We're just over 100 miles from Phoenix, the capitol and the epicenter of Arizona’s COVID-19 outbreak. That’s Maricopa County, where you'll find 4 million residents and over half of the 6300 reported cases in the entire state. That’s also where you’ll find the most popular resistance to Governor Ducey’s March 30th Stay-At-Home order, even though it is very broadly written and not nearly as restrictive as similar orders in other states.
Here in Gila County, the 4th least-impacted of our 15 counties, with only 11 reported cases out of the 54,000 residents in its 4800 square miles, just one hospitalization and no deaths, there is almost no adherence to the Executive Order by the general public. Granted, all of the hotels, motels, the casino and government buildings are shuttered, and most restaurants are reduced to hiring clowns and sign-wavers promoting curb-side service, but other than that it hard to tell from the outside that there's genuine pain being felt on the inside.
On a drive through town any typical weekday, one sees nearly full parking lots at both major grocery stores and Walmart, near-normal activity at both hardware stores and Home Depot, and at both auto supply stores, the golf course and the city lake and parks.
On Fridays and throughout the weekend the two state highways that intersect in town are jammed with tourist and other recreational traffic, including motor-homes and trucks trailering jeeps, boats, quads, motorbikes and horses. Most of this traffic originates from the sprawling metropolitan areas down in the deserts to our south, some destined for local second homes in town and in the surrounding bedroom communities, but most headed for the high-elevation lakes and forests to our west, north and east, despite the best efforts of the U.S. Forest Service to close the campgrounds and the most heavily-traveled access roads.
I don’t know if this speaks to a general attitude of independence among most typical Arizona residents, or whether it does display, as is often charged by the media when commenting on these matters, the indifference, ignorance and even insolence of a certain segment of the populace. Maybe it’s because the EO is set to expire at the end of the month, less than a week from now, and there’s a general expectation that existing restrictions, in our county at least, will be relaxed even further.
There’s no doubt, however, that whatever the motivation or lack thereof, few people are “up in arms” enough here in Central Arizona’s mountain communities to form even the semblance a respectable protest. Like the virus itself, our “lock-down” just hasn’t quite lived up to its billing.
Here in MA the RINO Governor, Baker, had enough sense not to order a stay-at-home, which surprised me, although all small businesses are closed, as well churches, libraries, govt. buildings, state parks, schools. But liquor stores are open and doing a brisk business as are abortion clinics although only for baby-killing, which The State considers "essential", they are closed for other "services". And gun stores are completely closed, even for curbside business. Guns spread The Virus, even I know that (sarc). This hasn't affected me personally in the least, I'm retired and I come and go as I please. I live in the Berkshires, "culture in the country", and summer people constitute the major part of the local economy. They are discussing not opening Tanglewood this summer and Tanglewood IS the local economy. So the fallout from this massive scam is going to be devastating and we may never recover. I hike at a state park here and the other day a family arrived in their mini-van to hike, a couple and two little kids. As soon as they got out of the van they all put on full head masks. They didn't want the kids exposed to sunshine and fresh air apparently. MA has the highest percentage of people with college degrees in the country, over 50 percent. That should tell us something
My God… that reads like something out of a dystopian scene that Huxley might have written! Never in my lifetime would I have ever thought we’d see these things happening in our country. And the worst part is that it’s not to protect the people, but to protect political power. Besides efforts like this to get the word out, we can only pray that enough people see through the fog of lies and remember in November. God bless you and the Commonwealth.