Inslee calls for national stay-at-home order to combat COVID-19
Gov. Jay Inslee on Sunday said he supports a national stay-at-home order, a move that President Donald Trump has resisted.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Inslee said, “The reason is that even if Washington gets on top of this fully, if another state doesn’t, it can come back and come across our borders two months from now. So this is important to have a national success.”
Trump last week said “it’s awfully tough to say ‘close it down’ ” to states with fewer infections, adding that those states should be given “a little bit of flexibility.” A day later, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said he didn’t understand why every state isn’t under a stay-at-home order.
Later Sunday, Inslee announced that Washington will return more than 400 ventilators received from the federal Strategic National Stockpile, to help states facing higher numbers of COVID-19 cases.
“These ventilators are going to New York and other states hardest hit by this virus,” the governor said in a written statement. “I’ve said many times over the last few weeks, we are in this together.”
Washington recently purchased more than 750 ventilators, which are expected to arrive over the next several weeks when they may be needed the most, the governor’s office said. Because of Inslee’s stay-at-home order and closure of non-essential businesses, the state has seen fewer infections than anticipated, said Dr. Raquel Bono, director of Washington state’s COVID-19 Health System Response Management.
“Our current status allows us to help others who have a more immediate need,” she said.
Inslee, a Democrat, appeared on a segment of “Meet the Press” with Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is among eight governors — all Republicans — who have not issued a stay-at-home order to slow the spread of COVID-19. They include North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
“It’s more important the message that ‘do your social distancing, don’t gather in groups of more than 10 people, and bring a mask with you,’ ” said Hutchinson.
He referred to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people wear cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain, such as grocery stores and pharmacies.
Hutchinson took a jab at Washington’s stay-at-home order and closure of non-essential businesses, which Inslee announced on March 23 and extended last week through May 4.
“I want to compliment Governor Inslee. We’re watching his success, some of the things that he’s done there. But I would point out that even in the stay-at-home order that’s one of the most stringent as he points out in Washington state, you can still go buy your marijuana. And that’s why it’s important that we add to that social distancing and the masks that we’re advocating if you can’t social distance,” Hutchinson said.
The Arkansas governor referred to the exemptions in Washington’s stay-at-home order that include “workers supporting cannabis retail.” The order also deemed cannabis stores, which are regulated by the state and generate tax revenue, as “essential” and thus, exempt from closure.
Inslee said Washington has had “good communications” with Vice President Mike Pence and the CDC. But he said it was “ludicrous” that there was not a “national effort” to combat the spread of COVID-19, noting that Trump had referred to the federal government as a “backup” to states.
The governor referred to an April 2 tweet from Trump: “Massive amounts of medical supplies, even hospitals and medical centers, are being delivered directly to states and hospitals by the Federal Government. Some have insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?). Remember, we are a backup for them. The complainers should have been stocked up and ready long before this crisis hit.”
Inslee also referred to a comment earlier in the program by the U.S. Surgeon General, Vice Admiral Jerome Adams, who was asked by moderator Chuck Todd what he would tell governors who have not issued stay-at-home orders.
Adams replied: “I would say to them: The next week is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment. It’s going to be our 9/11 moment. It’s going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives.”
Referring to Trump’s tweet that the federal government is a “backup” to the states in the battle against COVID-19, Inslee said: “Can you imagine if Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, ‘I’ll be right behind you Connecticut. Good luck building those battleships.’
“Look, we need a national mobilization of the manufacturing base of the United States as we started on Dec. 8, 1941. We need to nationally mobilize using the Defense Production Act so that we can get these companies instead of making cupholders, start making visors, start making tests kits,” Inslee said. Visors are used by health care workers to protect themselves against COVID-19.
Asked by Todd if he believes Washington has begun to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 infection rates, Inslee said yes and added: “And I’m glad we got on it relatively early while the President was saying that this was not a problem, it was a hoax; we were acting to save the lives of our citizens in a number of states, including California and Washington state.”
Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign on March 3 tweeted a video that made it look like President Donald Trump called the new coronavirus outbreak a “hoax.”
PolitiFact — a fact-checking service which is part of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a Florida-based non-profit journalism school and research organization — rated Biden’s video as “false,” saying Trump at a Feb. 28 rally in North Charleston, S.C. called it the Democrats’ “new hoax.”
Trump said at the Feb. 28 rally: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
“One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was not a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax,” the President said.
This story was originally published April 5, 2020 at 7:08 AM.