California's early lockdown did help save lives, but it didn't work for everyone.
Nearly 20,000 Californians died in the first six months of 2020 than would have in a normal year and while not all of them were from COVID-19, a lot of them were, particularly in certain communities of color. But Dr. Kirsten Bibbins Domingo, UCSF professor and chair of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department, told KCBS Radio more would have died if the state hasn't acted quickly.
"The lockdowns appeared to work, in terms of lowering the number of extra deaths in California than we would have expected," she said.
But it didn't protect everyone.
"In most of the racial and ethnic groups, the deaths did seem to go down at the end of the lockdown, but in Latinos, the deaths never went down," Dr. Domingo added. "So the Latino community did not really benefit from the impact of the lockdown. Their death rate stayed high and then continued to rise over the course of the first six months of the pandemic."
A lot of these were low wage workers with no high school diploma who kept working to make deliveries and stock shelves. Experts believe if we want lockdowns to work, we have to figure out a way to make it work for everyone.
According to the research, excess deaths were highest among California’s Black population on a per capita basis, although they declined toward the end of the lockdown period.
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