Most of those counties are in rural areas where jobs are limited anyway. It's always a catch-22 - live in a cheaper place where jobs just don't exist or find a way to work online, or live in a city where there are plenty of jobs but rent is exorbitantly expensive. For a family of four in SF, $110,000 or less is considered "low-income". Assuming two parents make $54k each on unemployment, that's barely even scratching that threshold.
Again, I don't think that a lot of people wouldn't rather just get unemployment than work menial jobs, but either way it's still not enough to make ends meet in a lot of places. And all of that is assuming that the majority of people can even get in the system or make what the potential earnings could be under it. Many people just plain can't get it, get bogged down in the bureaucracy, or just don't make a remotely helpful amount relative to their needs.
Going back to the original point: I don't even think purely just giving people money is the right attitude to have toward things - it's a bandaid either way - I just think that in a crisis where people either can't work or are forced to risk themselves or the people around them, we should be able to put things on hold in the richest nation in the history of the world for a while, or at least fix things in our economic system and our infrastructure to allow people access to certain resources. Putting forth individualist ideas of responsibility in a large intertwined society in the midst of a global pandemic that most people either don't understand or care to understand is questionable at best.
Outside of the bay area and the majority of LA and San Diego areas, a household income of $110,000 would be either upper middle class or borderline rich. In 2018, 65.02% of californians made 60K a year or less.
Making it optional to take the current unemployment just because you're afraid the virus when you're in the group with a 0.5-1% fatality rate and don't have any responsibilities involving at risk people isn't feasible for the economy. You can't just "press pause" on the economy. There are things that are essential and NEED to get done and the majority of these essential jobs are handled by the people who would lose the most money by working instead of taking the optional unemployment. Now if we could make it an incentive for essential workers to get the COVID unemployment AND their paycheck, that would get your workforce to stay and work, but how could we fund that? It's not even remotely possible to give every worker in CA $55,000 a year.
The way the system is set up now punishes 65% of Californians that work essential jobs and that are keeping things going. How is that fair to them?
Here's the percentages and how much money they'd be losing to work vs a year of COVID unemployment with the CA unemployment benefit for their incomes calculated. The results should show you what I'm trying to say here.
9.8% would lose an average of $8,716 a year
11.7% would lose an average of $13,724 a year
14.2% would lose an average of $18,732 a year
12.5% would lose an average of $23,470 a year
10.3% would lose an average of $28,904 a year.
on the flip side, this is what you'd be "gaining" per hour working versus staying at home for those who make equal to or more than $55K a year
7.24% of people would break even and essentially be working for free
6.33% of people would be gaining $4.81 an hour to go to work vs unemployment (Around an extra $27 a day take home vs sitting at home)