KC area’s stay-at-home order best chance to combat coronavirus. Complying isn’t optional
Johnson County commissioners were told only Thursday that a California or New York-style shelter-in-place order was possible to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. On Friday, they stressed that no lockdown plan was in place.
By Saturday, it indeed was — not just in Johnson County, but across the metro, in Kansas City, Jackson County and Wyandotte County. With allowances for trips to grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, medical visits, dry cleaners, laundromats and banks, residents of the area are being told to stay home as of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday — though, in truth, residents should comply with all deliberate speed.
Anyone listening to Johnson County public health officer Dr. Joseph LeMaster — also of KU Medical Center — isn’t surprised by the lockdown so much as the speed with which it descended after his measured remarks to commissioners Thursday. His gentle bedside manner belying the ominousness of his words, he cautioned them that such a directive could be coming “as early as next week.”
As it turns out, it came sooner than that, as increasing numbers of states around the nation and leaders in the St. Louis area announced their own shelter-in-place orders, which are having trouble keeping up with the spread of the virulent virus. Like the drastic, rolling cancellations of iconic American events such as the NCAA basketball tournament and many other gatherings, shelter-in-place orders have come in waves across the country during the past few days.
While just two days before, LeMaster had held out hope of mitigating the spread of COVID-19 through voluntary self-isolating, mandatory dine-in restaurant closures and prohibitions on gatherings of more than 10 people, it became increasingly clear a mandatory stay-at-home order was necessary. The need was apparent even Saturday morning, as traffic still clogged major Johnson County arteries, and shoppers were out transacting undoubtedly nonessential business.
Alarmingly, some people had earlier been asking what the limits of activity were under the county’s looser emergency order, LeMaster told commissioners. Translation: They wanted to be able to get out and do as much as they could get away with. That’s dangerous thinking, he suggested in not so many words. It’s thinking that may follow the letter of the order but not the spirit of stopping the spread.
LeMaster had said he wanted people to do as little as they could, rather than as much as they could get away with, “so that we don’t have to go to that more-draconian type of state” — adding ominously, “I will not promise you that we will not be there, or come back to you, or make that sort of an order, even as early as next week.”
It’s here, earlier than expected, even for the Johnson County public health officer.
Johnson County officials downplayed the possibility of a shelter-in-place order Friday, saying they didn’t want elevated levels of public concern. Now it’s evident that elevated concern would’ve been a good thing.
“People who are not alarmed — who think that this is all being blown out of proportion — are themselves minimizing the greatest public health crisis of our generation,” Dr. LeMaster said in a statement to The Star. “Everyone needs to take the public health orders with utmost seriousness and do their best not just to comply, but to do so in the spirit that they would if we were being invaded by an alien army. We must, every last one of us, take it as our duty in the national interest to limit the spread of transmission.”
Whether the fault of the virus or our apathy in fighting its spread — likely both — the more restrictive lockdowns you’ve been seeing in the national news have come to the Kansas City area.
LeMaster predicted it might be this way if we didn’t take voluntary self-isolation more seriously.
“If we have to go down to ‘shelter in place’ where each person is pretty much in their home all the time, it’s going to make things a whole lot more difficult for the city and for the county, for business — for everything to be able to function,” LeMaster told commissioners. “Even though (the prior state of emergency) is difficult, it’s not as difficult as it could be, or as difficult as it is in other parts of the country.”
We will now see what he means.
This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 4:41 PM.