It’s happening again. California, under the ever-steady hand of Governor Gavin Newsom, is tiptoeing back toward pandemic-era theatrics.
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that COVID cases and hospitalizations are on the rise, and county-level health officials are already urging residents to mask up indoors. Not mandated—yet—but we all know how these “recommendations” tend to evolve.
The script is familiar: “Wear an N95, KN95, or KF94,” said Yolo County health officer Aimee Sisson, as though Californians haven’t already been through two years of mask wars, business closures, and rules that always seemed to apply to the public but not to the governor.
Remember the French Laundry? November 2020, at the height of California’s lockdowns, when Newsom was photographed dining maskless with lobbyists at one of the state’s priciest restaurants. While ordinary Californians were being told to cancel Thanksgiving, skip funerals, and keep their kids out of school, the governor enjoyed a $350-a-plate soirée.
Now the cycle threatens to repeat. Newsom has announced a new “West Coast Health Alliance” with Oregon and Washington, supposedly to guard against “politicization” at the CDC.
But critics are quick to point out that the alliance itself is inherently political. It’s a successor to his 2020 “Western States Workgroup,” a body created to second-guess federal vaccine approvals—an odd move for a man who would later mandate the very same vaccines, costing thousands their jobs.
And let’s not forget: the vaccines, while helpful in reducing severe illness, did not live up to the original promises of preventing infection or transmission. For many, those broken assurances are why “trust the experts” rings so hollow today.
So here we are again. Masks urged indoors. Cases rising. Hospitals preparing. And a governor positioning himself as both skeptic and savior, both critic of the CDC and champion of his own regional task force.
The truth is, Californians aren’t eager for another round of restrictions. They remember what happened last time—schools shuttered, livelihoods destroyed, rules bent for the powerful while enforced on everyone else. If Newsom thinks residents will march in lockstep again, he may be misreading the room.
