Editorial: County COVID cases — a red-flag warning

Those who drive into wilderness areas are familiar with being alerted to risks that vary with circumstances. Fire danger can be extreme or high or moderate, depending on the humidity, heat, wind, and other factors. Restrictions on behavior come off and on, depending upon the circumstances of the moment.

It is a model that also makes sense for dealing with COVID, now that we’ve moved past the always-wear-a-mask-indoors phase and so many have grown fatigued with inflexible precautions.

The fact is that the circumstances of this pandemic do modulate, depending on rates of transmission, the prevalence of cases, the emergence of new variants and more. It just makes sense that policies should adapt to circumstances.

So it is that, effective Monday, visitors and those who do business in the Ventura County Superior Court will again be required to wear face coverings and maintain social distancing within courtrooms.

The action is being taken in direct response to circumstances: Since June 20 there have been COVID exposures in at least 18 courtrooms, and more than 40 court employees or visitors have tested positive for the virus.

In recent days, Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme and CSU Channel Islands have similarly restored indoor mask requirements.

These institutions, of course, are microcosms of the community at large. In Ventura County and across California, COVID transmission is again surging. Ventura is among the overwhelming majority of California counties that have crept into the “high” risk tier established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The tiers are established based on hospitalizations, the total number of new cases being reported and other factors.

In such high-risk counties, indoor mask wearing is recommended. Understandably, public health officials in Ventura County and elsewhere are being cautious, even reluctant, to reinstate indoor mask mandates — although L.A. County appears to be on the verge of doing so.

How high is the risk of being exposed to the COVID virus these days?

Consider this calculation offered by Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco. He notes that 5.7% of asymptomatic patients at the university’s hospitals are now testing positive. That indicates that about 1 in 18 people have the coronavirus but don’t suspect it — which means that in a random group of 100 people there is a 99.7% chance there is someone in the group who is infected and potentially contagious.

It should be noted that last week the 7-day average of positive tests in Ventura County was higher than the positivity rate in San Francisco.

Will circumstances reach the point at which a return to a countywide indoor mask mandate will become necessary in Ventura County? Weary as we may be of COVID restrictions more than two years into the pandemic, it must be acknowledged that such is potentially the case.

Public health officers, aware that mandates trigger some level of public resistance and concerned about compliance, have been discussing other alternatives for dealing with pandemic precautions going forward. One intriguing idea is to post color-coded signs — not unlike those familiar fire-danger warnings — at grocery stores and other places where large numbers of people congregate indoors.

When people see a red sign, they would know that the risk of exposure is extreme. Perhaps, when so plainly alerted that if appropriate precautions are taken the risk level could lower, a sense of social responsibility would motivate folks to voluntarily wear a mask.

To be sure, the public health risks are not as great as they were during previous surges of the pandemic. Hospitalizations, though moving upward, remain far lower than before. Vaccinations continue to protect against serious illness, and there are now effective medications to treat the disease.

Still, COVID remains very much a disease to be avoided, especially among the vulnerable. There will be times — and this is one such time — when circumstances require elevated caution.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Editorial: County COVID cases — a red-flag warning