New York and Illinois Follow in California’s Footsteps by Declaring Shutdowns — News

Updat­ed March 21: Govs. Ned Lam­ont of Con­necti­cut and Tom Wolf of Penn­syl­va­nia issued shut­down orders on Fri­day. On Sat­ur­day, New Jer­sey Gov. Phil Mur­phy issued a Stay at Home Order, clos­ing all non-essen­tial retail busi­ness­es effec­tive at 9 p.m.

The dire orders by the three Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors, New­som (Calif.) on Thurs­day and by Cuo­mo (N.Y.) and Pritzk­er (Ill.) on Fri­day “come as Antho­ny S. Fau­ci, direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases, said Fri­day that Amer­i­cans will need to stay at home as much as and main­tain social dis­tance from oth­er peo­ple for at least sev­er­al weeks to stem the spread of the virus,” accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post.

New York is quick­ly becom­ing the epi­cen­ter of coro­n­avirus cas­es in the Unit­ed States: The state con­duct­ed 10,000 coro­n­avirus tests on Thurs­day, with 2,950 con­firmed pos­i­tive, Cuo­mo said.

In his “must-see TV” dai­ly coro­n­avirus brief­ing on Fri­day morn­ing, Cuo­mo announced his PAUSE Exec­u­tive Order, a 10-Point “ that Assures Uni­form Safe­ty for Every­one,” with the first one being:

  • Effec­tive at 8 PM on Sun­day, March 22, all non-essen­tial busi­ness­es statewide will be closed;

A major­i­ty of the points ingrain social dis­tanc­ing behav­ior:

  • Any con­cen­tra­tion of indi­vid­u­als out­side their home be lim­it­ed to work­ers pro­vid­ing essen­tial ser­vices and social dis­tanc­ing should be prac­ticed;
  • When in pub­lic indi­vid­u­als must prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing of at least six feet from oth­ers;
  • Busi­ness­es and enti­ties that oth­er essen­tial ser­vices must imple­ment rules that help facil­i­tate social dis­tanc­ing of at least six feet;
  • Indi­vid­u­als should lim­it use of pub­lic trans­porta­tion to when absolute­ly nec­es­sary and should lim­it poten­tial expo­sure by spac­ing out at least six feet from oth­er rid­ers;
  • Young peo­ple should also prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing and avoid con­tact with vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions

In addi­tion, it includes “Matil­da’s Law,” named for his moth­er, which pro­vides pro­tec­tions for 70+ year seniors and oth­er “vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions.” This may be the first COVID-19 that requires a por­tion of the to wear masks and not to use pub­lic tran­sit. This pop­u­la­tion is direct­ed to:

  • Wear a mask when in the of oth­ers;
  • Not take pub­lic trans­porta­tion unless urgent and absolute­ly nec­es­sary.

And to “the great­est extent pos­si­ble, every­one in the pres­ence of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple should wear a mask.”

“No, this is not life as usu­al,” Cuo­mo said as the death toll in the U.S. topped 200 on Fri­day, with at least 35 in his state, an AP arti­cle on the orders issued by the three gov­er­nors. “Accept it and real­ize it and deal with it.”

Illi­nois

“To avoid the loss of poten­tial­ly tens of thou­sands of lives, we must enact an imme­di­ate stay-at-home order for the state of Illi­nois,” Gov. J.B. Pritzk­er said at a press con­fer­ence, report­ed Buz­zFeed.

“I ful­ly rec­og­nize I am choos­ing between sav­ing peo­ple’s lives and sav­ing peo­ple’s liveli­hoods,” Pritzk­er said, “but ulti­mate­ly you can’t have a liveli­hood if you don’t have a life.”

The gov­er­nor issued a Dis­as­ter Procla­ma­tion that used Cal­i­for­nia Gov. New­som’s term, “stay at home” or place of res­i­dence in his exec­u­tive order [pdf]. “Pritzk­er said his lat­est deci­sion was based on con­ver­sa­tions with ‘some of the best med­ical experts, epi­demi­ol­o­gists, math­e­mati­cians and mod­el­ers,’ ” report­ed the Chica­go Times. It took effect Sat­ur­day at 5 p.m. and con­tin­ues “through at least April 7.”

In short, res­i­dents who have heed­ed calls to from home, main­tain a social dis­tance and repeat­ed­ly wash their hands will have no prob­lem adjust­ing to the gov­er­nor’s lat­est direc­tive.

“For the vast major­i­ty of you already tak­ing pre­cau­tions, your lives will not change very much,” Pritzk­er said of the shel­ter-in-place direc­tive.

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