"We would've done everything differently": Newsom reflects on Covid approach

[Wordupmybrotha]

Oh, come on. You can't be insinuating that he never actually answers a direct question.

[YOUTUBE]redacted

I heard the words coming out of his mouth, but the strange linguistic terms he's using and his grainy voice make it very difficult for me to comprehend what I just heard.

[CrazyCobraManTim]

F him and the horse he rode in on.

The whores???

[mike.h]

Newscum is just trolling for future votes.

[TrappedinCalifornia]

I heard the words coming out of his mouth, but the strange linguistic terms he's using and his grainy voice make it very difficult for me to comprehend what I just heard.

Did you notice in the piece where even the reporter was complaining about his not answering the question; i.e., it's difficult to comprehend a 'non-answer' to a simple question.

[Palmaris]

He spent one billion on the never delivered masks.

Nothing more to see here.

I clearly remember $2B

[TrappedinCalifornia]

I clearly remember $2B

There were some pretty 'head spinning' numbers being thrown out. In April 2020, it was reported... Amid pandemic, Newsom faces scrutiny over $1B face-mask deal

California lawmakers bestowed Gov. Gavin Newsom with unusual power last month before they put their legislative session on hold and left Sacramento, giving him bipartisan approval to spend up to $1 billion "for any purpose" related to the coronavirus pandemic...

But since Newsom announced on national television last week that he had "inked a number of contracts" to buy hundreds of millions of protective face masks from a manufacturer in China, the kumbaya spirit has waned. Legislators have demanded more details on the arrangement and a recent news report raised questions about the company contracted to make the masks. Meanwhile, the Newsom administration told lawmakers on Friday that it will need to spend $6 billion beyond the $1 billion they approved to prepare the health care system to fight coronavirus - and legislators have set hearings to oversee the state spending.

Today Newsom defended his decision to order $1.4 billion in protective equipment from a consortium that includes BYD - a Chinese company with a subsidiary that manufactures electric buses in California - following a Vice News report over the weekend critical of the company...

In May of 2022... Little Scrutiny Two Years After Gov. Newsom's Odious $1B China BYD Mask Deal

Two years after Gov. Gavin Newsom's shady no-bid $1 billion N-95 mask deal with newly formed BYD Mask company, there are still many questions surrounding the deals.

Gov. Gavin Newsom approved spending $1 Billion of taxpayers funds on masks from Chinese company BYD, an electric bus maker which started manufacturing N95 masks as the COVID pandemic hit, when the original mask purchase to Blue Flame fell apart after a bank notified the governor that Blue Flame was only a few days old.

Even more egregious, California lawmakers were not allowed to see details of the $1 Billion contracts signed by Gov. Newsom with BYD. Legislators sent him a letter demanding details of the agreement, saying there has been too little transparency in spending those massive taxpayer dollars... to no avail...

The Globe reported May 7, 2020, "It was only recently revealed that the state of California wired nearly $500 million dollars for masks to a company that had been in business for three days."...

That seems (or seemed) to be the issue; i.e., spending that much on a 3-day old company with no transparency. As a result, much speculation abounded, including on this site...

Newsome a Chinese stooge too?
Newsom sends $1B to China company to manufacture masks
Where Is All This Money Supposed To Come From Gavin?

Bear in mind, in that 'moment,' there was a good deal of concern for many/most regarding the availability of masks and whether they actually worked; something which still sees 'debate' in media circles. In fact, it was the 'mask availability' issue and how the Government handled it which led, in part, to my first calls for Fauci's dismissal later in August of 2020... We May Be Close To Fauci Needing To Be Replaced, Because...

Where things may be 'confusing' or you may be 'conflating' figures... also from April 2020... Newsom's mask deal shows tendency for big plans, few details...

...The announcement surprised many state lawmakers, and California took the unusual step of paying half the cost up front. One week later, details of the $1 billion deal with Chinese company BYD are limited - the contract has not been made public, though Newsom's emergency services director said it would be soon.

The mask deal, and how Newsom announced it, illustrates the first-term governor's tendency to make big pronouncements without all details in place, or before his administration is ready to share them.

Lawmakers will begin oversight hearings Thursday to learn more about the deal and Newsom's spending during the pandemic after they halted their session last month and gave him broad authority to spend. He's spent nearly $2 billion...

So... $1 billion on a mask contract and $2 billion, at that point, on the pandemic as a whole.

[Creeping Incrementalism]

With the annoying server issues, I don't log in to CalGuns very often anymore, so I just read this response.

As with any population at any given moment, there will be 'good' and 'bad' people. In 2020, no one (or very few) had any real idea what was going on and that can be one of the most terrifying of circumstances. Given those parameters, 'reaction' is often, at least initially, instinctive rather than rational.

The first stats I saw about Covid in early March before the lockdowns was that something like 99% of the deaths were elderly and immunocompromised. Even if Covid were 10 times more lethal than the flu for health people, well -- we all survived the last 10 flu seasons. So yeah, I would say the reaction was stupidly instinctual rather than rational, even when rationality was possible.

Given that we had not experienced a 'pandemic' (or what was 'sold' as a pandemic) for over 100 years, how much 'experience' was actually out there,

Even in the post-WWII vaccine era, this was not something new. There was a flu pandemic in 1957, one in the 1968, and a perceived one in the 70s in the U.S. For each, a vaccine was rushed into production in the U.S., and there was some significant issues reported in the news and in the memories of even people who were children at the time, yet there was no where near the level of hysteria we had with Covid. The 1918 Spanish Flu was 30 - 50 times more lethal than Covid for those of the working age population (based on 0.03% versus 1 - 2 % case mortality) and the U.S. didn't react as badly then as it did for Covid. Even if an individual city did react harshly in 1918, it was only for a month or two, for only for that particular city (same for 19th century Yellow Fever epidemics), not for huge swaths of counties like we had with Covid.

The idea of _widespread_ lockdowns for Polio (i.e. more than just one city's pools or schools in one city) was the kind of thing that was occasionally brought up in print in that pre-Polio-vaccine era, and a dismissed out of hand by medical authorities.

How that moment was taken advantage of and the outcome(s) is/are what ultimately determines 'good' from 'bad.' The problem? Those outcomes aren't always known when the decision appears 'necessary.' In retrospect, it's 'easy' to declare "they should have known." In the moment, when the rubber meets the road, it's not always such a 'given' in terms of what is right and what is wrong.

I did a lot of general interest reading about disease and pandemics before Covid. The conventional wisdom I saw over and over and over and over without exception, was that locking down for a vaccine was something out a Hollywood fantasy. So, when a pandemic actually happened, the public health community panicked the same as everyone, and flipped its own conventional wisdom it had developed of many decades.

There are legitimate reasons why such things as lockdowns and states of emergency suspend certain laws, including restrictions on Constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Before Covid, I had never seen an Constitutional argument for locking down huge geographical areas, basically entire states, for any disease. Very specific institutions, like schools in one single city, or quarantines of people actually diagnosed as sick, or quarantines of a ship or people at a port of entry, is all that was every okay. Random 1918 mask laws in public were very limited affairs for a single city in every case I read about, in any case they never lasted more than a month or two.

It's why, when conducting a retrospective evaluation, one needs to be cautious painting with a broad brush; e.g., "the people of California are not good people." When you claim "They are not the Americans I grew up with," does that apply universally or is it more appropriately applied to certain actors or groups? Is it based on a pragmatic perspective or a more abstract sensibility; neither of which can be said to 'universally' apply appropriately when push comes to shove? Remember, many who were objecting, even from the beginning, fall under the definition of 'the people of California.'

I personally didn't know (outside of CalGuns) anyone who completely opposed the lockdowns like I did, and that fact really, really bothered me. Some of the the people I know did strongly oppose the laws when they saw they didn't work, and to this day these people agree with me that the laws were dumb. Though it still sticks in my craw these people believed in lockdowns even for a month or two.

But mostly what I am talking about are the ~ 70% or more of Californians who supported lockdowns and vaccine mandates (based on polls). I didn't hear anyone at my job who opposed lockdowns and mandates. Although I know of a few co-workers who did oppose it, I never heard it expressed in person, so I felt alienated from my co-workers. My point is, I can't see myself living amongst the general population in a state like California, it just isn't practical to live in a state overwhelmingly composed of people like this. Combined with a vaccine mandate, I spent 2.5 years in basically an apartheid/segregated state, and became alienated. It used to be, I could just avoid politics, but with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, it is literally impossible to avoid the issue when I have to wear a mask when no one else does! Andy Newsom does fairly represent the general population of this state / most of the population.

[TrappedinCalifornia]

The first stats I saw about Covid in early March before the lockdowns was that something like 99% of the deaths were elderly and immunocompromised. Even if Covid were 10 times more lethal than the flu for health people, well -- we all survived the last 10 flu seasons. So yeah, I would say the reaction was stupidly instinctual rather than rational, even when rationality was possible.

It's kinda like the 'rule' many teams follow in baseball; e.g., never swing on the first pitch. COVID wasn't and never has been 'the flu.' It's related and the results, from the disease itself to the so-called 'vaccines,' are similar and many of us predicted that the outcome would, eventually, prove to be similar as well. What you, I, and many others are reacting to is the degree to which the public and government didn't take a 'measured' approach to the actual problem and, in some cases, used the opportunity for 'nefarious' ends.

Remember, the Spanish Flu, as you indicate, was an actual pandemic and, it too, was a variant of 'the flu.' This piece was written in 2003, well before COVID... Purple Death: The Great Flu of 1918...

...No matter what they called it, the virus attacked everyone similarly. It started like any other influenza case, with a sore throat, chills and fever. Then came the deadly twist: the virus ravaged its victim's lungs. Sometimes within hours, patients succumbed to complete respiratory failure. Autopsies showed hard, red lungs drenched in fluid. A microscopic look at diseased lung tissue revealed that the alveoli, the lungs' normally air-filled cells, were so full of fluid that victims literally drowned. The slow suffocation began when patients presented with a unique symptom: mahogany spots over their cheekbones. Within hours these patients turned a bluish-black hue indicative of cyanosis, or lack of oxygen. When triaging scores of new patients, nurses often looked at the patients' feet first. Those with black feet were considered beyond help and were carted off to die.

What made this influenza especially baffling to health care workers was that it attacked healthy, strong adults most often. Normally, flu is only life-threatening to the elderly, young children and people with compromised immune systems. Many adults become sick, but very few die. Spanish flu turned the tables on this pattern. Disproportionate numbers of men and women-especially pregnant women-died, leaving their orphaned children behind...

Life came to a standstill in some parts of the United States. Boston officials closed public schools, saloons and soda shops. Chicago police officers were ordered to arrest anyone sneezing or coughing in public. In Nashville, all public gatherings-including in movie houses, dance halls and pool parlors- were prohibited. Even ministers were ordered not to hold church services...

Today, with COVID, we're dealing with a different generation, different technologies, more diversity of cultures, etc. As a result, there will be greater differences in perception related to rationality/irrationality. Residing in Walnut Creek is different than being in Los Angeles which is different than being in New York City.

Many times, all one has is 'instinct,' which is why the adage "practice like you play and play like you practice" is a catch phrase. The problem? The media centers and larger voting constituencies are located in places which, at the beginning, were getting hit 'hard,' no one knew (with certainty) what was happening, and, in many cases, those regions were governed by individuals and political parties predisposed toward the use of Government power. Not a good combination in terms of 'instinctive responses.'

...Even if an individual city did react harshly in 1918, it was only for a month or two, for only for that particular city (same for 19th century Yellow Fever epidemics), not for huge swaths of counties like we had with Covid.

The idea of _widespread_ lockdowns for Polio (i.e. more than just one city's pools or schools in one city) was the kind of thing that was occasionally brought up in print in that pre-Polio-vaccine era, and a dismissed out of hand by medical authorities...

Yet, that month or two and the possibilities were still viewed as 'interminable' by some and 'not long enough' by others. My second grade teacher spent time in an iron lung due to polio. Her perspective was different than family members who lived through the same 'event' and never contracted the disease.

The population was a third (approximately) of what it is today. So, while the statistics will shake out differently, there are also 'similarities.' It depends on where you live and what was emphasized. Remember, there were many instances of 'bad' reactions in past pandemics/epidemics. While we, in theory, 'know more' today, we also 'know less' than we think.

In that sense, it comes down to a maxim which is often expressed... A person can be smart, but people are often stupid. Just like...

I did a lot of general interest reading about disease and pandemics before Covid. The conventional wisdom I saw over and over and over and over without exception, was that locking down for a vaccine was something out a Hollywood fantasy. So, when a pandemic actually happened, the public health community panicked the same as everyone, and flipped its own conventional wisdom it had developed of many decades.

Bear in mind that, many times, "Hollywood fantasy" is based in actual events and real theories. While 'dramatic license' is often taken and too often taken too far 'for effect,' there is often a modicum of 'truth' to the scenarios. But, the question of "Which Truth?" is the real issue. Take the movie WarGames. Many will point to WOPR (an earlier version of today's AI) taking over and having to 'learn.' But, was that the point or was it what "we" should have or be learning? That very much depends on a great many factors, including one's predisposition.

A 'common' or 'conventional' wisdom may not represent who is actually in charge when "it" hits the fan. It may not even be the 'best play' in a given scenario since 'common/conventional' is roughly synonymous with 'average.' Now, think about that when comparing past reactions to COVID. An 8th Grade test from the 1920's would 'challenge' many PhD holders today. It's not necessarily that 'native intelligence' is any different. It's that what makes up 'native intelligence' is a different mix.

'Instinct' is defined as: the way people or animals naturally react or behave, without having to think or learn about it. What isn't observed as part of that definition is how reaction/behavior is a function of experience, both innate and learned; the latter being further broken down as personal and cultural. From the moment we are born, our reactions/behaviors are informed by internal and external stimuli. Now, consider the stimuli this generation is exposed to versus what it was in the past. Isn't that one of the very things we lament on a variety of different topics?

Before Covid, I had never seen an Constitutional argument for locking down huge geographical areas, basically entire states, for any disease...

While you may have never 'seen' them, the discussions, debates, and machinations have long been out there. It's why many reference COVID as a 'test' to see how much the current population would tolerate.

I personally didn't know (outside of CalGuns) anyone who completely opposed the lockdowns like I did, and that fact really, really bothered me. Some of the the people I know did strongly oppose the laws when they saw they didn't work, and to this day these people agree with me that the laws were dumb. Though it still sticks in my craw these people believed in lockdowns even for a month or two.

Actually, many were opposed to the lockdowns and for the same reasons you were. However, they didn't perceive themselves as holding the reins of power or weren't willing to deal with the repercussions of opposition. Others thought a lot of 'dumb ideas' were being floated and implemented; but, for lack of a better idea or the ability to implement one, their 'voices' weren't broadcast in the media and given the 'censorship' (some official, some unofficial) that was happening, they were likely to be listened to even if they were 'heard.' In fact, if you go through even just the threads on this site, you see exactly that.

But mostly what I am talking about are the ~ 70% or more of Californians who supported lockdowns and vaccine mandates (based on polls). I didn't hear anyone at my job who opposed lockdowns and mandates. Although I know of a few co-workers who did oppose it, I never heard it expressed in person, so I felt alienated from my co-workers. My point is, I can't see myself living amongst the general population in a state like California, it just isn't practical to live in a state overwhelmingly composed of people like this. Combined with a vaccine mandate, I spent 2.5 years in basically an apartheid/segregated state, and became alienated. It used to be, I could just avoid politics, but with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, it is literally impossible to avoid the issue when I have to wear a mask when no one else does! Andy Newsom does fairly represent the general population of this state / most of the population.

Actually, you are citing your parochial observations and then claiming them to be 'universally applicable' to the State. On top of that, you are looking at an 'unique' time and, once again, claiming it applies to 'all seasons.' Therein lies the problem. Gotta Be 'Fake News:' Poll Shows California Voters Disapprove of Newsom's Performance...

...My problem is that 44% still think he's doing a credible job as Governor and that only 55% supposedly think the State is headed in the wrong direction.

If you go back and read what I posted in my response, you'll see I'm not saying anything different. If you want to live somewhere that the population more closely aligns with your perception of how things should be, go for it. To one degree or another, we all surround ourselves with people we agree with. But, as I said in that post and in this one...

...I wholeheartedly agree that Government controls and mandates persisted far too long and not always as a result of 'good intentions.' Further, I agree that far too many in power allowed 'personal issues' to overcome their sensibilities when it came to their job duties and public responsibilities. But, that doesn't make all the players 'nefarious' or 'criminals' simply because they followed orders or acted out of concern; i.e., I suspect there were far more who did that than there were the likes of Fauci or Newsom or similar. In fact, Trump could very well be placed in the former category, despite his actually implementing some of the things we now castigate as motivated by things other than 'good intentions.'

It's why, when conducting a retrospective evaluation, one needs to be cautious painting with a broad brush; e.g., "the people of California are not good people." When you claim "They are not the Americans I grew up with," does that apply universally or is it more appropriately applied to certain actors or groups? Is it based on a pragmatic perspective or a more abstract sensibility; neither of which can be said to 'universally' apply appropriately when push comes to shove? Remember, many who were objecting, even from the beginning, fall under the definition of 'the people of California.' Many more were 'hesitant,' but went along, for awhile, until the 'evidence' and, thus, the perspective, was clearer. Many of those too fall within the definition 'the people of California.' Recognize it or not, some of those were actually the people you grew up with who didn't have the power or authority to alter what was happening 'in the moment.'

[p7m8jg]

What an absolute liar.

"At the same time, Newsom bemoaned the partisan nature of the pandemic and how every decision by he and counterparts in other states and the White House were all viewed through a partisan prism..."

Newsom was being partisan when he said he wouldn't accept the Government's vaccine unless it was tested by his California experts. All because Trump was president.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. Or is it hair? That gel might be flammable......

[Warbonnet]

Newscum would have always done whatever the prevailing political expediency of any given moment in time dictates --which serves his immediate political priorities.

If the political winds and consensus had called for rounding up covid dissenters and placing them cattle cars to be shipped off to internment camps, he would have done so.

That guy can't comb his hair without seeking the political consensus of far left progressive demands first.

[arrix]

The only thing he'd change is to hold more parties at his private winery instead of French Laundry.

[mike.h]

FGN

[joepamjohn]

His dreams of POTUS are a fantasy

When he is in the White House in the near future I will be sure to revisit this quote. Lol

[Dave Hill]

Honestly,, the politicians know how stupid their constituents are. If they weren't stupid the politicians would be made into Christmas tree ornaments.

[Dave Hill]

Newscum would have always done whatever the prevailing political expediency of any given moment in time dictates --which serves his immediate political priorities.

If the political winds and consensus had called for rounding up covid dissenters and placing them cattle cars to be shipped off to internment camps, he would have done so.

That guy can't comb his hair without seeking the political consensus of far left progressive demands first.

Remember during Hitler's reign the government employed herded the Jews to the showers for their final cleaning. Our politicians, government employed and military scum will do the same when mandated do do so.