For the last three weeks, 57-year-old Ann O’Connor has avoided leaving her home in Paradise Valley,
Arizona, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a cancer survivor with asthma, she is considered high risk for severe illness, and she wants to do her part to stop the virus’s rapid spread.
But others here are not taking the same precautions. O’Connor’s house looks on to a private golf course, and she spends her days watching foursomes tee off, buy refreshments and pile into golf carts. She sees neighbors greet each other with hugs.
“It’s really disconcerting because you just see these people and there’s no social distancing,” O’Connor said in a phone interview from her home. “It is like a huge, sick experiment,” she added about the lack of consistent action across the country.
O’Connor has children living in Washington, California and Colorado, where governors have issued statewide
shelter-in-place orders and shut down all but essential businesses. She had expected it would just be a matter of time before the rest of the country followed suit.
But while more than 25 states and dozens of counties have ordered residents to stay home, 10 states, including Arizona, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, have no such orders at the state, county or city level.
“Many of you have asked if or when the state will move towards a stay-at-home policy,” Arizona’s governor, Doug Ducey, a Republican, said at a
23 March press conference. “The answer is, not at this time.”
He added: “The CDC is not there yet. Arizona is not there yet. We’re not at the same stage as other states.”
www.resetera.com
