Holcomb says he's trying to avoid shutting down business. He wants us to use the other tools we have available (masks) so that we don't have to do that.
From my neck of the woods, a shutdown is inevitable. Too many people simply aren't taking this seriously, and this new order isn't going to do anything. The virus isn't spreading because of a huge outbreak of groups of 26 people getting together. It's spreading because too many employers aren't enforcing masking and social distancing, and too many dumbasses are actively refusing to put any effort into it.
I visited Mama Goat's rehab facility last week. They go to a lot of effort to protect the patients. Visitors go through a temp check, and all visits are socially distanced. They have a separate wing for Covid patients, completely isolated from everyone else. Great, right? Yet, when I stopped at the office to book another visit, the two women who work in that office had their masks around their necks talking to each other. They were six feet apart, sure, but that's just ridiculously stupid.
Nobody wears a mask at any of the gas stations I stop at. Restaurants seem to be doing well with the masking, but people are obviously within six feet of each other non-stop, so they need to be perfect with the masking and the health screening just to tread water, and they still might get unlucky. A couple of months ago, before Mama Goat got hurt, I took her out to lunch, and the place we went was using all their tables, seating groups right next to each other. The entire staff was masked, but the owner came out to expo food, and his mask was around his neck the entire time.
The BBQ joint in Bluffton that got shut down by the health department for refusing to follow the guidelines had their appeal hearing this week. Their appeal didn't involve a promise to do better if they could reopen. It involved their argument that the Governor acted illegally in extending the mask mandate past 30 days, and that the owner should decide what's best for him and his employees, and their customers should be allowed to decide if they feel safe or not.
This kind of idiocy will lead to our second spike being far, far worse than the first one. Indiana's hospitalization rate already exceeds the April peak, and the death rate is matching it, and we're just getting started. We're going to get shut down again, and it's all our own fault for not taking this seriously when we had the chance.