Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Monday, March 6.
This weekend marked three years since California declared a state of emergency in response to the novel coronavirus that spread from China to the U.S. in late 2019. Gov. Newsom, who lifted the order on Feb. 28, first enacted it on March 4, 2020 — when the state had just 53 known cases of COVID-19.
Over the next three years, more than 1 million people in the U.S. died from the virus. In California, 100,424 deaths have been confirmed, representing roughly 9% of the nation’s fatal cases, according to the latest figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There have been more than 11 million confirmed COVID cases in the state over the last three years.
Statewide, close to 73% of Californians received the initial series of COVID vaccines. Roughly 61% of residents came back for their first booster, and nearly a quarter of Californians got a dose of the bivalent booster.
Those big, public statistics gauge the effects of the pandemic from a public health standpoint. But COVID-19 and the response to it permeated and warped almost every aspect of our lives: how we worked, how we learned, how we ate, how we recreated, how we interacted with our community.
For me, much of 2020 is a haze. The rug of daily routine was pulled out from under us so quickly. Suddenly I was confined mostly to my home, scrambling with everyone else in my newsroom at the time to make sense of what was happening and convey the latest facts, figures and health guidance to the public.
But through it all, my family and I were among the fortunate ones. My spouse and I both kept our jobs (though I did face a period of reduced pay due to company furloughs at my previous newsroom). We didn’t lose any close family or friends to the virus. We managed to avoid getting COVID until late 2022, and thankfully didn’t require serious treatment or hospital stays.
But friends and colleagues lost loved ones. Millions of Californians were laid off, switched careers, moved or otherwise saw the trajectory of their lives change.
Can we even begin to comprehend the toll a globally disruptive health crisis took and continues to take on Californians? Maybe not, but we’re hoping you can help us understand the personal, nuanced impacts of the pandemic by sharing your stories.
We’ve launched a new survey for newsletter readers: Tell us how the COVID-19 emergency changed your life.
We want to know how the pandemic affected you most acutely — whether that was a physical or mental health issue, the loss of loved ones, economic hardships, educational impacts, or changes in relationships or social connections.
Our goal is to feature as many of your responses as we can in an upcoming edition of the newsletter, so please keep your submissions to around 150 words per question and focus on the single biggest effect the pandemic has had on you.
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