We may not have been at this pandemic thing long, but we’ve already learned enough valuable lessons that make it clear Aurora and the rest of the Denver metro area should remain under stay-at-home orders, at least for a few more weeks.
I was dismayed but hardly surprised that Gov. Jared Polis this week awkwardly pushed for easing off stay-home restrictions and other regulations that have already crushed tens of thousands of businesses, including this one and just about every newspaper in the state.
If you’ve already forgotten, Polis was fast on frankness when it became clear in early March that the pandemic was going to roll over Colorado and the nation like a spring blizzard. But he was slow to actually force businesses to close and people to stay home. On March 10, Polis declared an emergency and requested that people stay home. Denver was the first in the region to mandate it. It was only after Denver Mayor Michael Hancock laid down the law March 17 that Polis followed suit, just as county governments from across the region also were issuing closure mandates.
I wasn’t surprised by how reticent Polis was about forcing businesses to close and people to stay home. He’s handled Colorado’s freaky anti-vaccination tribe with the same kid gloves since he became governor.
If you didn’t know, Colorado has one of the worst records in the nation for those who’ve had critical vaccinations for debilitating and sometimes deadly diseases like measles, mumps and whooping cough. For years, the don’t-tread-on-me types have wormed holes into Colorado’s mandatory vaccine law. Ultimately, you don’t have to get your kids vaccinated to attend public school. That has created another pandemic-in-the-waiting problem right here in the Centennial state, but it’s a story for another time.
Polis won’t sign legislation closing the vaccine loophole. He believes that you get better compliance from people by educating them, prodding them, but not forcing them.
Given the wild-ass crazy stuff I see and hear on anti-vax Facebook groups and on the other end of the newsroom telephone, I believe Polis sees goodness and wisdom in people that just isn’t there.
Those people are just like the gun-toting nightmares who crowded together on Capitol Hill in Denver over the weekend. They were protesting being barred from crowding together and spreading the deadly new coronavirus just like they did. These people are, thankfully, relatively few, but one of the lessons we’ve learned already from this pandemic, is that it only takes one of these people to create a disaster for all of us.
These are people who don’t understand science and make that dangerous problem even worse by discarding science and reality, or even fighting against it.
Polis has long exhibited that libertarian-ish gene as a member of the state school board, congress and now as governor. And Polis is an entrepreneur at heart. He was selling cloud server space in his college dorm room while his pals were out partying. He sympathizes with the excruciating pain of having to watch your business being crushed to death by things that are beyond anyone’s control.
I do, too. Closed businesses don’t advertise, and newspapers without advertisements die.
But Polis, teams of scientists and our own local health department chief Dr. John Douglas have impressed three things on me.
- Fighting a long, uncontrolled pandemic is far worse economically and medically than imposing painful decisions to weeks and not months. Opening business now instead of in two weeks may be far worse in the long run.
- Close communities must coordinate their rules and efforts.
- Finally, adequate testing will be key in managing this disease after closures end. We don’t have adequate testing right now in Colorado.
And what we’ve learned so far is that people act irrationally at a time when that behavior kills.
Denver learned quickly that if you tell the public they can’t buy pot and booze, they will flood the stores in a coronavirus dream-scenario to go get it. If Denver keeps nail salons and gyms closed until the middle of May and Aurora doesn’t, Denver residents will come here to visit those risky businesses, and you know the rest of that story.
We know that no matter how many times you tell people there is no shortage of toilet paper, and that they don’t have to buy it out every time they go to the grocery store, they still do it.
We know that even with clear laws in place prohibiting businesses like Hobby Lobby from sneaking around closure laws, they’ll openly do it until court orders shut them down.
I agree that most people will do the right thing, but I disagree with Polis that enough people will behave voluntarily to keep this deadly virus under control until a vaccine makes that permanently possible.
Aurora, Jefferson County, Boulder and other large Front Range communities should join Denver in extending closure and stay-home mandates until testing resources are clearly available to ensure people carrying the virus aren’t exposing others, especially at-risk people.
It’s OK for Polis to trust people as long as we can still protect ourselves from people who can’t be trusted.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com