Businesses across the state on Wednesday will mark 20 weeks closed.
For most, it wasn’t of their choosing. It was an order from Gov. Roy Cooper trying to steer North Carolina’s ship through the coronavirus.
Bars, nightclubs, gyms, indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment and reception venues, movie theaters, bowling alleys, museums, playgrounds, bingo parlors including for charity, skating rinks, and business establishments that allow gaming such as sweepstakes and arcade games — all of them, and more, were closed by the governor at the end of March. We and they thought it was temporary, that it wouldn’t last long.
After all, the governor and his team — mainly cabinet-level Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen at the Department of Health and Human Services — were going over information daily and making decisions based on data and science. Over and over, that’s what they have told us.
But from Day 1, the information for those decisions has been flawed. The percentage of positive tests and whatever trend has been present always has been off because the reasons to test changed early, and even later remained focused on testing those believing they might be sick. Plus, negative tests from private providers weren’t counted early; now they do.
The positive percentage was always going to be skewed. Even now, with testing reportedly open to anyone wishing to have it done, the majority not feeling sick or believing they have not been exposed is not getting tested.
Hospitals never got overwhelmed, thankfully, and neither did we stagger up a northward spike line in cases. No, North Carolina flattened the curve from the outset.
As a matter of fact, Cohen and Cooper back in May were explaining the move into the first phase of reopening and said the slight rise on the hospitalization chart was deemed OK and viewed as stable. It had gone beyond the 500-mark then; it’s been over 1,000 every day this month, with ample hospital beds and ventilators available.
Cooper’s consistency in this pandemic has been to be slow. He and Cohen were slow to reopen any businesses, slow to require face coverings in public, slow to tell public schools what they and parents could have known more than a month earlier, and now they’re slow to reopen the rest of the businesses.
Life has gone on for employees in workplaces forced to close for nearly half a year. Some might return to their old jobs, but a lot of employers will be practically starting from scratch. They should get some access to start-up money in grants and incentives. Where’s Cooper?
We heard the governor criticize the president last week, calling him out for a nonexistent plan to deal with the virus. That’s rich.
North Carolina businesses are not. We’re hurting, all of us including the ones open. We need each other.
Safe to say, our governor can’t see the forest for the trees in his own state.
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