What (and How) We Learned About Year One of COVID-19 Voice of San Diego – Voice of San Diego

This week our teampublishedthebeginningofa seriesdocumentingthedevastatingtoll COVID-19hastakenon our community.Not only did welearnthatmore thanhalf of San Dieganswho died in thefirst year of thepandemic were immigrants, but that for every $6,600 increase in median household income, a personschances of death decreased by 10 percent.

You may be wondering why were sharing this information now.Allowmetoexplain.

Over the pastseveralmonths, our team hasspentcountlesshours at theSan Diego Countyarchiveslogging thousands of death certificates. One data entry for each San Diegan who died from COVID-19.Thedocumentsare in fact public records, but we had to sueforaccessto them.

Background:In April2020,Jared Whitlock, a freelance journalist who contributes to VOSD,requested copies of county death certificates. At the time he wanted the information for a series he was doing on nursing homes during the pandemic. But county officials told him he needed to provide the name of each decedent and their date of death something we obviously didnt have.

Fast-forward a few monthsandwe suedfor the information.The countyssuggestionthat a reporter must already know thedetailscontained in the documenttheyrerequesting turns state law on its head. Itwouldrequire the public to know what records its government has beforebeingable to access them.

Thencame thefunpart. Afterwinning our case, the county told us thatour staff wouldneed to travel to the county archives in Santee to see the documents. Otherwise, copiesof everything we needed would run us a bill of more than$80,000.We said no, thanks. Instead, our reporters spentmonthsat the archivesreading through the paperwork,without knowing exactly what wed find.(Reporter WillHuntsberryshared more about that experience here).

That brings ustotoday. When we filed our lawsuit, we hadhoped to find out on a granular level where the virus hascaused harm.So far, our stories have detailed two key findings.

The first is that the virus disproportionately killed San Dieganswith lower levels of education and income.These factors havealready been linked with increased risk of deathamong COVID-19 patients, but we foundthe share of San Diegans without a high school degree who died of COVID-19 was nearly three times as high as their share of the countys population.

As our team noted, having a bachelors degree is often the distinguishing factor between essential workers and those who worked from home during the pandemic.

And second, thatimmigrants accounted formore than half of all COVID-related deathsduring the pandemics first yearbutmake upjust23 percent ofthe countyspopulation.

Consider this:AsoureditorAndrea Lopez-Villafaaaskedreporter WillHuntsberryon this weeks podcast,Had you had access to these death certificates early onand you could pull and show those numbersdo you think it would have made a difference?

What do you think? Comment below or email me atmegan@vosd.org.

Click here to read ourseries Year One: COVID-19s Death Toll.Stay tuned next week for more.

On San Diegoslack of access to public restrooms

With all due respect to the Mayor, San Diego has a severe shortage of public restrooms. I visited San Francisco a couple years ago, walked for miles every day, and NEVER had a problem finding a clean, well-tended public restroom. It was a stunning contrast to my hometown. Balboa Park, Mission Bay Park, and the waterfront have some, but not enough, to accommodate visitors and residents. Elsewhere in downtown, I dont even know where I would find a clean public restroom.CatherineThiemann

Onreconsideringthe locationof San Diego Grand Central

Whatever the reason (sounds like slow Navy may be the main one), I am glad the focus on the NAVWAR site is being reconsidered. A transit hub that is located somewhere that transit isntactually neededwould be the ultimate San Diego Special: A convenient site or building thats not fit for purpose. Like, oh, a skydiving fun zone for homeless services. Here, the NAVWAR site is not fit for purpose because of location. Its in between a few big places that transit is needed (airport, downtown, areas of dense housing), but not in or close enough to any one of those places to make sense.Hunter

On theregulation of sidewalk vendors

Go down to the boardwalk vendors in front of Belmont Park. The boardwalk had been reduced from 24 to 18 feet with the vendors setup. Then you have two customers. Another three feet plus occasional vendors selling along the sea wall. Mike Johnson

Thanks for reading. If you enjoy this newsletter,check out our others here.Have something you wantme to include? Email me atmegan@vosd.org.

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What (and How) We Learned About Year One of COVID-19 Voice of San Diego - Voice of San Diego