Well, this is interesting. It was just 2 weeks ago that the California government was scaremongering and mandating and freaking out. What changed? Will their cases, which had spiked high, are way down, almost to where they were in August 2021, they were certainly freaking last August, and not even close to removing the mandates. They were putting in all sorts of mandates. Perhaps it was the live view of celebs and politicians blowing off masks at the Super Bowl?
California adopts nation’s 1st ‘endemic’ virus policy
California became the first state to formally shift to an “endemic” approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Thursday of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.
The milestone, nearly two years in the making, envisions a return to a more normal existence with the help of a variety of initiatives and billions in new spending to more quickly spot surges or variants, add health care workers, stockpile tests and push back against false claims and other misinformation.
“We are moving past the crisis phase into a phase where we will work to live with this virus,” he said during a news conference from a state warehouse brimming with pandemic supplies in Fontana, east of Los Angeles.
Perhaps it would be better to say they are the first liberal run state, because a goodly chunk of Republican states have been living like this for well over a year, never implementing mask mandates, school mandates, vaccine mandates.
A disease reaches the endemic stage when the virus still exists in a community but becomes manageable as immunity builds. But there will be no definitive turn of the switch, the Democratic governor said, unlike the case with Wednesday’s lifting of the state’s indoor masking requirements or an announcement coming Feb. 28 of when precisely schoolchildren can stop wearing face coverings.
And there will be no immediate lifting of the dozens of remaining executive emergency orders that have helped run the state since Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide stay-home order in March 2020.
“This pandemic won’t have a defined end. There’s no finish line,” Newsom said.
So…….it sounds like California is simply saying one thing, namely to live with the Wuhan flu, and doing another, keeping the government restrictions in place. It’ll be interesting to see if they keep the kids masked up while the politicians ditch the masks. However, it doesn’t really look like Leftist Californians are willing to ditch their own masks yet.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and with omicron fading in many parts of the world some countries have begun planning for the endemic stage. But no state has taken the step Newsom did and offered a detailed forward-looking plan.
Most states do not have to make this plan, because most states didn’t implement the vast number of government controls.
Republicans have been frequent critics of Newsom’s handling of the coronavirus and were quick to disparage his latest effort. State GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson called it “an extra-large helping of word salad” and renewed the call to “follow the lead of other blue states and end his state of emergency or lift his school mask mandate.”
Yup, word salad.
Newsom’s plan sets specific goals, such as stockpiling 75 million masks, establishing the infrastructure to provide up to 200,000 vaccinations and 500,000 tests a day in the event of an outbreak, and adding 3,000 medical workers within three weeks in surge areas.
Would these be the medical workers fired for refusing to take the vaccine?
California’s health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said one of the goals is to avoid business closures and other far-reaching mandates. However, he said the state’s requirement that schoolchildren be vaccinated against coronavirus by fall remains in effect.
So, yeah, forcing kids to be vaccinated.
The plan includes new education, including “myth-buster videos” to fight misinformation and disinformation and help interpret ever-evolving precautions for a confused public whiplashed by safeguards that seemingly shift by the day and vary across county lines.
Perhaps their messaging should have been not all over the place to start with. It really doesn’t look like they’re changing anything. They still want all the power.
Read: California Declares Chinese Coronavirus To Be Endemic Or Something »
New Zealand police ruled out forcibly clearing anti-vaccination protesters camped around parliament in Wellington on Friday, saying they did not want to provoke violence on the streets of the capital.
Consumers may already be reeling from higher prices for things like groceries and energy, but S&P Global Ratings says inflation has more surprises in store.
The human costs of natural disasters are the most profound, but the dollar-value losses are quickly increasing due to climate change.
As the deep ocean faces growing peril from climate change, seabed mining and other threats, scientists have discovered that seafloor sediments are home to vast populations of previously unknown organisms that may play a crucial role in carbon sequestration and marine food webs.
