Mayor Paul TenHaken voted to ease municipal restrictions on Sioux Falls businesses last week, but he’s not going out to dinner to celebrate:
Sioux Falls businesses are opening back up after the city loosened COVID-19 restrictions Friday, but Mayor Paul TenHaken won’t be heading out to eat anytime soon.
“Personally I will not,” the mayor said. “This is what I call permissive legislation. It’s legislation that permits it, but each person has to make their own decision.”
TenHaken said his decision wasn’t an official recommendation, saying he was “speaking as a dad of three” rather than the mayor [Carter Woodiel, “TenHaken Not Going Out Despite New Ordinance,” KELO Radio, 2020.05.08].
I appreciate Mayor TenHaken’s leadership by example.
Unfortunately, Mayor TenHaken’s good health sense, multiplied by, we hope, hundreds of thousands of South Dakotans and hundreds of millions of Americans, is why the coronavirus economic depression will continue. Real family-values conservatives (and, speaking practically and not ideologically, that includes every good dad and mom, right?) will put their children’s health over consumer impulses and frivolous spending. We’ll eat more peanut butter sandwiches and spaghetti, far fewer take-out meals, and no sit-down restaurant meals (sorry—no Mother’s Day brunches out and about this morning). We’ll keep adjusting our behavior and saving our money until we know the pandemic has passed… and we won’t wager our children’s safety on White House fairy tales. We’ll listen to the doctors, who say we won’t have a vaccine and thus a safe return to normal economic activity until well into the Biden Administration.
A long economic slowdown is the price we pay to keep our kids safe. That’s what Mayor TenHaken is saying. That’s what good parents are willing to do.
Look what’s going on across the pond, ideas for a safer greener working lifestyle. Damn, don’t just get all jealous when you see how the rest of the world advances while we stagnate.
“During the crisis, millions of people have discovered the benefits of active travel.
By cycling or walking, we’ve been able to enjoy this remarkably warm spring whilst sticking to the guidelines.
In some places, there’s been a 70% rise in the number of people on bikes whether it’s for exercise, or necessary journeys, such as stocking up on food.
So, while it’s still crucial that we stay at home, when the country does get back to work, we need those people to carry on cycling and walking, and to be joined by many more.
Otherwise, with public transport capacity severely restricted, more cars could be drawn to the road and our towns and cities could become gridlocked.
We also know that in this new world, pedestrians will need more space.
So today (9 May 2020) I am announcing a £2 billion package to put cycling and walking at the heart of our transport policy.” https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/transport-secretarys-statement-on-coronavirus-covid-19-9-may-2020
Mr. TenHaken is often wishy but on this he is righter than right. Everybody has the option to just stay home. You can stay home and whine about the people not ordering others to stay home, and you can stay home and wail that the militia is not called out to enforce strip bars and strip malls being closed, or you can just stay home and worry about your ownself.
Mr. TenHaken is choosing a good path. Like the City of Sioux Falls is, sending out the people who choose to visit the eateries en mass to see what happens to them, then cautiously follow and open city offices next month. Don’t follow the Judas goat.
But if a lack of hospitalizations (Noem and TenHaken’s reasoning) mean there is no need for a shelter-in-place order, then why should one fear a world without such orders; and simultaneously a world which invites more mingling and virus due to the lack of an order, I might add? Oh yah, the latter is probably the reason, huh? And won’t that cause more hospitalizations, too?
Currently, with the absence of a shelter-in-place order, Noem and Ten Haken are running a zoo on the honor system.
Only a small minority of Americans are with the entitled people crying because they can’t go to a movie, get a haircut, belly up to a bar, cook at home or get a pedicure. Even small business owners who are negatively affected by shutdowns are part of the 75-80% of Americans who support restrictions.
News and the GOP political machine work on division, but the fact is that the USA hasn’t been this united since 9/11/2001. A huge number of Americans are finding ways to contribute to the effort by sewing masks, donating food, serenading nursing homes from outside the windows, sending sandwiches to hospital workers, buying gift cards from closed businesses, delivering items to folks who can’t go out and more.
It’s not just individuals who are contributing to the common good. Businesses are donating supplies or selling them at cost, donating space to pandemic uses, providing free services to enable others and so on.
This is not only an American thing, but worldwide. One more thing. There’s a strong push arising that whenever it is that COVID-19 is managed, planet Earth must create a New Normal with far greater equality in all areas, without the pernicious wealth and skin color distortions that so warp the world today.
I’ve seen stories and articles on this in several places, though they certainly lack the attention of the conflict stories major news organizations love. Even without links, I’m sure you can see it all around you, in your towns and neighborhoods.
I’m quite certain we’re going to be okay.
Bet he won’t allow his kids to work in a meat processing plant, either.
But who are the 20 to 25% who don’t support restrictions? Most likely, I’ll allege, the young and mobile.
A new spike is already beginning in South Dakota: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/south-dakota-coronavirus-cases.html?auth=login-email&login=email
JKC, from what I’ve seen of protesters, they’re Medical Moron’s usual suspects. Older, white, less educated, resentful and feeling entitled.
Respectfully, when I go to a store with a mask for “necessary supplies”, I can’t help but notice that many of the unmasked are white men under 40.
I don’t care if someone is walking out in nature and is not wearing a mask, but every business should require that customers and employees wear a mask, or leave the store. I won’t go into any business that hasn’t taken this minimal requirement to protect its workers and its customers.
Let’s review. Your mask does not protect you from getting coronavirus. Masks on others are a way to protect YOU from getting the coronavirus. Anyone not wearing a mask is a danger to you, and should be called out immediately. Similarly, your mask is meant to protect store employees and other customers from coronavirus that you might otherwise spread.
I’ve had to educate a couple people who haven’t had a mask on or who have gotten too close in stores. One tried to get a little smart with me and I gave it right back to him. People where I live are not shy about putting such jerks in their place. I’ve seen little old ladies confront people. They are probably the most effective “educators.” I haven’t seen anyone give them any lip.
Mr. Pay, old men like grudznick can really give a whatfer, too. My gnarled visage putting on the appearance of being enraged is enough to make most all put on a colorful face masking.
Melinda Gates gave Medical Moron a D- on his [mis]handling of COVID-19. I’d say she’s being extremely generous.
Kristi views Paul as a party-line squire whose duty it is to ensure that sales tax from big Sioux Falls continues to flow into state coffers… because, what else is there? I saw the olive garden and fuddruckers were both packed on saturday, only because there are “enough beds” in the hospitals.
Meanwhile, here in Brown County, coronavirus cases have doubled in one week.
On age: the Harvard/Rutgers/Northeastern study I cited last week found higher percentages of folks 18–24 and 25–44 “very concerned” about family members catching coronavirus and about being able to get health care but less likely than older folks to “very closely” follow the guidelines for wearing masks around town. But the differences aren’t night and day: 50% of 18–24 group reported following the mask guidelines very closely and 22% said “somewhat closely”; 60% of the 65+ said “very closely” and 17% said “somewhat closely.”
Younger folks are a little less inclined to strongly support restricting public gatherings, closing restaurants, canceling big entertainment events, and blocking international travel, but they are a little more inclined to say we need to wait six weeks or longer to reopen the economy than are old folks.
Wow! I feel much better now knowing we’ve been educated by Mayor Tenhaken, Debbo, Donald Pay, and the ultimate ego driven Cory Allen Heidelberger?? Debbo. Older, white, less educated, resentful, and feeling entitled?? Try those remarks with anyone of color or a member of the LGBQTI community and you be dubbed a hater and start a protest. Donald Pay. Anyone not wearing a mask is a danger to you, and should be called out immediately? I’d be careful on that one. I’m a 58 y/o WHITE male business owner with a Master’s of Science Degree, American, working, taxpaying, veteran. You know, the new minority. I just get up, waive to my neighbors, and go to work. That’s right, a real troublemaker, a real rebel! Please show me the gold standard “Double Blind” studies that show everyone wearing a mask is the answer? That’s right, you won’t find one, but let’s believe you?? Please tell me you all carry around Clorox wipes and are cleaning up after yourselves in public. Please tell me given Mayor Tenhaken refuses to go out to eat he is washing everything down that his kids touch in public. Like the folks I see at the grocery store who are wearing masks and the process to handle every product and piece of produce to make sure they get the one they want and then leaving it for the next person to touch. What a bunch of ignorant righteous folks you portray….Im sure glad to see you follow the “We’re in it together model” You should give yourselves a bid ole pat on the back. Hey Donald. Next time you’re at the grocery store I’ll be the one without a mask. Bring It!!!!
“Rhetoric” is claims of suicide and starvation and all that against tens of thousands of actual deaths happening before our eyes.
Taking a child to the hospital is depressing. It causes the parents to lose hours at work and costs a whole lot of money, meaning the family will have less money available to feed the child when/if they get out of the hospital. But when the child is sick, the family upends its normal life to save the child.
The country is sick. We need to take our medicine. Shutting down the economy and staying home doesn’t taste good, and it has consequences. But it’s better than 80,000 more or two million more preventable deaths. That’s not emotion speaking; that’s Vulcan logic.