This story in the New York Times was a nice (and unusual) recognition that the sometimes obsessive interest in east coast news by the national media can seem a little bit much to those of us who live in the rest of the country. In the case of the pandemic, it’s certainly understandable that everyone’s attention would be riveted on New York since it’s the epicenter of the outbreak and has suffered more than the rest of us combined. I have no complaints on that count.
But as we go forward there really should be some attention paid to the places that managed to smartly deal with this epidemic even taking political chances that were very, very risky at the time. The west coat looks pretty good there. It could have been much, much worse here if they hadn’t done what they did.
Anyway, here’s the NY Times story:
California, Oregon and Washington have shipped 1,000 ventilators to New York. Should Western states be getting more attention for their relative success in battling Covid-19?
California, Oregon and Washington have more ventilators than they can use. As the nation struggles to scrounge up the lifesaving machines for hospitals overrun with Covid-19 patients, these three Western states recently shipped 1,000 spares to New York and other besieged neighbors to the East.
“All NYC needs is love …. From CA,” a worker scrawled in Magic Marker on a ventilator shipping box, shown in a video posted on Twitter by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom.
The ongoing effort of three West Coast states to come to the aid of more hard-hit parts of the nation has emerged as the most powerful indication to date that the early intervention of West Coast governors and mayors might have mitigated, at least for now, the medical catastrophe that has befallen New York and parts of the Midwest and South.
Their aggressive imposition of stay-at-home orders has stood in contrast to the relatively slower actions in New York and elsewhere, and drawn widespread praise from epidemiologists. As of Saturday afternoon, there had been 8,627 Covid-19 related deaths in New York, compared with 598 in California, 483 in Washington and 48 in Oregon. New York had 44 deaths per 100,000 people. California had two.
But these accomplishments have been largely obscured by the political attention and praise directed to New York, and particularly its governor, Andrew M. Cuomo. His daily briefings — informed and reassuring — have drawn millions of viewers and mostly flattering media commentary. They have established him as a daily counterpoint to President Trump and even prompted Democratic daydreaming that he could be drafted as their presidential nominee.
“Cuomo is just extraordinary to watch: He’s so real and authentic,” said Dr. Robert M. Wachter, the chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “But when this history is written, you have to look at what the mayors here did, what the public officials did, what Newsom did, and say they saved thousands of lives.”
This disparity in perception reflects a longstanding dynamic in America politics: The concentration of media and commentators in Washington and New York has often meant that what happens in the West is overlooked or minimized. It is a function of the time difference — the three Pacific states are three hours behind New York — and the sheer physical distance. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, a Democrat, found that his own attempts to run for president were complicated by the state where he worked and lived.
“News in this country flows east to west, always has and always will, but political and cultural movements flow west to east,” said Averell Smith, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked in campaigns nationwide and grew up in San Francisco, where his father was the district attorney.
The different responses that have been on display during these difficult weeks also illustrate the cultural, political and philosophical ways in which California, Washington and Oregon are distinct from the rest of the nation, a trend that has only accelerated since President Trump was sworn in.
[…]
California and Mr. Newsom have been under fire for delays in developing tests for the virus; New York has far outpaced California in testing potential victims. But the six Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, announced shelter in place orders on March 16. Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a stay at home order for the city of Los Angeles on March 19. Later that day, Mr. Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order.
Mr. Cuomo, who earlier that week had resisted a call from Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York to issue a stay-at-home order, followed a day later for New York — but that not take effect until March 22. Epidemiologists said that given the speed with which the virus spread and the density of parts of New York City, that delay was troubling.
“I remember seeing Governor Cuomo on TV making comments about not wanting to take away people’s civil liberties,” said London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. “I understand that, I totally understand that, But I don’t think that’s what we were doing. I know the information I had. It showed me the best-case and worst-case scenarios and provided the guidance to avoid the worst-case scenarios.”
“I think we’re going to look back and see that issuing this order had a tremendous impact on the number of people who have been infected, and also the number of people who died,” she said.
[…]
The West Coast is different than the East Coast in many ways.There are few cities on the Pacific with the sort of population density as skyscraper-filled New York and other metropolitan parts of the Northeast.
And the mostly liberal politics of the West Coast paved the way for the kind of early interventionist policies that were until recently resisted in much of the country.
“There’s not a general sense that government is somehow the enemy rather than an essential part of life,” said Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who is now the president of University of California.
It is a region with a heavy concentration of tech industry engineers and executives, particularly in Washington, Oregon and, of course, Silicon Valley. The tech industry, including companies like Google and Apple, took the lead in having employees work from home. “We’re adept at understanding and accepting science,” said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington. “Looking over the horizon at threats earlier than perhaps other parts of the nation.”
In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown said she had been “blown away by how receptive Oregonians across the political spectrum” have been to the demands of the moment and she offered a theory as to why. “We’ve been preparing and thinking through these crises, and I do think at some level it permeates the public’s consciousness,” she said, citing the frequent natural disasters that have befallen her state.
And the Pacific states are more connected to Asia, with a large population of Asian immigrants, so the threat of a medical calamity in the Far East did not seem as remote as it might in Maine and Georgia. “We saw it a little bit earlier,” said Mr. Inslee. “There’s just geography: We’re closer to China.”
In Los Angeles, Mr. Garcetti said officials saw early warnings in the low attendance at the Lunar New Year parade in early February and the small crowds on the sidewalks in Chinatown. “I think we had an earlier sense that this might actually touch us,” he said. “We have planned for a long time for a pandemic.”
Shutting down an economy — in the fact of deep concerns of workers and the business community — is one of the most difficult decisions an elected official can make, as has become clear this month.
“It’s easy now to look at Newsom and London Breed and say, ‘of course,’” Dr. Wachter said. “But there was a lot of pushback at the time. If they had made the wrong bet, it would have been politically disastrous.”
[…]
But if their prompt response has been overshadowed, Pacific Coast residents living through this crisis don’t seem to be giving that a lot of thought.
“This is a community that’s not self-obsessed and looking for recognition, adulation or credit,” said Bill Walton, the San Diego native, former UCLA basketball great and noted Pacific evangelist.
As for the attention to Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Inslee only praised his fellow governor, calling the nationally-televised briefings from Albany “really helpful to the whole country,” while expressing resignation about the disparity in coverage.
“We’re not going to change the direction the sun rises,” he said.
Trump said in his coronavirus rally today that some states are “ready to go” to re-open and I suspect he means California because Newsome put out some preliminary plans for how it will go once they believe they have everything in place to make that safe. It ain’t going to be May 1st:
While there is no timeline for modifying the stay-at-home order, Newsom’s office said California would use a “gradual, science-based and data-driven framework” to determine when it would be safe to do so. Newsom indicated efforts to flatten the curve in California “have yielded positive results.”
- California had 24,421 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday afternoon, per the LA Times.
- On Monday, Newsom announced California would create a task force with Oregon and Washington to coordinate the reopening of the regional economy. Northeastern states have announced a similar plan.
Newsom said California would use six indicators to determine when to relax social distancing measures:
- “The ability to monitor and protect our communities through testing, contact tracing, isolating, and supporting those who are positive or exposed.”
- “The ability to prevent infection in people who are at risk for more severe COVID-19.”
- “The ability of the hospital and health systems to handle surges.”
- “The ability to develop therapeutics to meet the demand.”
- “The ability for businesses, schools, and child care facilities to support physical distancing.”
- “The ability to determine when to reinstitute certain measures, such as the stay-at-home orders, if necessary.”
“While Californians have stepped up in a big way to flatten the curve and buy us time to prepare to fight the virus, at some point in the future we will need to modify our stay-at-home order,” Newsom said.
- “As we contemplate reopening parts of our state, we must be guided by science and data, and we must understand that things will look different than before.”
- “There is no light switch here. Think of it as a dimmer. It will toggle between less restrictive and more restrictive.”
Trump, on the other hand, wants to “open the economy with a bang.” I hope he isn’t counting on California to provide that pop because it isn’t going to. I suspect we’ll come back in he most sane way, meaning way more testing than we’re currently doing and lots of contact tracing.
Newsom is very adroitly kissing Trump’s ass the way he likes it. But I will be very surprised if he opens the state prematurely on Trump’s orders.