Pennsylvania at war
Imagine a state where elected officials were so at odds over how and when to lift stay-at-home restrictions that millions of dollars in covid-19 aid might be withheld by the governor, who wants restrictions to stay in place, while local law enforcement officials, who don’t, promise not to prosecute businesses that reopen. Oh, and here’s a little extra Civil War flavor to throw into the mix: The nation’s president is openly encouraging the rebels. It isn’t any state south of the Mason-Dixon, though. The state is Pennsylvania, and the counties up in arms are in the nearby Susquehanna River valley and include, fittingly, Adams County, home to Gettysburg.
On one side is Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, who on Monday announced his threat to withhold federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act funds from any county that fails to follow coronavirus-related restrictions. On the other are 10 mostly rural, majority Republican counties, including several on the Maryland state line, that are either planning to lift restrictions or have announced indifference to businesses that reopen despite the ban.
Pennsylvania’s governor appears to have chosen the science-based, guarded approach that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as other medical experts, have been seeking. And it’s certainly not the “one size fits all” model that protesters across the country have been complaining about.
Certainly, there might be a reasonable argument to be made, perhaps even county by county, about the particulars, whether Pennsylvania is using the best yardstick, for example, or whether the red, yellow and green phases outlined for the Keystone State are appropriate. The pandemic didn’t come with hard and fast rules about what is the best way to slow its fearsome spread. But unilateral declarations of politics or unfairness are not about science or safety or, frankly, about anyone’s best welfare. It’s an obvious attempt to curry favor with people who are frustrated by the economic harm coronavirus restrictions have caused and are probably suspicious about what medical experts have to say on the subject.
The standoff between Gov. Wolf and the leaders in those Susquehanna counties isn’t good. Denying disaster assistance is not an action to be taken lightly but then neither is openly defying state government. As Dr. Anthony Fauci and others noted in testimony Tuesday in the Senate, the U.S. needs fast, accessible and reliable covid-19 testing before “reopening” America and the country doesn’t yet have it. The stakes are high.