Source: California Globe

California’s growing ‘speakeasy’ economy

By Katy Grimes

“We need to live differently,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday after moving the state re-opening goalposts once again. Governor Gavin Newsom announced yet another new set of guidelines for re-opening counties in California, replacing the state COVID-19 watchlist system, and thoroughly confusing most everyone in the state.

Thousands of restaurants around the state have already closed, and many more are on the verge of closing if they can’t get back to business as usual. Following three more nights of rioting over the weekend, more restaurant owners boarded up their businesses to prevent more vandalism and destruction.

If anyone is still unclear about the governor’s actual goals: a county can average one “case” per 100,000 for three weeks and still not be fully open.

The California Restaurant Association said in a statement Friday that restaurants will continue to close permanently around the state because Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan will continue to keep most indoor dining rooms closed, while others will have strict limits on capacity.

The group called on Newsom to hold a special session of the Legislature to work on an aid package. Restaurant Association President Jot Condie said as many as 1 million restaurant workers have been furloughed or laid off during the pandemic, the Daily Mail reported.

But restaurants are not alone. The fitness industry has been very hard hit – and they don’t even serve food. Gyms have shown they can easily accommodate clients on equipment well-spaced out and cleaned after each use. But the governor and his advisors refuse to allow gyms to reopen.

The governor’s latest scheme is a new four-tier system which includes four color-coded tiers:

Purple (widespread), Red (substantial), Orange (moderate), and Yellow (minimal). Instead of varying metrics and factors between counties, only two metrics will be used to move states up or down tier levels: daily new COVID-19 case rates and positivity rates.

In his press statement, the governor says, “Blueprint recognizes that COVID-19 will be with us for a long time and that we all need to adapt and live differently to get through this.”“This Blueprint is statewide, stringent and slow,” said Governor Newsom. “We have made notable progress over recent weeks, but the disease is still too widespread across the state. COVID-19 will be with us for a long time and we all need to adapt. We need to live differently. And we need to minimize exposure for our health, for our families and for our communities.”

“The Blueprint builds on lessons learned from the first six months of the disease – and the new scientific understanding that has been collected – to create a new system for regulating movement and COVID-19 transmissions.” It includes:

1. At least 21 days to expand activities beyond the initial tier to ensure California better limits the spread of the virus;
2. Mandatory metrics – case rates and test positivity – to measure how widespread COVID-19 is in each county and guide what is allowed;
3. A uniform state framework, with four categories instead of 58 different sets of rules;
4. A more nuanced way of allowing activity: Instead of open vs. closed, sectors can be partially opened and progressively add to their operations as disease transmission decreases; and
5. A new process for tightening back up again quickly when conditions worsen.

“Separating hair from nails-skin services is arbitrarily discriminatory, dividing our barbering-beauty industry along gender, racial and industry-sector lines,” said a statement from the Professional Beauty Federation of California, the Daily Mail reported.

With the governor’s newest arbitrary guidelines, counties are now recognizing they have no authority to re-open.

Modoc and Alpine county have zero positive cases, and a positive rate of zero, yet under Newsom’s new rules these counties must keep restaurants at 50%.

There will be no ability to watch live professional sports in this state until a county has zero new positive tests for five straight weeks.

California’s Growing ‘Speakeasy’ Economy

In order to survive and put food on the table, many businesses have had to go underground. Some bars have become speakeasies; gyms are operating in parks outdoors or from the backdoor via secret knock; hair stylists and manicurists are quietly making house calls; restaurants have moved outdoors if possible and deliveries and “to-go” orders are booming;

“Counties must remain in every tier but purple for a minimum of 21 days before being eligible to move into the next tier,” the governor’s new plan states. “Each Tuesday, California will update each county’s data for the previous week and make corresponding changes to tiers. In order to move into a less restrictive tier, a county must meet that tier’s criteria for two straight weeks.”

However, Newsom’s third set of re-opening plans was overshadowed by the Center for Disease Control which quietly updated COVID-19 numbers last week, now reporting only 9,210 Americans actually died from COVID-19 alone.

Does this mean Gov. Newsom is lying? Is the Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly lying? Was the CDC lying? How much more can Californians tolerate?