Missouri’s Ashcroft to staff: ‘We need to be here’ in office during pandemic. He’s wrong
About 50 employees in Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office were told to return to their desks Monday, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has now claimed at least 114 lives in the state.
“We need to be here,” Ashcroft told The Star Editorial Board Monday. He said necessary precautions — hand sanitizer, disabled water fountains, physical distancing — were put into place to protect employees who had been working from home, or were on leave.
Masks are optional. The secretary is using one.
What is Ashcroft thinking?
“Not everybody can do their job from home,” Ashcroft said, adding that an office-based “mindset” can improve workplace efficiency.
Ashcroft’s office helps supervise elections, and he said he’d be blamed if the June 2 municipal elections go wrong, and he failed to adequately prepare. Of course, it should be noted that he’ll also be blamed if an employee now gets sick with COVID-19. But the Republican secretary of state says of that prospect: “People like to play politics.”
The coronavirus pandemic is, or at least should be, above politics. And it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that growing partisan pressure to reopen the economy played at least some role in Ashcroft’s decision to call employees back, despite the fact that the stay-at-home order doesn’t expire until April 24.
That order doesn’t officially apply to Jay Ashcroft’s office, which is unfortunate. His employees can’t work in a bubble. Not only are they at risk of catching the virus from a coworker in the hallway or other common areas, they could also spread it to family members, friends, even strangers at the grocery store.
“These employees will be sharing bathrooms and different work surfaces even under the best circumstances,” Jake Hummel of Missouri’s AFL-CIO said in an email. “It seems the secretary is unnecessarily placing his employees in harm’s way.”
The secretary’s decision sends a bad signal to private businesses and workers that it’s now safe to return to the workplace. That is not the case. One widely-used model projects that deaths from the virus in Missouri won’t peak until April 29, two weeks from now.
More than 1,100 Missourians are expected to die from the disease by Aug. 4 — some 10 times the current fatality total.
It’s true that fewer Missourians are now expected to be infected with COVID-19 and die from it than once feared. That isn’t an accident. It’s precisely because of shutdown orders and quick action by local officials that the curve has flattened, leaving hospitals equipped to deal with patients and keep more people alive.
To lift those orders too quickly would not only invite a rapid return of the virus, it would also quickly negate the sacrifices Missourians have made to date.
Missourians, like all Americans, want to work. They want to enjoy time with their friends and families. They want the state to return to normal.
But they would be wrong to take Secretary Ashcroft’s misguided decision as proof that precautions are unnecessary. The general public is still barred from entering the Jefferson City building, suggesting other officials are still worried about community spread of the deadly virus.
Restrictions on business and commerce “should lift at some time,” Ashcroft said Monday, “but I don’t know when.” Missourians should hear that ambiguity, and stay at home until the coronavirus danger has passed.