Written by Justin Culetu
Although California has just begun its reopening process, it continues to fall behind the rest of the country in returning to normal post-pandemic life. On Wednesday, San Diego County health officials and Supervisor Nathan Fletcher held a press briefing to address the local Covid-19 response. Unfortunately, Fletcher gave no logical response to the County’s failure to expedite the reopening process.
During the press briefing, KUSI News reporters asked Fletcher about the logic behind the county’s restrictive reopening, despite cases in San Diego County seeing a decline along with the knowledge of Texas’ cases and hospitalizations also declining after three weeks of ending lockdown mandates.
Fletcher responded, “Texas has a death rate almost double that per person than San Diego County. Meaning, that if we had followed the model of Texas, we would have almost twice as many dead San Diegans. So I don’t think Texas is a model that we necessarily want to follow.”
The fact of the matter is that states that have lifted lockdown restrictions have been thriving not only in regards to limiting the spread of coronavirus, but also economically. Not only does Supervisor Fletcher, who utterly failed in properly handling San Diego’s covid response, provide no merited argument as to why San Diego remains one of the most locked-down counties in the nation, but he also blatantly attempts to fear monger by comparing statistics of a highly populated state to a single county.
In fact, California and Texas remain very similar in covid deaths per 100,000 people, despite taking polar opposite approaches to containing the virus. As of April 15th, California has 154 deaths per 100,000 people and Texas has 171.
Clearly, Democratic California government officials are reluctant to follow the lead of red states on reopening strategy, despite the fact that red states are faring extremely well. Florida and Texas were among the first states to fully reopen in the country and they have seen successful outcomes in containing the virus, while still being able to return to normal pre-pandemic life. California on the other hand refuses to allow its residents to return to normal because state leaders would have to admit that Republicans were right.
