[wdr1]

There's a lot of bad reporting happening in Los Angeles.

There were a lot of headlines recently about "0% ICU capacity", which led most readers to think there are no ICU beds when there have been about ~50 since mid-December.[1].

The issue is the County Health department set a target of keeping COVID cases to under 30% of an ICU, so when when it exceeds 30%, for each point above 30% they deduct 0.5% from capacity.

I'm not a doctor, so that could very well be an appropriate way to do it, but when it comes to newspapers communicating with the general public, it misinforms people. (And I'm really worried about when we do hit 0 ICU beds -- as we probably will -- that people will be confused and/or lose trust.)

[1] http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/dhs/1070348_DHSCOVID-19Das...