Your comment is an excellent example of hindsight bias.
California's is not. (https://www.mercurynews.com/coronavirus-how-can-the-states-m...)
At some point the responsible thing to do is to use a more accurate model, but that's not what's happening.
Newsom plans to run for President, so it's hard to believe anything he says, doubly so with the incorrect stats available.
The only good thing I can say about the proposed rail system so far is that both San Jose and SF have "terminals" for it, so it could be built more quickly in the future.
When I was looking at the US fatal accident rate recently (about 37,000/year), what struck me was that it was basically 1 fatality per accident (ie. Americans really do drive sole occupant trips.)