Beervana Closed For Business
A couple weeks back, Multnomah County (ie, Portland) started making preparations to join the rest of the state in Phase 1 reopening on Friday, June 12. Businesses were given no caution as the date approached (or any information, actually), and began making preparations last week for what they assumed would be their first weekend of business in three months. And then, at 7:15 on Thursday night—less than twelve hours before owners would hang up “open” signs—Governor Kate Brown said nyet. “In order to ensure that the virus is not spreading too quickly,” she wrote, “I am putting all county applications for further reopening on hold for seven days.”
This was the most Kate Brown move ever. It may well have been the right call: Oregon’s cautious approach to reopening was always subject to re-evaluation. But in delaying the announcement until the night before scheduled reopening, with no hint this may have been coming, Brown made sure businesses had stocked up on food, brought workers back in, and made announcements about their plans. If it was the right announcement, she made sure to do it in such a way as to provoke maximal anger and disruption.
On SE Division, staff at Olympia Provisions Public House have been operating on a take-out only basis. The company spent hours and dollars laying the groundwork for sit-down service at that location this weekend. Tilden re-hired some staff and had them come off unemployment. He purchased food, beer and other supplies.
“We’ve all been punched in the face so many times now in the last three months that after a while you get used to it. So I wasn’t surprised,” said Nate Tilden, who owns multiple Portland restaurants including Olympia Provisions, Clyde Commons and Spirit of 77.
On the other hand, it may well not have been the right move, either—or at least it may have been inconsistent with the logic that led Brown to open up the rest of the state. It’s not clear Oregon’s situation has changed. The rest of the state started opening up a month ago. That’s plenty of time to see a change in the trajectory of the outbreak. In that time, confirmed cases have risen, but that’s largely a function of increased testing (though Oregon remains one of the worst states in terms of overall tests conducted). The more significant measures of worry, the number of daily deaths and hospital access, hasn’t budged much. In the month leading up to the first phase of reopening, Oregon recorded 66 deaths. In the month since? Thirty-eight deaths. The state likewise has a huge surplus of hospital beds and the number in use (including ICU) is flat. The only thing that’s changed is testing, which has pushed up the number of confirmed cases. The big difference is that earlier in the outbreak many of our cases were undiagnosed.
I’m not entirely sure what states should be doing. There’s some evidence that reopening has caused trouble for some states, though the nationwide death toll is dropping sharply. A few states have a clear problem, but they appear to be outliers (for now). What we’re seeing is a patchwork response, which both undermines public confidence that any leaders know what they’re doing, as well as creating anger and resentment as the response becomes increasingly politicized.
Sally and I spent a night in Astoria this weekend. On Saturday, we stopped in at Public Coast in Cannon Beach and had a beer—my first in exactly three months since my last on-premise pint. It felt a bit unsafe, though. The weather was 54 degrees and pouring, so we went inside. Mask use was mixed for those milling around—in a space in which it was often not possible to distance. At the other end of town, Pelican Brewing was requiring people to wear masks to get in use them when not seated. So even within towns, practices vary. Astoria’s breweries, we learned later, were less open and more stringent in their rules. With states and counties and now businesses adopting different practices, it falls to consumers to decide what to do.
When this crisis began, it never occurred to me that the federal government would abandon leadership and leave it up to the states to manage. That has resulted in a situation where jurisdictions and even individual businesses are forced to make epidemiological decisions about how to operate—decisions almost no one has the expertise to make. We have inherited a mess, and that’s not going to change.
Oregon is by most measures a coronavirus “success,” having managed to keep case and death counts low. But it’s been a microcosm of the nation as a whole, with haphazard leadership from the top and mixed responses from businesses and citizens. Meanwhile, we’re seeing a red/blue fracture, where cities are still cautious and compliant with masks and distancing, and rural areas are angry and noncompliant. We’re bumping along toward a future we can’t predict in the middle of an angry fight over which road to take. I keep waiting for the picture to clear so we at least understand what needs to be done, but it just keeps getting muddier. And that’s where we are today, four months into this crisis.