April 13, 2020:- On March 23 Governor Baker issued an order titled COVID 19 Order No. 13 instructing businesses (other than those providing “COVID 19 Essential Services”) to “close their physical workplaces and facilities… to workers, customers, and the public.” This was an extraordinary order. As a direct result, unemployment in Massachusetts rocketed upward as it did in other States whose governors issued similar orders.
In my previous post I mentioned that in the two-year period 2016-18, the approximate number of hospitalizations in the United States for influenza was 1.3 million and the approximate number of deaths was 99,000, and we did not close down the economy and throw millions of people out of work. Putting that to one side, whatever the past efficacy if any of Order No. 13, it is now time to rescind it. If the number of hospitalizations increases over the next week or so, there is no reason to believe that this will strain the system to capacity.
Accordingly I have asked Governor Baker the following simple question:
With the cumulative number of hospitalizations in Massachusetts at fewer than 2,500 and with the number of deaths per day attributable to the virus at about 80-90, it is now reasonably clear that COVID 19 is not going to overwhelm our healthcare system. Given that the purpose underlying your order dated March 23 (COVID 19 Order No. 13) was to flatten the curve, could you please announce when you are going to rescind the order?
The designer of the University of Washington model says that “the worst is behind us.” That may be accurate as to the pandemic, but it is not true about the effects of our State government’s response. The close-business orders have led to the immiseration of countless families, and more livelihoods and lives are now at risk than there were before March 23.
If your business closed because of Governor Baker’s order, please let me know.
Peter Vickery, Esq., 