States Roll Back on Stay-at-Home Orders

Businesses and restaurants are happy at the chance to reopen, but some urge caution that it could be too soon. And McCourt, health reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Emma, thanks so much for having me. I wanted to talk about what's going on right now

as states are trying to ease their COVID restrictions. There's a lot of big states like California specifically, that are rolling back some of their stay at home orders, allowing some businesses to start operating again, although a limited capacity. But it's coming at a very precarious time right now. These variants that we keep hearing about from the UK, Brazil, South Africa. There's some that have been spotted in the

United States itself. So I emma tell us a little bit, you know, kind of the balance that the states are having to work through right now. As you rightly point out, we are seeing states starting to loosten some of those COVID percautions at this time. You know, we've been in the biggest surge of COVID nineteen for a long time now, and as those national numbers are starting to come down, we're seeing case counts declining, hospitalizations coming down. The trajectory

of the pandemic appears to be easing. We're seeing states rightly take action and say we think we can allow some kinds of economic activity to restart, for instance, in Illinois, you know, saying after months of not allowing indoor dining that you know, indoor dining can resume in Chicago and suburbs. But you know, it is the difficult balance to strike because on the one hand, you do see these encouraging

signs when it comes to the data. On the other hand, we do know that there are worries and indicators in the horizon, including the emergence of these new variants which bring with them, you know, we know that at least one of these variance is more transmissible than the kind

of currents dominant strain of the coronavirus. But the other concerning aspects of this status quo is the fact that we know the vaccine rollout has been lagging behind expectations, and of course the vaccine is kind of that key critical tool in terms of being able to promote immunity in the population and word off further spread of disease

on that front. Real quick of the CDC release of numbers, they said that about forty five million or so vaccine doses have been sent out, but really maybe twenty three. It's about million vaccines have been administered. So we're still playing from behind there, and the United States has a population of one and so a long long way to

go on that front. We also noticed as a vaccine where you know, it remains to be seen, but we've seen we've heard a lot about hesitancy among Americans, people being concerned maybe they were developed too quickly and and and being worried about things like anaphylaxis. You know, these severe allergic reactions which have been reported in the context of these vaccines, but are as far as we know

so far, extremely rare. So there are factors around the vaccine rollout that still remain to be seen in terms of how successful it'll be. And we know there have been a number of logistical issues in terms of just getting those doses to the sites and getting them in people's arms that are still kind of being worked out at the moment. Let's talk a little bit about California,

obviously a huge state. The governor there, Gavin Newsom, had these stay at home orders restaurants and he closed outdoor dining at restaurants was a huge thing for local restaurants and businesses. So now we're seeing caseloads go down, hospitalization and go down, and these restrictions are being loosened up. There's still a lot of people that say, hey, wait

a minute, we could be moving too fast. Going back to that balance again that we've been talking about, there's a lot of other people saying, well, politics was playing a role in this. Governor Gavin Newsom is facing a recall effort, and that effort has almost the amount of signatures they need to put it onto the ballot. So some people were saying politics was playing a part in this as well, and of course Newsom has denied that

politics are playing a role in this. The state has been pretty firm and saying this is based on the numbers we have right the case numbers, the factors like declining hospitalization and test positivity rates, and this expectation that the availability of intensive care beds is going to improve. So that's what we're definitely getting out of the state.

I think that's really interesting about California and has been kind of a consistent factor throughout this pandemic has been that California is almost sort of stupefied experts in terms of why has the situation in California been consistently so concerning even though California famously early to impose restrictions, quick to take the kinds of measures we've heard experts advocate for, and it's led some people to think maybe the issue isn't the measures that the state has taken, but more

this question of adherence to those measures, and specifically, are these measures so strict that people have decided, you know what, you say, I can't eat outdoors at a restaurant while I'm going to go gather in my friend's apartment and without a mask, and we'll all get sick there. I mean, obviously that wasn't the intent. I live in California, and

anecdotally I can say that's kind of true. People have been driven in and they are still gathering with their family members, and we know that these are these points of transmission. So yeah, I I would say that, like I said, anecdotally from what I hear, that has happened, and that's been the problem. That COVID fatigue that we've talked about before is so huge right now, and people are just wanting to get back out there, and even

for the restaurant themselves, that's such a huge point. For local businesses, they're just hemorrhaging money right now, staying closed and even being at limited capacity doing outdoor dining. Maybe they're not making profits, but at least they're not losing those vast amount of money. So that's where this kind of thing has been lying at. It's been tough for a lot of people. And the point you raised, I think as a really that sort of anecdotal those stories

is an interesting one. I spoke with a public health expert who said, you know, we know from other kinds of diseases like HIV for instance, or other diseases where you can impose different kinds of approaches to trying to prevent it or scate it off. That you know, encouraging this idea of like abstinence only like almost like insects, like that you should just not do anything at all, doesn't work as well as trying to mitigate risk, you know,

different levels. And so he said, you know, California took this approach, they definitely needed to recalibrate what they were doing. Whether this new approach is going to work, so it depends a lot on whether the state has good contact tracing data to say we know people, for instance, are gathering in private household and getting sick. And he says, we haven't actually seen that data. It hasn't been made very transparent by California, So it'll kind of remain to

be seen whether this new approach work. And as adherence to the guidelines, the social distancing, the mask wearing, that's what we're getting conversations of, like should people be double masking, should we be triple masking? You know, that was kind of hitting the storylines this week, just as these restrictions are starting to loosten and people want to get out there.

Should we protect ourselves more with masks? Now? So this is all kind of rolled up into it, and those are key things that we need to do as we start going back to business right And I think another really important aspect of seam states relaxed these measures is also listening at what they're doing in terms of relaxing

these measures. So this week we also got a report from the CDC which said that school reopening would be done safely if you took all the right precautions and also if you took steps to make sure transmission in the community at large was minimized and was as controlled as possible. And so when you're talking about, for instance, in Illinois, reopening indoor dining and restaurants, it is an

interesting question of well, what about the schools. You know, are we taking all of the same kinds of are we relaxing all the same kinds of measures we relaxed before. Are we trying to do this smarter? Do this in a in a way that could have more impacts, you know, in terms of social and educational programs. Lots of stuff to go through as We mentioned that balance is so

difficult and we want to keep it under control. So we'll see how these states do as they do ease these restrictions and the court health reporter at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Asco Ramires and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every mondy through Friday, So follow us and I Heard Radio or wherever you get your podcast. H