In Pennsylvania, as in other states, political leaders are in disagreement about the timeline for reopening. Some Republican lawmakers are considering legislation that would reopen certain businesses,
The state’s Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, said on Tuesday he was in discussions with lawmakers of both parties about reopening plans and on Monday joined several governors of Northeast states to announce they were considering the question regionally. But the governor was firm on who did not have that power: the president.
“We had the responsibility for closing states down, essentially,” Mr. Wolf said, referring to other governors wrestling with the matter. “We also have the responsibility — the feet on the ground here, the people who know best what’s going on in our state — to figure out how we’re going to reopen.”
The plans in the Northeast will be developed by an improvised think-tank-like team with three representatives — the chief of staff, an economic development expert and a health expert — from each state. The governors who formed the coalition, which also includes Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island, said the group would create “a fully integrated regional framework” while weighing economic, scientific and social data.
From the beginning, there has been no central playbook for how to handle the coronavirus in the United States.
Some states, like California, shut down early and entirely. Others, like Florida and Texas, issued piecemeal orders for residents to stay home, first at the city and county level, and later statewide. A small number of more rural states, including Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, have yet to adopt stay-at-home orders, deciding instead to close businesses and appeal to residents’ judgment.
It is possible that the reopening of America could be just as ad hoc.
One model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which has been cited by the White House, predicts that states that were slower to adopt the most stringent social distancing orders will see the worst of the crisis last through the beginning of June, a month longer than states that took early action.
