By Shruti Date Singh and Jordan Fabian
Bloomberg News
Governors and mayors across the U.S. issued orders to shut down normal human contact and commercial life even as the Trump administration debates dialing back guidances that officials fear is smothering the economy.
On Monday, Indiana, West Virginia and Massachusetts ordered residents to stay at home while Virginia and Maryland placed restrictions on nonessential movement. The actions by the governors — Democrats and Republicans alike — show that even if President Donald Trump relaxes the recommendations, states won’t necessarily follow.
“It’s the biggest event of any living person in the United States today,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said about the pandemic.
Trump’s administration has weighed loosening “social distancing” guidelines and encouraging more Americans to get back to work. Convention cancellations, school closures, drops in bus and rail ridership and bans on dining in at restaurants are raising the chances the U.S. is headed into or is already in recession. Unemployment claims are surging.
Trump had made the booming economy his main argument for re-election, and last week he began discussing how to move people back to the workplace, according to two people familiar with the matter. That was three days after he announced a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plan recommending most Americans stay home for 15 days to help stem the outbreak. That period concludes on March 31, and internal discussions have centered on what to do once it ends.
But states and cities are meanwhile issuing their own directives that go further. A growing number of governors and mayors from both parties are closing schools for weeks or months, shuttering nonessential businesses and more recently ordering stringent shelter-in-place orders to keep millions of residents away from each other to slow the virus’ spread.
The governors of New York, Ohio, Illinois, California, Connecticut, Nevada and Pennsylvania within the last week told their residents — one-third of the U.S. population of 328 million — that nonessential businesses must close and they shouldn’t venture out other than for groceries, medicine or emergencies. This week, more are following that lead.
Justice of West Virginia, a Republican, acted after giving a televised speech Saturday in which he spoke of the gravity of the crisis but set no particular course of action. The Gazette-Mail of Charleston had a banner headline Sunday: “Governor urges action, takes none.”
On Monday, he took it, announcing a stay-at-home order effective on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Justice said at a news conference that nonessential businesses must close.
Jim Hurley, the owner of O’Hurley’s General Store in Shepherdstown, said that he would still try to continue the Thursday-night concerts that have been going on for 40 years, but without guests — only musicians.
“The music is going to go on, but the crowds are not,” he said.
Virginia’s Ralph Northam, a Democrat, said closing some nonessential businesses will add to economic stress, “but the sooner that we get this health crisis under control, the sooner our economy will recover.”
Eric Holcomb of Indiana, a Republican, on Monday ordered Hoosiers to remain home and said he would keep working with Washington “to get the financial help to the people most in need — and get it there now.”
Large Texas cities and counties are going their own way in imposing tighter restrictions in the absence of statewide guidance from Gov. Greg Abbott.
Abbott refrained from issuing a statewide shelter-in-place order during a Sunday afternoon news conference, pointing to the absence of positive COVID-19 cases in more than 200 of the state’s 254 counties. Abbott also said he wanted to see the full results of an executive order issued Thursday that included mandating the statewide closure of restaurant dining rooms and bars. Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas ordered the closure of those venues and other gathering spaces earlier in the week.
Dallas County on Sunday night ordered residents to stay put for all but essential business activity and individual errands under a shelter-at-home order. On Monday, public officials in Waco and McLennan County followed suit, each issuing orders directing their residents to stay home.
Abbott isn’t the only governor leery of cracking down.
Florida Republican Ron DeSantis, a fervent Trump supporter, said Monday that he still isn’t prepared to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, arguing that 20 counties — as of Monday morning — still didn’t have confirmed cases. He implied that more draconian measures in New York had backfired.
“A lot of people fled the city,” DeSantis said. “They’re going to stay with their parents or they’re flying — we’re getting huge amounts of people flying in. We’re looking at how to address those flights. I talked to the president last night about that.”
Federal medical experts, who have thus far played a central role in the administration’s response, have said that restrictions on movement and commerce are the only way to curb the pandemic within the U.S. But in past day Trump and his aides have begun floating the idea of rolling them back.
“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!” Trump tweeted late Sunday.
“The president is right,” top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Monday on Fox News, adding he spoke about the matter with Trump within the last 24 hours. “We’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs.”
