Coronavirus in rural America (Part XVI): governing a "rural state"

Charlie Warzel has an op-ed in today's New York Times titled "What It’s Like to Run a Rural State During a Pandemic," featuring an interview with Montana Governor Steve Bullock.  Here's the lede, which points up characteristics of Montana that make it a governing challenge:

Guiding a state like Montana through a pandemic is difficult because Montana is a complicated state in a precarious position. Its significant Indigenous population is spread across seven reservations whose resources are spread thin even in non-pandemic times. When bidding on critical resources, the state can’t compete with the bigger needs of coastal states like New York or California. 

As a tourism hub and second-home escape for the wealthy, Montana is vulnerable to increased outbreaks brought in from those looking to flee crowded cities. Many of the state’s rural counties have health care infrastructure that would easily be overwhelmed if hit by a full-fledged Covid-19 outbreak. Testing capacity is stretched thin and should supply chains fall down — even for a day — the state could find itself unable to catch up with the virus. 

Warzel characterizes Governor Bullock's leadership thus far as "decisive."

Postscript:  Joel Rose reports from Montana on Friday evening for NPR.  The story highlights how that low-population state has been cut off from federal stores of PPE supplies and ventilators.  Here's a quote from the story:

"When you look at those five or six national distributors, Montana is sure as heck not getting much luck out of them," Gov. Steve Bullock said in an interview. 

The market for medical supplies across America has become chaotic. States and hospitals are competing with each other and with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the same scarce resources. Also, the administration can invoke a federal law to prioritize its orders over others.

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"If the private market supply chains aren't necessarily working for the states, and we're just bidding up prices against one another in a scarcity, I think it makes it that much harder for us to do our job," Bullock said. 

Montana has a relatively low number of coronavirus cases, but it does have a serious outbreak in the Bozeman region. And that drew the attention of Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. 

"There were some — a few standouts that we were concerned about, which was Vermont, New Hampshire, Idaho, and Montana," Birx said at a press briefing this week. "These were micro-outbreaks that occurred due to ski events, weddings, and nursing homes." 

Emergency responders in Montana have told the governor they need half a million N95 surgical masks. Montana requested 80,000 masks from the federal government, but Bullock says his state received only 10,000. 

"I've gotten five times more supplies of N95 masks from North Dakota than I have from the Strategic National Stockpile," Bullock said.

Meanwhile, reports out of Colorado indicate that Trump announced sending some supplies to the state because of U.S. Senator Cory Gardner (R), while interfering with the efforts of Governor Jared Polis (D) to purchase 500 ventilators for use in the state.  The Denver Post has written an editorial under the headline, "Trump is playing a disgusting political game with our lives."  Here's an excerpt:

We are left to believe that if Colorado didn’t have a Republican senator in office, our state would not be getting these 100 ventilators. How many ventilators would we be getting if we had a Republican governor and a second Republican senator? Would that indicate we had more Republican lives in our state worth saving for Trump and resources would start flowing? Should Utah be concerned that Sen. Mitt Romney voted to remove the president from office? 

This behavior comes, of course, weeks after Trump informed states they would have to compete against one another in the procurement of medical supplies at a time of global shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The federal government should be procuring medicine, masks, and ventilators and distributing them to states on a set formula based on population, rate of infection and need. Instead, Trump’s messaging makes it feel as though he will watch with glee from the White House as people suffer in states being led by his enemies.

And here's a post-script from Sunday morning, a Tweet from Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York suggesting that it is states like his that aren't getting a fair shake:

I can't help wonder if the allocations to Montana and Nebraska may account for those states' inability to achieve economies of scale because of their relatively small populations, spread across vast territories.  Or maybe it's just Trump continuing to exact revenge on New York, formerly his home state.