The View from the Hermitage, Day 15

The governor is making "a major announcement" about the state's covid-19 response today at 2:00. Scuttlebutt has it that he will putting a shelter-in-place, lock-down, call it what you will, our time in the hermitage becoming mandatory rather than voluntary. Our governor is supposedly coordinating responses with Maryland's governor, and Maryland's governor earlier today issued such an order. That order said that the only acceptable reasons for being outside one's home were obtaining food or medical care.

The announcement about the governor's address came in a tweet: "I'll be making a major announcement about Virginia's #COVID19 response at 2:00 PM today. Watch live here on Twitter or at http://facebook.com/GovernorVA ." What does it say that social media have become so mainstream that traditional media, print and otherwise, are not the place to look for things such as a speech by a governor? Needless to say, I have Facebook open in another tab and will switch over there once the talk begins. 

Older son has asked for some sort of letter from us stating that by being our conduit to the outside world, he is ensuring that his parents and their 80-something neighbors do not have to leave their homes. He has also been shuttling laundry back and forth between our home and my mother's assisted living facility. Once he takes back the laundry I will be doing tomorrow, he will no longer have to handle that. We've arranged for the facility to do laundry as long as virus conditions require. One less thing to worry about, as if life in general did not have enough right now.

So we do have a stay-at-home executive order effective immediately. The real-time comments on the Facebook feed of the speech were going by almost too fast to read, but there was a fair bit of grousing that there was no enforcement mechanism to the order, so what was local law enforcement to do? Was there a penalty other than being told you should not be doing this?  There did appear to be a bit of fluff in the order itself, which is available here. There were more than several comments about the fact that nonessential retail establishments can stay open as long as there are no more than 10 people in the facility at one time. And several viewers/listeners with  were upset that construction seemed to be viewed as essential.

While the updated federal guidance is to maintain social distance measures until April 30.Today's state order, which I assume would have precedence over a federal one, lasts until June 10. The governor was asked today how the municipal elections scheduled in May for some localities would be handled. The answer was that they were working on that. No one asked about the Democrat's primary election scheduled for June 9. I'm an assistant precinct chief. While my precinct does not have a May election, we do have a June one. And things just continue to get weirder and weirder.