California Update

I think it's worth focusing on California lockdowns, which are oppressive in themselves, but as they say, what starts in California spreads to the rest of the country, and as we'll see below, there are rumbles to that effect.

On December 29, when an initial double secret set of restrictions expired, California extended its effectively statewide regional stay-at-home order until mid January. These were based on an entirely new criterion, ICU capacity, and overlay an existing color-coded set of restrictions on individual counties.

The bottom line is that in most parts of the state, schools are closed to in-person instruction, school athletics are suspended, restaurants are closed except for takeout, barbershops, hair and nail salons, and gyms are closed, and retail is limited to 25% capacity. The status of churches is in litigation, with indoor worship prohibited in most areas and outdoor worship subject to numerical limits depending on civil jurisdiction. (Los Angeles County has "allowed" indoor worship subject to vague conditions, but so far the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has not reopened for indoor masses.)

Amusement parks and indoor museums remain closed. There's an unofficial and unenforced ban on "inessential" travel -- indeed, in Los Angeles, a ban on inessential walking, bicycling, or scooter riding. However, on a recnt trip through Hollywood, I saw many people riding scooters, no joke, and I frankly doubt if those were all essential trips. As the photo above suggests, scooters in LA are an upscale phenomenon, and putative restrictions on them are ignored.

So we have an opinion piece by limousine libertarian Virginia Postrel in Bloomberg News, misleadingly titled "Los Angeles Locked Down. Covid Came Anyway." But it mentions no statistics, quotes no official policies. It's a gushy, perky chick piece on Virginia Postrel.

Our pandemic experience hasn’t been that bad. My husband and I get along and like being together. With jobs we can do online and no kids to homeschool, we have it easy. Our three-bedroom condo gives us separate workspaces and room to spread out. I’ve turned our kitchen table into my own Zoom studio, complete with backdrop and lights for a 2020 book tour. I’d love to eat in a restaurant or travel cross country, but those are minor sacrifices compared with what many people are experiencing, even without getting sick.

Postrel mentions in passing the effect of the virus on her housekeeper's family, but mostly it's that her husband can't go in to the university where he's a professor, and he hasn't had a haircut, so he's growing a pony tail. This is one reason why the Recall Newsom movement has an uphill battle: as Postrel acknowledges, the elites are only mildly inconvenienced, and their lives are fine. Too bad about the cooks, waiters, and barbers, huh? Postrel, a writer, knows her audience, and she knows her market. I'm glad that I only rarely worked as one.

The political class's views have in fact hardened. Alex Padilla, designated by Gov Newsom to replace Kamala Harris in the US Senate, expressed the party line just the other day:

But again, as you said, we’ve been hearing about, whether it’s COVID fatigue, and people are maybe taking it a little — getting a little too comfortable, thinking they would be immune or that the worst of it was over when it wasn’t true. Second, California can do all the things it needs to do, but if you have people still coming in and out from other states that have been less restrictive, right? Arizona is just right next door, for example, or all the people that flew throughout Thanksgiving weekend, all that is now coming home to roost. So, once again, we’ve got to tighten the belt in terms of that mobility,

What he's telegraphing is the need for a national lockdown. Because California.

Get a scooter, folks. You'll be fine.