 | | Construction workers eat lunch outside of a restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles.Philip Cheung for The New York Times |
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Not long after those first cases were found, experts began warning about how it would disproportionately hurt poorer people, whose jobs were likely to be deemed essential, and who were likely to be members of communities of color. |
But what's been less discussed is the role of deeply rooted inequality — long magnified in California — in driving the rampant spread of the virus. |
Over the weekend, my colleagues on The Times's Graphics desk and I published a piece looking at how that has played out in Los Angeles County, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, neighborhood by neighborhood. |
 | | Part of the map showing how the pandemic has affected Los Angeles, the nation's most populous county, unevenly. |
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While it's perhaps unsurprising at this point that lower-income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods have been hit harder by the virus than richer, whiter communities, the interactive map shows in stark relief the differences. |
It also illustrates clearly how Los Angeles is defined by "profound inequities that overlap with geography," as Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, put it in a tweet. |
There has been much focus on how much individuals are adhering to public health directives, but as we reported, for the essential workers who can't shelter, and who can't afford enough space to isolate if they or their loved ones get sick, even following guidelines to the letter isn't protection if the virus is everywhere in their neighborhood. |
"What we're seeing, still, is that a lot of families don't have any other choice but to continue business as usual," said Laura Hidalgo, the leader of a Covid-19 outreach team for Meet Each Need With Dignity, a nonprofit group based in Pacoima. |
In Pacoima — a predominantly Latino neighborhood in San Fernando Valley where much of our story is set — one in five residents has been infected with Covid-19, compared with one in 24 residents of much whiter Santa Monica. Pacoima's median household income is about $56,000, compared with $97,000 in Santa Monica. |
If you explore the map, other similar contrasts show up: In El Sereno, a rapidly gentrifying Los Angeles neighborhood with a median household income of about $57,000, one in seven residents have been infected. In the neighboring South Pasadena, a small city of tree-lined streets that often shows up in movies as an idyllic American suburb, one in 22 residents have been infected. The median household income is roughly $106,000. |
Daniel Flaming, president of the nonprofit Economic Roundtable, told me that "income polarization" within Los Angeles County, coupled with the fact that a large number of the region's lower-paid workers are in service industries where they must interact with customers, has made the surge in the county, the nation's most populous, particularly intense. |
But if you zoom in or out, the patterns, the inequities, repeat. |
And on a larger scale, researchers for the Community and Labor Center at the University of California, Merced, wrote in a July policy brief that California's summer surge was hammering counties with high concentrations of low-wage workers, including in the Central Valley, where relatively high case rates have persisted throughout the pandemic. |
Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration and state lawmakers have scrambled to blunt the effects of the pandemic, imposing dozens of rules for employers; starting programs to give essential workers, like in health care or agriculture, access to free hotel rooms to isolate; and introducing other initiatives aimed at getting aid to the most vulnerable. |
Most recently, legislators passed a bill allocating billions in federal pandemic aid to help tenants pay back rent and extending what many advocates have said are desperately needed eviction protections. |
But many of those regulations haven't been sufficiently enforced, said Edward Flores, an associate professor at U.C. Merced, who was the lead author of the policy brief. And some of the state's most vulnerable essential workers, those who are undocumented, largely haven't had access to aid. |
It's all worth considering as the state moves through its latest attempt at reopening, including in Los Angeles, where over the weekend, restaurants and a host of other businesses were able to reopen outdoors or with restrictions. |
Because, as experts have said time and again, when one part of the community is being hit hard, it puts everyone at risk. |
 | | The recreation center at U.C. Davis has been turned into a testing site. Max Whittaker for The New York Times |
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- In Davis, the University of California is in a pandemic bubble expanded to fit the whole city, rather than limited to just the campus. It involves a lot of testing. It's a "big science project" — and it seems to be helping. [The New York Times]
- Dozens of anti-vaccination protesters gathered at the entrance of the Dodger Stadium vaccination site on Saturday, shutting down inoculations for nearly an hour. [The New York Times]
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If you missed it, read about a day of vaccinations at the stadium: Hours of traffic and 7,730 shots. [The New York Times] |
- Here are answers to all — and I mean all — of your questions about getting vaccinated for Covid-19. [The New York Times]
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Here's what else to know today |
- Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency in San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties after winter storms caused widespread damage. [KSBY]
- Part of Highway 1 in the Big Sur area was closed after a large chunk of the road crumbled into the sea. Video footage of the damage is really something. [The New York Times]
- "We have different ways of making money that they don't understand," said a college senior in San Diego. Meet the young, fearless traders shaking Wall Street. [The New York Times]
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- Jared Goff, the Cal grad who was quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, is headed to the Detroit Lions. And Matthew Stafford, who went to high school in Texas with Clayton Kershaw, is headed to the Rams. This all says a lot about the N.F.L.'s quarterback market. [The New York Times]
- We may not have a California team in the game, but here's how to downscale your Super Bowl spread, if you observe. [The New York Times]
- OK, it's only marginally related to sports, but Amanda Gorman, the young inaugural poet from Los Angeles who stole the show, will perform during the Super Bowl preshow. [The New York Times]
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 | | Becky Crabtree took a photo of her daughter Rachel Crabtree and her dog Sadie on Manhattan Beach after winter storms blanketed the region with rain, snow and hail on Friday.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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But you might not get another opportunity to see a blanket of white on Manhattan Beach. (It was, as ABC7 reported, hail.) |
Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter. |
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley. |
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