Record Covid Cases Despite Strict Lockdowns...Maybe They Aren't Working? Rules Are For The Serfs Not The Overlords

California Reports Record COVID Cases And Deaths... Despite Strictest Lockdown

Jon Miltimore 

On December 4, a bipartisan group of California legislators sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a letter urging him to reconsider his order closing outdoor playgrounds as part of his regional stay-at-home order.

“While we must appropriately consider best practices to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, we also must ensure the children across the state are not unfairly deprived of their opportunities for outdoor access and play,” the legislators wrote.

Newsom’s order closing outdoor playgrounds—a response many see as senseless and ineffective, which prompted the governor to rescind it—is just one example of the hardline approach California public officials have taken in their attempt to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

Other restrictions include a 10 p.m. curfew, bans on outdoor dining and religious gatherings, as well as school closures. Surveys in recent months have shown California’s restrictions are some of the strictest in the US.

Sadly, but perhaps predictably, the regulations do not appear to be working. State data show California is smashing its previous highs in both COVID-19 cases and deaths.

“California broke its statewide records for both coronavirus cases reported and deaths reported in a single day on Wednesday,” The Hill reports.

“The state reported 51,724 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, breaking the previous record of 42,088 cases, which was just set on Monday, according to a Los Angeles Times tally.”

To put these numbers into perspective, the number of deaths California reported on Wednesday was more than double the daily high in any previous month.

‘I’m Not Sure We Know What We’re Doing’

Newsom’s decision to reimpose lockdowns in light of the evidence we have today has left some California public officials puzzled.

"During the first Shelter in Place order, which I wholeheartedly endorsed, the virus was brand new and had the capability of spreading exponentially due to zero immunity and people's complete lack of awareness," San Mateo County Health Officer Scott Morrow recently observed on the county’s website.

“[That order] was very much consistent with my long-held views about the judicious use of power.…However, I very quickly rescinded my initial orders shuttering society and focused my new orders on the personal behaviors that are driving the pandemic… .”

Morrow implied that many of the actions being taken suggest California officials have learned little since the spring.

“Just because one has the legal authority to do something, doesn't mean one has to use it, or that using it is the best course of action,” he wrote.

“What I believed back in May, and what I believe now, is the power and authority to control this pandemic lies primarily in your hands, not mine."

Morrow was blunt in his appraisal of the restrictions being imposed across the Golden State.

“I’m not sure we know what we’re doing,” he wrote. “I look at surrounding counties who have been much more restrictive than I have been, and wonder what it’s bought them.”

Morrow appears to have gleaned an insight once observed by the economist Milton Friedman.

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results,”Friedman famously observed.

With every passing week the results of government lockdowns become more clear. They cause tremendous and widespread harms—no one disagrees on this point—but the supposed benefits of the policies remain tenuous. Despite the bevy of evidence they possess, lawmakers continue to embrace restrictions because of bad incentives.

Pinkerton: The Covid Class War — the Liberated vs. the Locked Down

James P. Pinkerton

One rule for thee, and one rule for me.  That sort of hypocrisy has been baked into human power relations, since, well, forever.  As the Greek historian Thucydides wrote 2,500 years ago, “The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.”

Today, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are seeing power-hypocrisy once again, as politicians and plutocrats live one way, while telling everyone else to live another way.

A case in point is California’s oh-so-chic governor, Gavin Newsom. The handsome darling of billionaires, a man on everyone’s shortlist of future Democratic presidential hopefuls, Newsom got caught with his mask down at The French Laundry, a Michelin three-star restaurant in the Golden State’s posh Napa Valley.

In that incident, Newsom was photographed, maskless, in close proximity to a dozen or so donors and lobbyists in a private room at the restaurant. In response, Miriam Paweł, a longtime chronicler of California Democratic politics, penned a fiery op-ed in the New York Times, headlined, “Gavin Newsom, What Were You Thinking?” As she wrote, “It is hard to say which was more astounding, the hypocrisy or the hubris.”  That is, Newsom was partying, even as he was ordering lockdowns for the masses—who, of course, hadn’t been invited to his soirée.

Continuing, Paweł added:

The party at a restaurant where dinner for two costs more than many people earn in a week reinforced a fundamental schism between those who value government as a force for good and those who resent it as the bastion of an out-of-touch elite oblivious to peoples’ needs.

A Tea Partier couldn’t have said it any better.

By contrast, Newsom and his fellow elitists seem to be offering nothing but special deals to their cronies—and bad deals to everyone else. That unfair reality is made clear by the fate of another California restaurant, the Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill in the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles. Local authorities ordered that restaurant—boasting zero Michelin stars and no glittering customers—to be closed, including its new tented outdoor seating area. And yet at the same time, a Hollywood production company was allowed to set up its commissary facility—including its own tented area for eating—just a few feet away. In other words, while one tent was closed, another tent was allowed to open, right there for local-news TV cameras to see.

It was a shocking juxtaposition, showing power on the one hand and powerlessness on the other. The well-connected Hollywood types, officially deemed an “essential industry,” can operate freely, while mere ordinary restaurants are closed down. Breitbart News and many other sites highlighted the pleas of restaurateur Angela Marsden, now sadly facing financial ruin.