By David E. Mertz, P. E.
The country is facing the crisis of this generation, two if you consider climate change. Three months ago decisive action was needed to blunt the impact of COVID-19. In years past, timely decisions would have been made by the president based on the best advice available from government experts.
Instead, we received bluster and misdirection from the White House. The best were statements about testing, social distancing and masks being good. The worst were statements like “The virus will just disappear,” and “Inject bleach.” What we didn’t get were decisions, other than forcing meatpackers back to work under risky conditions.
Events demanded that the president ask the American people to make sacrifices to preserve the lives of their fellow citizens. Instead, he retreated to his usual formula of firings, name-calling, and chaos. It didn’t work. Just like honey badgers, viruses don’t care.
A month later, recognizing the horror of the looming catastrophe and that, in a crisis, our president was incapable of anything but pathetic vacillation, our states’ governors stepped into the breach, and with far fewer resources, did what the president was incapable of, making hard decisions and tough choices. They led. Trump’s abdication of leadership even cost our Nation the chance to negotiate fair prices for medical PPE, leaving the states frantically outbidding each other to the delight of the few who had, or could, make PPE.
The decisions our governors are making today are no easier than the decisions they made two months ago. Reopen too quickly, and the deaths of thousands will be on your conscience. Reopen too slowly, and the economic hardships will deepen. They’re even targeted by the reckless few noisily gathering and waving firearms protesting that they’re being denied the chance to be super-spreaders. There is no right answer available to the governors that will both restore the economy and not cost lives.
The right answer is comprehensive testing, contact tracing, and quarantining. The resources to accomplish those three exist only at a federal level, which has so far distanced itself from making any decisions that might possibly be wrong. In the absence of testing and tracing, our governors are trying to make the least wrong decisions they can, with the paucity of information and strained resources they have.
In what’s sure to be a frenzy of Monday-night quarterbacking about the decisions these governors made, we can’t lose sight of the fact that these brave souls made decisions. Their decisions saved thousands of lives. Maybe more perfect decisions could have saved more lives or done less economic harm. If the governors and the country had waited any longer for hard decisions from the White House, the death toll, and the economic toll, already would be far worse. By and large, our governors have made courageous decisions, as best they and saved thousands of American lives. In the only notable use of his emergency powers, Trump put more lives at risk. Remember that in November.