Gov. Asa Hutchinson offers a few decent if risky arguments for his oddly stubborn resistance to a stay-at-home order.
But that graph he's so proud of--the one he keeps telling an aide to put back on the screen at his briefings so that he can wander over and admire it--is not among them.
The graph shows these two lines moving northeastward. The one moving more to the north is made-up. It's somebody's supposedly official projection of the number of coronavirus cases we'd have in Arkansas by this time, and thus a guess. It's presumably informed--algorithmic, perhaps--but, still, a guess.
Hillary's campaign had an electoral college algorithm that showed her winning, by the way.
The line sagging below and beginning to lose velocity is the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state at this point based on testing of only a minuscule segment of the state's population. It is based on tests of fewer people than we thought we'd have tested at this point, because we didn't get kits at the pace we expected.
That's like saying you're winning because the line on the game was plus-40 and you trail in the first quarter only by 30.
That's not a bet yet ripe for cashing.
The better number for Hutchinson's argument that we're doing pretty well comparatively is that our hospitalizations have been steady and relatively few, around 70 to 75, at last count.
The great unknown--meaning Asa's great risk--is whether we have untold numbers of infected but untested and asymptomatic people walking around depositing droplets on unsuspecting older or otherwise vulnerable people.
But that our hospital number has remained relatively low seems to make the case that our restrictions are mitigating the spread of the virus about as well as any state with a stay-at-home policy.
If the virus was rampant among those not yet tested, then we'd have more people with critical respiratory problems turning themselves into the medical establishment for acute or intensive care.
Hutchinson pointed out to Talk Business and Politics over the weekend that the hospitalization-to-infection rate in New York would overrun our hospitals if applied to a substantial number of unknown infections in Arkansas.
We can all hope Hutchinson is correct and will remain correct. We can agree that we have worthy restrictions in place now, giving us a state that may not be all that more open than states with official stay-at-home policies but plenty of exceptions.
But the risk always remains for a society that stays more open than it otherwise might. We could always become a hot spot before we know it, like Louisiana, which is breathing down our border.
That's why Hutchinson's seeming stubbornness is odd. It must either be a political calculation of what the cursedly independent Arkansas culture would accept or genuine concern for 100,000 people's jobs.
"Abundance of caution" is what they call expecting the worst and acting accordingly.
I phrased it Sunday by saying over-reaction is the order of the day for pandemics, which led a reader to complain that talk like that is what stripped the toilet paper shelves.
I meant over-reaction in government policy, not personal behavior, though I get the point.
Still, you can't stop individual panic. But you can limit the number of bundles sold to a customer.
That's why the best answer must come in the form of public policy. It's why we listen to the governor every day rather than the man on the street ... who perhaps should be the man off the street.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 04/08/2020