‘Half-hearted effort’: Experts say Missouri governor’s stay-at-home order too porous
After weeks of pressure from medical providers and public health officials, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced Friday that he was issuing a “statewide stay-at-home order for all Missourians.”
But as details of the order came into focus, health experts who examined it say that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Unlike many other states, cities and counties that have issued stay-at-home orders to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Parson’s directive takes pains to ensure no businesses are required by the state to close their doors.
While it enacts capacity limits on essential businesses, such as grocery stores, all other businesses deemed “non-essential” by the federal government can stay open as long as they adhere to Parson’s previous executive order banning gatherings of 10 or more people.
Local governments are left to determine whether they wish to enact more stringent regulations, just as they were before the order was issued.
“That does not look like a stay at home order,” said Cindy Prins, an epidemiology professor at the University of Florida “It looks like a recommendation to continue social distancing.”
Arthur Reingold, professor of epidemiology at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Public Health, was equally unimpressed.
“Sounds like a half-hearted effort to me,” he said.
Parson defended his order during a Friday evening speech, asserting that he didn’t feel it was appropriate for the governor to “pick winners and losers” by determining which businesses were essential and could remain open during a pandemic.
“This power is something I think should be rare for government to ever take advantage of, and for one person to make the decision for six million Missourians without due process, jeopardizing their liberty,” he said.
Local Control?
Residents are instructed under Parson’s order to avoid leaving their homes unless they need to get to work or obtain food, medicine or other necessities.
Unless required to close by local order, all businesses are allowed to continue to operate as long as they follow social distancing guidelines. Parson’s order also has a provision allowing businesses to seek a waiver to exceed those distancing requirements.
Restaurants, for example, are allowed to continue offering dine-in services as long as fewer than 10 people are present and there are at least 6 feet of distance between all individuals that are not family members.
Capacity limits would cap the number of people allowed to be in certain essential businesses. A 40,000 square foot grocery store would be able to have 133 customers in the store at any one time.
At every one of his daily briefings for two weeks — and again on Monday — Parson said he has asked Missourians to stay at home, arguing that beating COVID-19 won’t be done at the behest of government but rather through personal responsibility.
“I don’t think any piece of paper is going to tell Missourians exactly what to do,” he said. “I think they’re smart enough and got enough common sense to realize this is a serious enough thing and we have to take it upon ourselves, as I’ve said all along, that it’s the personal responsibility of the people in this state to do the right thing.”
William Hanage, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said Parson’s order is “very mild indeed, about the lowest tier that would be remotely compatible with the advice issued in the (White House) press briefing last week.”
“Not requiring businesses to close will mean most will stay open for now.”
The Missouri State Medical Association was on the long list of health care organizations pleading with Parson for weeks to issue a statewide order.
Jeff Howell, general counsel for the Missouri State Medical Association, said his group appreciates Parson’s order but is “slightly discouraged that the governor chose to rely on local authorities to close non-essential businesses. We feel a state-led effort on that front would be a better defense against the spread of infection.”
Parson said Friday his order would not supersede any local orders already in place. And any municipality in Missouri that seeks to enact more stringent regulations, he said, is free to do so.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’ ordered non-essential businesses to cease all in-person operations, forcing them to either conduct business remotely or temporarily close. Restaurants were only allowed to offer carry out or delivery services.
Lucas said Monday that the governor’s order is overloaded with exceptions.
“It’s my view that clearly I don’t agree with the way that we’ve delineated what should be open and what should not,” Lucas said. “I think if you read the order...basically every business in Missouri — essential and non-essential — can remain open.”
Violations of Kansas City’s order are considered misdemeanor offenses punishable by a fine of up to $500 and up to six months in jail.
In Kansas, Gov. Laura Kelly previously used executive orders to block utility shutoffs and ban evictions and foreclosures for non-payment related to the virus.
On March 28, she issued a statewide stay-at-home order instructing residents to only leave their homes to get food, medicine and other household necessities. As in Missouri, they must maintain a social distance of at least six feet from other people and gatherings are limited to 10 people.
Any businesses deemed non-essential are required to either allow employees to work remotely or temporarily close for the duration of the order. Restaurants throughout the state are only permitted to provide take out and delivery services.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a stay-at-home order on March 20 that also allows people to leave their home for essential services and requires non-essential businesses to cease activities that cannot be performed remotely.
But Pritzker’s order goes further by banning public and private gatherings of any number of people occurring outside a home and closing all state parks.
The order is enforced by the state police and local law enforcement.
Karen Joynt Maddox, a cardiologist for Barnes-Jewish Hospital and health policy expert at Washington University in St. Louis, said the differences between Missouri and Illinois approach “has come down to some of the fundamental political arguments we’re having now.”
“The governor of Missouri largely let cities and counties make decisions about what to do,” she said.
‘Piecemeal approach’
Parson said Friday that states and cities imposed stay-at-home orders early in the crisis “without thinking of the unintended consequences. Hundreds of businesses were declared essential. Thousands were declared non-essential.”
Many of Missouri’s rural counties still don’t have any positive cases of COVID-19, he said, though he encourages mayors and county leaders to use their own discretion when deciding whether to enact more strict orders, “because you know the people and needs of your communities the best.”
Prins said Florida began the COVID-19 outbreak with hotspots in college towns and larger cities, but over time “that’s completely filled in, to where we have cases in just about every county in Florida.”
“The idea of not having everyone under a stay-at-home order doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” she said. “Put everyone under the same order, rather than a piecemeal approach and allowing for some of these rural counties to come up to the same number of cases before they wind up under a stay at home.”
Julie Swann, a North Carolina State University professor who has worked with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said early evidence suggests that states with strong stay-at-home orders are greatly slowing the spread of the Covid-19 disease.
“This is true for California, which had an early influx of cases,” she said.
“There are difficult decisions that have to be made,” Swann said. “What we do today determines how many cases there will be 14 days from now and the deaths maybe a week after that.
“How many lives is it worth to keep open non-essential businesses?”
The Star’s Allison Kite and The Belleville News-Democrat’s Kelsey Landis contributed to this story.
This story was originally published April 7, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘Half-hearted effort’: Experts say Missouri governor’s stay-at-home order too porous."
