When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, few parts of the country consider California – with its record infections, congested hospitals and confusing vaccine distribution – to be better off.
Then there is Arizona.
This 7.2 million state now has the worst coronavirus infection rate in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hospitals are filling up, with only 150 beds in intensive care units available across the state at any given time. Rural areas, including farm-rich Yuma, turn to patients flying to Phoenix. The rate of residents taking the test is among the 10 lowest in America.
As the masking and shutdown strategy ruled vast areas of California to contain a winter spike in the virus, its more politically conservative neighbor to the east has doubled in a totally different approach, refusing masking measures across the state, allowing restaurants and bars closed, and reversing the decision this month to cancel high school sports.
For a virus that depends on people breathing close to each other to spread, Arizona “created the perfect climate,” said Will Humble, executive director of Arizona Public Health Assn. “It is a recipe for disaster. The hot spot was California. But we did nothing to prevent the increase. Now, it’s us. “
So much so that a limited number of consultations at the two vaccination sites administered by the government were scheduled within a few hours this week and are now fully scheduled for February.
Scenes from the black winter of the pandemic have become familiar in California since much of the state went through the strictest closure measures last year: night sirens on empty streets as ambulances rush to crowded hospitals. Queues in supermarkets with capacity limits. Restaurants and gyms closed. Schooling zoom. Delays in the distribution of the vaccine.
A similar sense of foreboding developed in Arizona’s Yuma County, where field workers and migrant farm workers were hit particularly hard in what is known as the country’s “salad bowl”. About 20% of the tests there are positive, against 14% in the state. During the pandemic, about 1 in 6 residents in the region became infected. Army Reserve nurses now fly to help struggling health workers.
But in Phoenix and other cities, life goes on as if the virus can be eliminated through arrogance and sheer challenge.
This week, a concert hall in downtown Phoenix, where more than 100 people stood shoulder to shoulder for a hip-hop show, made local headlines. Not because it happened. But because the venue, one of many operating in the region with lax compliance with rules at crowded closed events, was caught for having an audience of over 50 without authorization and lost its liquor license.
In Tucson, the state’s second largest city, bars won a temporary postponement in court this week against a short curfew at 10 pm set to contain the crowds closed late at night.
“I understand, people are extremely tired with the virus. Pretending that it doesn’t exist is not the solution, ”said Joshua LaBaer, a diagnostic specialist and director of the research center at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. LaBaer, whose center runs test sites across the state, estimated that “between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 people in Arizona currently have an active case of the virus.”
The tests, he said, are also below expectations.
“We offer more tests and we have availability, even on our free public test sites, but people are not signing up. It is unclear why, ”he said, adding that this makes him less optimistic about infection rates that in recent days have fallen slightly.
“There are about 15,000 exams a day across the state. This is low for one of the national and global hot spots and makes me believe that the number of real cases is higher ”, said LaBaer. “We must test 80,000 or 100,000 daily.”
State officials largely rejected calls from hospitals for swift action to ease the pressure on overburdened ICUs. Last month, medical directors at eight of the state’s largest hospitals wrote a letter to Governor Doug Ducey and Arizona Department of Health Services director Cara Christ asking for curfews and an end to indoor dinners and group sports. .
The changes would be similar to the short-term closings that were implemented across the state in June and July, when Arizona’s summer peak brought in more than 3,800 cases a day during its peak. Today, the average has jumped to 8,000 cases a day. The increasing number of hospitalizations has led to a shortage of staff. Banner Health, the state’s largest hospital system, has hired 1,500 contractors from outside the state and is looking for almost 1,000 more.
Ducey, a Republican, stood firm in his opposition while the mayors of Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff begged him to make the masks mandatory.
“Since the beginning of COVID-19, there have been disagreements on how to deal with this. … I’ve heard infinite variations of the same question: Why don’t I block longer and longer? ”He said this month during his state of the state address.
“It’s a question that only makes sense if you forget everything else – all the other problems that the blockages have set in motion. If we are really in this together, we have to recognize that for many families, ‘blocking’ does not mean inconvenience, it means catastrophe ”.
Ducey said he wants to keep more people on the job listings instead of outside of them. The state’s unemployment rate was 7.5% last month, down half a point from November. Nationally, the unemployment rate in December was 6.7%. Arizona’s besieged unemployment agency has paid more than $ 12 billion in unemployment benefits to more than 2 million workers since the pandemic began.
In a state where the conservative and doubtful currents of the dangers of COVID-19 are strong, some applauded the governor.
“It is unconstitutional to place such a rule,” said Aaron Strassberg, 39, who lives in North Phoenix. “It’s stupid and ridiculous.”
He quit his delicatessen job at Fry’s Marketplace, a supermarket chain, months ago, after the company demanded that employees wear masks. Strassberg said he knew people who became ill with the virus, but no one who died or became seriously ill. He preferred to do business with stores that did not meet local mask requirements or were actively against them.
One of his favorites, Teeslingers, a t-shirt store north of Phoenix in Cave Creek, is now under police investigation after the owner aimed a gun at a customer for violating the store’s mask ban policy.
Ginger Sykes Torres, another resident of North Phoenix, said his family took an opposite approach to the virus and followed widely accepted scientific guidelines.
“We don’t go to restaurants and try to stay at home,” said Torres, 43, whose great-uncle died a few weeks ago from COVID-19. “It’s hard not to be discouraged when people aren’t taking it seriously, because we take it very seriously.”
Navajo mother of three, she spends her free time sending packages of masks, disinfectants and protective equipment to residents and doctors in the city of Tuba, in the Navajo nation, where her mother lives. The virus mainly affected indigenous communities in the state.
Torres recently received good news. Her mother, who works for a company that transports patients between clinics and hospitals, received her first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine after a four-hour wait in line.
“For our family, I know it will take more time for the vaccine, unless things change dramatically,” she said. “But this is a start and a relief.”