In my city, we expect to lift our shelter-in-place advisory on April 22nd. I do not know how this is going to go regionally, though. I live in a pretty major metro - 2.8 million people - spreading across a pretty big geographic area. We are all shut down*. This metro spans two states. Illinois is fully shut down, but I am in Missouri, which is not shut down except by local governments.

Here is the tricky thing that coast people just are not understanding. They say in this part of the country "movement is not restricted enough, people are still going places" but most people work essential jobs. Spring has begun in the mid-South unlike in the northern and coastal cities, so we are doing agricultural work. Other than schools (all shut down), healthcare, groceries, and local government, almost everyone commutes long distances to agricultural jobs so the rest of the country can eat. We mostly produce soy, corn, meat, and dairy in this part of the country. Soy and corn are seasonal, and we have had a wet but early spring season, so things have to get going now. It is amazing how judgmental people are being about this reality.

I do still think that Missouri should shut down. Although not much would change, it would be symbolic and show rural folks that they need to take precautions, too. Illinois is structured similarly--one highway with major metros that straddle state borders, a few bigger settlements off another highway, not much else--as is Indiana, and they have shut down. As it stands, our governor is spreading dangerous rhetoric, underemphasizing the deadliness and seriousness of this disease.

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* For our fabulous English learners, "shut down" would be the verb form, and "shutdown" the adjective and noun form of this term. So:

"Restaurants could not serve food because of the shutdown." (noun)
"They have shut down the restaurants." (verb)
"During the shutdown period, restaurants could not serve food." (adjective)