Wednesday, March 18, 2020

California's Governor Newsom on rural-urban difference in coronavirus incidence and response

California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke at length yesterday about measures the State is taking to protect Californians in the face of the quickly spreading coronavirus and COVID-19.  Newsom is continuing to allow local governments to make many decisions about closures for themselves and in doing so, said this on Sunday:
We’re not some small isolated state. We’re a nation-state.  Santa Clara County’s conditions are extraordinarily different than Tulare. Extraordinarily different than Madera. Or Colusa. And so, while it may be fanciful and comforting by perception standards, for some [who want] one size fits all, that’s not the world in which we view the reality on the ground. There’s no community spread in some communities, there [is] significant community spread in other communities.
While he didn't use the word "rural," in mentioning Madera, population 150,865, and Colusa, population 21,419, Newsom certainly implied it.

Also in Sunday's news conference, Newsom mentioned that about half of California's school districts would be closed starting on Monday, but those districts serve about 85% of the state's students.  Newsom commented, "Many smaller districts remain open and for reasons that are perfectly understandable."  I noticed that when many California school districts started announcing closures last week, Modesto in the northern part of Central Valley was not among them.  Modesto, with a population of 200,000 is hardly rural, but it's mid-sized in context of the population behemoth that is the Golden State.  Apparently many smaller California districts also remain in session this week. 

I note that on California's coronavirus map as of today, there appears to be one case in nonmetro Siskiyou County (or perhaps that's Shasta County, but right along I-5) and one in sparsely populated Humboldt County, perhaps in the county seat Eureka.  A few cases show up along I-5 farther south, in the state's great Central Valley (looks like a cluster in Fresno and a smaller number in perhaps Merced County).  At least one case is pretty far east in the Inland Empire, which is mostly nonmetropolitan.  Among counties with "shelter in place" orders, nonmetro San Benito, population 55,269, is new to California's list this morning and the only rural county on it.

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