Hospitals see big jumps in COVID-19 patients, but this surge is different from last winter
LOS ANGELES — The number of coronavirus-positive patients has spiked dramatically across Southern California since Christmas — but some health officials are noting important differences in how the latest surge is playing out in hospitals compared with last winter’s devastating wave.
In Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, the coronavirus-positive patient count has more than doubled in the last nine days. And in L.A. and San Bernardino counties, the daily hospital census has surpassed the peak seen during last summer’s spike.
Some officials remain concerned that hospitals could still face challenges as the highly contagious omicron variant infects people at what experts are calling an unprecedented rate. But there are signs that the crunch at a number of Southern California’s hospitals may not be as severe as last year, before vaccines were widely available.
Roughly two-thirds of patients who have tested positive at hospitals run by the L.A. County Department of Health Services were admitted for something other than the coronavirus, according to Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly.
That is starkly different from what the county’s public hospitals saw in earlier surges, when most coronavirus-positive patients were hospitalized because they had been sickened by the virus, Ghaly said.
—Los Angeles Times
Inmate in Texas could become first to receive gender-affirming surgery in federal custody
AUSTIN, Texas — A inmate currently housed in a North Texas prison could become the first transgender person to receive gender-affirming surgery while in federal custody.
Cristina Nichole Iglesias, 47, is a transgender woman serving a 20-year sentence for threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction against the British government. She was transferred to Federal Medical Center Carswell, a women’s prison in Fort Worth, in May 2021.
Iglesias has unsuccessfully requested the prisons bureau approve her for gender-affirming surgery since 2016. Late last month, a federal judge ordered the agency to meet to discuss her case before Jan. 24.
Iglesias’ lawyer said this was the first time a federal judge ordered the agency to evaluate such a request.
“We hope that the order directing (the Bureau of Prisons) to move forward will result in medically necessary and long overdue health care for Cristina — and, in time, for the many other transgender people in BOP’s custody who have also been denied surgery and other much-needed gender-affirming care,” John Knight, the LGBTQ Project Director at the ACLU of Illinois, said in a statement.
—The Dallas Morning News
Rabbi injured in synagogue attack gets prison time for fraud schemes
SAN DIEGO — The founding rabbi of a California synagogue who rose to national prominence after he was wounded in an antisemitic shooting, and was then exposed as the perpetrator of a multimillion-dollar fraud, was sentenced Tuesday to 14 months in prison.
Both prosecutors and defense attorneys had recommended home confinement for Yisroel Goldstein, citing his leadership in the weeks following the 2019 attack on Chabad of Poway, the immense physical and emotional trauma the former rabbi continues to battle, and his cooperation in the FBI's fraud investigation.
But the judge rejected that punishment as not appropriate given the seriousness of the crimes.
"You not only committed this offense yourself but you took a lot of people with you," U.S. District Court Judge Cynthia Bashant told Goldstein, 60.
"It's important to send a message to the community and important to send a message to you," she added.
Goldstein must also pay about $2.8 million in restitution, an amount shared with several other defendants who were prosecuted as participants in the financial cons.
He must self-surrender by Feb. 23, although he could appeal for a later date if COVID-19 continues to surge. The judge agreed to recommend he be housed at a medium-security federal prison in Otisville, New York, which his defense attorney said is known to accommodate observant Jews.
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
As Capitol riot anniversary nears, Western allies fear for health of US democracy
BERLIN — Last Jan. 6, the world watched in shock as a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, seeking to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's election victory. One year on, many of America's closest allies are still profoundly concerned about the state of U.S. democracy.
In Western Europe, major powers were openly relieved by President Donald Trump's exit from the Oval Office. Even so, there is a sense among them that the long-term threat to U.S. democratic institutions remains.
Perhaps nowhere is that feeling more acute than in Germany, rebuilt from the ashes of World War II, thanks in no small measure to the helping hand extended by its former adversary, the United States. The country still bears the imprint of 20th-century traumas, including the pre-war slide from democracy into Nazism and the East-West division that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
"I do think it is fair to say that there is great concern in Europe, and in my own country, about the challenge to democracy in America," said Constanze Stelzenmueller, a German scholar and expert on transatlantic relations at the Brookings Institution. "It's becoming clear to everyone that Jan. 6 wasn't just an isolated episode. It was part of something larger, more deeply rooted, and more pernicious."
Groups that study democratic metrics see much of the world on a troubling trajectory, with the United States being no exception. In November, a European think tank, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, for the first time put the U.S. on a list of "backsliding democracies."
—Los Angeles Times
