Air quality across California has visibly improved with fewer drivers on the road because of stay-at-home orders. But when the orders are lifted pollution will likely return to pre-pandemic levels.

Some scientists say we don’t have to go back to having such poor air quality in the state, but they recognize it will take a total mindset change for Californians. The number of miles driven in the state has dropped by around 75% since stay-at-home orders went into place and has resulted in a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, said UC Davis Road Ecology Center director Fraser Shilling.

“We're learning new things about our driving behavior … can we both mitigate the harm from COVID-19 and also mitigate the harm that we cause by burning fuel and causing climate change?” Sterling questioned after analyzing data from Streelight.com. 

Nationally he reports there was a reduction of around 74 billion miles traveled in the U.S. from early March to mid-April. That resulted in a greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 4% nationally for 2020 and by 13% from transportation in about eight weeks. 

If this continues, Shilling says, the reduction of miles traveled could drastically impact our climate goals for the better, including putting the nation on track to meet its annual greenhouse gas reduction goals under the Paris Climate Accord.

He says it’s an interesting position for the federal government to be in where the lack of driving allows the U.S. to meet the goals of the “Paris Climate Accord, and on the other hand, inadvertently exceed the goals ... It's a cool green lining.”

California has a 2050 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels. Shilling says if traffic remained at stay-at-home levels for a year, the drop in miles traveled would allow the state to meet half of its climate target by 2050.  

The rest of the reductions would come from all sectors of the economy including transitions to bioenergy, offshore wind power, and increased energy storage. A 2019 study highlighted by Stanford University from the group Energy Futures Initiative says meeting the 2050 goals will be “extremely challenging.”

“It's painful to drive less and have less economic activity,” Shilling said. “But when we drive less, and when we work at home, we can start to meet these climate change goals. They're not so far out of the way, out of bounds that we can't achieve them.”

But Shilling says there are negative aspects, depending on how you look at it, including potentially $370 million less state fuel tax revenue.

“The upside for drivers — like I filled my tank a month and a half ago — is we're not spending as much on fuel,” Shilling said. “The less fuel that's sold, the less fuel tax revenue … that money is not available for transportation projects.”

Could California keep its cleaner air?

Researchers at UCLA are taking this idea further. A study came out this week saying that California has all the policies and technology to stop all human-caused emissions by 2050. 

“We think there is a room for California to achieve that goal ahead of the game,” said Yifang Zhu, one of the authors of the peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. 

The authors call for increased energy efficiency across all sectors and reducing emissions from energy creation as the core ways to reach the sped up goal. That would mean a “systematic change” in how Californians consume energy and “more stringent” policies.

“We're talking about 85% electrification rate in the residential and commercial sectors, which we’re not even close to [today],” Zhu said. 

Achieving carbon neutrality is part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s mission to limit the rise in global temperature to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels by 2100. 

Zhu says, “nothing in our model in the roadmap is something unrealistic” even at a half a century ahead of the global goal. Doing so would mean fast tracking the state’s existing goals and their models show that by 2050 the savings from curbing emissions will exceed the cost by around $109 billion.

“We need to do more than what we're doing today,” Zhu said. “I want to highlight the cost is actually only 50% compared to the monetary benefits and also want to communicate the urgency for California agencies for stakeholders and policymakers to really act.”

Zhu says, even though the study started before the pandemic began, there’s a lesson to be learned from the COVID-19 crisis. 

“It is cheaper and safer to prevent people from catching and spreading this Coronavirus, then to treat huge numbers of severe cases,” Zhu said. “Similarly [with] climate change it is much better to cut down greenhouse gas emissions to prevent global temperature rise than to figure out how to deal with the potential future catastrophic consequences.”

The authors also note the state’s most disadvantage would benefit. According to the study, the state’s top 25% most polluted census tracts would get 35% of the health benefits of improved air quality. It could also, the study says, have a health effect of 14,000 fewer deaths from air pollution related illnesses every year, it could reduce asthma attacks in 1 million children and decrease cardiovascular hospital admissions by 4,500.

“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our state will not only slow down global climate change, but more importantly, will improve the air quality and protect people’s health in our local community,” said co-author Bin Zhao, a former UCLA researcher who is now an earth scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. 

Where jobs and the economy were at front of mind during last Friday's protest at California’s Capitol, Thursday’s demonstration against the stay-at-home order also focused on closed churches and government-mandated vaccinations.

The microphone passed from person-to-person, who each attempted to encourage the few hundred within earshot. One woman said she was honored to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those in attendance. The next person to speak took the microphone and said a prayer.

People who oppose mandatory childhood vaccinations have been a driving force in recent protests against California’s stay-at-home orders. Many who are passionate about the issue say they haven’t vaccinated their children yet. 

“I don’t vaccinate my children because I’ve done research on it and from experiences,” said Yvette Apfel of Modesto. “A lot of the people who don’t vaccinate because of experiences and that is not taken into account when they give their account of what’s happened.” 

Generally, concerns about childhood vaccines stem from the debunked belief that vaccines can cause autism or otherwise injure children. 

Democratic state Senator Dr. Richard Pan, who has authored several of California’s major childhood vaccine laws, said the messaging at these COVID-19 protests parallels what he’s seen from vaccination opponents in the past.

“We call them the anti-vaccine movement because they came out to oppose vaccination,” he said. “There’s no vaccine for COVID-19, but they’re also opposing essentially every public health measure we have that will allow us to resume our activities safely. So they’re opposed to the stay-at-home orders.”

At a hearing of the state’s Special Committee On Pandemic Emergency Response Wednesday, some people spoke up against public health measures such as contact tracing and testing.

He says he’s heard them preach the concept of “natural immunity,” which comes with a dangerous implication that everyone should acquire COVID-19.

“We often talk about ‘community immunity’ in relation to vaccination, because vaccines are safe,” he said. “So getting a vaccine doesn’t cause people to get hospitalized and die in the process of achieving it. If you try to achieve it through ‘natural immunity,’ you are talking about a lot of suffering and death.”

This is not the first time California’s been an epicenter of the anti-vaccination movement during the past few years.  

In 2015, California became one of the first states to eliminate “personal belief” vaccine exemptions for students attending public and private schools. These were previously allowed for families that opposed vaccination on religious, moral or other grounds. Under Senate Bill 277, only children with a medical exemption form signed by a doctor can opt out of mandatory vaccines.

As the bill moved through the Legislature, large crowds of vaccination opponents descended on the Capitol for rallies and public hearings. Pan received violent threats from people who feel the government should not have the authority to require vaccines for kids.

In 2019, Pan’s office raised the alarm about doctors who were reportedly writing false medical forms for children who did not meet the federal criteria for an exemption. After the personal belief ban took effect in 2016, the rate of kindergartners with medical exemptions quadrupled, according to the California Department of Public Health. 

Pan authored Senate Bill 276 to give the state final say on medical exemption forms. Hundreds of opponents packed into the halls of the Capitol to protest. Several weeks later, an opponent shoved Dr. Pan. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ultimately signed the bill, with some changes. It takes effect January 2021.

Now, vaccination opponents seem to be mobilizing again, not around childhood immunizations but around the idea that the government can require people to vaccinate themselves.

On social media, some Californians have said they will not get vaccinated for COVID-19 when that immunization eventually becomes available. They’ve expressed concerns about the safety of vaccines developed during a crisis response. Some at the protest Thursday said they were worried the vaccine would be used as a tracking device.

“I think it’s more to the whole government issue about the vaccine being a tracer,” said Mary Paris, an unemployed nail salon worker from the Bay Area who drove to Sacramento for the protest. “Whoever gets it, then we’re gonna separate you. So I really think this go-around I’m not gonna do it.”

PolitiFact investigated the claims about government tracking in vaccines in April and found them to be false. They also looked into claims some about the Bill Gates Foundation related to vaccines and tracing and found them to be false, saying "There’s no evidence that implanted microchips are being contemplated in a serious way to fight the coronavirus."

A look by Reuters at the claims about “tracing” and Bill Gates found the technology being referred to is not a microchip or implant that would allow an entity to track your whereabouts. Instead it is a die that would provide patient vaccine records for doctors and nurses in places without  medical records. 

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak announced the state will begin lifting COVID-19 restrictions sooner than expected, starting this weekend. 

“We will enter Phase One on Saturday May 9, before the current stay at home directive would have expired on May 15,” he said Thursday. 

This stage of Nevada’s Roadmap to Recovery allows for nonessential businesses like barbershops, salons and retail outlets to open their doors. And restaurants will be able to offer dine-in service again, too. But Sisolak explained there also will be some new requirements to make that process as safe as possible.

“Retail businesses shall limit the number of customers in their facility at any given time to no more than 50% of the allowed occupancy based on applicable firecodes,” he said. 

Restaurants will also be required to space tables six feet apart and use reservations whenever possible to help ensure social distancing.

Those stricter limits on customer density will also apply to essential businesses, like grocery stores, which didn’t have them before. Employees who work with the public will also be required to wear masks now, although customers are merely encouraged to do so.

Notably, the state’s casinos will remain closed at this point in the process. Bars that don’t serve food, movie theaters and gyms are also banned from reopening for now. 

Phase One — and every step that follows in the plan — will last at least two weeks, so officials can evaluate their impact on Nevada's outbreak.

The recovery plan was developed with input from the Local Empowerment Advisory Panel, which includes county-level elected officials tasked with seeking feedback from local leaders around the state. According to Clark County Commission chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrck, who represents urban communities for the panel, they wanted to avoid one-size-fits-all solutions. 

“We made sure that all of the counties had a voice in any statewide standards that we crafted,” she said. “There are different things across our state that make us unique.”

To that end, county officials are able to keep stricter standards for reopening in their jurisdictions if they think it’s necessary — but they won’t be allowed to make restrictions looser than those defined by the state. 

According to J.J. Goicoechea, who serves as Chairman of the Eureka County Commission and represents rural communities on the advisory panel, their efforts came in the nick of time. 

“We were right on the breaking point of some of these rural counties and some of these constituents just saying, ‘The hell with it, we’re gonna open. We’ve got to move forward, we can’t afford to stay closed anymore,’” he said.

In California, rural counties like Yuba and Sutter have bucked the state’s guidance and allowed non-essential businesses to reopen, prompting criticism from Gov. Gavin Newsom. Goicoechea says his efforts at communicating with his rural peers kept them invested in the process. 

Goicoechea says the plan’s flexibility is also important because the balance between public health and economic needs looks different in every community. 

“It was critical that we did have representation that these rurals felt comfortable talking to,” he said.

According to Kirkpatrick, the next step in the state’s plan to reopen was driven by public health concerns as well. 

“In Phase One we needed to be able to meet the federal criteria of the downward hospitalizations, we needed to increase the testing,” she said.

She added that Nevada is on track to be able to test 4,000 residents per day, with a target of 10,000 per day by June. Sisolak said in addition they’re expanding testing criteria, too. 

“They will all be able to get tests now if they’ve been identified as either a symptomatic or asymptomatic patient,” he said.

According to a recent NPR investigation, however, the state needs to test more than 5,000 people every day to be able to control its outbreak.

Experts:

Sarah Jaquette Ray - Author, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet 

Paul Smaldino - Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at UC Merced. He studies the interaction between individual behavior and social organization, with a perspective rooted in evolutionary ecology and complex systems.

Holly Martinez - Director of Programs and Advocacy with the California State Parks Foundation.

Kathyrn G. Kietzman - research scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Emphasis in elder health. 

John Swartzberg - an infectious disease specialist at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

How to find meaning within this crisis and how to fight off anxiety

Make a list.

That’s the advice Sarah Jaquette Ray is giving people who are dealing with anxiety because of the pandemic. The list should include all the things that are going well, because it will hopefully lift you out of the mundane. 

“Every morning I try to write down a couple of things that I'm going to look forward to that day,” Ray said. “Even if it's as simple as like making lunch for my kids or something dumb like calling my mom … it kind of marks points in my day that are a little bit more redolent with meaning for myself.”

The goal is to milk the value out of what we can control in our lives, Ray said. She recently wrote a book about climate anxiety and she says COVID-19 isn’t too different. 

“Climate change is going to unleash a lot more pandemics,” she said. “There's a direct kind of scientific connection. But in terms of the immediate threat that we feel with COVID, most people don't really feel that with climate change.”

She says people should see pandemics as part of climate change. But she says not to get too caught up in that and think about ways to overcome anxiety. She recommends only consuming media so often, because it can be overwhelming, disruptive and confusing for people.  

“We should be really thoughtful about the media that we consume and be quite disciplined about that because the media that we're consuming is known for trying to capture our negative attention,” she said. “We are also more inclined neurologically to focus on negative news … so we really need to be deliberate about the media that we consume.”

Lastly she says people should focus on what they can control because “that will distract us from a lot of the anxiety and worry, which is going to be there anyway.”

Precautions moving forward

With so many recommendations out there from local, county and state leadership, CapRadio decided to ask public health experts about how to go about life as the economy reopens. 

John Swartzberg, an infectious disease specialist at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, says it can be hard to know what to do because there is no recent playbook on how to deal with the pandemic. 

“So the next best thing is to turn to people who are making decisions based upon good solid data as opposed to the kind of information we're getting out of the White House,” Swartzberg said.

He applauds how California dealt with bending the curve and he says “we can’t shelter in place forever,” but going back to work may mean a second wave of transmissions. As the pandemic lingers and some people return to their jobs he says it’s still important to socially distance, to use masks and to wash your hands. 

“I worry that people think that if they're wearing a mask, they don't have to be very careful … and that's not the case,” he said. “The mask will help prevent somebody else from transmitting it to you.”

But he says California hasn’t tested enough people and that “without rigorous testing, we may see the curve starting to go up, then we immediately have to pull back.”

Swartzberg reiterated that the virus is still here and we don't know what percentage of the American population has already been infected with it.

“Our best guesses are somewhere between 3 and 5%, which means there's somewhere between 95 and 97% of the American population still susceptible to this virus,” he said. “Nothing has substantially changed since this pandemic began. Nothing.

“It's hard to believe it won't happen, that people are going to get infected in large numbers again.”

Paul Smaldino, a professor who studies collective social behavior at UC Merced, is also concerned a second wave could take place. He recommends taking any precaution you can because this is about protecting each other. 

“Wearing a mask is going to dramatically decrease the chance that you infect someone else; and I think that framing often gets lost,” he said. “You should also think about the fact that if you're sick, you have a responsibility to other people to not infect them. Not just because you're a nice person or whatever, but because we are all part of a society.”

He recognizes needs are different for each community. For example, a rural town might need different rules than a metropolis.

“We also need to remember that we're connected, right?” he questioned. “Just because you live in a low population area doesn't mean you don't have the possibility of infecting someone or being infected by someone in a high population area, even if you yourself aren't going between those areas [because] people still travel.”

How do vulnerable communities move ahead? 

CapRadio also received a lot of questions about seniors and disadvantaged communities that are more prone to catching COVID-19. Some said they’re “scared about more infections and the disproportionate impact on people of color.” Others have illnesses or are of an age that make them more vulnerable and are “not not sure when it will be actually safe to go out or when can we allow family members to visit?”

Kathryn Kietzman studies elder care at UCLA and says it’s very important that vulnerable communities take extra precaution. That may mean staying indoors a lot longer than everyone else. 

“I think that seniors and people of all ages with health conditions need to really proceed with caution and to not assume that because things are starting to open up that means we're free and clear,” she said. 

Because there's so many unknowns, like when a vaccine will be available, she says it’s important for seniors and their loved ones to stay the course.

Kietzman says “it’s a big risk to” open up the economy, because “you can't bring back a life. So, for me, the scales need to be balanced toward protecting and saving lives at all costs.”

For anyone dealing with sickness or 65 years of age or older she recommends talking to your doctor before you follow any order saying you can leave your home. 

“They may be able to help you without you having to leave your home to get evaluated,” she said. “Seniors and others with underlying health conditions that need attention, need to consult a doctor … to find out what can be done in response to their immediate health needs.”

She says it’s still very important to keep seniors in mind and to help them, because they will most likely be the last people to undergo a lifting of stay-at-home orders. 

“If stores are opening up that weren't open before, and an older adult has a need for something, enlist a family member or enlist a caregiver to get those things,” she said. “I would still recommend staying as close to the original stay at home guidelines as possible.”

For any seniors needing someone to chat with she recommends calling the Friendship Line. It’s a 24-hour hotline designed for older adults to have someone to reach out to when feeling anxious or to get information. That number is 1-888-670-1360

Is it safe to go out into the natural world?

Californians love the outdoors. It’s been hard for many to shelter-in-place when some of the best trails, parks and beaches in the world are so close by. 

CapRadio listeners who enjoy the outdoors or live in rural areas are concerned as well. They are worried about people bringing the coronavirus to places like Lake Tahoe, which could have lasting effects on the economy there.

There’s been a lot of confusion, or desire, about where people can recreate during the shelter-in-place orders. Holly Martinez, director of programs and advocacy with the California State Parks Foundation, says that’s because “most Californians don't typically understand the difference between a city, county, regional, state or national park.”

Martinez’s advice is simple. Check to see if the area you want to visit is open before you leave. And if you’re sick stay home no matter what the order for your area is. 

“Don't go outside — that is a really important thing — even if you have face covering or gloves, it's just better to be safe than sorry to not expose other people to whatever illness you might have,” she said.

If you are feeling well and choose to hike a trail or visit a beach she says only go with the people you live with. 

“Don't take that risk to expose others who might be carrying the virus and not even know it,” she said. 

When people go outside she recommends wearing a mask and gloves, especially when visiting areas with lots of people. She also says to bring hand sanitizer and lots of water because fountains will likely not be running.  

When hiking, visiting a park or laying out at the beach she says to stay six feet away from people and to make sure your presence is known.

“If you're approaching somebody, simply say hello and move aside giving the other person six feet of space to move by,” she said. “Just be courteous … and be very communicative about your presence so that people are clear that you're there and that we're respecting each other's space so that we can all enjoy these incredible places.”

CapRadio's Helga Salinas contributed to this report.