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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

This is great, and it's a big chunk of population, but I keep feeling like we could do better. For example, these three States could do a great job, but there's nothing stopping a bunch of the other States from bungling it (like, say, ignoring health experts and exempting certain groups from mass gathering restrictions). Then those States end up exporting infectious individuals into the States which are doing things right, and creating more clusters.

If only we had some sort of united group of all the States, where the response could be coordinated and centralized for maximum effectiveness.

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> If only we had some sort of united group of all the States, where the response could be coordinated and centralized for maximum effectiveness.

We do! It's called the United States government. I'll be letting the president know you're interested in him taking over and using his own ideas, instead of this one you seem to be particularly fond of.

Or, if that idea is slightly terrifying for you, perhaps it's a better idea that the states are handling this themselves. Your state conglomeration thing can always decide to use the National Guard to prevent outside travelers.

> Your state conglomeration thing can always decide to use the National Guard to prevent outside travelers.

The National Guard serves a dual role. Most of the time, it’s under the control of individual states, with the state governor acting as commander in chief. However, the president can activate the National Guard and place it under federal control. When this occurs, guard units are used to supplement the regular Army, bolstering its forces with additional combat units. [1]

1. https://science.howstuffworks.com/national-guard.htm

Well, if the federal government blocks you from using the NG to protect your states, then perhaps your state should... I don't know. Form a militia, and protect itself! Perhaps it could even seize the equipment from the National Guard in a mini-revolution!

It's almost like the constitution was written to enable these things to happen, and prevent a corrupt and/or inept leader from forcing a one-size-fits-all solution on the nation!

What do you mean by outside travelers? do you mean people from other states, or from outside the country? If you mean from other states, then they are legally barred from doing that.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...

States cannot discriminate against people from other states on the sole reason that they are from some other state.

Now... (I believe) they could use the National Guard to do wellness checks to make sure people don't have a fever, and potentially get them to quarantine, but it would have to be applied without regard to what state their license says. Though, the legality of forcing quarantine varies by state.

I may be wrong, but I think you missed OP's point. I took his tongue-in-cheek "If only we had some sort of united group of all the States" comment to mean if only we had a president who exercised his influence to encourage this type of coordinated response versus what he's done up to this point, which is nearly the opposite of coordinated.

You have no idea how crazy you sound as a European lol, the most straightforward way to put it is you're using an anonymous account on a website to dunk on someone in the comments section for implying they may care about avoiding infection during a pandemic

> You have no idea how crazy you sound as a European

Europe, a group of many independent states, trying different approaches to a common problem, with an over-arching bureaucracy to coordinate between them... and the US approach sounds crazy to you?

You're comparing apples to oranges. Europe is comprised of sovereign states which can and actually have closed their borders. From my understanding, but correct me if I'm wrong, this would be a legal and political nightmare in the US right?

Edit: not endorsing parent comment

As a European I’d think you’d appreciate the point he’s making. This is analogous to Spain and Portugal deciding on a joint Iberian policy between the two of them instead of trying to go to the EU and haggle it out with Hungary and Sweden.

Well, he'd appreciate your point ever more had the tenant of the WH been someone who can actually read pages with letters instead of watching tv 12 hours a day.

> you're using an anonymous account on a website to dunk on someone

I enjoy that you are making this point from the username "anoncareer0212"

I have no idea how that's the conclusion you drew from GP, can you elaborate?

"Like having a pool with a 'peeing section'" is how I've read this piecemeal approach described.

Well when our federal government basically screws the pooch it's up to individual states to work together to limit the spread. And since most of the state governments seem to not really care about the health of their citizens, it makes sense that there would be small groups of states that do. Honestly I assumed that if the outbreak got really bad the PNW would eventually secede from the union because the federal government wasn't providing much aid. But this is a lot better than that.

Yours is obviously just an analogy and I'm not making claims as far as the underlying argument, but we did used to have smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants, airplanes, etc. Clearly that was reasonable enough to people to be the way things were done for a few decades. Sometimes an 80% solution that seems almost comically flawed ends up being useful.

You could easily smell the smoke coming out of the 'smoking section'.

This is kind of like that, but you could die.

I imagine it more like 3 people standing in the furthest corner from the person peeing because the lifeguard isn't enforcing any rules except "no one can leave the pool".

Or a restaurant with a smoking section. Right next to the non-smoking section.

If other states don't do a good enough job at controlling their outbreaks, it is maybe, potentially legal to close our borders to residents from those states in order to control spread. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-FAQ-...

I'm fairly certain that Constitutional speaking "interstate commerce" can only be regulated by the federal government. The free movement of people may not be commerce per se, but it is inextricably linked.

In realpolitik terms, I doubt the federal government can stop this. What are they going to do? Send the army to force states to accept potentially infected people? That's basically an order to go kill your countrymen. I'd hope, given such an order, much of the military would defect.

The states also have their own well-equipped militias (National Guard). The U.S. Army can't just roll in and occupy a state if the state does not want it to - they will have to wage a war. Not at all politically acceptable.

With sufficient testing capabilities, closing the borders might not be necessary. Instead, test at the borders (and airports) and impose a mandatory quarantine on any infected individuals.

"California's got another Flu blockade up this week."

Your fears are very valid because we have already seen (prior to this formal coalition) the varying responses of states. Regarding your last sentence: I think there was a united group of all of the states waiting for central command and assistance which never truly materialized and now we have the states working together in the void.

> If only we had some sort of united group of all the States, where the response could be coordinated and centralized for maximum effectiveness.

We do, however by design that body does not have authoritarian control over things like 'shelter at home' regulations.

https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...

> Under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 264), the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states.

Nothing stops them from encouraging states, either. (We did this with speed limits, as an example. Want Federal highway funds? Play ball with the Feds.) Florida's Governor justified not issuing a stay-at-home order based on the White House not having asked him to.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/03/31/ron-desantis...

Ok, but what do you do when said authority is hellbent on forcing people back to work and reopening the economy when your local metrics show that would be a really bad idea? While the Federal Government may have the ability to restrict the states, I don't see any avenue where they can legally prohibit local/statewide restrictions that are stronger than Federal rules.

Perhaps through "encouragement" but that still leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Shelter at home is very different from controlling interstate travel. I agree on the latter point.

Not too dissimilar from the EU approach. There doesn't appear to be an EU-level coordination. The member states have open borders between them, I.e. the proverbial "peeing sections", and Italy's disastrous outbreak hasn't seemed to spread into Germany, Austria, Denmark, etc.

Centralization requires buy-in, and after at some point it becomes clear that sitting around waiting for other states to play ball can be equally disastrous.

Perhaps it allows them to begin to open borders between each other, but keep borders to other states closed? If those three states' economies are very interlinked it might let them get closer to normality.

Legally, is this possible in the US?

In Australia for example each state has closed or is controlling their borders with each other, and this seems to largely be a decision for each state (I don't think there's a federal law either way). I could imagine some states choosing to open up while others remain closed. Or if two states made big sacrifices but got the issue under control, while the others lagged behind, those two could open borders between themselves while remaining closed outside.

Legally, is this possible in the US?

Great question.

The Constitution is very clear that ultimate authority about Interstate Commerce belongs to Congress. States cannot bar travel from other states.

HOWEVER there is legislation enabling states to impose quarantines on people coming from other states. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/travel/coronavirus-us-tra... has information about such quarantine rules currently in place.

So stop travel, no. Make it difficult, we're going to see a lot of that.

> Legally, is this possible in the US?

What in the US is legal has changed radically in the last three years.

Any particular areas? The churn of law in the US is vast, ex: taxes.

I am surprised that most commenters so far have completely missed the hilarious sarcasm in “some sort of united group of all the states”.

It seems like you've essentially given up on the idea of freedom and separation of powers. Perhaps that would yield a better pandemic response (though that depends on the competency of the federal government), but I'm not sure it's worth the cost.

We're talking about forcibly keeping everyone in the country out of church. It's pretty disturbing to give that power to government, even temporarily. How long before it gets applied to other situations after the pandemic dies down?

What's to stop the president in 2030 from saying: "We're facing an epidemic of terrorism by [whoever] so we're keeping them from gathering in public."

Or: "There's an epidemic of [some crime] that uses the internet. We need to control it."

Well, this Western States Pact is a result of lack of leadership at the White House and federal level. They feel the US government is not doing enough, so they took the matter into their own hands.

So what are the issues with the Federal Government response? I often hear people criticize it, without any concrete examples

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-federal-govt-fem...

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/04/coronavirus-colorado-p...

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/08/colorado-coronavirus-v...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/27/trump-ventil...

There is a concrete example of the Federal government seizing PPE, Ventilators ordered by the states. Then only giving them 20% of what they ordered.

Its basically legal theft.

On phone so can't link now.

1. Ignored the pandemic response playbook. This document was prepared after the SARS outbreak and contained all the lesson s learned.

2. Reckless public statements. Calling the virus "no worse than a flu" and "a hoax" certainly caused people to not take it seriously and helped it to spread. Pushing the hrdroxocloriquine study before the research was conclusive has gotten people killed.

3. Depriving states of essential resources. Massachusetts not only had their request for masks denied, but also paid for their own masks only to have them seized for the "federal stockpile". In the end the governor had to get masks smuggled in on the New England Patriots private jet.

4. When New York projected it would run out of ventilators in 6 days, their request was denied on the grounds that Trump felt 30k ventilators was too big a number.

5. The emergency production act (or whatever it's called) could have been invoked at any time to address the ppe shortage. Afaik it hasn't been.

There was a piece on NPR today looking at the things the President announced they were going to do a month ago when he declared a state of emergency, and where we stand now on those things [1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/832797592/a-month-after-emerg...

Concrete examples.

Early in office, Trump got rid of the department created by Obama to respond to pandemics.

Early in this epidemic, we bungled getting testing out. Got it out in broken form. Had to get it out again. All the while we turned down an effective test advocated by the WHO. And when testing existed, had rules that tested so little that they missed the existence of community spread until it was well established.

Blocked private labs from developing and conducting tests. (Community spread was demonstrated by one who broke the federal rules. The reaction of the Trump administration was to come down on them for having conducted unauthorized tests.)

Well after it was clear that this was a pandemic that was not under control, Trump was spinning a narrative of this being no big deal.

Failed to declare a federal emergency and social distancing restrictions at a national level. Which caused a patchwork of inconsistent responses at the state level. California was in lockdown while COVID-19 was happily spreading among tourists on crowded Florida beaches.

I could go on. But right now the USA has 1/4 of all deaths worldwide from COVID-19. We are stilly dying faster, and didn't get there by accident.

Wasn't the issues with the initial tests that there weren't accurate and their simply weren't enough to go around? As far as disbanding the Pandemic team, it's not really true, there was a shuffling of who was in charge of it. It was finally transferred to the Vice President. As far as I can tell, the FDA approved an emergency policy to Help Expedite the Availability of Diagnostics on Feb 19th. The US probably has more contact with China due to trade/travel than most other countries. I don't believe the numbers from China, they are sure to be way higher than they report. I don't think the Federal Government really has the ability to shut down a states beaches that aren't Federally managed.

Wasn't the issues with the initial tests that there weren't accurate and their simply weren't enough to go around?

The USA shipped out tests after other countries, and with a faulty reagent that caused false positives. Causing labs that should have been able to do their own tests to have to ship samples to an overwhelmed CDC. See https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/05/905484/why-the-c... for verification.

The CDC promised new tests, but they took weeks to arrive. In the meantime federal bureaucracy roadblocked the development of independent tests. Finally the Seattle Flu study went and ahead and tested...only to find that COVID-19 had community spread for several weeks in that testing vacuum. You can verify that at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de....

As far as disbanding the Pandemic team, it's not really true, there was a shuffling of who was in charge of it. It was finally transferred to the Vice President.

Let's go for a fuller version: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pan...

Long story short, a number of people were let go, what was left was moved around in the bureaucracy, the political leadership left in charge claims that it still works, but the people left and other politicians claim that it was hamstrung.

Given that the US response has been so weak, it it questionable whether it operated at all effectively.

As far as I can tell, the FDA approved an emergency policy to Help Expedite the Availability of Diagnostics on Feb 19th.

Yes, at which point they created a bureaucratic nightmare for the approval process. As the NY Times article outlines, the lab that actually found community spread was NOT able to get through the approval process.

The US probably has more contact with China due to trade/travel than most other countries. I don't believe the numbers from China, they are sure to be way higher than they report.

Yes, the USA has a lot of travel. You are far from alone in not believing China. However there is no reason to believe that they are lying about having effectively shut down the virus. (Even the social distancing we are doing here seems to be working, and China was a lot more extreme.)

I don't think the Federal Government really has the ability to shut down a states beaches that aren't Federally managed.

Never underestimate the reach of the Commerce Clause. The President's ability to declare quarantines and apply them to whomever for whatever reason is extreme.

I don't know the limits for sure. But I doubt that he would have had less ability to act than various governors have had.

Have you been following the coverage? There are a lot of mixed messages (opening the economy by Easter, no I mean May, no I mean ASAP), lots of misinformation that contradicts the medical consensus (Trump pushing hydroxychloroquine as if he's the drug's spokesperson), a lot of half actions (Trump invokes Defense Production Act, but then refuses to use it), and blatant lies ("anyone who wants a test can get one"), multiple task forces being set up with vague responsibilities (first Pence, then Kushner).

The unwillingness to call for a nationwide lockdown is also a big one that has angered a lot of governors. And just today Trump tweeted that he has the authority to end lockdowns, which is a blatant lie.

So yeah, the response hasn't been great.

Trump actually did use the DPA to order GM to produce medical ventilators. Because a car company will have no problem retooling all of their factories to pump out medical devices. I believe that just taught all the CEOs of companies like GM that they shouldn't offer to do a damn thing publicly before they've already got a program in place.

This is as opposed to ordering one of the several companies in the US who already make medical ventilators to simply make more ventilators.

You are joking, right?

Just one example:

The US federal government waited until mid-March to order N95 respirators: https://apnews.com/090600c299a8cf07f5b44d92534856bc

Other governments acted much more quickly, for example Australia started doing so on February 7: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

The US government, in particular Trump, is responsible for this delayed response.

This is all 100% political. The only reason they are doing this is to preempt President Trump's announcement tomorrow about the formation of a committee to get this going. Anytime they say it's not political, that is 100% what it is.

I am afraid it is, but I do not see that much of an incentive for a Governor to keep their State shut-down when it does not have to.

May be its posturing or may be its not.

I think the interests of White House and Governors are more in line than not.

Time will tell.

Then again, that one group of states would become a Single Point of Failure.

If that centralized and coordinated leadership is incompetent and/or corrupt, there is no Plan B.

Except that in a federal system like the United States each individual state government can mount a real response like we've done in Washington where the epidemiological curve has flattened significantly in the past 3 or 4 weeks versus where it was heading before we began social distancing.

Sure there is. The Western States Pact is the plan B.

That's my point :)

I'm arguing letting the central federal government handle everything.

Sorry I got hung up on "there is no plan B". I prefer we have a coordinated response here as well (plan A). That's not happening so the "plan B" is states working together.

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