Gavin Newsom ignores sciencebased criteria
Gavin Newsom has some explaining to do. The governor needs to tell Californians why on Monday he abandoned the scientifically based medical criteria he established for loosening the state’s lockdown orders. It damages his credibility when, like President Trump, Newsom says one thing and then goes off in a different direction. It also risks the health of Californians.
Newsom said on April 14 that he would use six indicators to measure when the state lockdown would end. The first is the ability to monitor and protect communities through testing, contact tracing, and isolating and supporting people who are positive or exposed. A week later, Newsom said that to loosen the state’s lockdown orders, California would have to ramp up testing for the COVID-19 virus to 60,000 to 80,000 tests a day.
While there has been progress on testing, it’s still not enough. The governor acknowledged Monday that the state had provided tests to an average of only 40,000 people daily during the prior three days. Meanwhile, the state is just beginning to train a staff of 20,000 workers to do the contact tracing and case investigation to prevent further spread of COVID-19.
Yet Newsom announced that he would allow curbside pickup at enclosed malls and strip malls, and the reopening of car washes, pet grooming and nonessential offices where employees cannot telework.
The announcement doesn’t directly impact the Bay Area or other parts of California with stricter shelter-in-place orders. But, as we’ve seen with his prior relaxation of the state sheltering orders, Newsom’s latest action puts undue political pressure on those counties to follow suit.
As Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said Tuesday, “The conditions really haven’t changed … we don’t suddenly have herd immunity, we don’t have a vaccine. We have exactly the same conditions as we did in March.”
Indeed, the number of daily deaths in California seems to be leveling off at a rate roughly six times what it was in March when he issued his first shelter order. And, on Tuesday alone, there were 1,753 new cases in the state. We’re ripe for another surge if restrictions are eased.
The governor should heed the warning of the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who bluntly warned Tuesday of “really serious” consequences of death, suffering and deep economic damage if state and local officials lift stay-at-home orders too quickly.
A New York Times analysis released Wednesday of cellphone data revealed that as states began to relax their restrictions, about 25 million more Americans ventured outside their homes on an average day last week than during the preceding six weeks. Under the state’s new guidelines, it’s inevitable that thousands more will begin venturing out and about California without an effective way of monitoring outbreaks.
Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said last month that the fundamental element of keeping our economy open is making sure you’re identifying as many infected people as possible and isolating them. Harvard researchers say that the minimum number of tests should be 152 per 100,000 people.
In order to reach that target, California needs to conduct 60,800 tests per day. At its current rate of 40,000 per day, the state is only roughly two-thirds of the way toward reaching the minimum goal. And it’s not even close to having the ability to trace those who have tested positive and quarantine the people they have been in contact with since becoming infected.
Newsom earned Californians’ respect by his initial responses to the pandemic. His decision to ignore his own science-based criteria for reopening the state risks breaking that trust.