welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.

California has quickly become one of the biggest stories

in and around the coronavirus outbreak,

specifically because of how the numbers have grown

but also because of what the state has been doing

to combat coronavirus.

Talk us through the initiative that just kicked off today.

What is happening with regards to expanding health care

and beds for people who need it?

So, we have to increase our health care capacity

within our hospital system by two-thirds.

And in order to do that, you need three things.

You need the physical spaces,

you need all the protective gear--

the N95 masks, the ventilators--

but you need people at the end of the day,

and the most precious resource are people.

And, as a consequence,

there's no way we can meet the moment

unless people that are recently retired

or people that are in the middle of credentialing and licensing

start to enter into the workforce.

So we just did a big push today,

uh, to create a health corps,

uh, and create incentives,

uh, and create the kind of flexibility

so we can get thousands and thousands of phlebotomists

and pharmacists and paramedics and EMTs, nurses and doctors

-into the workforce over the next few weeks. -Mm-hmm.

So, that's what you're doing with regards

to fighting coronavirus on the ground,

but, as you said, you need the equipment

that the people are going to use.

One of the most confusing conversations

happening right now in America

is the battle between governors/states

and the president/the federal government.

In your opinion,

where is the federal government falling short?

And where do you think states need to step up

and do more to fight this pandemic?

We have not received any ventilators

in a state of 40 million, uh, to meet our needs.

Uh, there were 170 ventilators

that went directly to L.A. County.

Uh, just a couple days ago, they opened the boxes

and found out that none of them worked.

Uh, so, rather than complaining about it,

we decided to ship them from L.A.

I brought them into Silicon Valley,

and literally within 72 hours, all of them were fixed,

and they've already been sent back down to Los Angeles.

It's a way of making this point and answering your question.

We're not waiting around for the federal government.

-Mm-hmm. -We need more support, but at the end of the day,

we have to be resourceful in our mindset and our approach

and use all the tools in our toolkit.

All of that being said,

I want to thank the president in this respect.

We got that USNS Mercy, that large hospital ship,

thousand-bed capacity

into L.A. a couple days ago,

uh, and that's the kind of thing

we do count on the federal government for.

Beyond that, we're gonna be as resourceful as we can be.

One of... one of the things you were given credit for, um,

is being one of the governors who acted earliest

with regards to the coronavirus.

You know, you told, uh, people over 65 to stay at home.

You then implemented a lockdown before many other states did.

You've still come out and said you are worried

that up to 25 million Californians/Americans

could get the coronavirus.

How do you think you are looking right now?

Do those numbers still look as dire,

or do you think that you've done enough

to stave off the pandemic from growing?

Well, good enough never is.

You don't run the 90-yard dash on this,

and I think the biggest mistake we can make

is having done all of this good work,

the stay-at-home orders,

having people practice safe physical distancing...

I prefer "physical distancing" to "social distancing"

'cause a lot of young folks are confused by social distancing

when they're all socially connected,

but we need them physically apart.

-Mm-hmm. -The fact that we're practicing that at scale,

we think, has bought us time, but we're not out of this

by any stretch of the imagination.

Let me be specific. In just the last four days,

we have tripled the number of people in our ICUs.

We've doubled in the last four days

the number of people in our hospital system.

But we do believe that early call

on stay-at-home and physical distancing

bought us a few days, maybe a week or two,

that allowed us to start getting our resources in place

to meet the moment.

Okay. And then finally, I know you have to get back to work.

Um, one of the biggest issues

we're seeing around the country and the world

is the issue of people who are in prison

and how states and countries deal with that.

Because of the spread of coronavirus right now,

being in a close space

is one of the worst things that you can do.

Prison is exactly that.

Are you looking at releasing numbers of prisoners?

And how do you balance that? Because, obviously,

some people in the populous would say,

"Well, do prisoners get to come out because of coronavirus?"

And how do we balance safety versus the risk and the safety

of human beings who are locked up?

This is a moment where we need to be sensitive

to those that are locked up,

particularly in a system like California

that went on this incarceration binge in the 1990s

with Three Strikes and mandatory minimums.

And we grew our prison population

as we were cutting our support

for our higher education system.

So we've been trying to do more and more

to move in a different direction,

but now we have 18 staff...

As I talk to you, we have 18 staff

that have been tested positive for COVID-19.

We have a number of prisoners-- four as I speak to you--

that have been tested positive.

So we're practicing social distancing,

physical distancing in the prisons

by reducing visitation, eliminating it,

uh, by getting people to eat their meals in their cells,

uh, by doing more to isolate our prisoners.

But in addition-- and this goes to your question--

uh, we are looking at people that are coming up close

to their parole date that have parole plans

and make sure we match them with probation

and then get them paroled earlier.

And we're doing it in a very thoughtful and judicious way

based upon public safety,

not being flippant about this, not just saying,

"Hey, you people, randomly, we're gonna send you home,"

but people that were already in the queue

and just fast-tracking that to decompress the system

by thousands and thousands of others.

And, finally, we're reducing the intake into the system

for people that were coming into the prisons.

We are now stopping and capping that,

which then puts similar protocols at the county level

for jails to then start moving out

their lowest offender, uh, population,

people that are nonviolent, nonserious, non-sex offenders.

So we're doing it as thoughtfully as we can,

but it's a very serious thing for the rest of the country,

to protect the folks,

staff and inmates, within the system.

Before we go, is there anything you would like the public to do?

Is there anything people can help officials with?

Because we always ask from the top down.

But what can we be doing to help in this situation?

Th-There's nothing more potent and powerful

than the tool at hand for every single person watching

and that's practicing physical distancing.

You know, not going to the beach or, uh, playgrounds or parks

when tons of other people are out there.

Uh, not going on a jog, uh, when those jogging paths are full.

If we do that, there's nothing more significant

to bend the curve, and that's heroic.

Everybody has the capacity.

It's decisions, decisions, not conditions,

that are gonna determine the fate of this virus.

And so when you're reading all of these, uh, programs

and are watching programs that say,

"Here's what's going to happen," that's nonsense.

Nothing is predetermined.

We have the capacity to bend the curve

by making better decisions.

And so, please, practice physical distancing

and don't buy for a second

that we can cut the parachute before we've landed.

Governor Newsom, thank you so much for your time.

Good luck out there.

Great to be with you.