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HUMBOLDT’S MIGHTIEST LAWN CARE SERVICE
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The rate at which Humboldt County’s COVID-19 testing samples have returned positive has risen to 10.4 percent, far outpacing the national average of 7.8 percent. File
The Barnstable Effect
An unsettling new CDC report and what it means as cases spike in Humboldt By Thadeus Greenson thad@northcoastjournal.com
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Photo by Aleisha Bradley
The Zwerdling Law Firm wishes to thank the Northcoast residents who voted our firm as:
Zwerdling Law Firm • Best Law Office Zach Zwerdling • Best Attorney In the North Coast Journal’s 2021 Best of Humboldt Competition. Awards like this are gratifying but what really counts for us is providing the highest quality legal representation. Our clients have suffered serious injuries or the loss of a loved one. It is an important responsibility for us to make sure each is afforded the justice they deserve. Our firm is totally local and we have been serving Humboldt County for 45 years. We look forward to another 45.
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707-798-6211 office@zwerdlinglaw.com
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NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021 • northcoastjournal.com
o understand the abrupt aboutface in masking recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state of California and Humboldt County Public Health, you have to take a hard look into what happened in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Entering the Fourth of July weekend, it looked like Barnstable County largely had COVID-19 under control. Nearly three in four eligible county residents were fully vaccinated, with 82 percent having received at least one shot. On July 3, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported Barnstable County, which has a population of about 213,000, had a 14-day average of zero new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents per day. In short, things looked promising. But in the ensuing two weeks, according to the CDC, “multiple summer events and large public gatherings were held” and cases quickly followed. In all, the CDC report traces 469 cases back to Massachusetts residents who attended those events and gatherings, though local officials say the total case count is well north of 800. Of the cases the CDC tracked, 74 percent were traced back to fully vaccinated people. Of those breakthrough cases, almost 80 percent were symptomatic, with patients most commonly reporting coughs, headaches, sore throats, muscle pain and
fever. Five hospitalizations were tied to the case cluster, including four fully vaccinated individuals, two of whom had underlying medical conditions. Genomic sequencing from the case cluster found two things of note. First, nearly 90 percent of the cases were the highly contagious Delta variant, which health officials have described as the 2020 version of COVID-19 on steroids and now accounts for 85 percent of all new cases in the United States. Then, alarmingly, the sequencing indicated fully-vaccinated breakthrough patients carried a similar viral load — or the amount of virus present in a sample, an indicator of how much virus an infected individual is shedding and therefore of how contagious they are — as their unvaccinated counterparts. The report also notes that asymptomatic spread among the fully vaccinated might be underrepresented. Even in a preliminary form, the data was considered a game changer, according to internal CDC documents leaked to the Washington Post, and reportedly spurred officials to take immediate action even before the data’s official July 30 release. Specifically, the CDC issued a recommendation that everyone — regardless of vaccination status — resume masking in indoor public spaces in areas of “high” or “substantial virus spread,” which includes Humboldt County (read more on page 21). That recommendation was quickly followed by
