NEVADA VIEWS: Show me the data to justify continued restrictions

When Gov. Steve Sisolak shut down many small businesses on March 18, 2020, he said he was attempting to slow the spread of COVID to ensure our hospital system was not overwhelmed. That was a goal we could all agree upon, and we voluntarily complied. The governor mandated that all Nevada businesses close for 30 days.

It has now been more than 365 days, and most businesses are just now able to operate only at 50 percent. Yet there is plenty of capacity at all our hospitals.

Earlier this month, about 5 percent of all patients in the hospitals around Las Vegas were COVID patients. In Washoe County, COVID patients were less than 3 percent of all hospital patients. At the same time, there were only about 40 COVID patients in all of the hospitals in Washoe County.

The governor said on April 22 in a CNN interview: “I look at certain criteria. I look at hospitalizations as it relates to COVID-19, intensive care unit hospitalizations, ventilator usage, percent of positive tests versus tests that we have given. And they need those to have plateaued and begin the trajectory downward.”

Well, all those factors have been in a downward trajectory for the past two months. The positivity rate has been below 10 percent since the end of January. Death rates are declining, and vaccination rates are increasing.

Why are we keeping our economy restricted when our hospitals have plenty of capacity and all the key data points are being met?

Have the reasons we are still not allowed to fully open been changed now? What scientific data justifies the continued restrictions?

The Associated Press recently found that states which enacted tight restrictions on commerce performed no better in preventing coronavirus deaths or confirmed infections. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, imposed some of the most draconian curbs in the nation. Florida was at the opposite extreme. Yet “California and Florida have experienced almost identical outcomes in COVID-19 case rates,” the AP reports, and both rank in the middle in terms of deaths per capita.

Restaurants are suffering the most from these regulations. Studies in New York, Minnesota and other states show that just 1.4 to 1.7 percent of infections were traced to restaurants and bars.

We should not have to wait another month to allow our bars and restaurants to fully open. Restaurateurs need to generate more revenue to start paying back the massive loans they took to survive this shutdown.

By limiting dining and bar options, we push more people into crowded grocery stores and house parties, which time and again have shown to be “superspreader” events.

We can continue to protect our most vulnerable people, but let the 90 percent of us who are healthy get back to work, back to school and back to our lives.

We can still wear masks, socially distance and wash our hands. But there is no reason to not fully open our economy when the No. 1 reason to keep us home — hospital ICU capacity — is no longer an issue.

Instead of continuing to give business owners taxpayer bailouts, let us return to actually generating tax revenue.

— Jeff Ecker is president of Restaurant Consultants of Las Vegas LLC and a member of the Leadership Council of NFIB, the voice of small business in Nevada.