I can't say Gavin Newsom's mishandling of the pandemic has changed my mind about him. I recognized him as a soulless political ghoul the first time I met him in 2010. He called the L.A. politics bloggers together for a getting-to-know-me session at a sleek Hollywood hotel when he first ran for governor against Jerry Brown. He was well-prepared and smart and everyone in the room loved him but one-- me. I saw a political animal who wanted to be loved by everyone and would say whatever he thought the room wanted to hear. He clearly was aiming higher than for the governorship too. He gave me the creeps; still does.Like Cuomo, he hesitated when California and New York needed bold leaders to confront the pandemic. Both must have been busy polling and asking focus groups what would be most useful (for their ugly ambitions) while the coronavirus took hold. Now that California is spiking out of control-- except in the Bay Area where the mayors and county executives were smart enough to ignore Newsom and institute their own shelter-in-place orders despite him-- Newsom is trying again.Tuesday, California now has the second worse number if cases in the country, after New York-- 230,891. There were 7,906 confirmed new cases and 105 one day death reports (worst in the country). There were 5,844 cases per million, which isn't terrible for America, although it's worse than hard hit countries like the U.K. (4,618 per million), Russia (4,484 per million) or Italy (3,962 per million). All the out-of-control counties were the ones that listened to Newsom's go-slow approach. Tuesday's new cases:
• Los Angeles +2,757• Riverside +835• San Bernardino +753• Orange +630• San Joaquin +565• San Diego +317
The Bay Area counties where the acted fast and strong while Newsom dithered? San Francisco- 42 new cases, Santa Clara- 105 new cases, San Mateo- 91 new cases, Alameda- 202 new cases, Marin- no new cases. Wednesday, California had 6,389 new cases and the cases per million went up to 6,031.So... aside from "mandates" that are unenforced and therefor just advisory, what is Newsom doing? There have been no tests available in L.A. this week... very Trump-like but he and Garcetti are smart enough not to tweet and blab about it.The spoon fed fake reporters at the Washington Post pretended to know what they're talking about: "California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced he was reviving parts of the state’s sweeping lockdown, ordering bars to close and a range of other service-sector businesses in 19 counties to cease indoor operations amid a spike in coronavirus cases." Note to pretend reporters: If there's no enforcement, there's no mandate. So he told 19 counties-- Los Angeles, Sacramento, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Contra Costa, Fresno, Glenn, Kern, Kings, Merced, San Joaquin, Solano, Stanislaus, Tulare, Imperial, Santa Clara and Ventura-- to shut down in-restaurant dining and close movie theaters, bowling alleys, arcades, casinos and card rooms, indoor wineries and bars.A glimmer of hope? He said his Office of Emergency Services launched strike teams to help enforce the order, targeting businesses that aren’t complying. I'll believe it when I see it. This is more like Newsom: "Just because someone’s not going to tap you and issue a citation, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing. Wearing a face covering is a sign of toughness. It’s a sign of resolve. It’s a sign of someone who wants to give a damn." Yeah, but that hasn't worked. I see people in L.A. walking around without masks every day, knowing full well that there is no enforcement whatsoever. In other counties violators get a steep fine the first time they violate the rules and get thrown into jail the second time.
Two weeks ago he issued a statewide order that people wear masks when in the presence of others, both indoors and outdoors. No enforcement so no compliance. In fact some Angelenos are acting as though they're redneck MAGA supporters from Oklahoma and Alabama.
Fans are lining up in solidarity behind Hugo’s Tacos, the Los Angeles Mexican restaurant with locations in the San Fernando Valley and Atwater Village, after the company announced that it would be temporarily closing both of its locations because workers were being bullied by people who refused to abide by safety protocols. “Staff have been harassed, called names, and had objects and liquids thrown at them,” Hugo’s ownership said in a public statement, mostly for asking customers to wear their state-mandated face masks while ordering amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.Weekend reactions on Twitter varied from “thank you for standing up for your staff” to “LA get it together, this behavior is unacceptable.” A GoFundMe for employees has also been launched, and currently sits at over $22,000. Co-owner Bill Kohne told the LA Times that he expects the restaurant to be closed for at least the next week.
This morning, Politico reported that "Disease experts, public health officials and even state leaders themselves say they had too much faith that residents would continue social distancing in bars, restaurants and backyards. Epidemiologists are now wondering if California [a nice way to say Newsom] was too eager to reopen its economy in a state with the nation's largest, most diverse population of nearly 40 million people... [and] cooped-up residents flocking to beaches, restaurants and bars overrun by young people; and a high incidence of infection among essential workers, often living in congregant housing. State and health officials underestimated how much reopening 'became the starting bell for a lot of people beginning to ignore the kinds of public health maneuvers that they had followed earlier,' said Bob Wachter, chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco medical school. 'If you dodge the bullet the first time through, the virus is just sitting there waiting for you to get cocky,' he added."
Newsom initially laid out a slow, phased-in reopening process that started in May with retail pick-up, offices and manufacturing, all with social distancing. He then allowed restaurant dining and in-store retail to resume later that month. Facing litigation and pressure from the White House, Newsom allowed church services to start with limitations.By June, however, Newsom opened the floodgates to other sectors. In the next stage came hair salons and barber shops. Then bars and gyms, followed by nail salons and tattoo parlors. Simultaneously, protesters were hitting the streets throughout California-- though officials have insisted that demonstrations did not lead to outbreaks-- while residents were increasingly tired of quarantining without seeing friends and family.“Once the reopening process starts, there’s enormous political pressure to accelerate it to include everything,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.The governor has insisted that he did not allow California to reopen on a broad scale, putting that responsibility-- and blame, perhaps-- on officials in the state's 58 counties. He says he only told counties "how" they could open, not "when." Still, by issuing guidelines for each sector, his administration gave a tacit green light to counties where residents had been clamoring for a return to normalcy....Despite having more cases, Southern California was among the loudest in the reopening chorus. San Diego officials implored Newsom to loosen restrictions. Orange County cities threatened legal action against Newsom when he shut down their beaches in late April. Riverside County supervisors overrode their health officer's desire to move slower.The state’s agriculturally rich Central Valley has also emerged as a hot spot, with outbreaks at nursing homes and in the fields as well as at meat-packing and other food-processing facilities. Most inland counties considered their early coronavirus efforts a success and reopened sectors in conjunction with the state's timeline.In contrast, the San Francisco Bay Area took a more conservative [meaning progressive] tack from the start. Santa Clara County was the first in the nation to shut down large gatherings-- including professional sports-- and was soon joined by San Francisco. Then, six Bay Area counties imposed the nation's strictest rules days before Newsom imposed the nation's first statewide stay-at-home order.Their approach proved successful-- and they have likewise been more conservative than other counties in reopening their economy. As the state's problems grew more severe, San Francisco delayed opening museums, zoos, hair salons and bars last week, while Contra Costa, Alameda and Marin have also slowed their reopening plans.A handful of critics thought Newsom was reopening too soon-- chief among them Sara Cody, the Santa Clara public health officer credited with initiating the early coronavirus shutdown. In late May, as the governor allowed church services and haircuts to resume, Cody told her county supervisors that the pace was "concerning."“The state modifications are being made without a real understanding of the consequences of what the last move has been, and with the possible serious effects for health and possible serious risks or an exponential growth in cases," she said....Even if Newsom ratchets down social activity, behavioral change may remain elusive. "I've thought he's done a pretty good job and he's stayed pretty close to the data," said Steven Goodman, an epidemiologist at Stanford University. "What he says and how people behave are not exactly the same thing."Goodman also pointed to the influence of President Donald Trump's refusal to take the pandemic seriously. "There's no way to get the collective body of society to do things it doesn't want to do if you don't have consistent and persistent messaging from the top," he said. "California is not a country, and it exists in the United States where there are all sorts of other signals from the top that the actions we want people to take are just suggestions, they're just not mandatory."To much of the nation, California's emergence on the list of problem states is surprising not just because of its early success, but also because the recent surge has largely been framed as a red state issue. Nearly all of the current hard-hit states have Republican governors who prioritized economic concerns and were criticized for not taking the disease as seriously as other leaders.The divide between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to social distancing and mask wearing plays a role, but doesn't explain everything, said Matthew Gentzkow, a Stanford University economics professor leading a group of researchers in tracking partisanship in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.“The idea that political differences would somehow protect California because we have all these Democrats staying home and being careful, I don’t think that can be drawn from the research,” Gentzkow said. “The behavior of Democrats and Republicans haven’t been so different that it would insulate California.”Through mid-June, Newsom defended the state's reopening as viable because of the precautions in place and the state's large hospital capacity. He noted that California's early actions bought time for the state to stock up on personal protective equipment, such as 150 million N95 masks the state is purchasing from a just-certified manufacturer, BYD. He also took comfort in the state's positive test rate remaining stable around 4.5 percent.But within the past two weeks, the governor has shifted course. As a first step, he issued a statewide mask order for most public settings on June 18, stressing that wearing face coverings was essential if Californians wanted to keep the economy open and control the virus spread.
No enforcement = no mandate, just the worst kind of creepy, terminally-ambitious and gutless politician covering his ass.