As I type this, I’m sitting in my undecorated kitchen in Los Angeles, blasting Spotify’s “Christmas Favourites” playlist and trying to summon something resembling cheer. Instead, I started tearing up while Don Henley wailed about bells ringing “sad, sad news.”Suffice to say, it’s still rough going for the Golden State. Intensive care units across the state are at or near capacity, and tens of thousands more people are testing positive for the coronavirus every day. Even if the surge drops off sharply — not likely, given how things went after Thanksgiving, experts say — the state has predicted that patients will continue to flood intensive care units and emergency rooms well into January. Health care workers are exhausted, overworked and feeling mounting “moral distress,” as Joanne Spetz, a professor at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco, explained earlier this week.

Source: New York Times December 24, 2020 14:03 UTC