I’m a red-state mayor and I ordered my city to stay home

I gained an appreciation for this in the week after our first positive case came in on March 6. Throughout that week, we repeatedly heard that regulations to enforce social distancing need not be triggered until evidence of community spread had been identified. Our first and second cases were travel-related.

But as the week went by, I realized the fault in this logic: How could we find community spread if testing wasn’t available to detect it?

Mayors don’t have time for philosophizing. We have to get things done. Either the street gets fixed or it doesn’t. Either the police officers get hired or they don’t. But what if you didn’t know which streets to fix or how many officers you needed? How do you take on a virus in an epidemic if you don’t know where it is?

You assume the worst. I called our local health department director and talked with him about my concerns about the lack of testing. He told me he shared them and that he supported an event limit.