Is Politics the Reason Gov. Newsom is Keeping California Locked Down?
The only curve which needs to be flattened is the curve of the anti-jobs, anti-business political majority in Sacramento
By Katy Grimes, April 21, 2020 12:42 pm
While Republican governors are announcing plans to re-open their states, many Democrat governors are being non-committal and stalling.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom refuses to even put out a tentative date, even as testing of coronavirus infections shows they are not only leveling off, but dropping.
Californians are protesting this lockdown, and there are more coming to the State Capitol, and counties throughout the state.
Early in March, Newsom told Californians to stay at home in order to flatten the curve of coronavirus outbreaks in order to not overwhelm our hospitals. But hospitals in California were never overwhelmed.
Emergency rooms have been largely empty, and the state’s 422 hospitals’ ICUs have maybe four coronavirus patients each.
With 1,208 coronavirus fatalities in a state of 40 million, this math bears out.
Many don’t know that 780 people die each day anyway in California from other causes: cancer, motor vehicle crashes, suicides, homicides, drug overdose, and coronary heart disease is the top killer.
While California politicians and the news media are still hysterical over the coronavirus, it’s as if the annual seasonal flu never happened this year.
Yet it’s the seasonal flu which is so deadly nearly every year, while the media and politicians say show little to no concern.
And this year, 2019-2020 flu season, the flu vaccination is only 47% effective.
The CDC reports today there are 746,625 total cases of those testing positive fro Coronavirus in the United States, and a total of 39,083 deaths – the average age of which is 79 1/2.
Many doctors and coroners say they are told to count every death as coronavirus if the patient tested positive for it as hospitals receive a larger payment from medicare.
However, there have been 410,000 – 740,000 seasonal flu hospitalizations, and 24,000 – 62,000 flu deaths.
The CDC admits to not counting the seasonal flu beyond April 4 because of coronavirus.
As California Globe reported recently:
According to the Center for Disease Control, even with a vaccine, the 2018-2019 flu season, lasting 21 weeks, was the longest in a decade; 61,200 died, 647,000 people were hospitalized. The CDC says that is on par with a typical flu season.
In 2018, nearly 80,000 Americans died of seasonal flu, the kind that more people end up in the hospital with. It caused more deaths, particularly among young children and the elderly.
In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC, prior to 2018.
Looking at these numbers, why is California still locked down?
Politics.
While most state government employees are sheltering at home, they are doing it with a full paycheck.
It’s the private sector business owners and private sector employees who bear the brunt of the shutdown with business closures and more than 3 million jobs lost.
State employees are union members, of which, the SEIU is the largest labor union bargaining unit, and one of the largest political campaign contributors in the state.
Under one party rule in California, between the jobs lost due to the governor shutting down the state, and independent contractors and freelancers losing jobs after Assembly Bill 5 was passed, Democrats are largely silent.
Even with a new exemption carved out of AB 5 for musicians, “the language also specifically provides for unions to continue to organize the work of recording artists, musicians, singers and others, ensuring that current and future collective bargaining agreements will always govern in California,” the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported.
Motive for Remaining Shut down
Governor Newsom also may be getting pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, over California’s competitive congressional races.
Of the seven house seats lost by Republicans in the 2018 ballot harvesting slaughter, most of those are battleground seats in 2020. However, under statewide lockdown, Republican candidates Buzz Patterson (CD-7), Eric Early (CD-28), Mike Garcia (CD-25), Andy Caldwell (CD-24), Darrell Issa (CD-50), Jay Obernolte (CD-8), Young Kim (CD-39), Michelle Steele (CD-48), David Valadeo (CD-21) and others, trying to win back those seats cannot campaign, nor can they fundraise.
And Democrat incumbents are sitting on war chests, generously funded by labor unions.
California Globe has spoken with several of these candidates and they all express the same frustration.
More Data
According to a report released Monday by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, as many as 442,000 Los Angeles County residents may have already been infected with the coronavirus by early April, a number far higher than the 8,000 cases confirmed at the time.
In the first large-scale study of adults tested for COVID-19 antibodies in their blood, initial results show researchers found that 4.1% have the antibodies, an indication that they have already been exposed to the virus.
“That translates to roughly 221,000 to 442,000 adults who have recovered from an infection, once margin of error is taken into account, according to the researchers conducting the study,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
“The estimated infection numbers are 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed COVID-19 cases L.A. County had reported at the time of the study in early April.”
The study tested more than 860 people deemed representative of L.A. County.
No comments:
Post a Comment