Gov. Gavin Newsom | Rich Pedroncelli, Pool/AP Photo
OAKLAND — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rapid reopening strategy is drawing concerns from lawmakers and public health officials who fear the governor is basing decisions more on political pressure than science.
Newsom’s reopening plan started just over two weeks ago with a handful of rural counties with relatively few cases allowing restaurant dining and shopping in stores. Now, most of the state has been given the go-ahead to reopen churches, malls and hair salons. And gyms will get guidance within "a week or so," the governor said Wednesday.
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It's too fast for Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), a moderate “pro-business” Democrat. He argues the governor is caving into political pressure while ignoring dangerous “blind spots” in the state's health data. He said the governor’s first priority should be mandating widespread testing that will provide the necessary information to attack the virus on all fronts.
“The political calculation is not what we should be doing right now,’’ Glazer said in an interview Wednesday. If the virus is to be contained for good, “this can’t be about being popular."
The Democratic governor received national praise in March and April for saving lives by imposing the nation's first statewide stay-at-home order. But as restrictions continued into May, Newsom faced increasing scorn and protests from residents who said they were suffering financially and believed he was unilaterally punishing people who wanted some semblance of normalcy.
“Nobody wants to challenge that,’’ Glazer said of colleagues who are going along with Newsom's suddenly swift reopening pace. “They’ll question his budget, and how he’s spending the money, but not about reopening,’’ because confronting the growing calls for loosening restrictions “goes against all their political instincts.”
California’s reopening comes as the state this week reported its highest number of new cases in a single day and total cases neared 100,000. The governor has been emphasizing the relative stability of hospitalizations and that less than 5 percent of those tested have shown positive results.
But to some health experts, that doesn’t inspire enough confidence.
Santa Clara County Public Health Office Sara Cody, considered the architect of the nation’s first regional lockdown order, was among the first to sound the alarm, questioning the “brisk clip” at which the state is opening up and the confusion it causes.
In a briefing Wednesday, Cody compared the potential of coronavirus outbreaks to a wildfire. To prevent “spot fires” from growing into larger ones, Cody recommended allowing at least two weeks — the virus’ incubation period — between the easing of restrictions.
“We are now much better resourced in terms of testing and contact tracing to be able to address those spot fires,” she said, referring to the workforce needed to curb the spread by tracking down individuals who’ve been exposed to the virus. “But what we don’t want is a fire burning out of control that we can’t see. So, that’s why we are going to move slowly.”
The Bay Area counties, primarily the six involved in the original shelter-in-place order issued on March 16, have been slower to reopen than most of the state.
But Los Angeles County, now the state’s hot spot for the virus, on Tuesday released new guidelines that pick up the county’s pace to reopen, allowing religious gatherings to resume under the state guidelines and low-risk retailers to allow shopping indoors. This sets the stage for even broader reopening plans, despite the county’s high case count and deaths.
Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) said she’s worried about the swift reopening of the state, and particularly the region she represents. She’s concerned that testing and monitoring of the virus in vulnerable groups, including the poor, the elderly and people of color, is still far from adequate.
“It’s important that we keep our eyes on the facts and not let the loud voices of the few drive our decisions for how we open our economy and how we keep California safe,” Kamlager-Dove said in an interview Wednesday. “Data is our best weapon, and the reality is we need better data and more of it.”
Newsom has touted his science-based approach to reopening, and emphasized the state's increase in testing capacity and growing number of contact tracers, whom he refers to as "disease detectives."
While Newsom said Tuesday the state has started to test more than 60,000 people a day, he noted California has trained just 1,320 of these new contact tracers on top of the existing workforce of about 3,000 — still far less than the initial goal of 10,000 statewide.
Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, Berkeley, described the number of contact tracers in the state as "at least better than what we had before." But he noted that we can't test our way out of the pandemic.
"By the time you found out somebody tested positive, the transmissions have already occurred in the community," he said, adding that he believes the tests aren't all that accurate.
Riley recommended halting new relaxations of the lockdown for two incubation weeks at a time. "If we don't see a huge impact after a new set of relaxations and if you do this in a two-week, phased-in fashion, then you would begin to see what type of relaxation is feasible and what type of relaxation will contribute to resurgence," he said.
Richard Carpiano, professor of public policy and sociology at UC Riverside, noted that reinstating restrictions will be a tough task, particularly in regions that have fought the lockdown orders. "Heaven forbid that the brakes have to get slammed down again, or to use the governor's analogy of turning down the dimmer," he said.
But veteran California political analyst Jack Pitney says Newsom is wedged into a difficult “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” position, and still deserves “a lot of credit” for his handling of the pandemic.
“As early as mid-April, he acknowledged that there were costs on both sides of the shutdown ledger, mentioning poverty, the economy, and overall health care," said Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College. “If he were not letting up on the shutdown, he would face criticism for ignoring its dire consequences."
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Newsom faces growing concerns that he's reopening California too quickly - POLITICO
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