Almost exactly two years ago, when terrified people were scrubbing their groceries with Lysol and every store in America was sold out of cleaning products, the Blue Ridge Poison Center at University of Virginia Health issued a warning letter. “Drinking bleach will not prevent COVID-19 infections and could cause serious injury,” it read.

That same week, Gov. Gavin Newsom went beyond what federal guidelines recommended or what any other state had done to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. He ordered 40 million Californians to stay home except for “essential” reasons. The order had no end date.

Newsom also sent a letter to the White House. “We project that roughly 56 percent of our population — 25.5 million people — will be infected with the virus over an eight-week period,” he wrote, estimating that the state would be 19,543 hospital beds short of what was needed to treat patients.

The governor declined to explain how he came up with those numbers, and it quickly became clear that the numbers were nowhere near accurate, but it didn’t matter. The Reign of Terror was underway. The plainly evident plan was to frighten the public into complying with government directives. At one point, the California Department of Public Health even hired actors to play Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 in scary TV ads. “It was just a get-together,” a weepy young woman said on the voice-over, “Everybody felt fine. But now, we’re all sick.” But they weren’t.

Public officials pounded the message that no one and nowhere was safe. L.A. County closed bike paths and banned beach chairs. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti tried to send the police to shut off the water and electricity to homes where parties had been held. Restaurants were banned from serving customers indoors, and then after they constructed costly outdoor dining facilities, they were banned from serving customers outdoors. Government snitch lines were set up for people to report on each other’s perceived violations of the public health orders.

Fear was the message and the purpose. Lockdowns were tied to arbitrary metrics, embodied in a color-coded warning system that could never turn green because it had no green. A made-up definition of “available” ICU beds generated a daily news story suggesting that hospitals were nearly overwhelmed. But they weren’t.

Fear was the enforcement tool. The government told children that playing with their friends might kill their grandparents. The government banned holiday celebrations, religious services, graduations, high school sports, proms, weddings, birthday parties and funerals. Many people were too frightened to question any of it and angry at those who did.

This terrorizing of the population has damaged people, perhaps permanently. California’s government-sponsored campaign of fear has caused anxiety, depression and isolation. It has made many people afraid of normal human contact, even afraid of the air around them.

In some states and in some countries, government leaders didn’t do this to people. Even here in California, our own government leaders didn’t do this to themselves.

The scenes have become famous: Gov. Gavin Newsom maskless at a crowded dinner party with lobbyists after telling Californians to cancel Thanksgiving dinner with their families; L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl dining on the patio of her favorite bistro hours after voting to shut down outdoor dining countywide as far too dangerous; L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti at SoFi stadium smiling for the camera and later claiming he held his breath while his mask was off.

The masks came off a long time ago. The plastic smiles were concealing a snarling lust for power, money, and control.

While other states have ended their emergencies and normalized their governments, California is making the state of emergency permanent. Newsom has invented a plan for the “endemic” phase of COVID that’s eerily similar to earlier lockdown metrics – the government will be watching a particular number of its own choosing, and when that number reaches an arbitrary level, restrictions may kick in again. At various times the “parameter” has been the quantity of tests, cases, contact tracers, available hospital beds or vaccinations. In the endemic phase, the government is monitoring a number that is found in sewage. Write your own joke.

Unfortunately, it’s no joke. These heavy-handed policies have led the state into a slower recovery than in other states where freedom has returned, or never left.

“California continues to lag the rest of the nation in recovery,” says a January report by the California Center for Jobs and the Economy, “As measured against the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020, nonfarm jobs are still 2.8% short of recovery in California compared to 1.7% in the rest of the states. Employment is still 4.1% below compared to only 0.7% in the rest of the states.”

In ten states, jobs are now above their pre-pandemic level. The list includes Florida and Texas. Will California ever catch up? Maybe not. “In general, the pace of recovery in California has been slowing,” the Center for Jobs reports, “especially as measured by employment.”

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One industry experiencing brisk economic growth in California is cronyism. The endless state of emergency has empowered the governor to dispense with the bother of competitive bids and just hand contracts directly to the major donors. Who says government isn’t efficient?

Another growth industry is fraud; California paid out an estimated $20-30 billion on fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits.

Meanwhile, honest and hard-working small business owners have been destroyed financially, schoolchildren have suffered measurable learning loss and immeasurable stress, the workforce has been disrupted, the supply chain has been impeded, family relationships have been strained and fundamental constitutional liberties have been trampled.

It’s not too late for the state government to admit that the Blue Ridge Poison Center was right. Someone should tell the governor, before he orders another bottle of bleach for the table, that we’ve had enough to drink.

Write Susan at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley.