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Poverty and long COVID go together in California

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Poverty and long COVID go together in California


When the COVID-19 pandemic fully reached California in early 2020, experts in the fields of low-wage work and poverty braced for the worst. Their fear: The state’s poorest residents, often living in crowded conditions with inferior access to both information and adequate health care, were likely to suffer from the virus disproportionately.

That concern was prescient. Poorer communities in the state were wracked by dramatically outsized rates of infection and death in the pandemic’s first year. Workers in low-paying but “essential” jobs — in agriculture, food service, sanitation, public transportation — continued to be called into work, sometimes in unsafe conditions that further prompted disease spread.

It was an ugly picture. And its effects are still being drawn.

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New information from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research shows that among California adults who tested positive for COVID, those with the lowest incomes were more than twice as likely as those with the highest incomes to have experienced long COVID — in this case, symptoms of the virus that last for two months or more. The long COVID figure for those at the lowest income levels was a staggering 50%, versus a 29% average for all adults and 22% for those at the highest income levels.

The data, drawn from the center’s California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), defined those earning 0% to 99% of the federal poverty level as the lowest income group, with those at 300% or more of the FPL as the highest income group. For 2023, the FPL, a measure of annual income issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is $14,580 for individuals, $19,720 for a family of two and $30,000 for a family of four.

Such rates of lingering symptoms have corrosive effects down the line. Those suffering from long COVID symptoms were three times more likely to quit their jobs in order to care for themselves or a family member than were those whose symptoms lasted less than two months, said CHIS director Todd Hughes.

Further, Hughes said, 9% of those who experienced long COVID symptoms are currently unemployed and looking for work. The figure was only 6% among those who’d reported symptoms lasting less than two months.

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“And a lower rate of those with long COVID symptoms are considered fully or full-time employed — 54%, versus 61% among those who had symptoms of less than two months,” Hughes said. “So there appears to be a current impact on employment situations.”

The full scope and effects of long COVID are some of the final frontiers for scientists and others studying the pandemic. In September, the National Center for Health Statistics estimated that in 2022, 7% of American adults had experienced long COVID, which it defined as self-reporting symptoms for at least three months after contracting the virus. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines long COVID as symptoms that last more than a month.

In an August report, the CDC noted that long COVID in U.S. adults has been associated with “lower likelihood of working full time and higher likelihood of being unemployed.” It also referred to data from the New York State Insurance Fund, which found that 18% of claimants with long COVID could not return to work for more than a year.

“The larger economic and societal impact of long COVID could be far-reaching if working-age adults are unable to maintain employment or care for children or aging parents,” the CDC report said.

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The UCLA center’s survey is an ongoing, rolling questionnaire of Californians on a variety of health-related topics. The long COVID results, released in late October, are drawn from July 2023 data.

What the survey doesn’t explain, nor does it attempt to, is the why. But medical experts and social scientists alike have long understood that lower-wage workers in California generally have poorer access to quality health care, and for many, the lack of full-time work means they have to obtain such care on their own. In the time of COVID, that might include both testing and vaccinations.

“There’s a strong linkage between health insurance and employment,” Hughes said. Among the CHIS respondents, almost 20% of those with long COVID symptoms had experienced gaps in their health coverage in the past year, and nearly half cited cost as a reason why they either delayed getting care or didn’t seek any.

California has already seen what can happen when the state and federal government intervene to fend off the worst of a calamitous public event like the pandemic. The latest numbers from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), for example, show that pandemic aid dramatically reduced poverty in the state — and that the expiration of most of those programs is coinciding with a renewed rise in poverty rates.

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“Despite the economic shock of the pandemic, poverty in California actually declined because of major expansions to safety net programs,” said Sarah Bohn, a senior fellow at the PPIC who directs its economic policy center. “The federal Child Tax Credit and CalFresh food assistance programs were the largest expansions, aimed at low income Californians at risk of poverty.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom has successfully pushed to expand Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the federal Medicaid program, to include all income-eligible applicants regardless of their immigration status. A major leg of that expansion is set to begin in January, and it’s projected to reduce the number of Californians without any health insurance by nearly 1 million over time.

In the battle with COVID that is clearly still being waged, such interventions may prove critical to lifting lower-wage workers out of the worst of the virus’s effects. In other words, they’re merely the start — if the state is serious about putting COVID behind it.

Copyright Capital & Main, published with permission for USA Today Network.



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California

2 dead, 3 injured in shooting in Louisville’s California neighborhood

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2 dead, 3 injured in shooting in Louisville’s California neighborhood


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Two men are dead and three others injured in a mass shooting in the California neighborhood Saturday night, Louisville Metro Police said.

Second Division officers initially found four men with gunshot wounds in the 2200 block of Garland Avenue when they arrived at 7:30 p.m., LMPD spokesperson John Bradley said in a statement.

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Two men were pronounced dead at the scene, while the other two were taken to the University of Louisville Hospital for treatment. As of Sunday, one man was in “critical but stable condition,” while the other was in stable condition, Bradley said.

A fifth man was later found in the area, Bradley said Sunday. He was also taken to UofL Hospital, but his condition was unknown.

Police had not located a suspect Saturday night. LMPD’s homicide unit is investigating, Bradley said. Anyone with information about the shooting could call LMPD’s anonymous tip line at 502-574-5673.

The two men who died have not yet been identified.

Reach reporter Leo Bertucci at lbertucci@gannett.com or @leober2chee on X, formerly known as Twitter

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This story has been updated to add video. 



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California man beheaded his 1-year-old son with a knife, authorities say

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California man beheaded his 1-year-old son with a knife, authorities say


SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A man has been arrested on suspicion of beheading his 1-year-old son, Northern California authorities said.

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Friday that deputies responding to an early morning family disturbance call found a woman outside a home who told deputies that her husband Andrey Demskiy, 28, assaulted her and her mother.

Deputies forced their way into the house in northern Sacramento County when they learned Demskiy was inside with the boy. As they took him into custody, they found a “severed child’s head” in the bedroom where Demskiy was detained.

Detectives said Demskiy used a knife to behead his son after his wife and mother-in-law left the house, according to the statement. He was in custody and ineligible for bail, and was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

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The sheriff’s department and the county public defenders office did not respond to emails seeking information on whether Demskiy had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.



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Protests Swept California Campuses Last Year. Schools Are Now Blocking Them | KQED

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Protests Swept California Campuses Last Year. Schools Are Now Blocking Them | KQED


At UC Santa Cruz, police arrested one student who was using a megaphone during a demonstration on Oct. 7, according to an eyewitness who spoke to LookOut Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office public arrest reports show one person was arrested on the Santa Cruz campus for obstruction of a public officer and battery without injury that day.

While no arrests were made, Pomona College has suspended 12 students for the remainder of the 2024–25 academic year following an Oct. 7 demonstration in which they entered, damaged and vandalized a restricted building, according to the student newspaper. The college also banned dozens of students from the four other campuses of the Claremont Colleges, a consortium that includes Pomona.

Private colleges have implemented their own policy changes. Pomona College now requires students and faculty to swipe their ID cards to enter academic buildings. Since last semester, students and visitors entering USC are also required to show a school or photo ID.

Some students are still facing charges from last year’s protests

Few charges have been filed after UCLA’s encampment made headlines in April when counterprotesters led an attack on encampment protesters while law enforcement did not intervene for several hours. The following day, 254 people were arrested on charges related to the protest encampment. In October, two additional people were also arrested for participating in the counter-protester violence.

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The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office is pursuing three felony cases against individuals arrested at UCLA in relation to violence during last spring’s protests.

Meanwhile, the city attorney’s office is reviewing 93 misdemeanor cases from USC and 210 from UCLA, according to information it provided to CalMatters last month.

Lilyan Zwirzina, a junior at Cal Poly Humboldt, was among the students arrested in the early morning of April 30 following protesters occupying a campus building and ignoring orders to disperse from the university. Law enforcement took her to Humboldt County Correctional Facility, where she faced four misdemeanor charges, including resisting arrest. Zwirzina thought she’d have to cancel her study abroad semester, which conflicted with the court date she was given.

“I was pretty frustrated and kind of freaked out,” Zwirzina said. Authorities dropped the charges against her in July.

Pro-Palestinian protesters demand police officers go home during a protest outside of Siemens Hall at Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata on April 22, 2024. (Mark McKenna/CalMatters)

The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office didn’t pursue charges against 27 of the 39 people arrested, citing insufficient evidence. The 12 remaining cases were referred to the Cal Poly Humboldt Police Department for investigation. Those cases remain under investigation, according to the university.

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For 13 people, including students, arrested at Stanford University in June, the Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen has not pressed charges as of Nov. 20, according to information his office provided CalMatters.

Elsewhere across the state, some district attorneys are pursuing misdemeanor and felony charges against student protesters. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer is pursuing misdemeanor charges against 50 people, including two UCI professors, a teaching assistant, and 26 students, stemming from a protest at UC Irvine on Oct. 22, 2023. Charges include failure to disperse, resisting arrest and vandalism.

At Pomona College, 19 students were arrested on April 5 on charges of trespassing after some protesters entered and refused to leave an administrative building. Students arrested either had their cases dismissed or have accepted community service in lieu of further legal action. James Gutierrez, the attorney representing the arrested students, said he asked that the college drop charges against its students, citing their right to protest the use of paid tuition dollars.

“They are righteously demanding that their colleges, the ones they pay tuition to and housing fees and pour a lot of money into, that that university or college stop investing in companies that are directly supporting this genocide and indirectly supporting it,” he said.

Students fight back against campus protest policies

As administrators face the challenge of applying protest policies more uniformly and swiftly, the truer test of California public higher education institutions’ protest rules will be playing out in court.

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In one already resolved case, UC leadership agreed in August to comply with a court order requiring the campus to end programs or events that exclude Jewish students. A federal judge ruled some Jewish students in support of Israel who were blocked from entering the encampment had their religious liberties violated — though some Jewish students did participate in UCLA’s protest encampment.

Now, students have filed at least two lawsuits against their campuses and the UC system for violating their rights while ending student encampments last spring. In September, ACLU NorCal filed suits against the UC and UC Santa Cruz for not providing students due process when they immediately barred arrested students from returning to campus.

“Those students should have gotten a hearing, an opportunity to defend themselves or to explain themselves, and the school would have shown evidence of why they created a risk of disturbance on campus,” Chessie Thacher, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Northern California, said.

UC Santa Cruz spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said the university “appreciates the court’s careful deliberation” and that the university “is committed to upholding the right to free expression while also protecting the safety of its campus community.”

In October, ACLU SoCal filed lawsuits on behalf of two students and two faculty members against the UC and UCLA, alleging the actions the university took to break down the encampment violated their free speech rights.

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UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez told CalMatters via email that the university would respond in court and that UCLA “fully supports community members expressing their First Amendment rights in ways that do not violate the law, our policies, jeopardize community safety, or disrupt the functioning of the university.”

“The encampment that arose on campus this spring became a focal point for violence, a disruption to campus, and was in violation of the law,” Vazquez said in the email statement. “These conditions necessitated its removal.”





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