Which Governors Have Learned The Least And Will Get The Most People Infected In Their States?

"Die For Me" by Nancy Ohanian

The centers of America's pandemic were New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Louisiana, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island. The states where people have been the most lax about social distancing or where governors have decided to open up before its safe are going to be the centers of the next phase of the pandemic. These are the states where the number of infected per million is growing dangerously in states where the pandemic is not being taken seriously:

• South Dakota- 2,994 per million
• Colorado- 2,933 per million
• Indiana- 2,907 per million
• Nebraska- 2,796 per million
• Iowa- 2,759 per million
• Georgia- 2,751 per million
• Mississippi- 2,490 per million
• Tennessee- 1,904 per million
• Nevada- 1,817 per million
• Florida- 1,722 per million
• Utah- 1,636 per million
• Alabama- 1,565 per million
• North Dakota- 1,533 per million
• California- 1,369 per million
• Missouri- 1,367 per million
• South Carolina- 1,309 per million
• Arizona- 1,204 per million
• Texas- 1,110 per million

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, reporters Keiko Morris, Congress Koh Ping and Eric Sylvers noted that as lockdowns ease, some places see COVID cases rising. They reported that "More than 33,000 new cases were reported across the U.S. in the 24 hours to 8 p.m. Friday-- the highest daily figure since April 24... Confirmed U.S. infections now exceed 1.1 million, with more than 65,400 reported deaths." Yesterday states not usually associated with the frontline of the pandemic battle and states where social distancing rules are being abolished or were weak to start with, reported disproportionately large increases in cases overnight-- Georgia (806), Tennessee (770), Iowa (757), Indiana (665).

Governors in at least 30 states across America have begun allowing some businesses to operate or announced plans to do so this month.

But unlike with the shutdown, there is little consensus on how to carry out a reopening. State and local officials and businesses large and small are reaching their own conclusions on how to balance medical and economic risks. Data so far suggest it will take a while after orders are lifted for the economy to pick up again.

...In Stillwater, Okla., city officials on Friday amended an emergency proclamation requiring people to wear masks or face coverings in stores and restaurants after broad pushback from the public.

In the first few hours of the new mandate, workers reported being harassed and threatened with physical violence, including one instance when someone threatened gun violence, City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. The city is now asking people to wear masks in public but will no longer mandate it.

Public-health experts have said state officials need to put in place certain measures, including expanded testing capacity and contact-tracing teams, to safely return to some version of normalcy.

...Across much of continental Europe, where the virus appears to have peaked, governments prepared to allow some resumption of social and economic activities.

In Spain, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, adults were permitted on Saturday to exercise outdoors alone or with one person from the same household for the first time in weeks. The number of daily deaths has trended down in the country since peaking at the beginning of April at 950.

France plans to gradually ease its lockdown from May 11, letting its 101 administrative districts open depending how widely the virus is spreading and the occupancy rate of hospital intensive-care units. Lockdown rules will be eased more quickly in departments marked green, while those marked red will open more slowly. As of Friday, 41 departments were green and 32 departments-- including Paris and the entire northeastern quarter of France-- were marked red.

Russia, meanwhile, reported its highest daily rise in infections, with 9,623 new cases reported. Roughly 2% of Moscow’s 12 million residents have been infected with the coronavirus, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Saturday, adding that the real number is likely much higher.

“It is obvious that the threat is still growing,” Mr. Sobyanin said.

It may be obvious to the mayor of Moscow but it certainly is not obvious to the governors of Georgia, Florida, South Dakota and Texas. Earlier today we looked at Marianne Williamson's work pushing Americans to move from a financial bottom line to a humanistic bottom line. Two other Wall Street Journal reporters, David Harrison and Justin Baer, noted that as the crazy right-wing governors open up their states, saner people are ignoring them and staying home anyway. "South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster," they wrote, "eased restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, allowing retailers to reopen April 20. But a look at traffic congestion and hours worked in South Carolina and other states in which lockdowns have eased indicates workers and consumers haven’t resumed their pre-pandemic routines. The early experience in South Carolina and other states is a sobering portent for the country as a whole, suggesting it will take more than lifting lockdowns for economic activity to rebound. It also illustrates the limits of policy makers’ influence when residents’ and businesses’ behavior depends on their own perceptions of risk. In many places, activity shut down long before governors issued their stay-at-home proclamations. The data so far suggest it will take a while after orders are lifted for the economy to pick up again."

On Friday, a NY Times team-- Sabrina Tavernise, Jack Healy and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs-- posed the question many people are thinking about: Your Life or Your Livelihood: Americans Wrestle with Impossible Choice.

When Maine finally announced this week that hair salons could reopen, Sarah Kyllonen, a stylist in Lewiston, stayed up late wondering what to do, feeling overwhelmed.

The virus still scared her. It seemed too soon to open up. Then again, her bills had not stopped and her unemployment benefits had not started, and she was starting to worry about next month’s rent.

Around midnight on Thursday, she finally drifted off. But she woke an hour later, and did not sleep much after that.

“It’s an extremely hard decision for all of us,” she said. “I want to go back to work. I want to have the money. I want to see people. But it’s hard because I’m worried about the virus coming back around.”

She added: “I can’t get my mind off it. It’s very stressful.”

As states begin to loosen restrictions on their economies, the act of reopening has come down not to governors or even to President Trump, but to millions of individual Americans who are being asked to go back to work.

It is not an easy decision. In homes across the country this week, Americans whose governors said it was time to reopen wrestled with what to do, weighing what felt like an impossible choice.

If they go back to work, will they get sick and infect their families? If they refuse, will they lose their jobs? What if they work on tips and there are no customers? What happens to their unemployment benefits?

Until recently, only those designated as essential workers had to face such dilemmas. On Friday, as at least 10 additional states, including Texas, began to lift stay-at-home orders or reopen some businesses, more Americans ventured out of their doors to work, but often with a sense of dread-- that they were being forced to choose between their health and their livelihood.

Large majorities still approve of shutdown orders as a way to protect public health, but the tremendous surge of jobless claims since mid-March has created a crosscurrent: an urgent need for income.

The hyperpartisan wrangling between Mr. Trump and governors over whether to reopen has obscured the way many Americans are thinking about the issue. They are not always neatly dividing into two political tribes, with Republicans wanting to see restrictions lifted and Democrats wanting to remain shut down. Even within each person there can be conflicting instincts.

...Unemployment benefits through states are tied to employment, and workers cannot keep their benefits once their bosses call them back, even if they believe it is unsafe to go to work. There are some exceptions, granted by the federal relief package known as the CARES Act: They include those who are sick with the virus or who are caring for children whose schools or day care centers remain closed.

Republican leaders in Iowa and Oklahoma have threatened to withhold unemployment benefits from people who refuse to return to their jobs. In both states, employers whose workers do not show up have been asked to report them to state authorities so they can stop providing them with the benefits.

As Americans have started receiving unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, freeing some of them from having to worry as much about paying for food and rent, they have been able to shift their focus toward protecting their health.

...In Ohio, the authorities said manufacturers could begin operating on Monday. But Kim Rinehart, a worker at a transmission plant in Toledo, said she had heard nothing from her union or her company about when she might return to work. She is collecting unemployment and the additional $600 in benefits, and is feeling fine about staying home, particularly given the state’s limited testing capacity and the virus’s stealth.

“If you had a murderer in the plant, and you didn’t know where but you knew he was there, would you go back into that plant?” she said.

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp allowed restaurants to start dine-in service on Monday. But a large group of restaurateurs and chefs have pledged to remain closed for the time being, because it was safer.

One of the chefs, Craig Richards, the co-owner of Lyla Lila in Atlanta, said he did not want anyone to get sick as a result of his decisions. And he is not excited about opening a place that is depressing to visit, with workers in masks.

“I don’t want to open a restaurant that looks like an operating room,” he said. “That’s not a restaurant. To me a restaurant is about connecting people.”

To some degree, governors are leaving choices to individuals by design.

“It is the people themselves that are primarily responsible for their safety,” Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota said this week, announcing a “back to normal” plan.

Though she never issued a formal stay-at-home order, Ms. Noem said moving toward reopening would put the power back into the hands of the people, “where it belongs.”

“They are free to exercise their rights to work, worship and to play,” she said, “or to stay at home and to conduct social distancing.”

When the history of this pandemic is written, Noem shouldn't be overcalled just because she's governor of a small state. She's one of the very worst governors in America and has caused incalculable damage, not just to people in South Dakota but to people in North Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska, all states that are doing much worse because of South Dakota's rapidly growing rate of infection. Of the next wave of catastrophe states, South Dakota is doing worst of all-- 2,994 confirmed cases per million people. That's worse than Germany, France, the U.K., Russia, Iran, Canada, Holland, Israel, Japan, Poland and all the Scandinavian counties. Noem has done a horrible job and seems intent on making it much worse. Brian Kemp (R-GA) and Ron DeSantos (R-FL) are better known but no one has done their state more harm than Kristi Noem has done South Dakota.