While many will agree with Supervisor Robert Lovingood's July 4th message that he publicly released on July 2, 2020, I found it disappointing and sadly out-of-touch.

    The county First District supervisor stuck with his highly pro-business dialogue in following the line of President Donald Trumps' lofty dismissal of the global pandemic.

    Republican Lovingood's message tugged at the heartstrings and denounced Governor Gavin Newsom's interference at closing restaurants and other businesses in Lovingood's High Desert district.

    As an Independent conservative, I don't like Newsom but his difficult action is a bold move that appears necessary.

    The COVID-19 pandemic is out-of-control in California and the state's leadership is having to step-in because too many local politicians have proven to be too weak to adequately address the matter.

    San Bernardino County has failed to meet the state's matrix standards which has left the state with little other choice than to include San Bernardino County as one of nineteen counties that the state has placed closure requirements.

    There is no question that California (and the World) is at war.  More lives have already been lost in this U.S. viral war than some of our country's military wars.

    As in any war, there is collateral damage.  In the COVID-19 war against the population, the collateral damage includes businesses, especially high-risk businesses such as bars, restaurants, gyms, and churches.

    President Donald Trump, and his admiring copycat President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, both have the highest runaway COVID-19 numbers in the Western Hemisphere.  Newsom at least is recognizing the seriousness of the virus.

    Trump's mishandling of COVID-19, his addiction to tweets, and his misreading of Black Lives Matter are giving good wiggle-room for Joe Biden to become President.  Biden might have a female V.P. and as old man Biden might not live out his term, we'll have our first female President.

California's Confirmed and Cumulated Cases.

    Hours before the governor's close-down announcement, the county Board of Supervisors met in Special Session to discuss the county's response to the pandemic.  Lovingood presented some strong points to allow certain businesses to remain open.

    One of his strongest points was that some restaurants and bars had invested a great deal of money into meeting the state's standards to be COVID-19 compliant with state guidelines.  They had opened after the first closure and have been following all of the costly guidelines.  Their forced closure would be a slap at voluntarily following the state's requirements.

    Unfortunately, there have been far too many violators and now the good guys are being unfairly closed by the state due to the bad actors.

    Surprisingly, the county's Health Department has very little enforcement power regarding COVID-19, while the state has several hammers.  The biggest whammo is the removal of liquor licenses.

    There is no way that the economy can fully reopen safely at this time.  With the COVID-19 infections having increased 56-percent in the last 2-weeks, drastic measures are necessary.  We can quickly run out of available hospital beds and medical personal.

    Robert Lovingood would probably make a poor military general.  Generals must order operations that they know will have terrible causalities, but they do so to overcome the enemy and save as many lives as possible.  Lovingood like Trump is playing politics and appears to be willing to extend the final death toll.

    COVID-19 is taking a terrible tally.  People do need to work.  Many are going hungry and losing their homes and businesses.

    Yet, in this wartime and growing death numbers, rather than wear a mask and seclude themselves as much as possible to lessen the term of COVID-19, some people still don't understand the situation.  They are publicly mingling and having fireworks and parade festivities.