Before Reopening, California Counties Must Meet “Equity” Standard

Walter OlsonThis seems as if it ought to be more controversial: yesterday the state of California implemented a COVID-19 “health equity” metric mandating that counties demonstrate that they are investing in “eliminating disparities in levels of transmission” affecting disadvantaged communities, or have already eliminated such disparities, as a condition of being allowed toreopen economic activity any further. Simply achieving a satisfactory overall low rate of transmission will not be enough.Notice that the rationale for the policy cannot be simply a concern that a county is not truly safe overall so long as it still has any hot spots of higher prevalence. If that were the concern, the straightforward response would be to require a showing of investment in addressing whatever localized hot spots a county might have, no matter what their racial or socioeconomic composition.Although the current wave of COVID infection in California tends to correlate with poorer and minority communities, we know that over the course of the pandemic many hot spots have emerged in places that were not especially disadvantaged economically — ski resorts, college towns, places with many international business travelers, and so forth. Apparently it’s going to be fine for a county to reopen in California if it ’s got localized hot spots in categories like those, so long as its overall countywide numbers are satisfactory.Writes local reporter Bill ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs