Rallies and dodgeball won’t solve Idaho’s real problem of getting back to work

Idaho’s statewide stay-home order is awful. No one is enjoying it. It’s hurting our economy, hurting our personal finances and jeopardizing businesses.

But the order is not the real problem; it is only an outcome of our real problem. The real problem is a lack of testing for the virus so that we can get back up and running with confidence that we can control the spread of COVID-19.

Those who want to return to business as usual, go to the park, play dodgeball and hold rallies without proper social distancing or wearing protective masks are missing the point.

By focusing on the wrong problem, they’re making the real problem even worse. They’re not doing anything to help.

We all need to focus our energies and resources on solving the real problem so that we can really get the economy open again.

As Gov. Brad Little said, we need “all hands on deck.”

A woman was arrested for going into a Meridian city park Tuesday. A Middleton gym has reopened with impunity in violation of the governor’s order. A Nampa bar is vowing to reopen this weekend. Our own Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin is the scheduled keynote speaker at an anti-shutdown rally in east Idaho Saturday.

“I also fear the potential of a constitutional showdown between some of the people of Idaho and your administration,” McGeachin wrote in a letter to Little. “Your” administration? That kind of divisiveness doesn’t help at all. We all need to be on the same team right now.

If we all attack the real problem, we can reopen businesses and get our economy back on track.

And we need to do it together.

We are not able to handle the lethality of COVID-19 right now. As of Wednesday morning, the virus had claimed the lives of 53 Idahoans, including 12 in Ada County, 6 in Canyon, 12 in Nez Perce County and 11 in Twin Falls County. We don’t have enough testing capacity to test people and isolate them so that they don’t spread coronavirus to others. We don’t have enough hospital and ICU capacity to treat a high number of people who could become seriously ill. Without testing to isolate those with COVID-19, coronavirus could spread like wildfire and overwhelm our health care system.

No amount of dodgeball games and in-your-face protests will change that. No level of disobedience will increase the number of tests or our capacity to battle coronavirus.

Disobedience just makes things worse.

A mindset of “we think this is an overreaction, so let’s go back to normal and just see what happens” does not make for a good strategy.

The announcement for Saturday’s rally in East Idaho asks attendees to “try to social distance” during the event. Clearly, people at a similar rally in Boise did not do that or wear masks. That behavior reinforces the need for the governor’s order.

Yes, COVID-19 is as bad as the medical experts say. No, the shutdown is not worse than COVID-19.

What is a good strategy?

A new report, released Monday by Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, concludes that to keep the coronavirus outbreak at bay, “We need to massively scale-up testing, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine.”

How many tests?

“We need to deliver 5 million tests (nationally) per day by early June to deliver a safe social reopening,” according to the report. “This number will need to increase over time (ideally by late July) to 20 million a day to fully remobilize the economy.”

Note that: 20 million tests per day to fully remobilize the economy.

“The great value of this approach is that it will prevent cycles of opening up and shutting down,” according to the report’s authors. “It allows us to steadily reopen the parts of the economy that have been shut down, protect our front-line workers, and contain the virus to levels where it can be effectively managed and treated until we can find a vaccine.”

About 4 million people in the United States have been tested so far, and we’re averaging about 150,000 tests per day, according to Business Insider, citing numbers from the COVID Tracking Project.

So we still have a long way to go before we even come close to comfortably reopening the economy without sustaining a crippling outbreak.

So far, the United States has more than 800,000 cases of coronavirus and 44,000 deaths in just a few short weeks. It’s clear that without the abatement measures we’ve taken, the toll would have been far higher. And if we do nothing moving forward, thousands more people will die than if we stay our life-saving course.

Many people still have to go into work every day, and we owe it to those people to not jump back to “life as normal” because home life is boring or you can’t follow instructions.

We need to Crush the Curve

Tommy Ahlquist, the developer, physician and former Republican gubernatorial candidate, has commandeered a group of local business leaders and formed Crush the Curve Idaho to increase testing in the state Idaho.

We can’t help but juxtapose tireless efforts like this with groups of adults throwing temper tantrums and staging outrage parties. We’re just thankful that people like Ahlquist are out there working hard to find solutions to bring our economy back and not wasting time playing dodgeball or going to rallies.

Things are starting to get out of hand. If one business reopens in defiance of the order, what’s stopping other businesses from doing the same? We’ll soon have every business reopened and a return to business as usual. The effects of that will be devastating.

At the same time we’re fighting coronavirus, we also need all hands on deck redoubling our efforts to help small businesses and their employees weather this storm, through the federal payroll protection plan and using the $1.25 billion aid package recently sent to Idaho.

Little needs to make a stronger call to obey the order and set clear ground rules with a game plan for moving forward.

Now more than ever, Little needs the vocal support of leaders around the state to calm the fears of residents and businesses. Leaders need to stick together, obey the order and weather the storm.

Finally, we need the folks who are going to rallies and going to the park and planning dodgeball games to become part of the solution, not the problem.

We need leaders like McGeachin to step up and work to help save lives until we get the increased testing Idaho needs so that we can get back to business.