Every state — including 12 slackers — must join fight to beat COVID-19
As of Thursday afternoon, 12 governors still had not issued the statewide stay-at-home orders that are the best defense against the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
We have to wonder how many more of their residents must catch the virus, and how many more must die, before these 12 state chief executives wake up. We have to wonder whether they understand that they are endangering every American. A pandemic respects no state lines.
There is not a moment to spare. The toll of the virus is mounting by the day. More than 225,000 Americans — and more than 1 million people worldwide — have contracted COVID-19. More than 5,000 Americans, including 157 in Illinois, have died.
And the worst by far — possibly up to 240,000 American deaths — is yet to come.
Yet these 12 governors have ignored the advice of the best public health experts. They have refused to shut down daily activity as fully and widely as possible.
Can’t look to Trump
President Trump has been of little help in this regard. He has been all over the board on how to respond to the spread of the coronavirus, creating unwarranted skepticism. He originally predicted the virus would magically disappear. Then he issued a call, a week ago, for the United States to be “open for business” again by Easter.
Now Trump is saying that dramatic measures to contain the virus will have to remain in force at least through April, but he has been loath to call out governors — all Republican — who refuse to act.
Trump may also lack the constitutional authority to order states to go on lockdown. As constitutional scholars Laurence Gostin and Sarah Wetter wrote this week in The Atlantic, “Constitutional authority for ordering major public-health interventions, such as mass quarantines and physical distancing, lies primarily with U.S. states and localities via their ‘police powers.’ ”
That leaves it to the nation’s governors to move quickly and decisively, as Gov. J.B. Pritzker has done in Illinois. Yet many just won’t.
Piecemeal shutdowns not enough
In Missouri, which of course shares a border with Illinois, Gov. Mike Parson and public health officials have issued orders that amount to suggestions. Residents are “encouraged” to avoid social gatherings of more than 10 people and “avoid eating or drinking at restaurants, bars, or food courts,” according to NPR. Parson has shut down schools, but nothing else.
You are free to catch the bug at a burger joint in Missouri, row a boat across the Mississippi River, and spread the disease to everybody you chat up in Illinois.
The same goes in Arkansas and Nebraska.
Grab a beer in a crowded bar, catch the virus and take it on the road.
This piecemeal approach is woefully inadequate. As Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote this week in the Washington Post: “This is a recipe for disaster . . . . The country’s leaders need to be clear: Shutdown anywhere means shutdown everywhere.”
All of this must be galling for the millions of residents of Illinois and 37 other states — including neighboring Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky — who have been making extraordinary personal sacrifices to fight the virus. They are hunkered down at home day and night, venturing out only for necessities and in emergencies, maybe going a little stircrazy. They have lost jobs and paychecks, or are at risk of it, and they are unable to see friends, family and neighbors.
By government decree, schools, workplaces and nonessential businesses have been closed. Public gatherings have been curtailed. Parades, concerts and sporting events have been canceled. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has shut down our beloved lakefront.
We grumble. We do love our lakefront. But for the most part, we understand — our health, and the health of everybody else, must come first.
Best bet to beat virus
Does all this social distancing work? You bet.
A massive lockdown has been credited with beating back the coronavirus in China. Similar measures went a long way toward defeating the 1918 Spanish flu in the United States. And new research from California and Washington State — excellent news — suggests that social distancing in those two states has slowed the rate of infection. It is flattening the curve.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s foremost expert on infectious disease and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, has not called for a national lockdown. We wish he would, though we understand he’s got a difficult job in trying to manage Trump’s ego so as to stay in the president’s good graces and remain effective.
Yet in an interview Thursday, Fauci made clear that he believes some governors are being too lax, allowing too many exemptions to stay-at-home orders or failing to enact them altogether.
“I can’t make any official proclamations here, but I can say, ‘really, seriously consider, are those exemptions appropriate when you think about what’s going on?’ ” Fauci said on NBC’s Today Show. “I urge the people in leadership at the state level to really take a close look at those decisions.”
To the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, we would say this:
Do what’s right or watch people die.
There are tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers in detention who don’t belong in jails or jail-like facilities that are spread across our country.
They are not criminals.
More than ever, with the coronavirus sweeping across the country, there is an urgent need for their release.
Fifty-four percent of immigrants in detention who had criminal convictions were categorized last year as Level 3 offenders, according to Syracuse University’s TRAC research center. Their “crimes” were low-level offenses, such as illegal entry to the U.S. or traffic-related violations.
Those people should be set free. Their socalled crimes didn’t warrant detainment and deportation in the first place.
Another 31,000 people were being detained who had no criminal convictions at all, TRAC research showed, and some of them were asylum seekers. It’s no crime to seek refuge in the United States. Yet “detention is the default to every arriving asylum seeker,” Tania Linares Garcia, a senior litigation lawyer with the National Immigrant Justice Center based in Chicago, told me.
Those who have no convictions must also be released. Many are held in detention centers where filthy, overcrowded conditions have been well-documented over the years.
Since October, 10 immigrants have died while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, and seven children have died while in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody or died shortly after their release. That was before the coronavirus outbreak. We know that packing people in tight spaces, whether at a funeral or a jail, creates a petri-dish effect for coronavirus to spread.
Outbreaks of infectious diseases are common at ICE and CBP facilities. Typically, the flu is prevalent. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an outbreak of mumps that infected 898 migrants and 33 detention facility staff members.
Detention facilities pose a greater danger than ever to the health of detainees and employees. By releasing people who don’t pose a threat to public safety, surrounding communities could be spared from a greater spread of the coronavirus.
As of Thursday morning, there were six confirmed cases of the coronavirus among detainees in custody and five cases among ICE employees at detention facilities, ICE reported on its website.
At ICE jails and family detention facilities, panic has set in because of the virus.
“Everyone is really desperate, and I think this is all about to collapse,” a father at the Karnes Detention Center in Texas said in a recording leaked to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.
Sick children were vomiting and had diarrhea, said the father, who added: “People are totally desperate because of that.”
Another father said that except for shampoo in the shower area, he wasn’t given any soap.
Linares Garcia told me that only a handful of the National Immigrant Justice Center’s clients recently have been released on humanitarian parole amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Overall, “there is no sign ICE is relenting,” Linares Garcia said. Detainees know they are sitting ducks for the virus. “The anxiety, the anguish is so strong,” she added.
ICE claims it is taking measures to prevent the spread of the virus, including distributing soap, but Linares Garcia said detainees that her organization is helping aren’t given soap unless they buy it from a detention facility’s commissary. Even then, detainees sometimes must make a choice between spending their money on soap or using it to place phone calls to their lawyers.
When you’re in a crowded place and must struggle to get your hands on a bar of soap, you’re in big trouble against a deadly virus.
When you don’t belong in jail to begin with, it’s unconscionable.
Faced with the greatest public health threat in a century, we are stumbling in the dark. Each day’s death toll is treated as a shock, rather than what it ought to be — a fire bell in the night.
Only on April 1, for example, did Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issue a stay-at-home order. As recently as March 28 — even as refrigerator trucks were parking outside New York hospitals to serve as overflow morgues — many of Florida’s beaches were packed. Responding to criticism, DeSantis said he was taking cues from the White House. “If any of those task force folks tell me that we should do X, Y or Z,” he said, “of course, we’re going to consider it.”
President Donald Trump initially praised DeSantis for this, calling him “a great governor who knows exactly what he’s doing,” but apparently thought better of it later and encouraged DeSantis to issue the stay-at-home order.
Not to pick on DeSantis too much, but he is emblematic of the scattershot approach that is failing so badly to meet this crisis. As recently as March 31, he said it was up to “locals” to enforce public health guidelines.
“I was flying out of Miami yesterday,” he said, “looking at beaches with signs saying they were closed. Were there people out there? Damn right there were. It’s just unfortunate, but no matter what you do you’re going to have a class of folks who are going to do whatever the hell they want to.”
Actually, states have considerable power to enforce public health measures. In Virginia, violators of the stay-at-home order face fines of up to $2,500 and one year in jail or both. In Maryland, the fines can go up to $5,000. Courts tend to defer to states when public health emergencies arise.
Meanwhile, the federal government, personified in President Trump, lurches from alternativereality boosterism such as his March 24 plan to open up the country by Easter, to relatively sane projections of two “tough” weeks in the offing on March 31. He boomerangs. In the morning on March 28, he treated the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut to 12 hours of panic about possibly ordering a two-week quarantine of the region, only to back down in the evening.
The nightly briefings are his stage. As bodies pile up, a worried public tunes in. He mistakes this for popularity: He tweeted: “Because the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @ nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY.”
His self-absorption cannot be penetrated even by a national tragedy. This is, after all, the man who responded to 9/11 by noting that he guessed Trump Tower would now be the tallest building in Manhattan.
What the president should be doing is calling together the nation’s governors to request that every single state issue enforceable stay-athome orders for a three-week period. If strictly adhered to, the lockdown would curtail the virus’ spread.
While that was in effect, the president could focus on his proper role — not performing for the cameras but managing the nationwide shortage of personal protective equipment for health care workers and ventilators for coronavirus patients. He could be coordinating efforts to get testing kits to the entire nation. It makes no sense for 50 governors to be bidding against one another and against FEMA for essential supplies. As New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo put it, “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states.”
The federal government should be the buyer for whatever ventilators and other supplies can be found, and should then distribute them around the nation as needed. The disease is not hitting everyone at once. New York, Washington, and New Jersey should get priority now, and then turn over the machines to other states later.
Trump did speak to the nation’s governors on March 30. He noted that he wanted “appreciation” for his great work. When Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana explained that his state was only one day away from running out of tests, the president became personally defensive and switched to pitchman mode: “We’ve tested more now than any nation in the world. We’ve got these great tests and we come out with another one tomorrow that’s, you know, almost instantaneous testing. But I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.”
If the president really believes that, it’s frightening, because pretty much every sentient person in the country is aware of the testing kit shortage. If he doesn’t believe it, it’s even more alarming, because it shows that the false reassurance he offered the country throughout January, February and part of March has not been abandoned.
IT MAKES NO SENSE FOR 50 GOVERNORS TO BE BIDDING AGAINST ONE ANOTHER AND AGAINST FEMA FOR ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES. AS NEW YORK GOV. ANDREW CUOMO PUT IT, “IT’S LIKE BEING ON EBAY WITH 50 OTHER STATES.”