Californians losing their fear of COVID
LOS ANGELES — As California began to rapidly reopen the economy, officials in Santa Cruz County decided the safe thing to do was keep its landmark beaches largely closed in the afternoons to prevent 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 not willing to be governed anymore in that regard,” health officer Dr. Gail Newel said as the county rescinded its beach closure order last week.
This is one problem California officials now face as they deal with a major surge in coronavirus cases tied to business reopenings, social gatherings and other factors, and hospitals are becoming increasingly crowded. As the public has become more accustomed to the pandemic, Californians have seemingly become less afraid of the highly contagious virus, even though it’s no less infectious than it was in the winter.
When California became the first state in the nation to impose a stay-athome order on March 19, people listened.
Businesses ground to a halt and many stayed home as much as possible, watching as COVID-19 made a deadly march through places like New York and northern Italy.
Californians emptied the supermarkets as if preparing for the apocalypse. They sanitized cellphones hourly. Some even wiped down groceries or left mailed packages alone for days, fearful that the virus might be left on surfaces.
California emerged months later a seeming coronavirus success story, with far fewer deaths than in other hot spots. But those bragging rights also brought complacency, and a demand that we return to old routines that could revive the devastated economy. Eventually, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations started rising rapidly.
“We were kind of victims of our own success,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine and an infectious-diseases expert at University of California, San Francisco.
Government officials now must try to roll back some of the reopenings, hoping to avoid a disastrous July Fourth weekend that spreads infection even more quickly with social events and crowds.
Gov. Gavin Newsom this week ordered the closure of indoor restaurants, bars, wineries, movie theaters, zoos and museums in 19 counties, affecting more than 28 million Californians, or 72% of the state’s population. Beaches were ordered shut down by local government officials 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 become accustomed to being out in crowds after taking part in protests, seeing restaurants reopen and hosting social gatherings.
“California should be commended for doing so much well at the beginning. We really shut down, and I think we really got the right messages out,” said Dr. Kirsten BibbinsDomingo, chair of UC San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “So why did we start going out?”
“We felt good about all that we had accomplished, not realizing that the virus never left us. The virus was just under control,” she said. And while the shutdown of society happened quickly, “it made us believe that we could open up in the same type of way.”
Many residents are torn — they understand the growing dangers of the coronavirus but also say the months in virtual lockdown took an emotional toll. Casey Parlette, a Laguna Beach resident, said she is still wondering whether her city was right to close its beaches during the holiday weekend.
“I hear both sides of the argument ... but it’s a tough thing when everything is closed. When the beaches, trail heads, parks were closed, the only thing that was open was maybe your backyard, if you have one, and the middle of the street and that was pretty much it,” Parlette said.
“We were trying to figure out creative ways to get my 3-year-old son out and doing things,” she added. “But I think that there’s a certain amount of implicit responsibility that individuals need to take to not be part of the problem.”
California, however, is not yet in the same crisis as other states, such as Arizona and Florida. While the rate at which coronavirus tests are confirming infections in California over the last seven days is 6.9%, in Arizona it’s 24%, and in Florida it’s 16%.
Some experts say California can avoid disaster if it changes its behaviors now — without needing a return to the strictest stayat-home order.
That may be partly because of Californians’ understanding of the virus — physicians are able to provide better hospital care than they did in the pandemic’s earliest days.