I welcome others to offer additional information but, as I write this some 3 hours after @GavinNewsom's event, it's entirely unclear whether Californians should expect their region to shut down soon, sort of soon, kind of soon, maybe soon...

A quick thread.

Neither the governor nor his HHS secretary offered real clarity about when this would begin. Newsom said "next day or two" for some regions, but then also said "as late as the next week or so."

Sources earlier said that state officials had privately identified San Joaquin Valley and SoCal regions (combined, 23 counties) were literally on the verge of today/tomorrow.

But then we get the ICU capacity estimates from the state...

As of mid-afternoon, the chart from CA HHS showed no regions down to 15% capacity in ICUs. Of course, the numbers can change... but it's impossible for public/press to understand how *fast* these might change.

Here's what LA County's Dr. Christina Ghaly (whose husband is state HHS secretary) said today, courtesy of my colleague @LukeMMoney:

"I think we still need to understand the detail about how exactly they’re defining that. As I’ve mentioned, that capacity is not a static number."

And then here’s what Ventura County issued today, which says — as we first heard — SoCal could hit the shutdown threshold on Friday.

So, we're left trying to explain a bit of a moving target. State officials have promised to post this data soon, but right now it feels like they pulled the fire alarm but didn't tell us much about size of fire. That's not to say it isn't big... but... some info would help.
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EPILOGUE: Well, sometimes tweets help. Here's the explanation I just received. And also, the official public health order is now online https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12.3.20-Stay-at-Home-Order-ICU-Scenario.pdf

ICU capacity numbers, obviously, change daily. Some of the numbers used to brief stakeholders today were from yesterday... the numbers shared in this thread & with the public are from today.

The state will publish the numbers online tonight & will update the numbers daily.
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Oh, and bonus tweet: The shutdown/threshold public health order doesn't take effect until Saturday afternoon at 12:59 p.m. So all of this is an FYI until then. (And that's new info... we didn't know that earlier when Newsom spoke.)