GOP governor ends mask mandate, removes limits on businesses, placing state in danger of new surge
As cases of COVID-19 began to surge again in the fall, no state went up more sharply than Iowa. Between the middle of October and the second week of November, the rate of new cases in the state increased by 500%, and all that was before Thanksgiving and the surge that hit most of the nation due to increased travel over the holiday period. Only Iowa didn’t see that holiday surge. There was a bump in cases at the start of November from those Thanksgiving dinners, and another in January that was timed just right to be the result of Christmas get togethers. But for the most part, cases in Iowa trended down from that mid-November peak, even as cases were continuing to grow over much of the nation.
Why did Iowa go down while other states were going up? As The Atlantic reports, the state benefited from a limited mask mandate, grudging put in place by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. Along with that mandate came fresh limits on public gatherings, and a renewal of some business restrictions. The state benefited more from stores and local governments that encouraged mask use. And finally Iowa may have benefited most of all from “fear”—the fear generated by a case count that moved it into the #7 position overall when it came to cases per capita, a wave of deaths that followed not far behind.
But on Friday, Gov. Reynolds stepped in front of cameras to issue an executive order that not only ends the mask mandate, but fully reopens bars and restaurants, removes other social distancing guidelines, and invites Iowans to pretend that the pandemic is over. It’s not.
As of this week, the average daily new cases in Iowa works out to about 29 people out of every 100,000 coming down with COVID-19 each day. That puts Iowa in as the 18th lowest state. It’s certainly an improvement from where the state was two months ago. However, it’s also a higher level of both new cases and deaths than where Iowa was just before cases exploded in the fall.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/6/2014361/-Iowa-Gov-Kim-Reynolds-ends-social-distancing-guidelines-despite-continued-high-cases-of-COVID-19
Iowa ranks just ahead of my state (Washington) in total cases of COVID. There have been 324,666 cases in Iowa, 323,947 in Washington. Population wise Washington is twice as large.
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