SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Heading into Memorial Day weekend, California’s mood was celebratory. The state had avoided dire predictions of a coronavirus surge, hospitalizations were starting to decline and restaurants and most other businesses had reopened.
Californians may have adopted a false sense of security when the state didn’t experience the horror facing New York City
Absolutely. And the smart ones are quickly saying ‘aw hell’. At least it’s proving, once again, that basic biology doesn’t give a shit about politics, as some of the largest case increases are in some of the most liberal counties. I’m hoping enough of my fellow Californians have a strong enough sense of self-preservation to bend the curve back down.
Dude, don’t harsh my mellow this early in the morning.
ICYMI:
I’m in L.A. County, and even though we’re generally known as liberal, mask wearing folks, there are a still lot of people who don’t comply, either because of their political leanings, ignorance, or complacency. There’ve been examples of this everywhere since mid March.
Something like >50% of the inside dining that has been inspected in L.A. has been out of compliance and that’s huge. I feel so badly for the servers and managers who are in the role of bouncer/cop/health inspector in ways that are so completely beyond their pay grade or ability to enforce.
Having different practices for different areas seemed like a sensible idea (to me) at first, but it requires that everyone pay attention and abide by the specific rules for their own area, and that isn’t happening. Even if you DO stay up to date on what’s required/recommended, there is too much wiggle room for confusion and debate.
We’ll never have a national mask mandate, but a statewide one is necessary, I think. We need to be unified on this.
Very frustrating.
Not this one obviously… but Another Corona virus story on the front page that is behind the paywall?
I thought at the beginning of this thing @JoshMarshall promised that would be the case.
It was similar in San Francisco during the 1918 flu pandemic. Mask wearing was universal and a great success until pressure from business and an angry public forced a relaxation of the mask ordinance and the second wave began. Masks work.
An important reason why CA cases have risen is that there are too many residents demandingtheir freedumb to be stupid. And some counties refuse to make wearing masks mandatory. Thankfully Newsom made masks mandatory. Those of us following the rules will suffer because of these selfish pricks.
I’m in conservative Calaveras county in the motherlode country, and people up here have NEVER, just NEVER followed the guidelines to mask up. It isn’t even a question of ignoring the guidelines. It goes beyond that to aggressively boasting about not following guidelines.
We had 19 cases until a month ago. Now the number is at 53. We are a rural county and have had few cases, but that has led to a feeling that we are immune or specially protected. Fortunately, I see pushback and pro mask folks are boycotting businesses who don’t require masks. This isn’t organized, but it is happening…
Very frustrating as a Californian to see the number of people who still choose not to wear masks in public. It is not that hard folks. Just wear a f’n mask. Every health expert is saying that is what needs to be done to tame the virus. Good gracious. Just do it for the good of us all.
I live in a rural CA county that is heavily masked and we’ve still had 190 cases - so don’t feel bad about your uptick - I’m starting to think that there is so much randomness mixed in with the scientific vectors of contagion. Stay safe maracel.
My message for the maskless Covidiots is a kind of sympathy. If you don’t like wearing a mask, you’re REALLY going to hate the respirator…
I’m doing my part by staring at people who are in the store or whatever without a mask on.
Yup. And not all are in rural areas. Orange County and the “Boaters for trump” crowd have been so obnoxious about their “rights”.
No offense, but people on the East Coast should stop writing stories about California. Just Stop.
We are three states (probably more, but three is a good way of looking at it). The bay area (roughly 8 Million people, another 2 million if you toss in Davis/Sacramento/Folsom). The central valley/Bakersfield/down to imperial county (roughly 10 Million) and then LA/Orange/San Diego (20 million people).
Covid-19 is under control in the bay area. It is out of control in parts of LA and the central valley.
This is a couple days old, but is a chart of state wide vs. Bay area hospitalizations:
Kinda look alike, but they are not. bay area (again a population of 8M) went from 400 cases to 200, then up to 350. Not a new high, and some of those cases are transfers in from other areas.
Cal (40M people) went from 2000 sort of flatlined at 3000 now has spiked up to roughly 5000, but the ICU rate is not that different.
But the scales are different by an order of magnitude, and actually THE STATE WIDE RATE IS MORE THAN 4X THE BAY AREA RATE.
Different pattern. The difference is that we have a governor who is willing to highlight the bad to apply pressure to the trumpy places (imperial, Bakersfield, outer Orange County, etc) which are starting to have issues, and have weaker health care systems than the core urban (Bay Area/LA/Orange/San Diego/Sacramento) areas.
It would be like saying “new England has a covid-19 problem” w/o drawing a distinction between Vermont and Boston/NYC.
My partner and I live a half block from the beach in a county that was largely protected by a wet cold winter. Now we are being overrun by people fleeing the heat of the central valley who are mostly without masks. We are planning to stay inside for the weekend.
Up here in north Oakland (where more people voted for Jill Stein than Trump in 2016), mask wearing out on the streets was probably 50% prior to two weeks ago and now seems more like 80% (with the exception of runners & bicyclists where it is much lower). In stores, masks have been mandatory for months and compliance is 100%. It is rare to see someone without a mask ready to pull up as another person walks by.
Still, it takes a lot of peer pressure to get everyone to mask up and keep masking up. It is a very heavy lift and that is what is criminal about “leaders” who turned masks into a political statement. I give Newsom pretty high marks for trying to follow the data/science of the pandemic yet we still let our guard down. We’re human.
So, for every Republican governor who finally puts the health of their citizens above scoring political points, let’s welcome them as allies and not harp on their past sins. We need everyone to mask up and stop gathering in groups. We need as many allies as we can get on this.
Even as a resident I wouldn’t presume to speak for the entire state, population nearly 40M and 58 counties, but I do know we here in San Francisco, a city and a county, are for the most part following the state guidelines scrupulously. You can’t enter a store without wearing a mask and there’s signage that tells you so. If you take if off inside, you’ll be reminded to put it on. Social distancing? I try not to take it personally but people swerve six feet away from me at all times as if I’m the embodiment of Typhoid Mary even if they see me just walking out my front door. BTW I’ve had three COVID tests and each has been negative.
And therein is the problem. Responsible people on the coast, less responsible people in the central valley/eastern LA. The FOX news set brings covid-19 with them.
What we need is an intrastate quarantine.
Very disappointed in my state. I had a strong hunch this reopening stuff happened way too soon. I get that the size of California poses additional challenges but I feel like Newsom buckled to business and rural county pressure too soon and dallied in dialing things back. Still, it would have been worse with a Trump-governor running the show.
Maybe Newsom was too concerned about maintaining his popularity, whereas Cuomo, in the interest of public health seemed distinctly NOT worried about angering people impatient to reopen. In this situation that has been an asset for the state of New York.
Ditto. In San Francisco, outside of a few clueless people, almost no one is walking around outside w/o a mask (although to be honest, if you go down to 3rd street or the mission it is 80%, not 99%), and we have been at 100% wearing masks for months for anything indoors.
And San Fransisco has 900K people, and only 70 hospitalized covid-19 cases, and of those 20 are transfers from other places. Our Hospital capacity is about 2300 beds, and we have 404 ICU beds and 791 acute care beds available.
We are averaging about a 2.5% positivity rate for testing.
