No matter how you dissect the numbers—and there are many ways to slice them—Randall Bolten says the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic has been “shockingly poor, if not disastrous.”

Bolten, a longtime Silicon Valley CFO, UC Berkeley professor, data scientist and author of Painting With Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You, points to this country’s failure to control the spread of new cases as the reason for his dire assessment. That, plus the continuing deaths, inadequate testing and the politicization of decisions that should be purely science-based, but are often not, as factors to why the U.S. has the highest rate of new cases of Covid-19 in the world.

According to Reuters, the U.S. took 98 days to reach one million confirmed cases of Covid-19, but just 16 days [in mid to late July] to increase from 3 million to 4 million.

Last week, Bolten released a research note of four specific graphs focusing on the U.S. and comparing how it is doing in the crisis compared to 13 other countries with similar resources and healthcare infrastructure, including Canada and a dozen other devloped Western European nations.

For the purposes of his study, Bolten left out Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand “because their Covid-19 numbers are too small to show up on these graphs.”

Bolten’s first graph featuring the trend of new Covid-19 cases in the U.S., the most widely-used measure of the pandemic’s spread, showed the U.S. and Sweden were the only two out of 14 countries in this study that hit a second surge/peak around Week 13 after the pandemic first hit the respective countries.

However, Sweden’s new cases are now down 50 percent, while the average number of new cases in the U.S. through July 23 rose by more than 2,600 per hour, the highest rate in the world. While many have attributed the surge in new cases to an increase in testing, Bolten said even if that were true, more testing cannot explain that many new cases.

“If testing is getting ramped up in other wealthy parts of the world, why are other countries not seeing the spike in new cases as the U.S.,” said Bolton, who spent 35 years in Silicon Valley working as a finance executive at high-tech companies. “If in fact we’re doing a lot more random testing and getting the pandemic under control, then what we call the positivity rate—the percentage of tests showing up positive for Covid-19—would go down and it’s not going down. More testing doesn’t mean more new cases. It just isn’t true, and those kind of statements are on the verge of lying.”

The U.S. recorded more than 1,100 Covid-19 deaths on each day from July 22 to 24, and even though the mortality rate has lowered, Bolten said the narrative that some people are taking that Covid-19 is not a deadly disease is flat-out dishonest.

“When the dust settles on this, we’re going to find out the fatality rate for Covid is somewhere around 1 percent,” he said. “The fatality rate of the common flu is 1/10th of 1 percent. In other words, Covid is 10 times as lethal as the flu. Covid is lethal and a lot of what you hear from people pooh-poohing this that it isn’t very deadly, well, that’s just not credible. One of the reasons they say this is to make their failure to deal with the pandemic not as terrible a mistake as it really is.”

Bolton said that motivating and mandating safe public practices and effective testing are the two critical factors a nation can take to control a pandemic’s spread, especially when a significant portion of those infected are asymptomatic. The former has elicited fierce arguments—requirements to wear masks in public have become the subject of a fierce political divide—as many argue such orders violate the U.S. Constitution.

States that have been hit hardest in the recent surge—California, Arizona and southern states—all reopened their economies sooner than they should have, with certain segments of the population failing to observe sound personal safety and health conduct.

“The population simply hasn’t gotten on board with good health management practices,” Bolten said. “Wearing masks, social distancing, this is really straightforward stuff. The problem is when a hot spot shows up in one place, it’s inevitable it will spread to another place. This is especially true in a big country like the U.S., where even now there is a fair amount of mobility with people traveling either in cars or planes.”

When it comes to strategic testing—testing people as the result of contact tracing, periodic testing in high-risk and high-contact occupations like health care and food service, and testing individuals when a recent experience justifies—Bolten’s study says the U.S. ranks only in the middle of the pack compared to other Westernized countries.

Strategic testing differs from necessary testing, which involves testing because people show symptoms. Strategic testing is superior because they give more insightful results to help control the spread of the disease.

Bolten said that countries that have done an effective job of testing—think Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Iceland and Denmark—don’t have a lot of new cases and thus don’t burn up testing capacity dealing with people who are sick.

As a result, those countries can use the testing capacity to proactively test on people who are in sensitive industries so they don’t inadvertently start another hot spot. That’s why testing is so important, but it takes a fair amount of technology and a lot of personnel to implement something like contact tracing.

“So someone can test positive for Covid whether they’re showing symptoms or not, and they can get a phone call from somebody who is a tracer who will say, ‘OK, let’s go back three days. Who have you been in contact with?’” Bolten said. “The contact tracer can go backward and start letting people know they may have been in contact with a person who tested positive and they should get tested. This isn’t complicated, but it takes a lot of process and some technology to do contact tracing effectively.”

The eight to 10 days Bolten said it takes to receive a result from a Covid-19 test in the U.S. is another impediment to controlling the spread of the pandemic. By then the patient could be cured, out into society and infected a bunch of people without knowing it.

“So all in all testing is just a disaster in spite of what people are saying,” Bolten said in a recent interviw. “Frankly, I know our president said testing is overrated and that’s the kind of thing you would say if you were doing a terrible job of nationally organized testing. You haven’t done a good job, so of course you’re going to say testing is overrated. It’s kind of a sour grapes statement to say considering this country has kind of dropped the ball on how to handle this pandemic.”

With limited federal labor benefits, including increased unemployment benefits, set to expire—or at least be significantly reduced—in the coming days, California labor groups are pushing state and local lawmakers to boost labor protections in the Golden State.

Throughout the pandemic, a statewide coalition of labor advocates has urged lawmakers to extend sick leave and other benefits, which they argue will allow workers to stay home and prevent the spread of Covid-19.

In February, state Assemblymembers Ash Karla and Lorena Gonzalez introduced Assembly Bill 3216, which would offer workers various extra protections amid the pandemic. The Assembly passed the bill in June, and the Senate is currently considering doing the same.

However, in an effort to appease business groups, the legislation has been significantly watered down during the legislative process, says Maddy Hirshfield, the political director for the North Bay Labor Council.

As a result, the North Bay Labor Council and its allies are pushing local North Bay cities and counties to pass stronger local sick-leave laws, namely a 10-day sick-leave mandate for companies with over 500 employees. 

Under federal rules, employers with more than 500 employees are exempt from Covid-19 sick leave rules. And, under the current version of AB 3216, employees would only receive three days of additional sick leave.

Hirschfield and other advocates, including North Bay Jobs With Justice, who support the state and local measures, say that in addition to providing workers with economic protections when they fall sick, the rule will help prevent the spread of Covid-19. For instance, if a low-income worker in the food service or hospitality industry catches the virus, they would be paid to stay home instead of being required to return to work.

“People will go to work sick if they don’t think they’re going to get paid. It’s just the reality,” says Hirschfield. “It’s a public health risk in the best of times, but during the pandemic it’s a public health nightmare to have people going to work sick.”

“If we’re ever going to flatten this curve we’ve got to use all the tools in the toolbox and providing people an incentive to stay home when they’re sick is a pretty important tool,” Hirschfield adds.

To date, nine local governments, including the cities of Santa Rosa, San Mateo County, San Jose and San Francisco, have passed local sick-leave policies since the start of the pandemic shutdown. Hirshfield says the group is pushing the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and other cities in the county to consider a version of 10-day sick-leave policy.

Santa Rosa passed the sick-leave extension unanimously in June. Their ruling exempted the city’s own employees from the new rule.

As one might imagine, some businesses are not happy about the state and local proposals, arguing that additional sick leave will be costly to employers who they say are also struggling due to the pandemic’s economic impacts. 

An Assembly staff report states that a group of employers, including the California Chamber of Commerce, opposes AB 3216, the state labor legislation.

“[The bill] imposes staggering, significant and unprecedented new requirements on businesses of all sizes in California during a time of crisis when they can least afford it,” the report states.

In addition to expanding and extending sick leave during the pandemic, the bill would require some employers—including hotels and event centers—to offer laid-off employees their jobs back in writing once the company begins to rehire. That requirement, known as the Right of Recall, seems particularly offensive to business groups.

In a letter to the Assembly opposing AB 3216, the California Chamber of Commerce raised the threat of litigation against the state and the local governments which have already passed similar legislation. According to the Assembly staff report, the Chamber is arguing that the requirement is “the statutory right of recall contained in AB 3216 is legally suspect and would likely be struck down.”

The city and county of Los Angeles passed Right of Recall requirements for some businesses back in May.

Outraged by the rapidly growing number of Covid-19 cases in San Quentin State Prison, 14 protesters chained themselves to a driveway gate in front of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home in suburban Sacramento on Monday, July 28.

Gov. Newsom, who lived in Marin County before his election as governor, has failed to manage the Covid-19 outbreak in the state prison system properly, the organizers of the protest, the California Liberation Collective, argued in a statement to the Associated Press.

By Tuesday, July 28, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported 7,704 total Covid-19 cases throughout the state prison system. There are 1,753 active cases and 47 deaths across the system, including 528 active cases and 19 deaths at San Quentin alone.

The group also called on Newsom to stop all coordination with the federal immigration agency, ICE.

“(Newsom) criticizes Trump when convenient, but … turns incarcerated Californians who are eligible for release over to ICE instead of their loved ones,” the group told the Associated Press in a statement.

The Associated Press reported that Highway Patrol officers cut the chained protesters off of the fence as dozens more protesters stood nearby in support. It was not immediately clear how many people were arrested.

Contact Corps

Marin County Public Health and Dominican University announced a new partnership on Tuesday, July 28, which promises to give students important experience helping public officials track—and ultimately restrict—the spread of Covid-19.

During the coming fall semester, the university will offer up to 20 students spots in the one-unit course. Students will complete an online training course and then work with public health officials to track the spread of the virus.

“(Contact tracing) is a century-old public health strategy for communicable disease control,” Dr. Patti Culross, director of the university’s Global Public Health program, said in a statement about the partnership. 

The county is funding the course in the hopes that participants will be able to bolster the number of local contact tracers. Currently, about half of the county’s contact tracers are volunteers, according to a statement from the county.

“Although that inspirational spirit is needed to help limit the virus’ spread and tremendously appreciated during the crisis, it will take more than volunteers to effectively handle the demand in the coming weeks and months,” the county statement says.

“We want to be prepared for the ebbs and flows of volunteers as we move forward in this pandemic,” Deputy Public Health Officer Dr. Lisa Santora said of the program. “And we also know that as the school year starts there will be more social activity and possibly an increased number of cases in our county. Having that workforce development opportunity with the university will have us better prepared as we see the increases in cases, which we do expect to see.”