It is this Los Angeles, of tight-knit families, of streets packed with food vendors from Central America and Mexico, of encampments of homeless residents, where the virus has spread ferociously, bringing so much sickness and death. Early in the pandemic, many hoped that Los Angeles — at least the Los Angeles of the popular imagination, with nice houses and backyard pools and everyone in their cars — would somehow be protected from catastrophe. In communities across Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest with a population of more than 10 million people, it is clear those early hopes were misguided. Perhaps nowhere else in America can the unequal toll of the virus be felt more dramatically than in Los Angeles, where suburban sprawl and freeways demarcate the neighborhoods of the haves and the have-nots. There is a lot of overcrowding and I think that is very critical to thinking about how the virus spreads.”

Source: New York Times January 23, 2021 17:51 UTC