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I went to a poor town in Kitsap County, Washington yesterday.
Over the past decade, the city and business community has spent millions to revitalize their downtown.
Now with the coronavirus shutdown, all of that investment, all of the hope, has been laid to waste.
...
An old man who owns a sandwich shop with his daughter told me they were within days of closing up permanently. Then he got a contract with a nonprofit to provide 100 sandwiches a week to the mentally handicapped. He can survive until the contract runs out.
The comic store has sealed off the main floor and opened a tiny entryway to customers. I ordered some Pokemon cards for my son and the clerk went to retrieve them. When she returned, I asked how business was going. She gave me a blank stare and said she wasn't sure.
The only shops that seemed to have any business were the bail bondsmen. This isn't good. I've seen it in Youngstown and Gary and other decimated places in the Rust Belt. When crime becomes the dominant industry, your town is done. If we go into a depression, this will spread.
Policymakers and media have no idea what's happening to small towns in America. Our policies have devastated these places for the past half century, now they have been stigmatized as "backward, racist, Trump-supporting towns." They frankly don't care.
When I spoke with people here, they seemed shellshocked. It happened so fast. The virus, the media panic, the shutdown. Two months later, Kitsap County has had only two coronavirus deaths, but its economy has collapsed. Rural cities have been held hostage by urban politics.
The businesses and citizens here don't "want people to die." They don't want to "kill grandma so they can get a haircut." They want to survive. They want their sandwich shop or comic store to be there when this ends. Rural counties should be able to calculate their own risk.
Why should rural Washington be hostage to the work-from-home modelers and shut-it-down-forever politicians? Why should rural New York be hostage to De Blasio and Cuomo, who botched the response in New York City so badly? Small communities need representation. They need choice.
Here's the bottom line: the virus has hit different places with varying intensity. Those places have different needs, cultures, and risk profiles. They deserve to set their own policy. They deserve to calculate their own risks and rewards. They deserve that freedom.
Exactly. Different place, deserves to have more autonomy.
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