California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered all bars in Los Angeles County to close, due to a rapid increase in the number of coronavirus cases there in the last several days.
Newsom tweeted that he was ordering the closure in L.A. and several other counties, and recommending that several other counties do the same.
It is not clear what, exactly, is causing the rapid spread. Unlike Texas and Florida, which reopened their economies quickly after shutting down initially for coronavirus, California was slower to reopen.
However, the Black Lives Matter protests Brough tens of thousands of people to the streets of Los Angeles and other areas. Few of the protests observed any kind of “social distancing.”
Support by politicians, mostly Democrats, for the protests has weakened public adherence to coronavirus rules and increased pressure to reopen businesses and public amenities more rapidly.
Hot weather in the interior has also driven people indoors, into air-conditioned environments, rather than outside, where the virus is thought to be more difficult to spread, at least at a distance.
The closures will come as an additional blow to local businesses, many of which barely survived the first shutdowns in the spring.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.