Ellen Interviews California Governor Gavin Newsom About COVID-19 Response

California Governor Gavin Newsom called in to The Ellen DeGeneres Show to discuss his lauded response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Newsom was one of the first U.S. governors to order shelter-in-place rules and promote social-distancing on a statewide scale, and since then he has been praised for taking early action in stopping the spread of the virus.

When asked if he found it difficult to enact quarantine orders so soon, Newsom acknowledged the challenges of addressing the crisis when no one was sure how the public would respond to such a sudden, drastic lifestyle change — not to mention a tanking economy.

“Certainly people thought it was too much, too soon, too fast,” he said. “But I think ultimately it’s helped advance our efforts to, as I said, bend this curve. And what I mean by that is nothing more than this: we had models showing the massive increase in the total number of infections. But because of 40 million Californians taking these directives very, very seriously — staying at home and practicing social distancing, physical distancing, when they went about their essential work or going grocery shopping or getting medical supplies — we have substantially impacted that curve and put ourselves in a position where just today, I was able to put out a framework to begin the process of considering a strategy to pull back from the stay-at-home order.”

Later on the show, OneRepublic did a remote performance of their song “Better Days,” from their upcoming album Human, at their home studio.