How California went from model student to pandemic problem child

Source: Politico | July 1, 2020 | Debra Kahn and Victoria Colliver

SAN FRANCISCO — California was long the nation’s shining star on the coronavirus, heralded by national media and White House advisers as an example of how other states could beat the disease. The state was so confident in April that it sent hundreds of ventilators to the East Coast.

Now, the Democratic state joins Republican-dominated Florida, Texas and Arizona as America’s problem children, with new cases skyrocketing and leaders seemingly caught flat-footed as the spread grows beyond their control. California has seen a 70 percent increase in daily new cases over the past two weeks, while hospitalizations have shot up 51 percent.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday took his biggest step yet to reverse California’s reopening, ordering 19 hard-hit counties to close indoor dining, movie theaters, bars, wine tasting rooms and bowling alleys for three weeks. The moves affect seven out of every 10 residents, including most of Southern California.

Now, the Democratic state joins Republican-dominated Florida, Texas and Arizona as America’s problem children, with new cases skyrocketing and leaders seemingly caught flat-footed as the spread grows beyond their control. California has seen a 70 percent increase in daily new cases over the past two weeks, while hospitalizations have shot up 51 percent.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday took his biggest step yet to reverse California’s reopening, ordering 19 hard-hit counties to close indoor dining, movie theaters, bars, wine tasting rooms and bowling alleys for three weeks. The moves affect seven out of every 10 residents, including most of Southern California.

“The bottom line is the spread of this virus continues at a rate that is particularly concerning,” Newsom said Wednesday.

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 was too eager to reopen its economy in a state with the nation’s largest, most diverse population of nearly 40 million people.

The state, with the fifth-largest economy in the world, offers a large-scale preview of what states across the country may face in coming weeks as they reckon with a virus that just won’t slow down. California serves as a microcosm of all of the problems cropping up around the nation: an older, more vulnerable population; outbreaks in prisons and nursing homes; 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.

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