California’s Newsom renews state emergency declaration, citing COVID’s ‘seasonality’

For the better part of two years, California’s governor has pursued some of the nation’s harshest COVID-related restrictions on constituents, in what many critics have complained is little more than a power grab. Now, it appears he’s preparing to do so again.

In a Sunday report, PJ Media’s Gwendolyn Sims noted that last week, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order renewing the state of emergency he originally declared in the Golden State in March 2020.

“Winter is coming. Winter is here,” the governor told reporters at a press conference Tuesday, according to Sims.

“A challenging winter”

Newsom went on to cite the “seasonality” of COVID-19, saying people are more likely to congregate indoors in colder weather, putting them at a higher risk for infection.

“And as we want to be reminded and should be reminded, last year we had a challenging winter, particularly down here in Southern California,” he reportedly remarked.

“We started to see around this time last year case rates, positivity rates, hospitalization rates, ICU numbers start to increase,” Newsom recalled.

According to the governor, the phenomenon is now taking place “all across the globe,” leading to coronavirus trends that are “not dissimilar to last year.”

“One-man rule”

But as Sims noted, Newsom’s contention that COVID-19 is a growing menace doesn’t appear to be supported by the government’s own data.

“While Newsom bleats about the number of COVID-19 cases rising, the CDC’s own data suggests that hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 are currently falling significantly and substantially across the country,” she wrote Sunday, citing figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The number of cases does not and has never correlated to the severity of the pandemic; only hospitalizations and death rates can tell us that,” Sims added.

Writing for PJ Media, Sims concludes by arguing that although medical evidence doesn’t explain Newsom’s decision to renew his emergency declaration, a hunger for power does.

As she puts it, “Once Newsom’s emergency powers end, so will his mandates, executive orders, and county public health officers’ powers.” And when the crisis is over, “Newsom loses the ability for one-man rule,” Sims says.

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