Newsom blunders again at providing needed leadership
Gavin Newsom continues to demonstrate why he’s the wrong person to lead California through the COVID-19 crisis.
The governor’s plan to order regional shutdowns when hospital intensive care unit capacity dips below 15% is once again too little, too late — endangering lives because he lacks the political courage to lead.
The Thursday announcement is the latest of a series of blunders demonstrating that Newsom still doesn’t have a coherent plan to deal with the pandemic. California residents and especially front-line health care workers are paying a heavy price for his inept approach.
Fortunately, unlike Newsom, Bay Area officials aren’t waiting for things to get even worse before taking action. Health officers from Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties and the city of Berkeley on Friday announced shelter-in-place restrictions beginning Sunday evening that will save lives and prevent the region’s hospitals from being overwhelmed. It’s appalling that San Mateo County isn’t joining in on what should be a regional effort.
The problem with Newsom’s leadership is that it remains reactive rather than proactive.
It was obvious as early as mid- October that a major surge was likely in California if the governor did not take aggressive, immediate action. He should have imposed a strict shelter-in-place order that would have sharply reduced the spread of the virus.
Instead, he installed lesser measures that were either ineffective or ignored. Small wonder. Newsom violated his own guidelines when he attended a dinner Nov. 6 for a lobbyist friend at the fancy French Laundry restaurant in Yountville.
The new state guidelines announced Thursday also carry significant shortcomings.
The governor, for example, will allow construction workers to continue building indoor projects but will prohibit churches from holding indoor services. Try explaining to the Supreme Court the logic of that approach.
Or consider professional sports teams. Santa Clara County last week wisely banned all contact sports activities. Under Newsom’s orders, professional sports teams are somehow considered part of the state’s “critical infrastructure,” enabling players to freely infect each other, while tens of thousands of workers in other fields are sidelined. Go figure.
But most troubling is the governor’s illogical decision to wait to pull the trigger on restrictions until hospital ICU availability drops to below 15% of capacity in any of five California regions. Newsom admits that’s only a matter of time. Why wait?
The longer he delays, the more cases we’ll have, the more people will die. The governor has once again demonstrated that he lacks the backbone to impose tough but necessary restrictions in a timely manner.
State officials said Thursday that Bay Area hospitals’ ICU capacity stood at 25.4%. But Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said Friday that the county’s ICU bed availability was 14% — below the state threshold. Contra Costa County’s intensive care units were at 79% of capacity Wednesday, while Alameda County’s ICUs were 61% full. All three counties are experiencing growing numbers of cases and are anticipating an even greater surge in coming weeks.
Vaccines are on the way, but they won’t come in time to head off this winter disaster. The governor knows that. It’s unconscionable that he won’t act accordingly. The only thing helping the Bay Area is that county health officers have more courage than Newsom.