by Jonathan Wolfe
Last month California became the first state in the U.S. to officially move from a pandemic approach to the virus toward an endemic one.
The state unveiled a “next phase” playbook that will treat the virus as a manageable risk, with measures to promote vaccines, stockpile medical supplies and combat disinformation. It marked a new chapter for the state and the nation.
For more on the plan, I spoke to Shawn Hubler, who covers California for The Times.
What do we need to know about California’s move to endemicity?
There are multiple things happening at once. At the executive level, Gov. Gavin Newsom has lifted or dialed back a lot of the health restrictions that were put in place during the pandemic. Already, California has loosened indoor mask mandates, and on Friday, the state’s mask mandate for schoolchildren is going to be lifted. In the private sector, a lot of businesses have also eased their rules for masking and vaccinations.
At the same time, California is trying to build coronavirus protections into the state’s existing laws. The state health department has started the ball rolling to require schoolchildren to be vaccinated against Covid as they are with polio and measles. The Legislature is trying to close a loophole that at the moment allows for personal belief exemptions to school vaccinations for Covid. Another bill in the hopper would allow children 12 and older to get vaccinated without a parent’s permission.
Has there been any resistance?
Yes. California is not as blue as much of the nation assumes it is. A third of the state voted for Donald Trump, and there are more Trump voters here than in any other state in the country. And the people who are resistant are fairly determined not to build pandemic measures into the state’s legal infrastructure.
In Shasta County, for example, a group of far-right voters recently recalled a supervisor and took over a majority of the board that governs the county. The new board’s first act last week was to issue a proclamation saying it wasn’t going to enforce mask and vaccine mandates, which are virtually nonexistent or unenforced in the county anyway at this point. And other constituencies may push back on some of the proposed legislation.
What does this move to endemicity mean for the rest of the nation?
California tends to be a model for policy in a lot of other places and in Washington, especially for Democratic administrations. I can see some of what California is doing potentially ending up as a piece of the Biden administration’s approach.
In health terms, the state’s coronavirus policies seem to have paid off. As the governor constantly points out, California’s per capita death rate from Covid-19 has been significantly lower overall than big Republican states like Florida. And as a majority-minority state, California has put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that, say, Latino farmworkers have as much access to protection as coders in Silicon Valley, which fits with the administration’s priorities.
How do Californians feel about this moment of the pandemic?
Covid case rates are down to about what they were in the middle of last summer when people were elated — so, yeah, Californians are stoked. By and large, a majority of the state is ready to move on.
But the pandemic has been this terrible trauma. It’s brought out the best in us, but not all of us rose to the occasion. I think about my neighbors and friends who didn’t wear masks or who — to my astonishment — knowingly spread misinformation about vaccines or didn’t get vaccinated.
The pandemic has been like one of those scenes in a movie where everyone’s on a plane, and then it starts to nosedive. People are confessing things they never thought they would confess. Some people are helping others, while another person is smacking the guy next to him. But now, the plane is leveling off. We now know how our neighbors dealt with the pandemic, and we can’t unsee that. So how can we move on together from that?