OC ICUs’ COVID-19 cases far from surge highs, but is it too soon to get hopes up?

“I don’t think the next wave in SoCal, whenever that may be, is going to be devastating,” [Andrew Noymer, UCI associate professor of public health] said. “I’m not panicking — I think the next wave may be a little wavelet, not a mountain — but we can’t rest on our laurels. COVID is going to be here to stay for years. It’s not necessarily going to fade away, like flu, to something that causes 60,000 deaths a year. Maybe it’ll fade to 100,000 deaths a year — but that’s still way too many.