The Poster Child for Failed Lockdowns

California, with the nation’s most severe lockdowns, now has the most new cases per capita in addition to all the other harms. It’s hard to imagine a more catastrophic failure of political leadership.

Yet California’s embarrassing Legislature is delaying its January return by a week, even with the Governor out of control and our food banks overwhelmed. We’ve seen this movie way too many times before.

California’s lockdown scheme is increasingly being recognized as the worst anywhere. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at UC San Francisco, said “California is unique because this particular lockdown came off as arbitrary and not data driven. Californians have listened to the news. They have seen the data on the virus, they know that being outside is safer, they know the impact the lockdown will have on businesses that could die forever, and they just don’t buy it.”

James Hamilton at UC San Diego adds that “the benefits of lockdowns are hard to demonstrate in the data.” Nate Silver, the high priest of data science, referred to the “irrational and not-very-science-driven regime of COVID policies in California,” adding, as a New Yorker, “Don’t mistake us for California.”

My Recall Newsom book identifies eight uniquely perverse qualities of Newsom’s worst-in the-nation COVID response: self-promotional, lawless, corrupt, unscientific, hypocritical, incompetent, partisan, and neglectful.

As to the last quality, I mean Newsom has abandoned our healthcare workforce. While nearly 100,000 people signed up for the California Health Corps, exactly 21 of them are now being utilized. Time and again this year, Californians have stepped up and our government has let them down. 

Meanwhile, signatures for the Recall keep coming in. If the required number were the same as it was for the Gray Davis Recall, it would already be on the verge of qualifying.

Because of a corrupt law our Legislature passed in 2017 to drag out the process, a Recall Election won’t take place until next summer. But there’s a benefit to that timing: the new Governor could immediately call a Special Session of the Legislature to pass fundamental reforms, and any defenders of the corrupt status quo would have to face voters the following year.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and I am hopeful we all have a better year ahead. It’s going to take an extraordinary act of We the People to give our state the fundamental course correction it needs.

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