Newsom Continues Dreadful COVID-19 Crackdown

On March 3, 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency, “deploying every level of government to help identify cases and slow the spread of this coronavirus.” In April, the governor announced spending of $1 billion on masks from a Chinese company, but the state of emergency was more far reaching.

Newsom backed a ban on sport fishing and police arrested solitary paddle boarders. The governor shut down schools and his rules for private gatherings banned singing and the playing of musical instruments. And so on, by some accounts, the most rigid regime of any state. (READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Supreme Court Hands the ‘Pillage’ People a Loss)

Newsom officially ended the state of emergency on Feb. 23, 2023, but the people have grounds to wonder. Newsom now deploys a SMARTER Plan not just for COVID-19 but “strategies and systems for future emergencies.” SMARTER stands for Shots, Masks, Awareness, Readiness, Testing, Education and Rx. As Katy Grimes of the California Globe noticed, Newsom was simply extending his previous COVID protocols.

According to the SMARTER plan, “Vaccines are the most powerful weapon against hospitalization and serious illness.” This ignores the reality that the COVID-19 vaccines backed by the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci failed to prevent infection and transmission of COVID-19. Though fully vaccinated and boosted, both Dr. Fauci and Joe Biden tested positive.

“Properly worn masks with good filtration help slow the spread of COVID-19 or other respiratory viruses,” the SMARTER plan proclaims. As Californians may recall, Dr. Fauci said there was no need to wear a mask before claiming that masks were necessary, and that it was “common sense” to wear two masks. The guidelines ignore studies making a case that the masks don’t work.

“COVID-19 IS not going away,” the SMARTER plan proclaims, and “we will continue to stay aware of how COVID-19 is spreading, evolving variants.” According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, the variant JN.1 is “closely related to the variant BA.2.86” and JN.1 has “only a single change” in the spike protein with BA.2.86. That variant is a “grandchild of Omicron,” according to Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and “about the same,” in infectiousness and transmissibility.

There is very little difference between the variants, but the CDC gives them menacing tags like “Pirola,” for JN.1. SMARTER takes no notice of these realities, and Californians have other reasons to ignore the governor’s plan.

In November of 2020, during the state of emergency, Newsom and a squad of lobbyists partied sans mask at the upscale French Laundry. He kept details of the $1 billion Chinese mask deal secret, even from fellow Democrats, and many Californians wonder where the money went. Newsom ordered many wineries to cease indoor operations but his own PlumpJack operation remained open. (READ MORE: Crime and Punishment, California Style)

Newsom claims that California’s COVID-19 death rate was the nation’s lowest, that the state GDP grew faster than U.S. GDP between 2019 and 2022, that California students experienced less learning loss than the rest of the nation, and so forth. As Grimes explains, this excludes the 50 percent of all California restaurants forced to close by the lockdown, the ongoing labor shortage, and the students who lost one year of learning due to Newsom’s school closures. For Grimes, the bogus statistics are intended to bolster Newsom’s “senseless three years of emergency powers,” and they should come as no surprise.

In his recent state of the state address, Newsom claimed “California is not a high-tax state.” As UCLA economics professor Lee Ohanian notes, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation “identifies California as a very high-tax state,” with the highest tax collections per person among all states.

California collects $7,200 per person per year in state tax revenue, some 65 percent more than the national average of $4,375. And as taxpayers might note, Newsom recently teamed with former Jerry Brown to have the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act taken off the November ballot, for which it had already qualified.

COVID-19 rules aside, Newsom seems to be suffering from reality dysphoria. A healthy intake of economic and medical reality will prevent this ailment from spreading to other states.

Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

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