For Arkansans eager to set up their tents in our beautiful state, to float the Buffalo River, or to simply get a haircut, the outlook for a meaningful return to normal this summer appears hopeful.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, aided by his coronavirus-fighting sidekick Dr. Nate Smith, has set a course for Arkansas to emerge from a form of economic and social hibernation. It was prescribed back in early March as a form of immunization against the spread of covid-19, given the fact no real vaccine for the illness yet exists.
What’s the point?
Every Arkansas plays a vital role in how, and how quickly, the state will be able to return to some form of normalcy.
It's been almost nine weeks since children stopped rolling out of bed way too early (at least according to them) to get to their classrooms before the ring of the tardy bell. Now, tardiness is relative. It's more of a self- or parent-structured school day, turning work in via the Internet and occasionally joining online video meetings with teachers. The next few weeks will be much the same; Gov. Hutchinson has made it clear Arkansas' sons and daughters won't get back into the classroom to finish off the 2019-2020 school year.
But on most other fronts -- that is, the economic ones -- waiting until fall is neither an option nor a desire. Congress has written checks totaling $3 trillion in an attempt to keep the American economy from falling apart. More than 33 million people have lost their jobs in the shutdowns designed to keep covid-19 at bay. Political leaders and business owners are, frankly, uncertain about the future: How many jobs and how many customers will come back? What will the summer tourism economy look like? Will spending tendencies rebound to bolster the national picture?
"States want to relaunch their economies, but they're going to be doing so in an environment of high unemployment, reduced income and fear," Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said in the New York Times. "It's not a matter of saying, 'Hey, go out and spend.' It's a matter of people being able to and wanting to."
Gov. Hutchinson has outlined his plan to start the revival of Arkansas' economy: Elective surgeries are already under way, restoring a key source of revenue for medical facilities. Gyms were permitted to open their doors last week. Hair salons and barbershops were given clearance to get their clippers going last Wednesday. The state's restaurants can get back to dine-in serving as early as Monday. Places of worship and entertainment or related venues have gotten the governor's blessing to regroup.
All of them have or will open will strict state-issued limitations or guidance. It would be fair to call their restart a partial opening, because in balancing economic needs and concerns about an infectious disease, you've got to start somewhere, and Arkansas is starting reasonably small.
Perhaps it's a reflection of the pressures on government officials that Dr. Nate Smith, the infectious disease expert who also leads the Arkansas Department of Health, steered his remarks last Thursday beyond his specialty. He described a Wednesday evening in which Robert R. Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was said to have praised Arkansas' efforts to contain the spread of covid-19.
"We were able to keep our economy going at some level, and now an increased level, at the same time we have been able to decrease our cases," Smith told reporters and others across the state in a live-streamed update on the state's circumstances. "I was very pleased with that input, especially since to hear some people talk, it seems like they think you have to choose between saving lives and saving the economy. And I want to say that really is a false choice, because here in Arkansas, we're doing both."
At the same press conference, Gov. Hutchinson offered words for the future, sounding just for the moment a little more like a cautious physician, warning a patient not to do too much too quickly.
"We have to remind ourselves, even though we're opening up, that we still have a challenge to face," Hutchinson said. A resurgence of covid-19, Hutchinson warned, could lead to setbacks. Phases 2 and 3 of the state's re-opening rely a lot on whether Arkansans continue to follow advice to wear masks, keep six feet or more from others in public settings and follow the restrictions in place at these newly reopened businesses and activities.
How will you feel if, come September or October, Arkansas has to go into shutdown mode again?
That remains a possibility, but Hutchinson and Smith continue to stress it doesn't have to be an eventuality, if Arkansas residents and visitors behave smartly.
The state will see "spikes" from time to time, Hutchinson said last week, but with growth in capacity for testing and what they call contact tracing -- the ability to find people who have had contact with a sick individual or group -- the state hopes to be able to avoid further general shutdowns.
"We're going to study any spike very carefully," Hutchinson said. "If there's a spike we can identify and we can control it, we can manage it, then that should not detract from our overall objective and direction that we're going in, going to Phase 2 and opening up more. ...
"The key is our contact tracing and being able to identify any spike before it becomes a trend."
And, we'd emphasize again, Arkansans being smart in their public behaviors.
Those behaviors, as well as the state's testing and tracing capacities, will help determine whether anyone is watching the Razorbacks play football in the fall, or if the kids get to return to their classrooms, or if the economy is going to take another tough hit with more closures.
Normalcy, such as we can define it, will be achievable for the long haul if Arkansans, for now, reject the idea that everything can get back to normal immediately.
Gov. Hutchinson and Dr. Smith are taking a cautious approach to the state's economic restart. If Arkansans follow along with the same level of caution, the prognosis for the fall may be just what the doctor ordered.
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