How would you proceed if you were Governor?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Imagine you are the governor of, say, the state of Illinois, the 6th most populated US state.

Total population is ~12.5M, with ~2.7M in the Chicago area, which is located in Cook County, DuPage County, Kane County, Lake County, McHenry County, and Will County.

Its next biggest city has 200,000 people.

It’s smack in the middle of the US states in terms of area. Aside from urban Chicago and the area that borders the Great Lakes, the rest of the state is largely rural, from river valleys to plains and farmland.

Its economy is comprised of a mixture of things, from manufacturing and mining, from finance to agriculture, and tourism and transportation.

Your current situation is this:

You issued a stay-at-home order on 3/21 which expires on May 1st.
Date state prohibited large gatherings: 3/13
Date schools closed: 3/17

4/18 COVID data from the state of Illinois Covid site http://www.dph.illinois.gov/topics-services/diseases-and-conditions/diseases-a-z-list/coronavirus

Confirmed cases
29,160 (Cook Co accounting for 20,000 of these)

Recovered
unknown

Deaths
1,259 (Cook Co is 860 of these)

On 4/17 there were 1842 new cases. On 4/18, there were 1585 new cases. Some models predict that 4/17 was the peak of new cases. There were 125 deaths on 4/16.

If it matters, assume that you have the same background as the actual governor (Pritzker). You are a Democrat and were comfortably elected in 2018. The other highest ranking members of your state are also Democrats. Your family owns the Hyatt hotel chains.

Given that data, plus whatever data you deem to be relevant, how would you proceed? Would you continue the stay-at-home order? Would you relax it? And what criteria/model would you use to determine your course of action?

2

I’m glad it’s not my decision. If it were, I’d do a lot of studying and listening before I made any decisions.

As a general rule, I don’t necessarily want leaders who would do what I, in my present relatively uninformed state, would do in their place.

3

I would proceed along a red velvet carpet strewn with rose petals, borne in a sedan chair by a half dozen Amazon maidens.

4

Maidens of Amazon the river or Amazon the online retailer? If it’s the latter, for $99 per year they will get to your destination in 2 days or even same day for select areas!

5

Gov. PundidLisa, has your pension vested yet? Retire and let your successor sweat it out.

6

For an actual serious answer, my response would be guided by:

a) No relaxations until hospital capacity has at least <reasonable-percentage> of slack in it and supplies of PPE are enough to cover a possible wave of <medium-size>. Actual values of ‘reasonable-percentage’ and ‘medium-size’ to be determined by medical and modelling experts

b)Step 1 is small. Perhaps ‘send half the kids back to school’. Or ‘gatherings of up to four people allowed’

c) Step 2 is not announced or even finally decided on until Step 1 has been in place for two weeks, and the state is not seeing cases and hospitalisations rise. In the multi-step plan, no step is ever taken while cases and hospitalisations are going up, only while they’re going down and below the threshold.

Repeat b) and c) until normality or vaccination is achieved.

I’d lean towards a strategy of ‘schools first, then employment sectors one by one, finally social events’

7

Make noises in public about how I have my staff working on a plan to have a limited reopening phase in time for Memorial Day. Behind the scenes, tell my staff to watch the hospitalization rates coming out of the states that intend to initiate reopening on May 1. Let someone else be the guinea pig and do what they do on a 3-4 week time lag.

8

No relaxation until widespread testing has become available, has been widely distributed, and a large segment of the population has been tested. Despite the numbers we are seeing, they are hopelessly inaccurate because they’re based on a tiny percentage of the population.

9

I’d follow the CDC recommendations to the letter, doing neither more nor less than what they recommend. They’re the experts, and it would be presumptuous for me to think I know better than them.

So far as I know, this approach has been followed by 0 out of 50 governors. Some are insisting that the virus doesn’t exist and anyway it doesn’t matter because it’s all China’s fault, while others are concluding that if some reaction is good, then more reaction is always better, and doing everything they can think of without regard to whether it’s causing more problems than it solves.

10

I’d divide the state into areas of infection, and issue different rules for each area.
Chicagoland would remain in lockdown like now.
But rural areas could be treated differently

.In areas of low infection and low population density,some schools could be reopened,and most businesses could reopen with guidelines about social distancing.
Then watch those areas very,very,very carefully, and make changes daily.

The areas would not have to be defined by county lines. It might be possible to say that towns X and Y are open as usual, but the rest of the county beyond highway number Z is still off-limits.
So children living beyond that road would still not be allowed back to school, etc.
This would get complicated, but if there are some rural areas with zero know cases of flu, it might work.

11

Won’t this result in people leaving more restricted areas and traveling to less restrictive areas, spreading the infection?

This was a major problem in Italy.

12

Can you list those recommendations out for us?

13

Total lockdown for 3 weeks. Ban anyone from entering the state (can leave, but cannot come.) Ban all arriving flights. Send National Guard to lockdown the border. Total house lockdowns for 3 weeks.

By three weeks’ end, any lingering Covid-19 should be dead. Then reopen up businesses and homes, but still keep the total travel (from out of state) in place.

14

Does that mean nothing shipped in from out of state? No food, or medical supplies, or toilet paper? Total house lockdowns for hospitals? If you get appendicitis or a heart attack, you stay home and die?

If not, how do you guarantee that “any lingering Covid-19 should be dead”?

15

The only one I specifically looked up was the one that impacted me most: I would order a school closed for three weeks if there was a diagnosis of covid-19 among any of the staff or students.

16

The problem with that specific action is that is assumes that the only path for contagion is via school, and that transmissibility is only possible from symptomatic carriers. However, we know that neither of these conditions are true; people can transmit the virus while presymptomatic and potentially asymptomatic, and of course because people are circulating outside of schools, there are many more paths for the virus to infect the student and staff population. If we could freeze the entire world population for a few weeks (long enough for the virus to express, and then transmitted to household members and rexpress, so say five or six weeks total) then we could stop the contagion in its tracks but that is logistically impossible and economically infeasible.

I strongly suspect that the United States will have another, larger wave of contagion once states ease up on restrictions, and as the contagion moves into rural areas lacking the medical care available in major cities we will see a significant increase in mortality similar to that seen in Italy as people are not able to seek effective treatment. The states that seek to increase testing and tracking, and limit all but economically necessary activities will have less outbreak but because of commerce and personal travel between states will still see increases in incidence.

I would not want to be in the position of a governor at this time because they are in very unenviable positions of being essentially completely accountable for the response in their state in lieu of any effective action by the federal government (unless they belong to the approved political party and have sufficiently fêted federal authority as aptly demonstrated in practice by the aid denied to New York, Michigan, and California but offered to Florida) but lacking in resources to mount an effective front against the disease, notwithstanding the encouragement to civil disobedience to isolation measures by the chief executive authority of the country. I think governors like Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom are doing “yeoman’s work” under trying circumstances and as tempting as it is to say that something could be done better, I doubt I would have the ability to negotiate such a political, economic, and social minefield. Newsom in particular has impressed by accepting responsibility for the shortfall of testing in California (despite the fact that there has been a pointed lack of tests provided by the CDC, an issue that merits Congressional investigation) instead of whinging, and pledged to use the resources and industry of the state to make improvements.

Stranger

17

#1. Keep highway rest areas open. We need the truck drivers. Even if it takes national guard to stand their cleaning and handing out hand sanitizer.
#2. Talk to business leaders. Let them come to you with their ideas on how to reopen and still stay safe. Listen to them. Do it.
#3. Test, test, and test some more.
#4. After #3, identify bad areas and quarantine. The mayor of Sioux Falls did this at the Smithfield meat plant where about 1,000 of the states 1600 cases were found. In one county in Kansas half the cases were connected to one senior living facility.
#5. Set an example. Push for sewers, quilters, and general makers to start making home made masks and other PPE.

18

That approach only makes sense if people can get tested. That’s why it was insane when the CDC said it.

19

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-business-response.html

Interim Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Social Distancing, Quarantine, and Isolation:
Keep Your Distance to Slow the Spread

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/social-distancing.html

20

Thank you for your thoughtful answers. My home state of Ohio will be having a soft open on May 1st where businesses that can comply with the CDC guidelines for ensuring employee/customer safety. While our Republican governor was praised for his early intervention, he is experiencing pressure from constituents who are demanding that businesses open again.

While I certainly understand the desire to get back to normal, and to open businesses so people can pay their bills, I do fear a 2nd wave which will result in a second confinement. Personally, I would wait until the number of new cases dropped significantly.

If I were governor of Illinois, I’d probably do what others have suggested and let the rural communities open while keeping a tighter lid on those areas with condensed populations.