An openandshut case of whiplash
Californians’ difficult sacrifices have turned around the latest surge of coronavirus infections, so it’s time for a cautious return to strictly necessary activities like — baseball? Gov. Gavin Newsom recently expressed “all the confidence in the world” that fans will be watching Major League Baseball in person next month, typifying the whiplash reversals and rereversals that have haunted the state’s response to the pandemic. In scarcely over a month, we’ve gone from closing everything to Opening Day.
Pitching spring baseball was only Newsom’s biggest swing for the fences toward leaving behind the lockdown order that ended in late January. The recallcrossed governor also moved to loosen the standards he imposed on counties by about half, allowing indoor dining, workouts and other highrisk activities to resume at higher transmission rates. Bay Area officials, most of whom have been more conservative than Newsom in restarting their economies, are largely following his lead.
The governor said the relaxed reopening thresholds would take effect once the state reaches benchmarks in vaccinating residents of the state’s
poorest neighborhoods, for which his administration will reserve 40% of doses. While targeting inoculation to groups disproportionately devastated by the pandemic makes sense, that announcement marked one more shift in another topsyturvy aspect of the state’s response.
Newsom reserved 10% of vaccinations for teachers last month in an effort to return more children to classrooms, most of which haven’t reopened with anything like the urgency of, say, professional sports. California’s multilayered eligibility criteria have hindered the vaccine rollout and undergone multiple modifications. In addition to educators and residents of targeted neighborhoods, those currently eligible include senior citizens, health care and emergency workers, and farmworkers, to be joined later this month by those with disabilities and underlying health conditions.
Thanks partly to the Trump administration’s abdication of the pandemic response and Republican lawmakers’ obstruction of federal aid for most of last year, Newsom and Bay Area officials face immense pressure to let beleaguered businesses reopen. The trouble is that after early successes in controlling the contagion, the summer and fall surges each followed rapid reopenings enabled by the governor’s rearrangement of his own goalposts. And while the latest and worst wave has ebbed precipitously, the virus is still sickening thousands of Californians and killing hundreds every day. Emerging variants could compound the risks of yet another surge and another disorienting and discouraging shutdown.
Newsom, whose calculations are further complicated by the threat of a recall election, insists that he can see “that bright light at the end of the tunnel.” OK, but let’s not let it blind us.