Some states to begin opening businesses as early as Friday
The governors of Georgia, South Carolina and Alaska are allowing some businesses to reopen this week, as long as they follow distancing and sanitary guidelines. Tennessee will allow many businesses to reopen May 1. Florida and several other states are working on reopening plans. None of those states meet the Trump administration guidelines for reopening businesses. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman joined Jen Rogers, Myles Udland, Andy Serwer, and Akiko Fujita to discuss.
Video Transcript
JEN ROGERS: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. Last week, President Trump told governors they could call their own shots, but the Trump administration also issued guidelines out there for reopening businesses in different states. And Rick Newman has been looking into four Republican states that are actually ignoring President Trump's reopening guidelines. So-- so, Rick, who are these governors?
RICK NEWMAN: Well, these states are South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alaska. All-- they all have Republican governors. And I looked up the number of reported cases on a daily basis. I had to do some number crunching to figure out the daily totals. But the Trump guidelines say that a minimum requirement-- and this is one of several for reopening some businesses-- is that you have to have the number of confirmed cases on a daily basis going down every day for at least two weeks.
So I looked at these four states, and none of them are close to that standard. I think the closest might be Tennessee, which had its peak number of cases a few days ago. But in the best case, if-- if cases just continue to go down in these states, they still shouldn't be opening until early or mid-May by that standard. And to-- to make this even fuzzier, I mean, these-- the number of reported confirmed cases is a serious undercount.
I mean, we know there are tons and tons of people who have this virus. They may or may not have symptoms, but they're not getting the test because we don't have enough testing. So these states are going for it anyway. They're not really worried about the data. They're not worried about conforming to the Trump administration guidelines, and we're going to find out what happens. Are we going to see a resurgence of virus in these places, or is it going to go more or less OK?
ANDY SERWER: But, Rick, isn't the problem-- we talked about this-- that, you know, it's the federal government, it's the governors. But even when you get into a state level, I mean, you take Georgia, you know, Atlanta, densely populated. You go up to the mountains, there's no one living there. Life is probably not that different there right now. So isn't it, I mean, what's the right level of granularity? Is it counties? You know, it's-- this is-- this is difficult stuff, right?
RICK NEWMAN: We're figuring this out-- we're figuring this out as we go along. There's no template. But the right way to do this probably is for the governor to say, OK, it is now OK for cities or counties-- I mean, you know, governments are structured differently-- if the-- if city or county leaders feel it is OK, then go ahead and do it. And we're, you know, which we are already seeing divergences by city. So in Florida, for example, Jacksonville has opened its beaches, but a lot of other cities remain closed. So the mayor of Jacksonville, I guess, feels it's OK.
We-- we're going to see probably more openings in Florida and some other states that are banding together to come up with a sort of a regional set of guidelines. The-- the most interesting thing to me is that this is a live laboratory for what happens when you send people back out into the virus zone. I mean, the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, he acknowledged, he said, yeah, we're probably going to see more cases as we allow people to go back to some of these businesses. And they're opening things in Georgia like bowling alleys, nail salons, and things like that, where people are actually pretty close together.
So what happens? I mean, are-- are workers going to be comfortable going back to those jobs? Are they going to just go back and say, yeah, it's-- it's probably more risky than staying at home, but I don't mind? Or are they're going to say, no, I'm not going to go back to work? And what about shoppers and customers? Are they just going to go out, or are they're going to say, nah, I'm going to sit this one out till I feel a little more safe?
ANDY SERWER: Everyone's going to go to that one beach in Jacksonville.
RICK NEWMAN: Apparently, they--
ANDY SERWER: Oh my god, right?
RICK NEWMAN: I mean--
JEN ROGERS: That's why this reopening is, yeah, so complicated. As you say, it's a-- it's a live laboratory.
RICK NEWMAN: Some of these-- some of these southern states could end up as poster states for how not to open after the coronavirus.
