Teresa Hanafin of the Boston Globe writes in her daily Fast Forward column that there are 12 states whose governors refuse to issue stay-home orders:
“I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s mostly governors who belong to the science-denying GOP who have been cavalierly ignoring the unanimous and increasingly frantic calls by the nation’s top epidemiologists and researchers for everybody to stay home to try to slow the spread of this deadly virus.
“The mayors of some cities in seven of those states have ignored their governors and implemented local stay-home orders: That has happened in a few cities and towns in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
“But in Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and both Dakotas, there are no such orders. Maybe they think they have magic borders.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Utah has a large disparity of population. Our urban areas are on stay at home orders as our county and city mayors have imposed this on us. Most people were in compliance before orders were given. Our rural areas are mixed. Some rural areas are very sparsely peopled. These families are already isolated. Differing areas have different needs. Our governor is doing a great job.
Disagree. WAY too many people are congregating at trailheads and state parks and campgrounds and stores. People in Utah are NOT taking this seriously enough. Our governor is doing a terrible job.
Simultaneously doing a great job AND a terrible job?
Schrödinger’s Governor?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat
TARGO!!
Yep. Utah has not come out with a state-wide order. A couple of counties have done it on their own, but it’s SO ridiculous that Utah hasn’t done a state-wide order. Governor Herbert has really dropped the ball on this. I’m infuriated.
We appear to have cross posted. Don’t even get me started about the kerfuffle at the airport as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have been coming in droves home and everyone is schlepping to the airport to greet them. Utah is NOT taking this seriously enough.
This makes no sense. They should be isolated, tested, and go home with no fanfare on empty streets. Very sad.
That’s what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints asked families of returning missionaries to do. Only have parents pick their kids up and wait in their cars. But a lot of people ignored the requests and brought tons of people to the airport. The governor said he was, ” disappointed, ” but did nothing to stop this.
And the returning missionaries are quarantining at home, by the way.
The blinding power of ideology, demagoguery, and authoritarianism is awful and terrifying.
This echoes something I wrote 8 years ago as what I considered to be the most important lesson of the financial meltdown, “Ideology as the unquestioned voice of certainty is the most formidable enemy we face as a civil society.” Kinda joins your three Horsemen together because it cuts through every political issue. I think Diane was a bit of an inspiration because I’m pretty sure I wrote it about a month after first reading Reign of Error.
Arthur, Greg. Well said.
Two bits says that the governors of those states, like here in the Show Me State, are Rethuglicans.
Only two bits?
That won’t even buy you a covfefe and a doh nut.
They’re the best recyclers by putting the same old, worn out ideas (ideology!) in new packages. I would give DeWine very high marks in Ohio, but there will always be a shadow on his record because he used the distraction to pay homage to the right wing agenda on abortion and I fear a sneak attack on technology in the classroom in the offing.
States with rural populations think those counties are immune? Did they build a wall around the population centers? (there’s that wall again). Do they think in Utah that people living in the middle of nowhere don’t shop or work in the big city?
AND – the sick irony – Missouri allows one to carry a gun anywhere anytime without having to carry a permit. St. Louis and KC have tried and tried to get legislation to allow that to be a county by county decision.
So let’s see, more people have died from gunfire (so far) this school year than the virus.
Typical hypocritical positing on anything regulatory.. The right and far right and scary right hate the government and regulations on anything even if it doesn’t affect them – – – anything except guns, women’s choice, taxes, highways, education funding and more because those statewide regulations come in handy for those.
Counties decide on guns? Heck no.
Counties right to ignore science and health regulations? Of course. Hey big government and science – “don’t tread on me!”
UnKochMyCampus.org reports
“St. Louis University decided to have Rex Sinquefield’s hand picked ally direct a new economics center and to give Sinquefield final approval over the disbursement of all funds.”
Economics professor David Rapach has had the courage and integrity to renounce the endowed chair in economics. There is a petition at UnKochMyCampus.org to sign opposing the richest 0.1% influence on the campus.
Linda, just got that petition and plan to post it.
Sinquefield is an enemy of both America and the social justice factions of his church.
The mayors of cities are often Democrats. Republican governors tend to rule states that are more rural with a smaller, poorer, less educated population.
“How Democrats Conquered the City”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/brief-history-how-democrats-conquered-city/597955/
“Why Rural America is Increasingly Red.”
https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-rural-voters-governors-races.html
The 2020 census should be put on hold until after the COVID-19 pandemic is over. I suspect that Red America is going to lose more people than Blue America.
I finally just did my 2020 census online. It’s been laying on my dining room table..along with two reminders.
The last thing on our minds is this census. People are afraid to go outside and get groceries. I doubt that the census will be anywhere near accurate.
I agree that Red America is most likely to suffer during this time. Indiana is right next to Chicago, one of the hot spots. Most likely the huge number of infections will slowly cross over into Indiana. Our top medical advisor said that Hoosiers don’t have to wear masks. They aren’t available even for medical personnel.
At least at the current time I won’t have to pull out my old sewing machine and make a mask out of my well worn pajamas. Make your own masks. What nonsense.
Since my hobby is woodworking, I have a small collection of masks (and I have used them all at one time or another) to filter out all the sawdust, from masks with HEPA filter canisters designed to catch everything from sawdust to toxic chemical fumes, to N old fashioned, simple N95 mask, the one recommended to protect us from this virus.
When I’m using paints and stains, I wear the best quality HEPA filter mask I have and cannot smell anything until I slip it off after finishing work on the project for the day. Once that mask comes off, I get hit by the fumes that had been surrounding me for hours.
Iowa is right next to IL and has cases in more counties than not, so I don’t know what they are waiting for.
To a great extent, rural areas in places like the Nebraska Sandhills are the definition of social distancing. Telling such people to stay inside to avoid covid is silly for them. They have been living like that for generations.
The problem occurs when small town America sees itself as rural. WE live in a rural location, but we are keeping to ourselves because the towns we all have to go to for food and business are larger.
Don’t forget where most of those isolated rural types shop: a local Walmart that destroyed the small town mom and pop shops.
I’m pretty sure I could come with some mind altering substances to help in in that journey to Andromeda!
A one way trip to the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.537 million light-years. Even with the slow down in time at near the speed of light, the only way anyone that started that journey would be alive when the ship got there is if we were all in hibernation.
In the sandhills of Nebraska, Wal-mart is a long way off. Often their shopping trips are 100 miles away to some larger store, a monument to rural de-population in the 1980s. Then there is the desert Southwest. I know a place in Colorado where the nearest grocery is 200 miles away. Same for the nearest hospital.
“Six degrees of separation” also applies to people in remote rural areas. The only way to avoid contact with someone that might be contagious is to make no contact with anyone at any time.
Even most people in remote areas interact with others and then the others interact with others like the links that make up a chain.
All it takes is one contagious link in one of those chains to infect the rest of the strand. It just takes longer to happen.
“I know a place in Colorado where the nearest grocery is 200 miles away. Same for the nearest hospital.”
That’s nothing
I know a place in the Andromeda Galaxy where the nearest grocery store is 2.537 million light years away. And the nearest hospital is only a couple miles closer
Lloyd
If you want to get away from everyone, have you considered the Andromeda Galaxy? I hear the weather is very nice there in the spring (or at least was 2.537 million years ago.)
I’d give you directions but Google just says “destination not found.”
But maybe Wayz knows the way. Just watch out for the speed trap out by Pluto.
I do not have that spacecraft, so I can’t leave Earth even if I wanted to.
And if I had one, an advanced alien civilization would have to sell it to me at a very cheap price or donate it as the 2nd Arc, since our civilization isn’t even close to building one yet.
And, I suspect a cheap one from some alien huckster, con-man, fraud, serial liar like Trump would just sit on the pad doing nothing when I pushed the button to launch?
We are all stuck on this planet. Even the few humans not on the surface would run out of supplies and all die without support from the ground.
By the way, in case you want to plan your travel time, that’s about
15000000000000000000 miles, so if you average 60 miles per hour (allowing for brief stops at rest areas and to gas up), it will only take you about 250000000000000000 hours (if I counted my zeros right. But with that many zeros, what difference does one or two or ten or 12 make anyway, right?)
Thanks to Einstein, we know that the faster you go, the slower time passes–so a very fast spaceship is a time machine to the future. Five years on a ship traveling at 99 percent the speed of light (2.5 years out and 2.5 years back) corresponds to roughly 36 years on Earth.
If we are gone for ten years, double that to 72 years. If we are gone for twenty, everyone we knew would be dead by the time we got back and we might end up meeting our great-grandchildren if they existed. If we came back.
Of course, if you take Elon Musks rocket and put your car inside you will get there faster, but it’s still a long time and don’t ask me to count any more zeros.
Because viruses are sentient, they understand that there’s not much payoff to be had infecting people in rural areas. That’s why they’re all renting cars and driving themselves to places like New York. Buy stock in Enterprise now!
Sheesh. Who didn’t know that? Ron DeSantis and his ilk are geniuses!
“Virus Behavior”
Viruses renting cars
And driving to the cities
Parking at the bars
Infecting Twitter twittees
Rural folks are safe
Cuz viruses have gone
Disease is what they gave
To cities and their spawn
Oh, yes, SomeDAM! You are a poet to be envied.
By who? Viruses?
I have such great material to work with ” viruses are sentient.. all renting cars and driving themselves to places like New York”
Viruses renting cars.
What an image.
Yes totally love viruses driving rental cars, can see it now. Start w/the ad where a disgusting mucus-green cartoon germ is suckered to the windshield calling “I miss you to the med-taking driver… Fast-forward to germ carjacking it & heading for city.
The question to ask at this time is, if you had the virus would you act selfishly and spread yourself about, or would you stay at home? Act like this and STAY AT HOME! GO HOME!
That IS an astonishing image!!!
We can’t just call these driving viruses and virus. Let’s give them names. Virus is their surname.
Donald Trump Virus
Mitch McConnel Virus
Mike Pence Virus
Sonny Perdue Virus
William Barr Virus
Wilber L. Ross Virus Jr.
Mark Esper Virus
Elisabeth Prince DeVos Virus
Dan Brouillette Virus
Andrew Wheller Virus
Chadd Wolf Virus
Mike Pompeo Virus
Robert Wilkie Virus
et al.
Aren’t these all just strains of Mornavirus trumpinski orangii?
Moronavirus trumpinski orangii was created in a Russian top-secret laboratory in Siberia. Each step was filmed and once the virus was released to spread havoc around the world, the team of Russians assigned to the project was executed and their bodies dissolved in quick lime.
Haaaa! I think you have the plot of your next novel here, Lloyd!!!!
:o)
Have to finish the current two projects first. But, I do have a half-finished rough draft, the sequel to one of the two I’m finishing, that is supposed to end in Russia.
I even have a title for the unfinished rough. “Never for Glory”
This is wonderful to hear, Lloyd! I can’t wait to read the new ones!!!
As you know, editing and revisions take time and are tedious.
I know this quite well, Lloyd!
. . . Lloyd . . . After today’s news, any laugh will do. But that’s a good one. CBK
Oops. Moronavirus trumpinski orangii
excuse me Poet and lLoyd you gentlemen are so OFF and living in some CGI world and Einstein FYI ….do your research Fool, lights don
t go on forever they fade and slow and most modern Physicistm sorry your remarks were so embecile it made me laugh !!!! wow….. cheerswill tell you (straight-up) Einstein was front man and pushing a false narrative for who knows?????? gravity is bullshit and lightspeed is also bullshit ...I
Robert j Calandra I can see civil discourse is still on track. CBK
If you can’t spell “imbecile,” why should we believe anything you write here?
A misspelled word is a Trump trademark.
That might be a clue that RjC is a sockpuppet name that supe-con, crook, failed honest businessman, fraud, serial liar, traitor, cheater, and dictator lover Donald Trump uses.
“A misspelled word is a Trump trademark.”
Are you implying, Lloyd, that Calandra is, in fact, T**** himself? Very possible. Now that he cannot twitter, he goes from blogs to blogs, impregnating them with his wisdom and vast knowledge of healthcare, education and physics.
That is exactly what I am implying. Trump is a con-man, a fraud, a serial liar, a cheat, and a bully. His entire life is built on lies.
For him, it would be an easy step to add internet troll to his list of anti-accomplishments using sockpuppet names to defend his greatness.
RjC must be a hardcore QAnon follower living in an alternative dimension.
What? You’re in luck! I am, among other things, an English teacher. Can I help you to understand the elements of a declarative sentence, something you might use to add coherence to your rambl…ur, discourse?
Everyone in the world stop what you’re doing for three month except eating.
Which is fine, assuming somebody will foot the bill for this.
That said the science behind closing schools is unknown. Obviously it slows things down. Quantifying that is a guess. Anyone who claims differently is a science denier.
Science is not racing to a foregone conclusion. Trump has a lot of hunches. Now everybody just has a real good hunch that shutting things down is ‘really working’. By .1% or by 50%? Are the measures should be tightened, what relaxed? With no scientific measure it’s all just a hunch, just like Trump. Like John Ionnidis says, this is a data fiasco.
If people don’t believe in VAM, why are they lemmings to this claim of scientific precision?
Ted, I think that the medical experts agree that the virus is spread by human contact. Thus, they recommend minimizing contact by social distancing and by banning congregating of large groups. You may have read about the church choir in a Seattle suburb that held a rehearsal. Only 60 of the 121 showed up. 45 came down with the virus and 2 died.
Maybe they should have called off the rehearsal.
Maybe there is a way to minimize contact without closing down the entire economy, and I am hoping there are intelligent people thinking about exceptions to the overall shutdown.
In an informal news roundup, reporters found who and where irresponsible people and businesses are—those violating state or local home orders, lockdowns, size of group regulations, or operating a non-essential business.
They are:
operators of bars,
people who insist on having parties,
businesses owners/operators of smoke/vape shops, fitness centers, car washes, and non-essential retail:
pastors who have church services,
people who think “private” means my rules not state orders– a private college, a private playground.
Thieves, burglars.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/news/2020/04/02/482568/tracking-enforcement-measures-violation-stay-home-orders/
Young people in the southern states are uniquely vulnerable to corona due to inadequate/ no access to health care, high rates of poverty, and right wing, science denying christian nationalist governors. The old confederacy is becoming a third world country.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-unique-threat-south-young-people/609241/
Here in Flor-uh-duh, we still have a lot of bubbas who barely watched even their Fox News and still think this is some sort of hoax. And, of course, we had churches and beaches full, the latter with Spring breakers from all over the country. And a Trump-toady governor elected by the slimmest of margins as a result of widespread voter suppression who delayed and delayed and delayed. We’re screwed. It’s going to be really, really bad here. And, of course, we have a lot of elderly folks.
Bob The mayor of Los Angeles referred to those who STILL don’t get it . . . wait for it, then interpret: “Axxhxxes.” Needless to say, I was shocked.
However, . . . . CBK
Sometimes these good old Anglo-Saxon terms are les mots justes.
Surprised that Georgia wasn’t mentioned here: Gov. Brian Kemp (former Sec. of State who aided & abetted voter suppression & election fraud in his race against Stacey Abrams) just yesterday declared a state lockdown. Why did he wait do long? “We only just learned that people w/no symptoms could have the coronavirus.” This is all over the
‘net. New York Magazine article: “Georgia Governor Shows Remarkable Ignorance About How Coronavirus Spreads,” & videos of his press conference available. As of 12 hrs. ago, Georgia’s + covid-19 cases stands exceeded 5,400, w/176 deaths.
Wondered how this would have gone w/a Gov. Abrams…
Stay at home, safe & healthy, Georgia!
What is the list of those 12 states?
It seems the 12 number is shrinking as governors come under pressure. This piece from two days ago says only 11 GOP governors are still refusing to issue stay-at-home orders.
https://americanindependent.com/gop-governors-coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders-states-republicans-covid-19/
It appears there may be a correlation related to political resistance to “stay at home” actions and the size of state ALEC presence (isolating to states with GOP governors). The most profound possible example-Oklahoma. Secondary may be Utah, Georgia and Mississippi.
Governors may view infections of medical workers as the price they are willing to pay for mitigated economic effect. The percent of medical personnel who catch the disease is estimated at 20%.
States without shut downs may experience a quicker economic rebound due to herd immunity ( Boris Johnson’s plan). Most hospital staff caring for the sickened patients are women.
Does that mean RjC is the slaver planning to enslave everyone that didnt’ vote for the serial liar and traitor Donald Trump?