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Avoid socializing in groups larger than 10 people that don’t readily allow for physical distancing. Strongly consider wearing something to cover your face while in public.
Those are recommendations aimed at helping protect American lives and phasing back much-needed economic activity. And they come straight from the White House’s Guidelines for Opening Up America Again.
[Our COVID-19 tracker contains the most recent information on Maine cases by county]
So we hope you’ll pardon our confusion when we watched some protestors in Augusta on Monday waving Trump flags during a protest of virus-related restrictions enacted by Gov. Janet Mills, while not following some of the very guidelines the president is suggesting in order to reopen America’s economy.
Hundreds of protesters attended Monday’s event, with many lining up close together at the corner of Capitol and State streets. Some did stay in their vehicles, and some were wearing masks — something that organizers had encouraged in order to demonstrate a willingness to follow safety guidelines voluntarily. But cherry picking certain measures to follow and looking past others isn’t how we reopen our economy safely.
You don’t have to take our word for it — just take a look at President Trump’s own guidelines. That plan released last Thursday, which won’t be successful without more federal action on testing, includes a set of criteria for states or regions to meet before proceeding to the first phase of reopening. One of those criteria calls for a 14-day period with either a downward trajectory of positive cases or a downward trajectory of positive tests as a percentage of total tests administered.
Maine has encouragingly seen a slowing of COVID-19 hospitalizations, and could potentially have passed a peak. But Maine case numbers haven’t met the 14-day standards outlined by the White House. Maine’s single biggest daily increase in cases was on April 13. Positive tests as a percentage of total tests appear to have decreased ever-so-slightly in the past week, but not for two weeks straight. So even under the president’s guidelines to reopen in three stages, it’s not time yet for Maine to move into phase one of reopening.
“Look, we’re tired of this. We want to be able to do business, and we want to be able to do it safely on our own. We don’t need these measures to be mandatory, we will do these anyways,” said Ken Spear of the group Mainers Against Excessive Quarantine, according to WGME.
The frustration is understandable. The economic pain here in Maine has been severe, as it has been around the country. And if the “Vacationland” economy remains paused during the summer months, that hurt is only going to get worse. We share the desire to get Maine as back to normal as possible and get as many Mainers as possible back to work. But surely there are better ways to demonstrate a desire to safely reopen than to ignore guidelines from the very White House many of the protesters passionately support.
Perhaps the inconsistency here can be traced to Trump himself, given that the president has provided these guidelines but also tweeted in support of protestors in several states who are clearly not following his guidelines (or individual state orders).
“We’re sending completely conflicting messages out to the governors and to the people, as if we should ignore federal policy and federal recommendations,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said on CNN over the weekend.
Details shared on one the Facebook pages promoting the Patriots Day protest here in Maine said that Mainers are smart and care about each other.
We don’t disagree. Maine sensibility, resilience and empathy have been some of the few bright spots throughout the past weeks and months. But watching many protesters fail to follow, or only follow some of the White House’s recommendations doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in a willingness to help each other during this pandemic. Wearing masks and avoiding large groups are as much, if not more, about protecting other people from you than about protecting yourself from them.
In an interview on Good Morning America, White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci recognized the current economic hurt, but cautioned about moving too soon.
“But unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery, economically, is not going to happen,” Fauci said.
We’d expect you’d be hard pressed to find a single person who’s happy about the current economic upheaval — though the fact that there are people engaging in price gouging and disrupting video conference meetings means some people are trying to profit off or further the chaos. But the overwhelming sentiment, both from the public and from the government, is that we need to reopen our economy. The question is how and when.
