No one is in charge of reopening the country

That’s a good thing. No one person should be in charge of the nation’s response to the pandemic, because no one person has proven qualified to bear that responsibility on his own, and in all likelihood no one person could. Dealing with a very ugly situation at hospitals in Detroit, Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has taken measures that strike me as extreme, allowing only the sale of “products necessary to maintain the safety, sanitation and basic operations of residences.” Suddenly, Home Depot closed its Michigan paint, flooring, and outdoor-gardening centers in response to that order. Suddenly, parents who might want to pick up a car seat to drive their newborn baby from another wing of the hospital cannot do so.

So no, one person does not and should not have the power to direct the actions of 330 million others, even in an emergency. Nebraska does not look like New York, which does not look like Michigan. One state’s needs should not be held hostage to another’s.

Instead, it is the people themselves who are powering these lockdowns. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans support temporary efforts to keep their fellow citizens indoors and slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Long before the orders went out to close restaurants and non-essential businesses, the people themselves, informed by news reports from around the world, began to restrict and modify their own movements. And no governor could possibly enforce state-sanctioned restrictions if the poll numbers flipped and four out of five began to oppose them, as I suspect might start to happen in the coming weeks.