A report card grading state responses to COVID-19 between 2020 and 2021 slapped California with an ‘F’.
The Committee to Unleash Prosperity ranked the Golden State in 47th place due to decisions made that impacted the economy, education, and mortality during the pandemic.
“The economic damage to the state of California was very considerable,” said economist Stephen Moore, one of the authors of the study. “California had very high unemployment as a result of a lot of people losing their jobs and business failures because of the lockdowns. Another factor is that California kept its schools closed for a long time. Shutting down schools was a catastrophic mistake.”
Founded by former U.S. presidential candidate Steve Forbes, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity report card was launched to track the nation’s growth, according to media reports.
“It’s pretty clear that the teacher's unions in California, just like in states like Illinois and New York, drove the education agenda,” Moore told the Southern California Record. “In fact, we now know that the teacher's unions wrote the guidelines and so they played a big role in keeping schools closed. For a group of people who say how much they care about children, that was one great episode of national child abuse.”
Top ranking states include Utah, Nebraska, Vermont, and Florida.
“These states were rational,” said Moore, who is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Institute for Economic Freedom. “If you went to Utah or Florida or some of these top states compared to California, which I did during COVID, it was like being in two different countries. Florida was completely open for business. The beaches were open, the hotels were open, and the restaurants were open whereas in California there was no one out. It looked like there were going to be tumbleweeds coming going down the avenues in Los Angeles. It was a night and day difference.”
Moore hopes the study results will act as a deterrent so that economies of states and schools will never be shut down again in the name of a virus.
“It’s one thing for Gavin Newsom or someone like that to make the mistakes that they made but it’s quite another two years later to repeat those mistakes,” Moore added. “I'm very worried about that…that we're going to see more lockdowns, more mask requirements, more shutting down of schools, more remote learning where the costs dramatically outweigh any benefits.”