In too much of rural Utah, the current recommendations from Gov. Gary Herbet’s Coronavirus Task Force are being flagrantly ignored. The governor, like our president, is leaving these orders up to smaller units of government, cities, towns and counties.
The national patchwork approach to keeping residents safe is not working in states, cities and counties where there is no stay-at-home mandate. Where these orders went into effect early, California, for example, the number of confirmed cases is growing at a much slower rate than in places — Louisiana, for example — where the orders lagged behind.
In my community, restaurants are still open for inside dining, hair and nail salons are still operating and people are still congregating at grocery stores and hugging, shaking hands, etc.
My husband and I are elderly with underlying medical conditions that put us at risk, so we are practicing our own stay-at-home order, only leaving the house for necessities. We pick up our groceries outside the grocery store, go to the drive up pharmacy window, etc.
But people working to provide us those necessities need to be protected and, with so many folks ignoring the warnings, those front line workers are put at risk every hour of every work shift.
Please look at the evidence and at long last, like Florida's and Georgia's GOP governors, do the right thing. We need a mandate to keep our communities safe. Trusting folks to do the right thing on their own just isn't working here in rural Utah.
Lynn Martinez, Brigham City