The ‘delicate balance.’ How does Beshear weigh reopening before steady decrease in cases?
Andrew Jacobs, 39, is certain there will be a second surge of the coronavirus in Kentucky.
The city he lives in, Bowling Green, is in the middle of a surge right now — Warren County has seen nearly 400 cases since April 20 — and he said plenty of people are fed up with the restrictions in place.
Jacobs and his wife moved his father-in-law out of a nursing home and into their house. They have a 10-month-old at home. And as Kentucky begins reopening the economy this week, he said it is “nerve wracking.”
“The second wave is coming,” said Jacobs, who is currently unemployed but worked as a fish farmer. “It is. We can see it.”
Others are more fixated on the wave of economic devastation that efforts to contain the coronavirus have created.
“I don’t think we’re reopening too quickly,” said Mike Courtney, owner of Black Swan Books on East Maxwell Street in Lexington. “I think unless we get the economy back there’s going to be a lot of people who won’t be able to pay the bills.”
Dr. Steven Stack, Kentucky’s public health commissioner, has talked about the delicate balance of attempting to reopen Kentucky’s economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic — a balance between people’s fears about contracting a deadly virus and people’s fears about having enough money to feed their families.
“We are trying to do the best we can to balance the societal need to resume activities that are so important to society but to keep people safe,” Stack said last week. “That’s what we’ve been trying to do for the last two months, that’s what we’re trying to do going forward.”
That balance has proven difficult.
Gov. Andy Beshear unveiled seven benchmarks last month for reopening the economy, but he appears to be treating them more as suggestions than rules.
His administration is forging ahead with a phased reopening in the face of mounting pressure caused by the reopening of other border states, lawsuits supported by Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron and an antsy populace.
Most office-based businesses, manufacturers and construction sites began reopening Monday. By the 20th, retail stores will be open again at limited capacity, followed by restaurants on the 22nd, hair salons on the 25th, and fitness centers and movie theaters on June 1.
That is, of course, unless there’s a surge of COVID-19.
“I worry,” said Jeorg Sauer, 42, who lives in Lexington and is a lecturer at the University of Kentucky. “I know that Beshear is really walking a fine line. And it’s hard because I think he’s trying to make everyone happy while keeping people safe.”
A bit of art and a bit of science
On April 17 — the day Behear unveiled his seven benchmarks for reopening — the state had 2,522 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the death toll stood at 137.
While Beshear has made it clear that all of his benchmarks would not have to be hit in order to reopen, a plan for reopening released by the White House hinged, in part, on 14 straight days of decline in cases.
The state saw its highest number of daily reported cases last Tuesday.
More than 300 people have died in Kentucky from COVID-19 as of Saturday and at least 6,440 have been infected by the virus. Around 4.7 percent of the people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Kentucky have died and nearly 29 percent of the people older than 80 who have caught the virus died.
Beshear seems to be making his plans for reopening based on two benchmarks: the amount of personal protective equipment the state has on hand and Kentucky’s ability to test for COVID-19 and trace the contacts of everyone who is positive.
While the state struggled to get personal protective equipment early in the pandemic, the situation appears to have eased. Beshear has said the state has enough PPE to supply hospitals for about a month if a resurgence occurs. On Thursday, he announced that the federal government is providing a 14-day supply of PPE for nursing homes, where the disease has been particularly deadly.
The state’s ability to deploy 600 contact tracers to work seamlessly with local public health officials to track cases remains to be seen. Traditionally, that task has been left to local health departments, but Beshear’s administration did not seek much input for local health directors before putting out a request for companies who can staff contact tracers throughout the state.
On testing, the state has made significant progress in the last two weeks. Beshear originally said he wanted to be able to test 20,000 people a week before things could reopen but through partnerships with private labs, he estimates the state will be able to test nearly 50,000 people a week.
A partnership with Gravity Diagnostics will allow the state to test at least 30,000 of those people. Another partnership between First Care Clinics and Solaris Diagnostics in Nicholasville will provide another 10,000 tests a week, aimed at employees who have returned to work.
The state announced 28,752 tests between May 3 and May 9, largely because Beshear announced tests that had previously gone unreported. Based on data provided by Beshear’s office, the previous high for testing in a single week was 14,333 tests.
“I believe that we can safely engage in phase one of healthy at work,” Beshear said at a news conference in late April. “It’s also the reason that we are doing this gradually. Some other states have said some other things can start at 50 percent capacity yesterday. We know that we still have steps to take and we’re giving ourselves time to get there.”
Time to reopen?
At least a third of Kentucky’s workforce has filed for unemployment since the pandemic began, the highest in the nation. As of last Friday, the Cabinet for Education and Workforce Development, crushed by claims, was still trying to get money to people who filed for unemployment in March.
Black Swan Books has been closed for about five weeks, but Courtney, its owner, has still been going in every day to organize shelves and mail out the two or three books a day the shop has been selling online. It’s not sustainable.
He’s got hand sanitizer, gloves for customers and a mask he can wear. He’s ready for the shop to reopen.
Not all business owners feel the same way. For Roulay, a restaurant in downtown Lexington that opened just weeks before the pandemic, a second shut down would mean $5,000 to $10,000 in lost inventory.
Roulay isn’t doing take-out — the restaurant is geared toward in-person fine dining — and Nick Lagagsorn, the owner, said it won’t reopen on the 22nd. He wants to be cautious and see how things go for other restaurants before he reopens.
“If they (customers) don’t feel confident going to your place, you’re not gonna make it,” Lagagsorn said.
Some, such as U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, have accused Beshear of being “drunk with power” and of “picking winners and losers,” a critique that has lingered ever since he allowed liquor stores and abortion clinics to remain open during the pandemic.
“I think the frustration has been the logic behind some of the decisions,” said Sen. Wil Schroder, R-Wilder. “We’ve seen big box stores remain open this whole time and that’s been kind of frustrating for some of our small businesses.”
Others, though, see wisdom in the decisions Beshear has made.
“The worst thing that could happen is for all the sacrifices to be for nothing and we have to go back into lockdown,” said Rep. Patti Minter, D-Bowling Green.
In the last two weeks, Minter’s hometown surpassed Lexington in new cases and currently has the ninth highest rate of cases per 100,000 people in Kentucky, higher than Jefferson County, Fayette County or Kenton County.
“There is this general conflict in many communities between people who want to believe that the worst is over and they can go back to living their lives,” Minter said. “Whether we like it or not, things aren’t going back to normal.”
This story was originally published May 11, 2020 at 3:00 PM.
