Federal and State Governments Have Less Control Over Shutdowns Than They Think

On April 16, President Donald Trump and the White House's COVID-19 task force outlined a three-step process for states to begin unwinding their economic shutdowns. The plan was contingent on ramping up testing and slowing the spread of new cases, and it likely would have taken months to progress from phase one to phase three.

Just three weeks later, a growing number of states have largely discarded the federal plan in favor of their own efforts aimed at restarting their shattered economies.

On April 22, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf outlined a three-step process for reopening regions of his state, with counties progressing from "red" to "yellow" to "green." Counties can be fully reopened when there are fewer than 50 cases per 100,000 residents over two weeks. The state has cleared 37 counties (out of 67) to move to the "yellow" stage on May 15.

Less than three weeks later, officials in six Pennsylvania counties that have yet to meet that threshold have declared their intention to reopen anyway, and sheriffs in two other counties say they will not issue citations to businesses that open in defiance of the state's shutdown order. Although the county commissioners acted independently from one another, all make more or less the same argument: The state-mandated economic shutdown has been ruinous, the vast majority of coronavirus deaths in Pennsylvania have been in nursing homes, and the 50-in-100,000 threshold will take too long to reach.