Commentary: President Donald Trump calls it one of the hardest decisions he’ll ever have to make, but it’s not really a decision at all. It’s more like a suggestion.
Sometime in the coming days, Trump will revise the federal guidelines calling for business closures and physical distancing to combat the ongoing pandemic. The key word there is guidelines.
Guidelines are very different than rules, as the president himself made clear on the day he announced the new guideline calling for people to wear cloth face-coverings while in public. Immediately after releasing the new guideline, Trump informed us that he would not be complying with it.
The president has already decided not to decide. He has made it very clear from the beginning of the pandemic that the federal government would play a supporting role only. It would be the governors and mayors who would have to make the tough decisions and take responsibility for the health and safety of their residents.
The guidelines now in place have not been uniformly followed throughout the county. The same will be true for whatever guidelines come next.
A disaster declaration was approved Saturday for my former home state of Wyoming, meaning that all 50 states have now received that designation, along with Washington, D.C.; Guam; Puerto Rico; and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The president declared a national emergency, but has refused to exercise those powers. In another administration, that might have been described as leading from behind.
The lack of a cohesive national strategy has left us with a supply chain where states are forced to bid against each other on the open market for masks, gowns, face shields, ventilators and testing kits, causing prices for those items to skyrocket.
Without a nationwide testing system, it will be more difficult to re-open the economy. We’re forced to rely on predictive models that have already proven to be unreliable.
The patchwork of different regulations prevented us from being able to more effectively contain the virus early on. Restrictions in one state or town could easily be circumvented by people taking a drive across state lines, and potentially bringing the virus back with them when they returned home.
We have pretty much buttoned that down now, but the calls are growing louder to loosen things back up.
The virus has not impacted each state equally. Those living in densely populated areas are more at risk. Restrictions that are clearly needed in areas of New York and New Jersey may not be necessary for those living in Chugwater, Wyoming.
The virus has also not impacted each person equally. Those who are older and who have pre-existing health conditions are far more likely to get seriously ill or die.
There are tragic exceptions to both of those rules, but those two known factors should help guide decisions moving forward.
The current shutdown is unsustainable for the length of time that it will take to develop a vaccine. We will have to come out of our houses sometime in the next few weeks. We need to make those decisions based on the limited information that we have now.
For those of us living in Las Cruces, the decisions made by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Mayor Ken Miyagishima will continue to be far more impactful than anything coming out of Washington.
But unless we’re able to build a fence around the city and the state, it may not make much difference once other states open back up.
Walter Rubel can be reached at waltrubel@gmail.com.