I am disappointed that the state of California has not taken the initiative and stepped up to lead the response in the US to the coronavirus epidemic.

It’s been clear for weeks that citizens of CA (and WA, and OR, and …) will need support while we all weather this pandemic. Hospitals will need to ramp up. There’ll be a need for testing, for contact following, for basic support including food and shelter while people are unable to work. There will need to be scientific work on vaccine development, and development of testing methodologies that return results quickly.

It’s also been clear for years that the Federal administration has been steadily destroying the ability of federal departments, including those responsible for these things, to do their jobs. From the fabulist in charge, through the suck-ups whose entire function is to kowtow to the fabulist, through the heads of departments whose publicly-stated function is to shut down or make ineffectual the departments they are put in place to lead, including the NIH and CDC, it’s been clear that expecting a well-planned and well-executed response to a national or international emergency from the Federal government is no longer reasonable.

Given these facts, the states have chosen to carp at the Feds about what they’re not doing, rather than stepping up and doing the work themselves. California in particular has financial and academic resources equal or greater than most countries on the planet, and could have, weeks ago, instigated a program to ensure that every UC campus medical center be ready to function as a regional pandemic control facility, with all the resources needed to test, quarantine and treat the general population, funded by the state government. They could then have shared that knowledge and those resources with WA, OR and any other state that needed them.

The Federal government is broken. It is simply not capable of responding well to a national emergency with anything other than rhetoric, misinformation and finger-pointing. Rather than participate in those games, state governments have an obligation and an opportunity to take the reins.

Update: they figured it out (“California exceptionalism is the new American exceptionalism”, Todd Purdam, Atlantic Monthly https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-california-gavin-newsom/610006/). Better a month and a half late than not.