Coronavirus: Trump wants restrictions eased by Easter, but California begs to differ
- Officials in the most populous US state, already designated a disaster area, say the outbreak has not yet reached the height of its impact there
- Governor Gavin Newsom says a return to normal is more than a month away, while San Francisco Mayor London Breed asks ‘Why are we still listening to the president?’
Even as US President Donald Trump pressed this week for an end to strict public health measures taken to curb the coronavirus spread, California officials pushed back, saying that the state was nowhere near reaching the apex of the outbreak’s impact, let alone in a position to loosen restrictions.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti warned that his city – the nation’s second-largest, behind New York – would be in the same situation as New York, considered an outbreak epicentre, in as little as six days.
“It’s coming,” Garcetti said on Tuesday evening. “The peak is not here yet. The peak will be bad. People will lose their lives.”
The mayor’s warnings were typical across a state that has already been designated a national disaster area, facing unprecedented economic fallout and bracing for the worst.
Film and television production has all but shut down in Hollywood. Coachella, the pre-eminent annual music and arts festival in the US, postponed its start from April to October; Silicon Valley, the tech mecca which emerged as one of the country’s viral hotspots, was part of the Northern California region subject to the country’s first “shelter in place” orders on March 16; Governor Gavin Newsom extended those orders statewide three days later.
The state’s economy is the largest in the US – if California were a country, it would have the fifth largest economy in the world, larger than those of India and Britain – and went into 2020 with a historic budget surplus and reserve fund of more than US$21 billion.
