conspiracy?
Too little thinking behind such a comment.
So little empathy.
OAITW, First, if you read carefully you’ll see that I clearly wrote “Regardless of the cause”, which signals that I am not assigning causation. I’m not sure where you got the causation from when all I did was point out trends in the data. Second, I don’t think you understand how the formula works. Mortality should be calculated by dividing the number of dead by the sum of the number of dead and recovered (mortality = (dead)/(dead + recovered)). Some people also calculate it by a more imprecise method, which is the number of dead divided by the total cases (mortality = (dead)/(total cases)). Either way, it should be obvious that anything that increases the denominator in those formulas (dead + recovered, or total cases) will decrease the mortality. Therefore the more recovered you have, or the more total cases, the lower the mortality. I hope that clears it up for you.
Public Health says majority of cases are due to people commingling in the community without taking proper precaution. I would assume elderly and unhealthy people are not doing this – if they are, then stupid is as stupid does. Most of the people I see out an about are younger people who typically do not have elderly roommates. So, how are these elderly/unhealthy people getting Covid? Are you telling me they are are at home and then allowing people to come into their homes to spread the virus? I am asking this not be snarky – I truly would like to know WTF is going on.
Elderly have care givers that live in crowded homes and have a hard time quarantining and distancing. Not so hard to figure out why they are getting sick.
Hey, Freak, so people being frightened by the prospect of dying with a tube in their lungs are a “death cult”?
So you think that’s rational pushback?
Get over yourself.
OK now I see – because there are a bunch of people living together in close quarters who do not have the common sense to NOT get Covid to begin with our Governor thinks we should shut down our economy and deprive kids of in person education so as to not alienate this subset of society. This still smells like political correctness and voter pandering.
And the way you do not get COVID in the first place is by staying home and closing nonessential businesses and places where people gather for long periods of time like schools, churches, and restaurants.
Nope!! As per the cdc and public health, studies are showing less transmission in places with school in place. We’re choosing to make SB worse, Less intelligent and less safe by keeping schools closed. But yeah…keep doing your part to make everything worse by anonymously posting comments like that which completely disregard science!
Restaurants were open all summer long, and there was no spike in COVID cases. On the contrary, there was a decrease in the number of cases. In NY, when they reopened schools, there was no increase in the infection rate that could be attributed to in-school attendance. I can’t speak to faith-based activities, being an atheist, but my impression is that some religious institutions were holding services responsibly, wearing masks and socially distancing.
What caused the spike was people congregating indoors in private homes. In my opinion, the lockdown forces people indoors, whether they are more likely to congregate unwisely, letting their guard down vis-a-vis mask-wearing and social distancing and generally acting less responsibly than they would, say, at a restaurant, where their actions are visible to many observers and more likely to draw criticism.
I agree Loose Cannon. The measures our state took to combat covid actually made things worse, with so much collateral damage as well.
5:24 5:57 5:58 and 6:32 PM –
9:30 & 11:29 PM :
I don’t think you understand the severity of the pandemic.
Do you think 349,000 deaths in the USA alone are faked?
International death totals are faked?
Other countries are in on the conspiracy?
Too little thinking behind such comments.
So little understanding.
Never the same twice.
Since I left a comment at 5:58pm, I assume that this rant is directed, in part, towards me.
So to answer your litany. Yes, I do understand the severity of the pandemic; I don’t think deaths are faked; I don’t think there’s a conspiracy.
I don’t think it’s necessary to close all restaurants, shut down vast sectors of the economy, and deprive our children of in-school learning–these edicts seem to be based on hysteria, rather than science.
A-1609641723. Instead of formulating an argument, or marshalling evidence to support yourself, you get all emotional and impugn the motives of people with real, valid concerns. You are a bad witness for the prosecution. But a good example of a hysteric.
Yes, I read the article from US News & World Report. Yawn. I’m more of a NY Times/Guardian reader and NPR listener myself, but that’s beside the point. I’d rather go on the basis of the recommendation by our local health authorities, who gave the green light for in-school learning, rather than some dubious outfit teaching people “financial literacy,” whatever that means. Anyway, the vaccine is here now and teachers are going to be offered it very soon, so then there’ll be no excuse for the lack of proper in-school instruction. Open the schools already. No excuses.
Vaccination is key. Otherwise, breaking the healthcare protocols on gatherings is just throwing lighted matches into gasoline.
Just an incredibly poorly written article (yes yes I know I will use the wrong there their and they’re 11 times in the next 4 posts) that basis their conclusions on 2 super spreader outbreaks that occurred over the Summer…in India. It’s an interesting comp… though I’m not sure the Delhi school district and the Goleta school district is a great comp. Other than though… fun link that led to some other fun links… silly through and through and directly in contradiction with up to date cdc recommendations… but fun none the less! And at least it wasn’t a copy and paste, so… that’s a plus!