King Sisolak promises new restrictions
UNLESS King Steve Sisolak changes his mind again, Las Vegas will soon face new limits on gatherings and activities.
Last week, Sisolak gave Clark County residents a temporary reprieve. His original plan was to put new restrictions to fight coronavirus into effect last Friday. Instead, he announced the restrictions, if needed, will go into effect this week.
Instead of at rambling news conferences, Sisolak has been making these moves via press release. That means most people aren’t aware that he’s completely revamped Nevada’s “Road to Recovery” plan.
There isn’t a path to normalcy anymore. His new plan is to keep the current restrictions in place for the foreseeable future unless he’s tightening them. The state now evaluates counties on three criteria. If a county surpasses two of the three benchmarks in consecutive weeks, new restrictions are supposed to go into effect.
At a minimum, that includes dropping the limit on group sizes from 50 to 25. It could include returning Nevada to Phase 1 restrictions.
Any relaxation of the current rules — such as reopening churches, even at 50 percent capacity — will come at his whim. Only rarely will a king voluntarily let go of power.
Per Sisolak’s previous royal decree, Clark County should have had new restrictions put in place last Friday. Both last week and the week before, it met two of the three criteria, placing it in the high-risk category. So did five other counties, including Nye, Washoe and Elko.
But Sisolak changed his mind. Good. But on Friday, Sisolak announced via press release that new restrictions are being refined for potential action this Thursday. He also formalized this all in a new royal edict or, as he calls them, directives.
Yet further restrictions aren’t necessary this week either. The daily increase in cases peaked in mid-july. After a high point on Aug. 3, hospitalizations have dropped over the past two weeks. Deaths are a lagging indicator, so expect those to remain tragically high for a while. One undesirable sign is that the positivity rate for tests has gone up a few tenths of a percent over the last week. The state measures that using a seven-day average.
This is encouraging, but Clark County is still well above the criteria Sisolak established. A county is flagged if it has more than 200 cases per 100,000 residents over a 30-day period. Clark County’s case rate was 888 last week. A county also is flagged if its case rate is more than 50 per 100,000 and its testing positivity is more than 7 percent. This is measured over a 14-day period with a seven-day lag. Last week, Clark County’s positivity rate was 15.5 percent.
In simpler terms: Sisolak is preparing to further crush Nevada’s economy based on what was happening two to four weeks ago. If you ever needed evidence that Sisolak doesn’t know what he’s doing, there it is.
The best-case scenario is that Sisolak changes his mind — again — and doesn’t impose new restrictions. Don’t worry Your Highness. It won’t be a flipflop. You’d just be exercising your royal prerogative.
Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Listen to him discuss his columns each Monday at 3 p.m. with Kevin Wall on AM 670 KMZQ Right Talk. Contact him at vjoecks@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @ victorjoecks on Twitter.