It looked like good news: The normal supply of a necessity at Albany’s Bi-Mart on Tuesday.
Most stores ran out of toilet paper early in the coronavirus panic. So may we be allowed to see a glimmer of hope for an early return to normalcy now that this particular shortage seems to have been overcome?
Not according to Governor Kate Brown, who on Tuesday declined to project a date by which current restrictions on business and people’s movement will be lifted or relaxed.
And not according to the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Wash., which concluded in its latest Oregon update on April 10 that “current interventions will need to be maintained in order to decrease the number of active infections.”
Governor Brown says a bunch of things have to happen for her to lift her stay-home mandate and business closures. These are a declining growth rate of active cases, enough protective equipment for medical workers, enough hospital capacity to handle a potential surge in patients, a greater capacity to test people, more tracing and isolating of people with positive tests, and plans to protect nursing homes and homeless people.
That’s a mountain of conditions that may or may not be achieved soon, if ever.
As the destruction of the Oregon economy deepens, maybe the governor will see that what she called her “framework” of conditions for lifting restrictions should be amended. A series of little steps would be worth trying, starting now, before people get more sick of the restrictions than they are fearful of the virus.
In the meantime, whatever the reasons, let’s be grateful that at least the shortage of bathroom tissue seems to have resolved itself. (hh)
Who cares about hope and freedom?
Let’s talk about important stuff like Dr. Birx’s signature scarfs….or the new beer “Fauci Spring”…like, cool stuff….like, ya know?
Maybe you can do a piece on how the local economy is doing. I would start with perhaps the restaurants to see if the takeout option is working. In my small sphere of essential workers we are providing food. Some companies are hiring during this time maybe that would be useful information for people that have been furloughed. I see many people venturing out and using caution. With a good weather friends are visiting outside for short periods of interaction. I think Americans in oregonians are wise and resourceful people. It would be useful to know those that are suffering and could use some help perhaps because of job loss or inability to replenish supplies what groceries. It’s hard to put a positive spin on the situation but I’m tired of the blame game let’s just do what we can as Citizens in our limited capacity
You know what would destroy Oregon’s economy? Opening the state too soon and getting a large wave of cases that would put us back in our houses and extend the amount of time we are out of work. If we flattened the curve just to then overwhelm our hospitals, we just made things worse, didn’t we? Maybe listen to the experts instead of being armchair epidemiologists.
Thanks for injecting a little common sense into a discussion based on misconceptions and ideology trumping the facts.
What are the facts? According to all the experts deaths could go as high as 2,000,000 which was the first shot by our medical experts. Now they are down to 60,000 which is way high. If the governors would have shut down mass transit and events like Marci Gras chances are we wouldn’t have even noticed it as the majority of deaths are people with bad health or old age. Now every death is classified as being caused by the virus even if the person recovers and subsequently dies like the individual in the DH this morning.
As we should know by now, the free market solves the problem even when government uses its force to create it as usual.
Now that the Oregon economy has been shattered, along with all other states, maybe governor Brown could not go after the air pollution reduction she was so interested in a few weeks ago. We need all we can get right now in terms of jobs and money, to avoid a terrible depression, and to impose higher taxes at this time does not seem useful. Just my thoughts on the situation.
Hasso, as always, thanks for asking questions and not just assuming that public officials, in the health sector or otherwise, always know what they’re doing. History has shown that often they do, and sometimes they don’t. Also, thanks for reminding people that a virus isn’t the only thing that can destroy someone’s life.