With coronavirus cases on the rise in all but one state and a newly reached American death toll of 250,000, this would not seem the moment for the United States to take a patchwork response to the pandemic.
But that is what it has done, and that was perhaps never clearer than this week as mayors, school boards and governors struggled to fend off the onslaught.
In Ohio, it was a nightly curfew. In Mississippi, it was an expanded mask mandate, and in Iowa a statewide one — the state’s first ever. In Maryland, all bars, restaurants and night clubs were ordered closed by 10 p.m. And in Pennsylvania, the authorities said anyone traveling to the state would need to be tested before arrival.
“The new normal is no longer sustainable,” Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said Wednesday evening as he announced sweeping new restrictions. “The ground is literally shifting under our feet.”
But there is a glaring exception in Walz’s new restrictions: Houses of worship, funeral homes and wedding venues are allowed to host people as long as they meet certain requirements, one of which is making sure there are no more than 250 people in an indoor space.
New York City, just eight weeks after opening its schoolhouse doors, said it was closing them again. Denver, too, said it would move to all-remote teaching, as did the state of Kentucky.
A day after the governor of California said the state was “pulling the emergency brake” on its reopening, Los Angeles County went a step further and announced a curfew for businesses. Illinois, too, imposed new restrictions.
For its part, Rhode Island will enter what Gov. Gina Raimondo called a two-week “pause” starting on Nov. 30. New measures will close all bar areas, fitness centers, recreational venues and many offices, and impose certain restrictions on other gatherings including limiting indoor socializing to members of the same household. The restrictions were necessary because hospitals are at 97 percent capacity due to rising Covid-19 cases, Ms. Raimondo said on Thursday, and a full lockdown might come after three weeks if the numbers did not come down.
Only in Hawaii were cases reported to be staying relatively flat.
States That Imposed Few Restrictions Now Have the Worst Outbreaks
Using an index that tracks policy responses to the pandemic, The Times analyzed outbreaks in each state relative to the state’s most recent containment measures.
Early in the week, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said the nation needed “a uniform approach,” not a “disjointed” state-by-state, city-by-city response. Public health experts say the lack of a coordinated strategy has been a primary reason that the United States leads the world in infections and deaths.
But there has been a notable lack of national direction.
Even before the election, there was squabbling within the Trump administration over how to contain the virus. The disarray has become even more pronounced in the aftermath of the election, with President Trump directing his aides not to cooperate with the transition.
On Wednesday, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. asked that the government give him access now to federal resources to help him plan a coronavirus response. “This is like going to war,” he said. “You need a commander in chief.”
As the day drew to a close, more than 172,000 new cases had been announced in the United States — the second-highest daily total of the pandemic. And more than 1,900 more Americans were dead.
— Eric Nagourney The New York Times