Morning Brief: COVID Holidays, A Bloody Strike, and Hollywood’s Pet Cemetery

gHello the It’s November 24.

This time last year, LA County was in the throes of the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. Governor Gavin Newsom had implemented an emergency curfew, and things in Los Angeles were starts to get confused, with county orders, city orders, and state orders sometimes in conflict with each other, and sometimes in conflict with themselves.

Despite the best efforts of officials, we’ve had a flash flood again, and some are wondering if the same will happen this year.

The answer is, it depends. Overall, California is in much better shape: according to our editorial partner, Cal Matters, the seven-day average of Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 on November 21, 2021 was 3,330, down 36% from the same day last year.

But in 18 counties in California, there are more hospitalizations than there were at the same time last year. These counties are mostly in the Central Valley and rural Northern California, which are still recovering from bad summer surges, including Humboldt, Madera and Lassen.

The main driver in most areas that have higher case numbers is low vaccination rates, but reopening may also be a cause for some.

In addition to worrying about sick residents, experts are also worried about the burnout of hospital staff who have been battling COVID-19 for more than a year and a half.

“They’re exhausted,” said Gary Herbst, CEO of Kaweah Health Medical Center in Visalia, “and that’s our main concern.”

Keep reading to learn more about what’s going on in LA, and stay safe there.

What else you need to know today

• UC student researchers have threatened with strike if university officials continue to refuse to recognize the union chosen by student researchers to represent their interests.
• In 1945, tensions between the producers who wanted to sell the Hollywood dream and the workers who did the hard work behind the scenes boil in a violent fight.
• Thinking of going back to college? Here’s how to find out if your credits will be transferred.
• The Mojave Trails National Monument, over 1.5 million acres in the Mojave Desert, is in the study for the International Dark Sky Sanctuary designation.

Before You Go…Where Old Hollywood Buried Its Beloved Pets

The Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park was founded in 1928 by veterinarian Eugene Jones. Like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, it’s home to some of cinema’s most illustrious actors – in this case, their four-legged (and two-legged, two-winged…) friends. Animals interred in the park include Boogie, Mae West’s pet monkey; Tawny, one of MGM’s original lions; and Kabar, the Alsatian Doberman of silent film star Rudolph Valentino. here is the story behind the plots.