The NPR Politics Podcast - WH Guidelines For Reopening Remain Vague So States Like Georgia Return To Work

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

The White House has released guidelines for when and how states can begin reopening their economies, but the metrics are loose. Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp is allowing businesses to go back to work. How is that playing out?This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and WABE's Emma Hurt. Email the show at [e-mail] Join the Facebook group at n.pr/politicsgroup Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/politicsnewsletter Find and support your local public radio station at donate.npr.orgLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Assalamu alaikum. This is Gul Jamal recording from Tashkent, Uzbekistan on the fourth night of Ramadan. This podcast, in turn, was recorded at 2.07 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be here working on my dissertation related to 16th century manuscripts illustrated in Central Asia. Ma'ilash, marhamat, here's the show. My, oh my, Uzbekistan. Wow. I think with almost certainty that's our first Uzbekistan timestamp, and I love it.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And today we're going to look at one state that has decided it's time to get back to work. Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp is now allowing businesses like restaurants, movie theaters, tattoo parlors, and barber shops to reopen during the ongoing public health crisis. He's one of the first governors to make this call. These are tough

decisions, no doubt, but we put measured steps for people that wanted to open. It was not a mandate. There's a lot of people that have decided to wait, and I support that, but you also have people out there like Peggy that was fixing to lose her car. So we're better off, in my opinion, trusting people. Mara, the president has been eager to get states up and running. Governors are obviously eager to get their states up and running. But the president also criticized Kemp last week at the White House for this decision. So where does the White House currently stand on this? Well, the president has gone back and forth.

Remember, first he said he has total control. He said governors can't do anything without my permission. Then he said it's up to the governors to open up. And then, as you said, unprompted, he criticized Kemp for deciding to open up nail salons and tattoo parlors earlier than the president's own public health officials said was a good idea. But now he has landed in a position where he's saying, I want to open up as fast as possible, but as safely as possible. And I trust the governors to do that too. But the White House has put out some metrics for these guidelines that governors should use when they're making the decision to reopen.

What are they? The White House guidelines are pretty broad and even vague, but they have three phases. And if a state has a diminishing number of cases over 14 days, they can go on to the next phase. They're encouraged to open up businesses, even schools, and even sports venues, but they are recommended to continue social distancing protocols, physical distancing, wearing masks. And it's only in phase three that places like bars can reopen. All right, Mara, well, let's bring in Emma Hurt. She's one of our station reporters from WABE in Atlanta, Georgia, who's been reporting all about this. Hey, Emma. Hey, y'all. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. So Mara was just talking

about the White House's guidelines for when it's safe for a state to start to reopen. Is Georgia meeting those requirements? Yes. So that's been, I think, some of the source of some of the criticism of Governor Kemp's decision. But our public health commissioner yesterday laid it out again. Her name's Kathleen Toomey. She's a CDC alum. And she admitted we don't meet the full gating criteria, but we had several and we're approaching a plateau. And the numbers that she's pointing to that she and Governor Kemp are relying on for these reopening steps are declining reports of flu- our state's public health website, the department itself admits it may be incomplete because of the lag time and test results. But she's also pointing to on the other side what you referenced before about public health capacity. So we've got enough hospital capacity now, we've got enough testing, and we're ramping up our contact tracing capacity to a point that they feel comfortable moving forward. So what were the reasons that the governor used to say why he decided to start reopening now? Kemp really pointed to the criteria that I mentioned that our public health commissioner is highlighting. And I think yesterday he had a line where he said, I'm protecting

the lives and the livelihoods of Georgians. And so that's really this economic side of the equation here in people's lives. I mean, he's hearing from people who are losing, going to lose their cars, going to lose their houses, can't pay their rent. And at what point does it become too much? I mean, one fifth of Georgia's workforce has filed for unemployment. And it's just, you know, he's hearing from people who are really in a tough spot. The president and I believe in the same exact things. We want to keep our citizens safe and we want to reopen America to entrepreneurship and to business. I mean, he knows, like I know, we cannot continue this way economically. We are looking at depression

like unemployment. I mean, Mara, 50 governors have to weigh 50 different scenarios in their own states. But I just think the political risks are different for each one of these governors, too, because one thing that I think is striking about these reopenings is that polling is still showing us that the majority of Americans are still OK with social distancing and stay-at-home orders and sheltering in place. So are governors pushing against the tide of public sentiment right now? I think governors understand that people, as you said, are pretty supportive. People have been a lot more patient than a lot of analysts expected them to be. But this can't go on indefinitely. So you do have some difference

in the polling where Democratic voters are slightly more willing to be more patient, and they're more willing to put the public health priority over reopening than Republicans are, even though big majorities of people across the board are willing to wait. But I do think you see a little bit of red state, blue state divide here in general. But there are governors like Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, who was closed down very early, was very proactive. He wants to open up as fast and as safely as possible. Jared Polis, Democratic governor of Colorado, he's also starting to open up. So it's not a perfect blue state, red state divide. But in general, I think the Republican governors are willing to

open up a little faster. Something that Governor Kemp has been saying this whole time is that he believes that this virus is ultimately not going to be defeated by government. It's going to be up to individuals and their decisions to take ownership and responsibility and make their own decisions about their own public health. But I will say someone in the governor's office told me, like, look, we have no good options here. I mean, everybody's weighing bad choices. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk more with Emma about how Georgia's businesses are handling the reopening. The biggest story in the world is a science story. And keeping up with all

the latest coronavirus research, it's a lot. So on Shortwave, we translate the science you need to know into short daily episodes. Listen and subscribe to Shortwave from NPR. And we're back. And Emma, you've been talking with some local business owners in Georgia that have decided to reopen. And we should note, not all businesses have made that decision. What have they been telling you about it? Yeah. So, I mean, it really feels like you get a different answer depending on the different business you talk to. I mean, there are as many answers as there are businesses in Georgia. But there are some threads that I've been picking up. So I talked to one person, Palmer Fortune. He runs a cafe on the Georgia coast on St. Simons Island. He has two restaurants,

actually. The cafe closed. The other was carry out through this whole time. And he decided now to open for limited dine-in for both of those. So not even half of capacity and lots of sanitation and social distancing restrictions, masks for all employees, gloves. And yesterday, on Monday, he had just 40 customers where he says normally he would have had 250. But he said they needed to take a step forward. We don't have jobs where we sit at home and get a paycheck. And we provide a service to the community. And when we're closed, we can no longer provide that service. And as long as we can provide the service in a healthy, safe way, then we're willing to do that. And the money will come. The people will start to come back. But the process had to start.

Yeah, I mean, this is one of the big questions I have is, as businesses start to reopen, the one thing we can account for is how willing are people going to be to be going back into those businesses? Right. I mean, it's a big unknown question. And the governor said, look, the private sector is going to have to convince people that it's safe to come back. And according to Fortune, the people coming to his business, he says, like it's kind of it's self-selecting. You know, they aren't the people who are really afraid of this virus. Those people are still staying home. And there's a self-selective group that's starting to tiptoe out. And I'll say in Atlanta particularly, it's a little bit of a different vibe. I mean,

there was a big two-page ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today about restaurants in solidarity of staying closed, some of the kind of most visible restaurants in the city. It's not really cool to open in and less cases. Honestly, in Glynn County, where Fortune's Cafe is, there's only like 50 cases confirmed. So it's just it's really different across the state, too. What about racial disparities? Because we know there's a real racial disparity that the illness is hurting black and minority communities. What are you hearing from blackowned businesses in Atlanta? There's that emotional response that I've gotten from some Black business owners saying, why are we going first? You know, why do we have to go first? And the governor would say, of course, this is a choice. I'm just giving you the choice to open if you can and feel safe to do so. But, you know, one barbershop owner I spoke to in Atlanta,

his name's T.J. Johnson, and he said that none of his barbers wanted to come in, nor did their clients, and particularly because they are acutely aware know, and that's more important than work right now, you know. So if we can take our time and open safely, I think we're going to be okay. I mean, it's really just horrible the way these racial and economic lines are kind of running parallel right now. And in Georgia, we can see it in the numbers of what we do know. Half of all the confirmed cases we know of with comorbidities of that, half of them are African-Americans. For the white population, it's about 38 percent. So we are seeing that in the numbers, too. Has the racial disparity affected businesses' decision to stay closed? Are some businesses deciding not to open

even though they could because of concerns about health and how it affects certain communities? Absolutely. I mean, the NAACP chapters in Atlanta have banded together to call for a sick out indefinitely because of this. And there are a lot of businesses who are choosing not to reopen, despite the fact that it is putting their livelihoods at risk. One of them is Netta Hanavar. She owns a yoga studio in Atlanta, and she said it wasn't even a question for her that she wasn't going to open yet. You know, the way that people are showing up in hospitals right now, and the like horror that's happening, that seems a lot more at stake than losing my business. I mean,

I would, it would be devastating to lose my business. And like, I would also like for this pandemic to be over sooner rather than later. And the more that we're opening businesses and letting people gather together, the less, you know, that's going to be able to happen. Like, it's good. It's going to be it's going to just go on longer. So we're really seeing a whole big range. And that's kind of what the governor said he was expecting. And he supports everyone in would have happened. It's going to just go on longer. So we're really seeing a whole big range, and that's kind of what the governor said he was expecting, and he supports everyone and their different decisions on the road here. So it's like let a thousand flowers bloom, but what we haven't even talked about is what happens if there's a new spike of illness? Does everybody close down again? Is it possible to close down after you've already opened up? I don't know.

It would be quite some whiplash. But I mean, it's something that definitely has been alluded to. I mean we're all going to be watching as states slowly start to reopen. So hopefully it goes well, right? Hopefully it goes well, Emma, not just for you, but for your whole state. We won't know for two weeks. We'll check back in in a couple of weeks, I'm sure. Thank you so much for joining the pod today. Thanks for having me, guys. That's Emma Hurt from member station WABE in Atlanta.

And that's a wrap for us today. But we want to remind you that this Thursday, we're going to be holding a live Q&A on Facebook all about the effort to reopen the economy. We'll be live at 3.30 p.m. Eastern on the NPR Politics Facebook page. You can send us your questions about policy and politics to nprpolitics at npr.org.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.