Local hospitals seek ‘hundreds’ more workers as surge looms

But according to Andrew Noymer, associate professor of public health at UC Irvine, the jump in Kern’s cases is exactly what you’d expect in “an exponentially growing pandemic,” where the rate of increase is proportional to the size of the number of cases. “It just takes a while for the fire to get started,” Noymer said. “When the kindling is just sparking and not much is happening it’s easy to assume not much is going on. But once the fire gets going, it’s apparent those sparks are important.”