Unhappy Friday,
For your second Oregon Roundup of the week, we’re temporarily returning to Friday. It’s Friday the 13th, the weather in Oregon is miserable even by usual November standards, and Governor Kate Brown just announced a two-week statewide “freeze” in an attempt to blunt a surge of Covid-19 cases and related hospitalizations. Apparently there are only 15 ICU beds available in Portland metro area hospitals currently.
So things are going great. I haven’t seen the actual orders yet, and they may not yet exist. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, here are the key components:
- Limiting restaurants and bars to take-out service only.
- Closing gyms and other indoor recreational facilities, museums, and indoor entertainment like theaters.
- Closing outdoor recreational facilities, zoos, gardens, and entertainment venues. City parks and playgrounds will remain open.
- Requiring all businesses to mandate that employees work from home when possible, and to close offices to the public.
- Limiting grocery and retail stores to 75% capacity and encouraging curbside pickup service.
- Prohibiting visits at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
- Limiting social get togethers, whether indoors or out, to no more than six people from two households.
- Limiting worship services to 25 people when indoors and 50 people when outdoors.
According to Gov. Brown during her press conference today, the business restrictions go into effect on Wednesday, November 18. The restrictions on individuals begin immediately. The state will reassess in two weeks, but at least hotspot counties like Multnomah are likely to remain frozen for four weeks or more.
Obviously, going back into a form of lockdown a week before Thanksgiving stinks for a lot of reasons, particularly for families that, if they follow the rules, can’t gather in significant numbers. It also really stinks for small businesses and their employees, especially restaurants, bars, gyms, etc. Interestingly, state officials today observed that most of the surge in cases has come from private social gatherings, not from businesses. However, the impacts of the “freeze” will fall most heavily on businesses and their employees, in part because the state can much more easily enforce the rules against businesses than against individuals.
Some of the social gatherings that caused the surge occurred in violation of pre-freeze limits on social gatherings, and the state probably lacks the political will and means of effectively enforcing limits on private gatherings. The closure of restaurants and bars to on-premises service will probably have the effect of making people more likely to have private social gatherings for lack of other options to socialize,
As I wrote back in March, the burden of proof must be on the Governor to demonstrate why specific restrictions on individuals’ liberty and ability to work are necessary to protect public health. This is even more true now, because we know much more about how and where the virus spreads in Oregon. Today, when asked, the state epidemiologist explained that restaurants and bars were targeted because (1) people who attend private gatherings are more likely to go to bars and restaurants, (2) people in bars and restaurants must take off their masks to eat and drink, and (3) there is evidence of “some” spread in bars and restaurants, though predominantly among employees. This is not terribly compelling, especially now that we have six months of experience with open restaurants and bars to work from. I did not hear any justification offered for further limiting worship services, retail and office work, or for closing gyms.
The Governor has articulated a case for enforcing existing limits on social gatherings, and perhaps for instituting new ones, but she has not really laid out the case justifying the new business and worship restrictions. The thousands of Oregonians who rely upon affected businesses for their livelihoods, and the millions of Oregonians who benefit from the products and services provided by those businesses, deserve to know whether their state government is acting rationally and in a manner intended to minimize the negative impact on their lives while protecting public health.
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Hope your weekend gets better from here!
Jeff Eager
jeff@oregonroundup.com
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