When California quickly reopened the economy, Santa Cruz County officials decided that it was safest to keep its iconic beaches largely closed in the afternoons to avoid crowds that could spread the coronavirus.
But the public increasingly ignored the rules and demanded their summer on the sand, swimming, sunbathing, and just hanging out. Unable to stop the crowds, county officials simply gave up.
“People are no longer willing to be governed in that regard,” health official Dr. Gail Newel said as the county rescinded its beach closure order last week.
This is the problem California officials now face as they face a huge increase in coronavirus cases linked to business reopens, social gatherings, and other factors, and hospitals are becoming increasingly crowded. As the public has become more accustomed to the pandemic, Californians appear to be less afraid of the highly contagious virus, even though it is no less infectious than it was in winter.
When California became the first state in the nation to impose an order to stay home on March 19, people listened.
The companies stopped and many stayed home as much as possible, watching as COVID-19 carried out a deadly march through places like New York and northern Italy.
We empty the supermarkets as if preparing for the apocalypse. We disinfect our cell phones by the hour. Some of us even clean groceries or leave mail-delivered packages alone for days, fearing the virus might surface.
California emerged months after an apparent coronavirus success story, with far fewer deaths than at other critical points. But those bragging rights also brought complacency and a demand that we return to the old routines that could revive the devastated economy. Eventually, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations began to increase rapidly.
“We were victims of our own success,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine and an expert in infectious diseases at UC San Francisco.
Government officials must now try to reverse some of the reopens, hoping to avoid a disastrous July 4 weekend that spreads the infection even faster with social events and crowds.
Governor Gavin Newsom this week ordered the closure of interior restaurants, bars, wineries, movie theaters, zoos and museums in 19 counties, affecting more than 28 million Californians, or 72% of the state’s population. Local government officials ordered the closure of the beaches in Los Angeles., Orange and Ventura counties.
Getting more people to comply with a state order to wear masks in public remains a challenge. And many have grown accustomed to being in the crowds after participating in protests, seeing restaurants reopen and hosting social gatherings.
“California should be commended for doing so well at first. We really shut down, and I think we really got the right messages out, ”said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of UC San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “Then why do we start dating?”
“We felt good about everything we had accomplished, without realizing that the virus never left us. The virus was under control, “she said. And although the closing of the company happened quickly, “it made us believe that we could open ourselves in the same way.”
Many residents are torn: They understand the growing dangers of the coronavirus, but they also say that the months of virtual confinement had an emotional cost. Casey Parlette, a Laguna Beach resident, said he still wonders if his city was right to close its beaches over the holiday weekend.
“I listen to both sides of the argument … but it is difficult when everything is closed. When the beaches, the trails, the parks were closed, the only thing that was open was maybe your backyard, if you have one, and the center of the street and that was it, “Parlette said.
“We were trying to find creative ways to get my 3-year-old out and do things,” he added. “But I think there is a certain amount of implicit responsibility that people have to take to avoid being part of the problem.”
However, California is not yet in the same crisis as other states, such as Arizona and Florida. While the rate at which coronavirus testing confirms infections in California in the past seven days is 6.9%, in Arizona it is 24%, and in Florida it is 16%.
Some experts say California can avoid disaster by changing its behavior now, without needing to return to the stricter order of staying home.
This is in part due to our better understanding of the virus: Doctors can provide better hospital care than in the early days of the pandemic.
But people also need to do a better job of avoiding higher-risk activities. Experts say indoor bars are high risk, as are large indoor gatherings.
Low-risk activities involve meeting friends or family outdoors, in smaller gatherings, for shorter periods of time, while wearing masks when they don’t eat or drink. The San Francisco Health Order, for example, allows outdoor gatherings but requires masks and calls for social distancing and no more than 12 people for special gatherings and no more than six for a meal.
In Los Angeles County, the coronavirus crisis remains so severe that officials do not recommend meetings outside the home. Newsom discouraged such gatherings this holiday weekend.
We may change our habits. Seat belt use became California law in 1986. Smoking is no longer allowed in crowded public areas.
“Public health, when it does its best work, does not tell people what to do. It is telling people how to keep themselves and their loved ones safe so that people can make their decisions about how to do it, “said Bibbins-Domingo.
Lockdown fatigue is not a new phenomenon. During the 1918 flu pandemic, San Franciscans threw their masks into the air when they thought the pandemic was over, not realizing that a new deadly wave of flu would arrive in a few weeks, Chin-Hong said at UC San Francisco.
“People fear that history will repeat itself,” he said.
California’s exuberant optimism that the worst of the pandemic was behind was fueled by the state’s early success. While many people in California might not know someone who died, Chin-Hong said in New York, it seemed that everyone knew someone who died.
Without that deep-seated fear, it has been difficult for some Californians to accept that some traditions that seem safe and healthy, such as reuniting with an extended family inside, are now risky.
In California, large gatherings in the interior have triggered multi-generational COVID-19 outbreaks. People are particularly infectious in the days before they show symptoms if they get sick; A substantial part of infected people never show symptoms, but they can be very contagious.
Dizzying differences between neighboring counties over the pace of reopening also complicated the public messaging system. You can’t cut your hair in San Francisco, but you could if you drove to Napa County.
And in Los Angeles County, it would have been difficult to keep businesses closed any longer than in neighboring counties, Mayor Eric Garcetti said in May. “The regions have to move together,” he said at the time, adding that it would be difficult to tell a barber in Long Beach to remain closed while beauty salons are open nearby in Orange County.
The rules are so confusing between counties that people may end up thinking, “These people don’t know what they’re talking about, I’m just going to do my thing,” Chin-Hong said.
Also, the historical protests that arose after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer may have caused some people to think, “If this is okay, then certainly start meeting with others … it should be okay too. ” Said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.
Another reason why the coronavirus is difficult to contain is its mortality rate. While it’s 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, making stay-at-home orders reasonable for many, the virus is not as deadly as the 2002-03 severe acute respiratory syndrome virus. 10 times higher fatality and would likely elicit more support for stronger blockade measures, Kim-Farley said.
To emerge from this new crisis, public health officials, politicians and the public must agree on a path that is easy to understand, Kim-Farley said.
A unified message and a wave of public support have helped contain the virus in places like Taiwan and New Zealand.
First, public health officials and politicians must work together to identify widely understood goals, then politicians must work with the public to establish support, and “they need to lead and demonstrate, for example themselves, the actions they want the public to do – like wearing masks, “said Kim-Farley.
If officials can craft disease control measures that the public will support, it will help create new social norms.
“We have to create a new public health standard for COVID: that it is not good to be outside without a mask,” said Kim-Farley, or that customers will not go to restaurants that do not keep tables at safe distances. Perhaps county officials can rate companies’ compliance with COVID-19 regulations, he said.
For now, health officials hope that news of the current increase in infections and hospitalizations will persuade Californians to change their behavior.
Bibbins-Domingo said he does not believe California is destined for a New York-style hospital system overload. “What New York saw was a rate of growth so rapid in a very limited environment that it was really impossible to manage,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
She said California should pay attention to outbreak outbreaks, such as in Latino communities, which can be much worse than the county average. “We are all interconnected in some way. That is where we are at risk that only the transmission level is too high for any of us to be safe. ”
Bibbins-Domingo said he hopes California can recover the coronavirus.
“We have already shown that we can do that. We can take some common sense steps, “he said. “We have to take it seriously … but I think we can also go back.” This was just a little wake-up call. ”
Times editors Jake Sheridan, Colleen Shalby, Joseph Serna and Hillary Davis and Lilly Nguyen of Times Community News contributed to this report.
