[Goose]

New daily record by far

Newsom giving long impassioned plea for people to talk precautions in his news conference now.

Mentioning every single precaution he can and making it very personal.

He has the power to do a lot more than "plea" for them to do so. He isn't. Why not?

The CA orders and mandates are largely meaningless if people don't see them as necessary.   The fines would be relatively small, many counties already were threatening to not enforce early mandates, etc.   The citizens need to want to do it because they know it is right, not because they fear a potential $250 fine.   Enter the pleas for human decency/appeals to science/etc.

Most have acknowledged that the first spread prevention orders were hard to implement and enforce, but to try to ask for a return to a phase would be very difficult.  That's where we are, now we will get to see just how tough it will be to retreat a bit.

Any retreat/return of a phase would need a lot of support from all levels of government and the citizens.  We don't appear to have that in CA.  Newsom needs to plea a bit to get more citizen agreement and offset those government officials that have been implying it is all over, masks are optional or whatever.

I understand the bind he is in. He needs lots of people to do things they really would rather not do. When SIP first came out, most people were supportive. OTOH, it was clear that we couldn't remain shutdown forever. The state and counties both needed to realize that it was essential to keep people involved in the process and wedded to the idea there was a plan and we were going to come out the other end "soon". There needed to be lots of "rah-rah" to getting case numbers down to zero and testing/tracing numbers up. We needed to hear about this from the powers that be daily, and have lots of "presence" about how things were going. . They didn't do that.

It was always a big danger that the average person would conclude that SIP probably wasn't an optimal short-term strategy for said person. The vast majority of people won't get COVID-19 real soon. If they do, they will recover. If they are under 50, the probably are at low risk of dying. Many if not most people are OK with that risk, at least to the point that they don't social distance all the time and they don't wear masks when they don't want to do so. The problem is that if everybody does this, the hospitals get overwhelmed and the whole equation changes. It is a game theory problem, and people often aren't good in dealing with that level of abstract complexity. The state and local governments needed to control the narrative. There was going to be pushback. They needed to stand firm and make people eternally grateful for finally getting permission on a county by county basis to have phase 0 reopening. That didn't happen.

So, what to do now? I think that Newsom has to get control again, and that means patiently explaining what needs to be done and why. Inconsistent messaging has been a big problem. Letting LA start reopening when clearly things were not under control sent the message that he wasn't serious. After the patient explanation he has to be the father figure and set up regulations for counties that are nearing ICU capacity. He needs to set target case loads for each county and say if you are above that number, you are going to full SIP again. Yes, he can't arrest/fine everybody. But if he at least makes it clear he means what he says, many people will comply. If he does arrest/fine quite a few people, makes sure that hits the news, and then explains why it has to be that way it will convince a bunch of other people and maybe he can get out in front of this again. IMHO, if he doesn't do something along those lines, he is irrelevant and our case count will continue upward until we are in a medical overload condition.

[Goose]

New daily record by far

Newsom giving long impassioned plea for people to talk precautions in his news conference now.

Mentioning every single precaution he can and making it very personal.

He has the power to do a lot more than "plea" for them to do so. He isn't. Why not?

The CA orders and mandates are largely meaningless if people don't see them as necessary.   The fines would be relatively small, many counties already were threatening to not enforce early mandates, etc.   The citizens need to want to do it because they know it is right, not because they fear a potential $250 fine.   Enter the pleas for human decency/appeals to science/etc.

Most have acknowledged that the first spread prevention orders were hard to implement and enforce, but to try to ask for a return to a phase would be very difficult.  That's where we are, now we will get to see just how tough it will be to retreat a bit.

Any retreat/return of a phase would need a lot of support from all levels of government and the citizens.  We don't appear to have that in CA.  Newsom needs to plea a bit to get more citizen agreement and offset those government officials that have been implying it is all over, masks are optional or whatever.

I understand the bind he is in. He needs lots of people to do things they really would rather not do. When SIP first came out, most people were supportive. OTOH, it was clear that we couldn't remain shutdown forever. The state and counties both needed to realize that it was essential to keep people involved in the process and wedded to the idea there was a plan and we were going to come out the other end "soon". There needed to be lots of "rah-rah" to getting case numbers down to zero and testing/tracing numbers up. We needed to hear about this from the powers that be daily, and have lots of "presence" about how things were going. . They didn't do that.

It was always a big danger that the average person would conclude that SIP probably wasn't an optimal short-term strategy for said person. The vast majority of people won't get COVID-19 real soon. If they do, they will recover. If they are under 50, the probably are at low risk of dying. Many if not most people are OK with that risk, at least to the point that they don't social distance all the time and they don't wear masks when they don't want to do so. The problem is that if everybody does this, the hospitals get overwhelmed and the whole equation changes. It is a game theory problem, and people often aren't good in dealing with that level of abstract complexity. The state and local governments needed to control the narrative. There was going to be pushback. They needed to stand firm and make people eternally grateful for finally getting permission on a county by county basis to have phase 0 reopening. That didn't happen.

So, what to do now? I think that Newsom has to get control again, and that means patiently explaining what needs to be done and why. Inconsistent messaging has been a big problem. Letting LA start reopening when clearly things were not under control sent the message that he wasn't serious. After the patient explanation he has to be the father figure and set up regulations for counties that are nearing ICU capacity. He needs to set target case loads for each county and say if you are above that number, you are going to full SIP again. Yes, he can't arrest/fine everybody. But if he at least makes it clear he means what he says, many people will comply. If he does arrest/fine quite a few people, makes sure that hits the news, and then explains why it has to be that way it will convince a bunch of other people and maybe he can get out in front of this again. IMHO, if he doesn't do something along those lines, he is irrelevant and our case count will continue upward until we are in a medical overload condition.