[Read more about debates over how much the public should know about the state’s coronavirus cases.]

Certainly, as my colleagues have reported, New York City’s density hasn’t helped keep people apart. (Although, as my colleagues have also reported, density will also be a source of resilience in the difficult recovery.)

And over the weekend, Mr. Newsom and other California officials got some tentative thumbs up from experts who said that California’s restrictions — provided that they continue and that residents adhere to them — may help the state’s biggest urban areas avoid the kind of devastating scenes playing out in New York City.

“When history is written,” California leaders including Mayor London Breed of San Francisco and Mr. Newsom, “should get credit for saving hundreds of lives,” Dr. Bob Wachter said on Twitter. He is a professor and chair of the University of California, San Francisco’s department of medicine.

Nevertheless, officials across the state are scrambling to meet demand for hospital beds and health care. And they’re still pleading with residents to stay home.

“Only time will tell us if that time you didn’t go out saved a life,” Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles said on Sunday as he laid out plans to add more hospital beds at the Los Angeles Convention Center. “We’re racing against time.”

[Read more about the arrival of a 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship at the Port of Los Angeles.]