Governor Gavin Newsom of California instituted a statewide lockdown in March. Photo:JD Lasica/Flickr
By Luca Powell
Published March 22, 2020 10:30 AM
In the wake of
mixed-messaging from the federal government,
state governors have taken the lead in response to Covid-19.
On a state-by-state basis many of those actions look quite different. Some of this makes sense. In Washington, one of the first states hit by a significant community spread vector in late February, Governor Jay Inslee was one of the first to
declare a state of emergency. Mississippi, meanwhile, only closed school on Thursday, March 19th (This despite the governor himself being self-quarantined).
California’s on lockdown, Montana is finally out of denial, and Virginia thinks
a
10-person limit in bars and restaurants is enough to do the trick.
You can check out gubernatorial responses in this map. Just mouse over each state to see what policies have been enacted. Darker states indicate a more aggressive state response.
Data: Data for this was collected from the Covid-19 Tracking Project, the CDC, and Wallethub. Wallethub scored each state’s response across 35 metrics.