California Governor Gavin Newsom July 2 Press Conference Transcript

Governor Gavin Newsom: (00:00)
Good afternoon everybody. It has been said that, “If you have your health, you have a million dreams. If you don’t have your health, you have but one.” That’s why today I want to talk about one of the most impactful things you can do to protect yourself, protect your health, and the health of others, and more broadly the community, and our state. That’s the importance, the imperative, of doing what we can to practice what we have been preaching, and that is putting on a face covering, wearing a face mask. Countries that have worn masks that have had universal mask policies in place at the beginning of this pandemic, have seen a substantial reduction and mitigation of the spread of COVID-19, and this virus. States that have also mandated requirements, and cities, and counties, large and small, have also seen slower spread in comparisons to other states that have not adopted, or other counties and communities that have not adopted these standards.

The evidence is simply overwhelming. Masks keep Californians healthy. As a consequence, we have for many, many months now, going back to the beginning of many of these presentations, been encouraging you to wear masks. Of course, over the last number of weeks now it’s a mandate in the State of California, and for good reason. This slide I’ve presented to you before is a slide that gives you a sense of how far the droplets when you cough go, and how far a distance those droplets can go if you sneeze. Just take a look at this closely. If you cough, droplets go about six feet. Even if you take a big exhale, droplets go as far as four and a half feet. But if you sneeze, 26 feet. So it’s just a reminder of the power and potency of these masks to mitigate the spread of those droplets, and to keep you healthier, and keep others healthier and safer at the same time.

For months now we have been putting out PSAs, public awareness campaigns. Recently we put out one with all of the ex-governors, and just very proud of Governor Schwarzenegger and his inspiration for this idea to encourage Governor Brown, Governor Davis, and Governor Wilson, to put out a PSA. What was notable about this public awareness campaign that we put out a number of weeks back was not only that four ex-governors were willing to do it, which was humbling in and of itself, but two representing the Republican party, two representing the Democratic party. Making the point that this is not a partisan issue, this is not a political issue, this is a public health issue.

We did PSAs that we put out in a very culturally competent way, in many different languages, all throughout the last number of months, encouraging you back when we had the state- at-home order more formally advanced, encouraging you to practice physical distancing, social distancing, to do the kind of hygiene that is required at this moment, and of course wear masks. We did animations. We went so far as to, well, when in doubt pull in the Seinfeld cast, and got Larry David. If you haven’t seen these PSAs … I, by the way, encourage you to take a look at these PSAs. They’re on the covid19.ca.gov website, or just type in Larry David PSA. Of course, you can’t be an ex-lieutenant governor and not be a fan of Veep, and so we also had Julia do a video for us as well, Snoop Dogg, Kim Kardashian. I honestly could add to many of these.

I can show you images of PSAs we put out. But we tried to really break the barriers in terms of breaking down, meeting people where they are by age, demographic, whether or not they’re watching broadcast TV, radio, or social media, if you’re on TikTok, or you’re on Instagram, if you’re doing more traditional social media on large platforms, we tried to reach out but we did so in more of an episodic way. We are now launching a major public awareness campaign. Announcing it formally today, launching it formally today, that is much more comprehensive, much more dynamic, we hope much more impactful, to encourage people to wear masks and mitigate the spread of this virus. We’ve already received, and I couldn’t be more proud to have received, $10.75 million in this campaign, 27 million additional dollars in in-kind contributions to begin and to launch this campaign.

I want to express gratitude, and want to express appreciation particularly to the CDC Foundation, the Sierra Health Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, to Jeff Skoll and his foundation, to Rick Caruso as an individual contributor, to Tom Steyer as an individual contributor, and to our entire Business and Jobs Recovery Task Force that helped inspire this effort and has helped organize our effort in a multidisciplinary approach. Again, radio, TV, a focus on messages that we think can hit home in traditional ways, more emotional ways. And again, in messages that people can understand in Arabic, in Cantonese, in Mandarin, in Vietnamese, and other languages, and clearly Spanish. I’ll give you a preview of what this public service announcement will look like and includes, and I’ll get to that in a moment, some billboards as well, animation. But we’ll start with these two very short videos that will give you a sense of what you are going to start seeing on your TV screen.

[Spanish 00:06:21].

Those are two messages. One that we believe is particularly impactful as it relates to the true health consequences of being neglectful of your health and the health of others. And of course, one that truly represents the diversity of our state, providing a message in Spanish as is absolutely appropriate in the State of California. It gives you a sense of what you’ll start seeing out there. Accordingly, we have now over 400 billboard sites that we are putting up, that you see here on this screen, wearing a mask, slow the spread. Trying to make this as simplistic as we can, but as pointed as we can as a reminder of the significance we place on what we refer to as a non-pharmaceutical intervention that is the most impactful outside of staying at home, outside of practicing the physical distancing.

Wearing a mask is foundational, and again, it’s mandatory here in the State of California. That’s what we’re launching. I want to again thank all our partners for inspiring this, for writing the checks, and getting the in-kind contributions. We hope to grow this campaign. We hope to make it even more comprehensive. But as I said, you’ll be seeing the fruits of this effort tonight. This afternoon these billboards are coming up and the PSAs are going out. And of course, over the next few days in particular, around 4th of July holiday weekend, we want to get this done before the 4th of July holiday weekend, and then well beyond until we mitigate the spread of this disease.

I want to just update you on some of the actions we took yesterday and just acknowledge and thank our local partners. I talked yesterday in very positive and optimistic terms about the counties that we were working with, the 19 counties in the State of California that we have targeted in terms of support. They’re on what we refer to lazily as a watch list, but a monitoring list more formally. This group, this cohort of local actions that you see represented in this slide, this represents leadership at the local level and partnership. Folks in Glenn County, Sacramento County, the San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Fresno, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, Riverside. We expect actions to be taken today, and yesterday L.A. led Kings County, Ventura, Solano.

And we talked about Imperial County and how they moved, to their credit, in partnership, the spirit of partnership, to meet this moment and do more so that we can all do better in mitigating the transmission, the spread, of this disease. That represents the vast majority of the 19 counties. We’re working with the other counties, and we made this clear again in the spirit of partnership that we don’t want to do things to you, but with you. But we reserve the right to move forward with this mandate if we don’t see action at a local level demonstrably. Just in 24 hours you’ve seen local level action along the lines of what we were hoping for, and we expect all 19 to come into compliance. Again, if not, that hand will be forced in the spirit that requires of this moment. Again, we’re confident we’re going to see progress.

By the way, I want to also just acknowledge the incredible progress we’ve seen as it relates to Orange County’s move, and the work local beaches, and Huntington Beach, and some other beach communities to their credit, their local elected officials, local health officers, are moving forward with their own local decisions that go beyond just closing parking lots to help decompress their beaches over the 4th of July weekend. We want to applaud that. We want to acknowledge that, and also just thank again, the leadership in L.A. and Ventura County that really led with that local framework. Looking again, specifically into this holiday weekend, with the kind of concern that many of us have about people gathering, mixing outside of their household, not practicing physical distancing, not wearing face masks, and the prospect that in a week or two, two to three weeks, we’ll see those numbers spike yet again.

I want to just encourage people as always to do the right thing, and we expect the vast majority … It’s demonstrable on the basis of the actions you’ve seen from those counties on that previous slide. But we want encourage those individuals and business leaders to do the right thing. Yesterday I announced that we were going to send out notifications from our, what we call Occupational Safety and Health Board, OSHA as it’s commonly referred to. We put out over 350,000 letters that we sent out yesterday, specifically laying out expectations in terms of good business behaviors to protect not only customers, but to protect workers in those businesses. We also put out other public health information and mandates that we also will follow up through this enforcement action that we highlighted yesterday. Six regions of the state, teams of anywhere from seven state agencies to as many as 10 state agencies that will be going out in the spirit of collaboration, spirit-

… and sees that we’ll be going out in the spirit of collaboration, spirit of education, spirit of cooperation, and not a punitive frame first, but an encouraging frame first to help enforce all of these efforts again because the seriousness of we take related to the recent spread, an increase in cases of COVID-19.

Let’s talk about that increase in spread. In the last 24 hour reporting period, we saw 4,056 cases that were identified as positive to begin the month of July. We have seen over the course of the last 14 days, our positivity rate now rise to 6.3%. Again, it started 40.8%. When we did the first 14 day roll, we saw a significant decline in the positivity rate. Unfortunately, we’re starting to see an increase in the positivity rate, not only over a 14-day period, but over the last seven days, it has been 6.9%.

Looking, though, at the 14 day period, I want to show you that trend line. This is why we have the mask mandate and this is why we’re doing the PSAs. This is why we’re encouraging you to take individual responsibility, more social responsibility to protect your family, your friends, and the broader community. But this slide you see represented here, that increase in that orange line represents a 37% increase in the positivity rate just over a two week period. Again, now over a 14 day period, 6.3%.

The number of hospitalizations I’ve said this many occasions, I’ll repeat it. Again, today hospitalizations, as you see positivity rates go up, total number of cases that are identified as positive, we’re going to see a trend line of increase in hospitalization as a lagging indicator. We’ve now had a 56% increase in hospitalizations over the two-week reporting period. 56% just over a two-week reporting period. Again, reinforcing the importance of these local actions and reinforcing the importance of your personal responsibility, your actions on behalf of yourself, your families over the course of this holiday weekend.

Total number of hospitalizations represents 5,355 patients in a hospital system that has capacity for 73,867. So again, that represents about 7% of the total population of our current hospital system beds. The total number of people, patients admitted overall was 46,035. That’s represented in that 62% number. This again is a slide if you’ve been watching, tuning in, you’re very familiar with, but that COVID patient population still represents about 7%, 6, 7%. It’s been rather consistent over the course of the last number of days moving into last week.

ICUs. ICU are up some 49% in the last two weeks. You could see not surprisingly as you see trend line increase on positivity rates, trend line increases on hospital rates. Invariably we’ll see trend lines increasing on ICU admissions. The ICU admissions represented on this pie chart, you’ll see that subset of the 10,788 total ICU beds, 1,676 are filled with ICU COVID-positive patients.

We still have capacity in our ICU system. Again, this is capacity in the aggregate, and I’ll remind everybody, none of us live in the aggregate. We live in communities, large and small, different hospital resources, different capacity resources, but this in the aggregate represents our total capacity, including the total number of ventilators in the state, still in excess of 11,400 plus ventilators that we have within the hospital system and in our cache here at the Office of Emergency Service and what we refer to as EMSA.

As it relates to this 4th of July weekend again, we have the mandatory closures as it relates to certain activities within sectors, within businesses. Indoor activities is where we’re trying to push outdoors. Indoor dining, we want to push outdoor dining. Want to get as many of those activities where you’re mixing or could come into contact with people you haven’t been with in your household, and you may come into contact and mix with them, increasing the likelihood of the spread of this virus. We’re trying to mitigate that.

And this 4th of July weekend is one of the most social weekends in our lives. This is perhaps my last formal opportunity as we move into that weekend. Many of you will move in tomorrow on Friday, not just formally over Saturday and Sunday. I want to remind you that many cities have already canceled their fireworks shows. Many cities have already adopted their own local guidelines saying we’ll continue to do our fireworks, but we encourage you to stay in your cars or stay home and just enjoy them from afar. Again, in those 19 counties that we are working very closely with, we want to see those fireworks shows diminished or eliminated accordingly. We want to remind you that we don’t want to see you bunch of strangers without being physically distanced and without wearing face coverings over the weekend to the extent you can. That’s why we say avoid crowds and avoid going to large parades outside of your household.

Again, this is common sense and I don’t mean to be patronizing or paternalistic about all of this. I’m just working with local health officials, dealing with the data, the science trying to mitigate as we were so successful mitigating the spread of this disease by tempering that growth of the curve in the beginning. We need to do that again. We will do that again, and it’s really going to be up to each and every one of you to see how quickly we could do that, and that’s why this weekend is so important. We put out more formal 4th of July weekend guidelines that are up on the COVID19.ca.gov website, but encourage you to follow them, take seriously this weekend, take seriously this moment that we’re living in. A moment. It’s not permanent. A moment that we’ll get through it together, but we have to continue to fight this disease, do more and do better accordingly, no important way you could do that and wearing a mask, wearing a face covering.

And I want to just encourage all of you in the spirit that brings us this PSA that brings this new media campaign to the forefront, to do what you can, to protect yourself, to protect others, and send a message that recognizes that we’re not out of this pandemic. We’re still on the first wave and we have a lot of work to do to mitigate the spread, to make sure that our hospital system is ready to receive people outside of an emergency for a COVID-related cause, to make sure ICUs accordingly are free from COVID patients. In order to do that, there’s nothing more important, impactful, no greater imperative than wearing a face covering when you’re out of your home, you’re out and about in the community.

So again, wishing all of you happy 4th of July weekend with all of these criteria and conditions and modifications in mind. And as always, we are here to answer any questions.

Speaker 1: (20:05)
Hello, Governor. Thank you very much for taking our questions again. With all due respect, yesterday you talked about the enforcement thing, mostly on businesses. You’re putting a lot of the responsibility, a lot of the onus, a lot of the consequences on businesses when there have been many instances of people ignoring the orders of the businesses and wearing face mask or physical distancing. So what is the harm in asking law enforcement agencies across the state to enforce? In the LA County Sheriff’s department, at least in the West Hollywood area, they’re going to issue tickets. 300 bucks, I think, for the first offense. So why not make that a mandate that if I was walking down the street with open container, I’d be stopped and given a ticket. Why not if I’m walking in a crowd without a mask, I don’t get a ticket? I guess I don’t understand why all of the consequences and onus is on the businesses, not the individual.

Forgive me if you were led to that opinion yesterday. I went to great lengths and this is an opportunity I’m grateful for the opportunity and the question to prompt, the opportunity to repeat some of the things I said.

We began by talking about a fiscal contingency that we put into place with the California legislature. Some two and a half billion dollars in our budget is contingent upon counties enforcing the orders that their health officers have put forward. By definition, that’s an enforcement mandate that goes far and wide beyond just the issue of enforcement for businesses. I highlighted businesses because as a business person myself, I think businesses have a role and responsibility to protect their workers as well as their customers, and that’s why we have the frame of engagement. Not a punitive frame, but a frame of education and engagement to work through conditions. We’ve got these teams in six different regions in this state. They’re targeting enforcement based upon abuse. Again, not to try to be punitive, but people have turned their back or been particularly more problematic in the past.

By definition, the contingency on the two and a half billion dollars related to health officers and mandates transcends again just the business sector, and that includes masks and includes a cross section of roles and responsibilities. So we look at regulatory, we look at codes, we look at encouragement, we look at education. That’s the purpose of today’s presentation as an education campaign, and we look to local elected officials, local county officials, local sheriffs, local police officers and the like to do justice.

But as you know, a lot of local enforcement is also targeted for people walking, for example, your example, walking with alcohol as they shouldn’t be, or people that are abusing, not using the intersection or jaywalking, you tend to educate first and if you’re not successful and you still have problems, then you enforce more formally. You can put out warning citations, you can put out education material, and eventually if you’re not seeing behavioral change, you’re absolutely right. And then we think citations are warranted where there’s abuse. So thank you for the opportunity to reinforce what I said yesterday and to clarify any ambiguity of concerns reflected in your question.

Speaker 2: (23:42)
Thank you, governor. That stat of ICU use is very concerning. I’m wondering if there will be any difference in the state’s approach to maybe dealing with protesters or large groups of people that are out on the street. And also you talk about family barbecues and the concern about people gathering. Is there anything you can do as a state to-

Speaker 2: (24:03)
Concern about people gathering. Is there anything you can do as a state to discourage that or regulate that in any way or is that sort of just up to everybody to do on their own?

Yeah. I’d say it’s… Look, all of this, there are laws on the books that if we tried to enforce at scale, we never could that transcend and predate COVID-19. If 40 million people want to turn their back on civil society and abuse the rules, laws, and regulations on a consistent basis at scale. Then society begins to erode. Accordingly, the health of a community begins to be diminished.

And so look, we have a health crisis in this nation. We are not out of this crisis. We’re still in the first wave of this crisis. It requires some level of personal responsibility. And so, what we’re doing is educating people. We’re encouraging people. We’re not just doing it at a press conference at noon with one individual, a governor. We’re trying to do that. And you saw some of the material we put out in a very culturally competent way with trusted messengers, with celebrities. We’re trying to reach a younger cohort, not just an older cohort. More traditional broadcasts, at the same time going on to TikTok and going on to some of these social media platforms, getting some well known celebrities, influencers to do the same, to encourage people to do the right thing.

And that’s what I’m asking. Encouraging people to use their common sense to protect themselves if for nothing else consider yourself. But if you don’t consider yourself, you feel like you’re immune from prospects of having any health risks, consider others. Consider that video we put out of that person who was holding on for her dear life. That could be your mother. It could be your grand mother. It could be someone you deeply love. It also could be a stranger that you walked by in passing, where you were asymptomatic or presymptomatic, and you didn’t experience any ill, or you didn’t feel any experience of any symptoms of feeling ill. And you may have spread that disease to someone and never known that three weeks later, that person may be on an ICU. No one wants to do that. And so, again, I’m just encouraging. Same time we’re stepping up. We been clear based on the previous question, we’re stepping up our enforcement, not just to businesses, but across the spectrum and encouraging people to do more and do better.

Look as it relates to the ICUs you’re absolutely right. ICUs are a point of real concern, goes back to the ventilator questions, it goes back to our capacity well beyond just COVID-19 to deal with the needs of people in acute medical conditions. And so that’s a number we have closely monitored. 49%. 49% increase in the last two weeks. 73 human beings lost their lives in the last 24 hours because of this disease. 110 lost their lives in the reporting period that I provided you yesterday. Don’t think for a second, we are out of the woods. As Dr. Galley reminds me, we’re on the second or third inning of this nine inning game. By no stretch are we out of the woods, but we can influence. We can mitigate the spread. We can, again, bend this curve. We can lower the ICU rates. We can lower the hospitalization rates. We can lower the positivity rates. You, we collectively. Society becomes how we behave, in the collective, individual acts. Smart, thoughtful, not only about yourself but about others, will mitigate this spread.

Speaker 3: (27:41)
[inaudible 00:27:41] as of Chronical.

Speaker 4: (27:46)
Hi Governor. I wanted to ask about how the new restrictions that you announced yesterday change the reopening strategy going forward? Are there any lessons from what didn’t work about the approach so far that’s going to inform any changes to how those counties reopen at the end of these three weeks or however long it is before, that you feel they’re stable enough to start reopening businesses again? Have you developed a different strategy around that?

I appreciate that question. It’s a good question. And I hope you’ll see represented in today’s action an example of a response to your question. More targeted education. I think the most important thing we’ve learned over the course of the last number of months, even in the conversations that we have, the questions and the response through dozens and dozens of these opportunities that we share together in a very public way, is so often the conversation the questions were about when, not how. We need to have deeper conversation about how to safely reopen. And that’s what this public education campaign is all about. And that’s what you’re going to hear from me more and more and more.

And so directly in response to your question, let us begin a new to focus on the guidelines with more intensity, more specificity, and let us do more to focus on to how we can safely reopen. We can safely reopen, but we have to change, we have to modify, and we have to adapt different set of expectations and behaviors. And if we can’t socially enforce them, through encouragement and education, we’ll have to lean in a little bit more to further the cause of mitigating the spread.

Speaker 3: (29:44)
Carla [inaudible 00:29:44].

Carla: (29:47)
Hi Governor, thanks for taking the question. Given the alarming numbers that you just reported, what do you say to critics who suggest that PSAs may be great, but it’s time for your office to get tougher on enforcement? I know you’ve been asked this, but I mean, there are people saying, why aren’t you in just imposing fines on those who don’t abide by the statewide mask mandate when you’ve got cities doing it, why aren’t you going there? And then there’s local officials planning events that threatened Fresno County. They say the Fresno Fair’s going on, despite the fact they’re expecting 600,000 people to show up there, possibly just a fall surge occurs again. Are you going to take action against that and take some kind of measure to stop those kinds of events? Enforcement basically, what’s your answer?

Thank you, Carla, for the question. It’s an opportunity again, to reinforce a response I had a few questions prior. Opportunity to reinforce what we said yesterday, and thank you for that opportunity as well to reinforce what we were previewing over the course of a number of weeks. Here is the substantive answer to your question. We have made contingent two and a half billion dollars. Two and a half billion dollars of resources. We refer to as cares act dollars and realignment dollars to counties that are unwilling to enforce their local health officer’s mandates. We have conditioned those dollars on a set of expectation that we will have more robust funding.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that on my own. I couldn’t just sign an executive order to make contingent contributions to counties. I needed the consent and concurrence from the California legislature. Let me thank the California legislature. I was able to sign a budget, just on Monday, that afforded us the opportunity with the language in what we referred to as the trailer bill that allows contingent expectation of performance under the health ordinances. That substantively goes to your question of enforcing the health ordinance and the mandates that we are providing.

I yesterday, announced that we have now sent out teams. These teams are teams that systemically are going to integrate in very, very prescriptive ways, organizations and entities that are well known. Might be alcohol beverage control with organizations that are less well known, like the BBC, not the ABC, which is the board of barbers and cosmetologists. Working with CHP, working with the department of labor, working with different state agencies, consumer affairs, and others in a cross sectoral strategy to target in six regions in the state of California, the enforcement.

The state of California, and, you know this well, the state of California, jurisdictionally constructed, not top down, but bottom up. State of California has over a thousand school districts, independently elected school boards. It has enforcement mechanisms that exist and reside, even within the school system. Many of those school boards have hired their own police departments, which is a point of consternation, a critique and concern.

Many of the enforcement mechanisms that reside within cities reside within city councils, reside directly with city administrators and mayors. County level, County boards of supervisors fund primarily the County sheriffs. All of these jurisdictions have a role and responsibility to play on the enforcement. If we don’t see those roles being advanced, if we don’t see the level of enforcement that I can hear in your voice, you’re encouraging, or you are described based upon those of inquired to you, that’s precisely why we put up two and a half billion dollars of contingent money. That’s precisely why we have these teams already assembled in six key regions in this state. It’s precisely why we’ll continue because we have been enforcing at the alcohol beverage control. We have been enforcing for months at BBC. We’ll continue to build on that enforcement frame. And it’s exactly why I began, forgive me for belaboring this. It’s exactly why I began with that slide showing counties, including Fresno, that presumably is acting today based upon the input that they provided us this morning, to advance the spirit and the letter of the mandate that we announced yesterday, that should also mitigate the concern that you referenced about their particular activities.

Speaker 3: (34:46)
Brandon [inaudible 00:34:47].

Brandon: (34:50)
Hi Governor. Thank you for taking my questions. I’m calling down here from Orange County and just wanted to know what will be done about Orange County’s past disregard for enforcing mask orders? Stuff that the sheriff has said about taking more educational approach when we’re going into the 4th of July weekend. And yeah, I mean, and whether or not you think that that fiscal contingency strategy will be enough for a County like ours, that has shown such disregard for it?

Well, I certainly hope and expect it will. I had a really robust conversation with organization that you know well, others may not, called CSAC. It’s basically the organization representing 58 counties in the state of California. They have an outstanding leader, Graham, and a wonderful president of their organization, Supervisor Bartlett from Orange County. She was magnificent in the phone call yesterday, in terms of her understanding of this moment, her desire to meet it, her representative responsibility as a supervisor, working through CSAC as the current president of CSAC and its director Graham, to make sure that we are working together and that we’re eye to eye in terms of how the contingency-

Working together and that we’re eye to eye in terms of how the contingency plan may work. She expressed, understandably, concern at a lot of counties by the magnitude of the money, because two and a half billion dollars is a significant amount of money for counties that are struggling right now, particularly with related costs associated with COVID-19 and revenue declines as a consequence of COVID-19. So we have their attention, I assure you. And let me just say, not only is it demonstrable in that conversation we had yesterday, but it’s also, I think, demonstrable in Orange County today, that looks as if they are moving. It’s interesting. We were in the midst of a dispute a bit around our respective jurisdictions and my authority as governor to impose a mandate to mitigate some of the crowds on the beaches in Orange County.

There was a lot of pushback, as you know well, coming from the county. Now, Huntington Beach, Newport, Laguna and others, folks in the county are moving forward on their own. And I’m very grateful for that. So I think it’s an example of the fact, in some ways, we’re turning the page, in other respects, we may not be. And so we’ll continue to engage them, but I just want to thank the leadership down there. And I want to thank all the county representatives that I know are working hard to keep their community safe and are really engaging in the spirit of cooperation that is required at this moment.

Speaker 5: (37:28)
[inaudible 00:00:37:30], LA Times.

Brandon: (37:32)
Hi governor, in your ramped up restrictions that you announced yesterday for the 19 counties, noticeably not on the list were places like churches and gyms and fitness centers, day camps, even government bodies that are still meeting in some of these really highly impact counties. Why is that?

Well, as I’ve said, in multiple occasions yesterday, when I had the one-on-one conversations with-

Brandon: (37:57)
Obviously not on the list were places churches and gyms [inaudible 00:38:01]

… Sorry, a little feedback there. I had an opportunity to talk to many of you one-on-one in interviews yesterday. That question was posed on multiple occasions. Forgive me if I may come across as repeating myself from some of you that directly asked. A number of things happened yesterday. We specifically put out new guidelines for gyms yesterday. I encourage you to take a look under the guidelines sections at covid19.ca.gov, to learn more about those guidelines for gyms. We also put out new guidelines for places of worship, which is also available on the covid19.ca.gov website. So specifically we updated the guidelines yesterday in that space.

I referenced yesterday and in those interviews that we had with many of you that as it relates to casinos in the state, we are having government to government conversations with sovereigns, the tribal nations reside within the state of California, respecting their sovereignty and respecting the incredible partnership we’ve had over the course of many, many years, but also in the beginning of this pandemic, where they moved and worked with their county health officers, or at least with their co-partners in the counties that they operate in to advance the stay at home order, and many have been models as it relates to how to effectively and safely reopen. So we’re working with them as well.

I made it clear yesterday and I’ll make it clear today, we have a lot of work we’re doing not only with those 19 counties, but a number of other counties that we think certainly may come on the monitoring list as well as other sectors of our economy. And so we want to be targeted. We want to be targeted to hotspots. We want to be targeted based upon what we’re hearing from health officials and counties, as it relates to their concerns around spread. And we want to work as we have sectorally with industry leaders to put out guidelines and update them. And I can assure you, you’ll be among the first to know, as soon as we make any additional updates, we will make them public and we’ll continue to monitor the situation and be flexible in our decision making on a daily basis. This disease doesn’t take weekends off, nor do we, in terms of updating our health advice and counsel.

Speaker 5: (40:31)
Ashley [inaudible 00:40:31].

Ashley: (40:34)
Hi governor, I know yesterday, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you said that CHP was involved in the strike force on enforcement with the safe guidelines, but I’m looking at CHP’s permit calendar for the 4th of July the same day. I know your administration is urging everyone to not gather with people they don’t know, and I’m seeing that there’s a 300 person protest, two weddings, another demonstration, all with dozens of people and the 300 person protests. I want to know how you address what some might perceive as mixed messaging here.

I don’t have the benefit of the details of the permits that they are looking at. Forgive me for not having that. I pride myself on having a lot of information, but not all the permits that have gone in front of the state agency. That said, I do have something perhaps more valuable. And that’s Mark Ghilarducci, the head of the Office of Emergency Services here, that works with the CHP hand in glove, is leading our strike force efforts. And maybe he could talk more broadly to spirit the question you just posed.

Mark Ghilarducci: (41:43)
Thank you governor. CHP has gotten permitting requests for protests, and obviously, we have been now working to try to provide the opportunity for peaceful protest to take place. CHP is evaluating those permits now to see about how that can be done safely, taking into account the governor’s orders and the directives that we want for appropriate social distancing and limiting folks to come together while still protecting people’s rights to assemble for peaceful protest. So as you know, we’ve had the protest that went on through the course of a couple of weeks ago. And so we’re trying to continually balance that with safety and security and the ability to continue to allow for people to exercise their civil rights.

Thank you. Next question.

Speaker 5: (42:49)
Final question. Doug [inaudible 00:00:42:50], CBS.

Doug: (42:53)
Hi governor, not to beat a badly limping horse here, but I want to get back to the enforcement question for a second. Specifically-

I fear Doug, perhaps you might, but God bless.

Doug: (43:02)
… Can you hear me, governor?

Perfectly.

Doug: (43:05)
Okay. I’ve heard from a number of people who say they don’t understand why they’re being told, you can’t go see grandpa this weekend. You can’t see uncle Joe, you can have a barbecue with your neighbors, but then they turn on the TV and they see hundreds or thousands of people protesting. Based you got a selective enforcement, preferential treatment given based on political persuasion, can you explain for people why they should listen to these messages when they do see that happening and no one getting tickets, no one even being told to enforce the mask for social distancing rules.

Yeah. If they care about their grandfather, their uncle, their aunt, that’s why they should listen. Look, we’re not going to everybody’s backyard and enforcing, you know that, and they know that. We’re just encouraging people to be safe, to be thoughtful about themselves and others. Honestly, I maybe was unique in my household, but I don’t think it was, I think it’s universally taught, just because someone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should. I remember my mother, my dad saying that in probably 2000 occasions, just because someone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should. People know what the right thing to do is, I encourage them to do the right thing. And people also understand that we have a constitution, we have the right of free speech and we are all dealing with a moment in our nation’s history that is profound and pronounced, you know that as well.

And I think many of those individuals that you’re referring to in that hypothetical or the literal example you’re proposing, also understand that. I recognize the dichotomy, and to the extent, the dialectic between those examples. And all I can offer is this consideration, do what you think is best, not only for you, but for the health of those you love. Look at the epidemiology, look at the spread of this virus over the last few weeks. Look at the fact that our hospitalization rate has gone up 56% in just two weeks. Consider the fact that ICU has gone up 49% in the last few weeks, consider that when you go about coming together, perhaps with members of your family or strangers or neighbors you haven’t been with in some time over the course of the weekend and just consider one of those stats may be you.

And if you think this hasn’t or won’t impact you, because it hasn’t impacted you, I hope to disabuse on you that based upon not only the 73 lives that were lost in the last 24 hours, 110 the previous 24 hours, or the fact that we are now experiencing unprecedented rates of growth of COVID-19, I hope you’ll be safe, not because we have the tools or capacity to enforce 40 million individuals and their positions or behavior, but because as a community, we’re capable of doing more to meet this moment and to mitigate the spread.

And so I am calling on the better angels and for people to use their common sense and do what they can to keep themselves safe, to keep their loved ones safe. And to the extent that we have agencies up and down the state, doing enforcement, doing the kind of outreach and education. Well, we are now doing that at a record scale that we’ve never done in the past and we’re just hoping that we’ll see some modification of behavior that may have happened on the natural and the default as we not put out all this guidance, all these recommendations and these public service announcements.

Look, thank you all for staying on message, reporters, in terms of the questions, and thank you all to members of the public. Those of you that have given me the privilege of your time, thank you for extending it yet again, I’m grateful to you. And I just encourage everybody. I haven’t said enough, I’ll say it one final time before we enter in to this holiday weekend, happy 4th of July weekend and wear a mask. Take care everybody.

California Governor Gavin Newsom July 2 Press Conference Transcript

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