A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JULY 28 , 2020
The coronavirus pandemic
jobs at t he 3,000-bed state prison.
They drive regional marijuana
sales that are quadruple the state
average, according to the Oregon
Office of Economic Analysis.
“The parking lots are full, Ida-
ho license plates are throughout
the entire facility, and there’s
lines going around the buildings”
at marijuana dispensaries, state
Sen. Lynn Findley (R) said.
To cope, officials are stressing
wearing masks and engaging in
social distancing, and exhorting
people to avoid large gatherings
— which they know have been
happening in Malheur, Poe said,
but even more so in Idaho’s Can-
yon County, which has the state’s
second-highest caseload. Packed
Fourth of July events there drew
many Oregonians, she said.
This month, commissioners in
deeply conservative Malheur
passed a resolution urging even
more mask-wearing and smaller
get-togethers than Oregon re-
quires. It was “a very bold move
for that community,” state Rep.
Mark Owens (R) said.
Across the Snake River, Idaho
Gov. Brad Little (R) has declined
hospital leaders’ pleas for a state-
wide mask mandate, telling NPR
he worries about “mask fatigue,”
particularly in areas with few
cases.
And in the cluster of southwest
Idaho counties east of Malheur,
public health officials have strug-
gled to hold meetings to discuss
masks. On July 16, a virtual meet-
ing live-streamed from the dis-
trict health department office in
Canyon County was canceled af-
ter unmasked protesters — in-
cluding Ammon Bundy, who led a
2016 occupation of a national
wildlife refuge in Oregon — dis-
rupted it, trying to enter the
building, where masks were re-
quired. The department canceled
a rescheduled meeting days later,
citing safety concerns.
The health department did not
respond to requests for comment.
But on Thursday, its board of
health managed to meet in the
county courthouse, where face
coverings were not obligatory.
The board decided to recommend
mask-wearing throughout the re-
gion but not mandate it.
[email protected]
[email protected]the border with Tennessee.
Bristol, Tenn., and Bristol, Va.,
share a historic downtown, with
State Street running from one to
the other and only plaques to
mark state lines. But on the Vir-
ginia side, gatherings greater
than 250 people are banned, and
Gov. Ralph Northam (D) is again
urging people to stay home. On
the other side, NASCAR recently
hosted one of the first major
sporting events of the pandemic,
with 20,000 spectators and the
governor in attendance.
“I am concerned about that,”
Virginia Health Commissioner
Norman Oliver said. “The impor-
tant thing about the spread is that
it’s multifactorial. I would not say
it’s all because of porous borders,
although that fact is one factor.”
In eastern Oregon, officials see
few ways to alleviate what they
feel certain is a cross-border ef-
fect stoking a troubling caseload
and positivity rate. As the poorest
county in the state, Malheur de-
pends on Idahoans who reside in
the fast-growing greater Boise
area. They shop at the busy Wal-
mart. They fill 70 percent of thesive reopening as cases rise. Ar-
kansas now has a statewide mask
mandate; Mississippi does not,
although one is in place for the
hardest-hit counties.
“We’re doing better than most
of the counties on the lower Mis-
sissippi River,” Smith said. “But
we are surrounded by it, and it’s
closing in.”
Even as some states, such as
New Mexico, trace cases to neigh-
bors, the extent of cross-jurisdic-
tion spread nationally remains
unclear, because gleaning such
trends depends on intense con-
tact tracing that is not happening
in most places, epidemiologists
say. John Graves, a Vanderbilt
University researcher who works
on modeling for Tennessee, called
it “a huge blind spot of a lot of
modeling, which assumes a con-
tained population. But given the
amount of commuting that hap-
pens across state borders, it just
stands to reason that we’re not
isolated in our own cocoon.”
In the absence of clear evi-
dence of viral creep across the
state line, officials in Virginia say
they’re keeping a close watch onzones. Cases in Helena-West Hel-
ena are not rising at the alarming
rate of those neighboring coun-
ties, but Mayor Kevin Smith said
he sees the bridge as a “funnel”
bringing the virus over.
“We have three state policies,
and the president did not want a
national strategy; he basically
said, ‘You’re on your own’ to the
states and the cities. So we have a
patchwork of things,” Smith said.
“A ll of us have been left t o fend for
ourselves.”
Early in the pandemic, Smith
unsuccessfully petitioned Gov.
Asa Hutchinson (R) to allow
screening of travelers crossing
the bridge. He remembers when
he was growing up that trucks
carrying cotton across the bridge
were inspected for boll weevils
that could devastate crops. He
called it “somewhat ridiculous”
that the state would be “super
vigilant about agricultural dis-
ease” but not “actually human
diseases that could kill people.”
Still, he credits Hutchinson
with consistency compared with
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R).
Reeves has rolled back an aggres-vations, have set up checkpoints
or turned away visitors. In Eu-
rope, where residents are accus-
tomed to traveling without pass-
ports between countries, many
nations closed their borders to
outsiders. Nationally, cellphone
data indicates trips across state
lines have tripled since the shut-
downs of March.
As reopenings began this
spring, blocs of states in the West,
Midwest and Northeast coordi-
nated plans. In an announcement
about its formation, the five-state
Western States Pact — joined by
Oregon but not Idaho — noted the
“virus has preyed upon our inter-
connectedness” and “doesn’t fol-
low state or national boundaries.”
States in the South, where cases
are surging, discussed forming a
compact, but it never material-
ized.
The Midwestern group in-
cludes seven states, but not Mis-
souri, which lifted all statewide
restrictions in early June and now
has a far higher rate of positive
virus cases than its neighbor Illi-
nois, which opened more cau-
tiously. Missouri was singled out
this month by Illinois Gov. J.B.
Pritzker (D), who pointed to
alarming spread in counties of his
state across the Mississippi River.
One Illinois county Pritzker
mentioned was St. Clair, which
Simmons said “is in full panic
mode” after logging a daily record
of 105 coronavirus cases July 18.
St. Clair public health officials say
they haven’t directly linked cases
to Missouri, but Simmons said he
did not doubt movement across
the bridge was playing a role.
Missouri was “behind us in
shutting down their bars and
restaurants. It was nothing for
people to get in their cars or get
on mass transit and go t o St. Louis
and do their partying and come
back here,” Simmons said. St.
Louis has strong restrictions, but
other nearby counties in Missouri
don’t, he said.
Helena-West Helena, Ark., sits
on the Mississippi River, a natural
barrier to infection — except that
a bridge connects the city to
Mississippi, and Louisiana is
close by. Both states have been
virus hot beds, and across the
river from the Arkansas city are
three counties labeled as redent suppression measures and
virus case numbers. To officials in
these adjacent places, and to
many experts, the tensions illus-
trate problems inherent with a
highly fragmented national re-
sponse to a virus that knows no
boundaries.
“I’ve said from Day 1, it would
have been a lot easier for the
decision-makers if everyone
would have been on the same
page, and we’d have shut down
this or that type of business in our
county and state, and the border-
ing states would have done the
same. That’s the only sure way of
doing it,” said Herb Simmons,
emergency management director
in St. Clair County, Ill., which sits
across the Mississippi River from
Missouri, where restrictions are
lower. “What we needed is a na-
tional-level plan.”
Public health officials in Las
Cruces, N.M., know from contact
tracing and investigation that
some cases had roots in El Paso,
the Te xas city about 45 miles
south, said New Mexico Health
Department spokesman David
Morgan. As coronavirus weari-
ness sets in, he said, it’s hard to
get people to refrain from cross-
ing the border to engage in behav-
ior allowed in Te xas but not New
Mexico. In May, New Mexico’s
human services secretary warned
that such travel would “absolute-
ly, unequivocally” lead to more
cases and hospitalizations.
“We ask, ‘Did you travel recent-
ly?’ They’ll say, ‘No, but I went to
El Paso to have my hair cut.’ Well,
that’s travel and that counts,”
Morgan said. Hair salons opened
a month earlier in Te xas.
“If they can’t get the service
they want in one state, it’s just
natural that they seek it in the
state where they can,” Morgan
said. “But the consequences are
greater than a lot of people appre-
ciate.”
Leaders in many places have
adopted strategies aimed at
thwarting the virus’s roving, bor-
derless nature. In the United
States, places including Connecti-
cut and New York require many
travelers entering their state to
quarantine, and some regions,
including Native American reser-
NEIGHBORS FROM A
States with stricter rules fearful of risks as l ax neighbors cross their borders
ANGIE SMITH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
The border between Oregon and Idaho, along Interstate 84 West. Idahoans come for Oregon’s sales-
tax-free shopping and legal marijuana. But u nlike in Oregon, masks are not mandated in Idaho.To receive a live streamreminder for this event visit:washingtonpostlive.com@POSTLIVE #POSTLIVEAlberto M. CarvalhoSuperintendent, Miami-Dade CountyPublic SchoolsLily Eskelsen GarcíaPresident, NationalEducation AssociationHosted by The Post’sEugene Scott onTu es. July 28 at 12:30 p.m.Superintendent, Miami-Dade County