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With help from Myah Ward
A sign is displayed above a restaurant and bar on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. | Getty Images
COVID BEATS LA — Despite California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s early and aggressive effort to contain the virus, Covid has come raging back. It’s a resurgence in a state where some residents thought they had the virus beat. Los Angeles County alone now has more coronavirus cases (103,000) than about 45 other states. The state topped 220,000 cases today and will surpass 6,000 Covid deaths. New Covid cases there are now averaging more than 5,000 a day, up 33 percent from a week ago. Before last Monday the state had never recorded 5,000 cases in a single day.
Still, it seemed today as if Newsom wanted to put Covid behind him. He wore jeans — California health care reporter Victoria Colliver explained to your host today that Newsom generally eschews suits in casual situations, when he’s not in Sacramento and when he’s addressing homelessness. Newsom held his daily press conference from an East Bay motel and began by speaking for about 15 minutes on a pandemic-related state effort that’s had mixed results: housing homeless residents in hotels.
Things went south around Memorial Day — Newsom’s administration put together reopening guidelines for 30 different economic sectors but left it to counties to figure out when to lift restrictions. Some counties plowed ahead before they were ready to reopen. In most of the state, businesses had generally reopened in June except for large gatherings. People were visiting wineries in Napa and manicurists in Fresno.
In addition, the state bungled a prisoner transfer on May 30 to San Quentin, bringing the virus into a state prison that had zero confirmed cases. Now about a third of the prison’s inmates have Covid. Other outbreaks have occurred in the Central Valley’s meat packing plants and at a Bakersfield nursing home.
State residents also got too smug and eased up on wearing masks and following social distancing restrictions, Victoria said. “We were the head of the class and we got tired of being good,” she said.
California is trying to bend the curve, again — Newsom is attempting to reassert control of the Covid response over the state’s disparate 58 counties, calling it a “dimmer switch” approach with gradual adjustments. He issued “a naughty list” of 19 counties that need to dial back restrictions because of rapidly rising hospitalizations.
His administration will withhold state funds from local governments that refuse to enforce a statewide mask mandate, Newsom said today. Some conservative leaders in Republican counties have responded by accusing Newsom of being a “dictator,” said California Playbook author Carla Marinucci.
Newsom said today more restrictions would be coming Wednesday “to tighten things up,” ahead of the July 4 holiday. He blamed not just bars and restaurants for accelerating the spread, but family events as well.
So far, the new, tough approach seems to be working, Carla said. Southern California’s bars are now closed and fireworks displays have been canceled. LA’s beaches will close this weekend.
It will be a while before Newsom can take a victory lap on either Covid or homelessness. His normally long, rambling briefing ended today after 30 minutes, as protesters for police reform drowned him out.
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. I Marie Kondo’d my closet this weekend. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam . Nightly will be off July 3-6. We will return Tuesday, July 7.
A message from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network:
Congress addressed the affordability of Covid-19 testing and treatment. Cancer care needs the same. It’s time to reduce out-of-pocket costs and ensure cost-sharing assistance benefits cancer patients. Congress: cancer patients need you to act quickly to remove hurdles to quality care.
| FIRST IN NIGHTLY |
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE CORONA — The Trump White House has a new battleground: how much to talk publicly about a pandemic that’s crippling huge swaths of America, White House reporters Nancy Cook and Gabby Orr write. President Donald Trump’s top aides are divided over the merits of resuming national press briefings to keep the public informed about the latest coronavirus statistics as infection rates spike in large states including California, Texas, Florida, Arizona and Georgia.
Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, senior adviser Jared Kushner, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and counselor to the president Hope Hicks are among the aides arguing against these regular sessions because they want to keep the White House focused on the path forward and the nascent economic recovery — without scaring too much of the country about a virus resurgence. Other senior aides, as well as Vice President Mike Pence and his team, believe keeping Americans up-to-date about the nature of the outbreak is critical as the death toll rises. More than 126,000 people have died in the U.S. due to the coronavirus, according to the CDC.
It’s the pandemic, stupid — More than three quarters of voters, 76 percent, say Americans “should continue to social distance for as long as is needed to curb the spread of coronavirus, even if it means continued damage to the economy” — up 7 points from the beginning of this month, and 5 points from last week, senior campaigns and elections editor Steve Shepard emails us. That’s from a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll set to be released Wednesday morning. After months of fears about the coronavirus slowly decreasing in the U.S., voters appear increasingly alarmed about the recent spike in cases.
A majority of Americans, 61 percent, say the coronavirus crisis is getting worse throughout the country, though only 41 percent say it’s getting worse in their own state, according to the new poll.
And only 5 percent of voters say the federal government should decrease funding for states’ coronavirus testing — as was proposed and then back-tracked last week by the Trump administration — while 58 percent say federal funding for testing should be increased.
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| FROM THE HEALTH DESK |
‘WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL’ — The government's top infectious disease expert said the U.S. is “not in total control” of the coronavirus pandemic and suggested 100,000 new infections a day are possible without more safeguards. Anthony Fauci, the director for the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Senate health committee the outbreak is moving in the “wrong direction” and expressed alarm about spikes in states he said may have relaxed social distancing and lockdowns too early so they could restart their economies, health care reporter Brianna Ehley writes.
“Clearly, we are not in control right now,” Fauci said.
| ASK THE AUDIENCE |
Nightly asks you: How has the pandemic changed your July 4 holiday? Send us your answer using our form, and we’ll include some of them in our Thursday edition.
| TALKING TO THE EXPERTS |
Matt Wuerker
HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO WEAR MASKS — A national mask mandate could increase the number of mask wearers by 15 percentage points, which would slash infections and protect the economy from a 5 percent reduction in GDP, according to a Goldman Sachs report released Monday.
At least 14 states have statewide mask mandates, and more than 20 others have mask-wearing requirements for business patrons and employees, according to the National Governors Association . Some states have threatened fines or even arrest for noncompliance, but law enforcement officials in some parts of the country have described the mandates as unconstitutional and unenforceable. Other states have threatened to punish businesses — by, say, suspending a liquor license — and videos of distraught, maskless customers have gone viral as employees and other patrons ask them to leave, Nightly’s Myah Ward writes.
So what’s the best way to get Americans to wear masks? “I think if we knew the answer to that, bottle it and you could make a billion dollars,” said Ray Niaura, interim chair of the department of epidemiology at NYU and a professor of social and behavioral sciences.
The best way to persuade mask skeptics, who are resistant to authority, is probably through their social networks, Niaura said. “Eventually people are going to say, ‘Well all my friends and acquaintances are doing it and they don't seem to be too bent out of shape, so maybe I'll try it’, as opposed to ‘The government's coming to take my guns and they're forcing me to wear a mask.’”
But Paul Slovic, president of Decision Research and professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, compared the phenomenon to a failed public health campaign from the 1980s.
At the time, about 10 percent of Americans would voluntarily wear seat belts, Slovic said. “The safety people developed a very expensive, high-level ad campaign to try to motivate people to buckle up for safety,” he said. “And it didn't work. They could not move the needle on that small percentage.”
According to Slovic’s research, people didn’t wear seat belts because their perceived probability of being in an accident was small. The only way to get more people to buckle up was to make seat belts mandatory by law.
“A lot of people follow the laws. And so it bumped up to that 70, 75 percent,” Slovic said. “But it wouldn't have gotten there voluntarily, so I think the message for mask wearing is to mandate it and to enforce it.”
Even so, Steven Taylor, professor and clinical psychologist in the department of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and the author of “The Psychology of Pandemics,” said history demonstrates that a mandate can backfire. The attempted San Francisco mask mandate in 1918 resulted in the formation of the Anti-Mask League.
“Social pressure or social disapproval is far more effective in getting people to wear masks,” Taylor said.
Political leaders need to reframe mask-wearing as an act of patriotism, he said. “Political leaders need to be seen out in public, wearing masks to demonstrate that it’s not a sign of cowardice or weakness. It’s not a sign of your political affiliation. It’s just common sense that you’re doing something that could be helpful for your community.”
A message from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network:
| AROUND THE NATION |
EPIDEMIC INSIDE A PANDEMIC — Remember the opioid epidemic, America’s other big health crisis? It’s still here. And getting worse. But as Brianna Ehley reports in the latest edition of POLITICO Dispatch , attention — and resources — are mostly going to the pandemic, as overdoses rise in its shadow.
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| COVID-2020 |
BIDEN ESCAPES BASEMENT — After laying out his own plan to slow the coronavirus, the presumptive Democratic nominee made what now amounts to news in this bizarre presidential campaign: He opened the floor to questions from reporters, waving off aides when they tried to cut him off and marveling at how strange this has all become.
It had been nearly three months since Joe Biden held his last news conference, and that one took place in a choppy virtual setting. In his absence, Biden has faced relentless badgering from the president and his allies, who accused him of hiding out at home and challenged his mental acuity.
Biden couldn’t have picked a more fortuitous time to reemerge, national political reporter Christopher Cadelago and national correspondent Natasha Korecki write. His 20-minute speech tearing into Trump for mishandling the coronavirus was carried live by all three cable networks. So too was his 30-minute question-and-answer session, which came moments after Fauci’s congressional warnings. If that wasn't fodder enough, reports that Russia offered bounties for killing U.S. troops — and questions about what Trump did or didn't know about it — have consumed the White House for days. Against that backdrop, Biden parried 16 questions from seven reporters, including three from Fox News.
Another Tuesday, another primary — The latest Democratic primary battle between the party’s establishment and its progressive wing is in Colorado today. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper, whom Democrats recruited into the race after he abandoned a poorly performing presidential campaign, is trying to fend off challenger Andrew Romanoff from his left and secure the nomination to face Sen. Cory Gardner, one of the two most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection this year, Ally Mutnick, James Arkin, Steve Shepard and Zach Montellaro write.
Elsewhere today, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is locked in a tight race in his comeback bid, in a Repubilcan primary against Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox. And Republicans are choosing candidates in two of Democrats’ most endangered House seats.
LISTEN IN FOR CRITICAL NEWS AND NEEDED CONTEXT IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS: The nation is moving through the phases to reopen as Sunbelt states face a spike in coronavirus cases. Americans are demanding action to address racial injustice and police reform. Tens of millions remain out of work, and election season is upon us. Struggling to keep up with the never-ending news cycle? Keep up to speed with the essential news of the day with POLITICO Dispatch, a short, daily podcast that cuts through the news clutter. Subscribe today.
| NIGHTLY NUMBER |
$10 billion
The amount of money the federal government has poured into Operation Warp Speed , the joint project of the departments of Health and Human Services and Defense to accelerate the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. POLITICO is tracking the global competition, the research and development, the rollout plan and how effective the vaccine will be. Check out our full coverage here.
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| PARTING WORDS |
NOT TOO CRABBY — Nightly’s Tyler Weyant emails from Maryland:
Greetings from Harford County, just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Harford is the birthplace of the Iron Man himself, Cal Ripken Jr. Most of us don’t broadcast that John Wilkes Booth grew up here, too. Like our country, Maryland has mountains and beaches, cities and farms, proud historic moments and those we’d rather forget. The first ingredient in popular spice Old Bay, somehow, is celery salt.
And, at this moment in our pandemic, we are publicly wishing the whole of America was a little bit less self-contradictory even as we wish it were a little bit more like us. As late as the end of May, White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx was describing the Baltimore-D.C. area as a hotspot. But it is the end of June, and things are looking fairly rosy. Hospitalizations, which reached more than 1,700 in mid-April, have dipped to about 450. The seven-day positivity rate is less than 5 percent. And, generally, people seem to be wearing masks, being smart when eating outdoors and remaining socially distant.
So, atop the Chesapeake, we gaze southward, and feel sad for our fellow Americans who haven’t been able to get to where we are. A slight air of smugness comes through. We congratulate ourselves: Republican Gov. Larry Hogan made the right calls, people for the most part have followed the rules, and we’re reaping the good seeds we’ve sown.
This tone makes me nervous. No state, no person, no country can feel like they have Covid completely under wraps. All it takes is an asymptomatic person at Seacrets (not a typo) nightclub in Ocean City, or a superspreader case at a Fells Point brunch in Baltimore, and we’ll be in the same boat as parts of Texas, Florida and Arizona.
No one person’s, or one state’s, or one region’s, actions are going to fix this. Instead of derision, however light, we should offer compassion and comfort. After all, in the America of July 4, those are aspirational values. We’re in it together for the long haul, and staying focused on that slog is much better mental work than a regional nanny-nanny boo-boo to other states. Simply put, in two months, we could be next.
A message from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network:
COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on the significant barriers to affordable health care that cancer patients have long faced. Policymakers took action to address the affordability of COVID-19 testing and treatment. Congress must do the same for cancer patients by removing the red tape of prior authorization and step therapy, reducing out-of-pocket costs, and ensuring cost-sharing assistance directly benefits patients. Learn more.
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