Business leaders view anti-lockdown protesters with skepticism, with some keeping them at an arms-length.
“We don’t support them,” Tim Sink, president of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce in New Hampshire, told the Washington Examiner.
Protesters gathered at the State House in Concord on April 18, calling for the reopening of businesses. Some who arrived toted semi-automatic weapons and wore pro-Trump paraphernalia, items that have been prominently displayed at other similar rallies, drawing nationwide attention.
Sink said that state officials are currently working on a plan to reopen businesses, but incrementally, and not instantly as the protesters demanded. A quick opening of bars and restaurants could increase the number of people becoming infected by the virus.
“They’re trying to accelerate the process when we have had a very good run, here, in New Hampshire, of keeping the amount of people infected low, and we haven’t seen a large surge like other states,” Sink said, adding that many of the protesters were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing.
“That’s unfortunate,” he said, adding that “we don’t find them to be very helpful right now.”
While anti-lockdown protesters have gained nationwide attention, they appear to be in the distinct minority.
Pandemic restrictions have the overwhelming support of the public, according to polling released Thursday by Rutgers University–New Brunswick, Northeastern, and Harvard. The survey of 23,000 respondents found that 93% do not favor an immediate reopening of the economy.
Similarly, 58% of respondents in a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday said that they feared that governments would move too quickly in easing restrictions, versus only 32% who are concerned that the process will move too slowly.
Sink understands the frustration people have about wanting to reopen the economy, but he insists that a lot of details must be hashed out before businesses can safely open their doors.
“How do we get the restaurants up and going?” he asked. “It’ll be somewhat on a gradual process.”
Sink said outdoor seating at restaurants might be the good first step in allowing them to reopen. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that air conditioning could have played a role in spreading the virus at a restaurant in Guangzhou, China. Sink also said that New Hampshire’s increase in testing will help to get the economy moving. The state, on average, tested 885 of its citizens a day as of Thursday, according to New Hampshire’s Public Health Laboratories. On March 5, only 22 tests had been administered.
“We really turned a curve, in terms of the availability of testing,” he said. “That’s gotten a lot better over the last couple of weeks.”
Rich Studley, chief executive officer of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, supported his state’s first stay-at-home order issued by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but her follow-up order, which required social distancing measures for businesses with workers on-site and limited in-state travel to vacation residency, went too far, in his estimation.
“Government actions like that, here in Michigan, resulted in the unnecessary closure of thousands and thousands of businesses across the state, and that triggered unemployment for literally hundreds of thousands of Michiganders all across the state,” he said.
Armed demonstrators entered Michigan’s state capital on Thursday to protest the governor’s orders.
“If you watched the news clips from other states, you might have wrongly concluded that there was a riot, that people were injured, when in fact the demonstration was loud and raucous, but our capital security handled it properly,” said Studley, who is sympathetic to the protesters.
Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, a Republican, referred to the protesters as “a bunch of jackasses.”
While the protesters obeyed the law, Kevin Mercuri, a gun owner, was irritated that they brought their rifles to the demonstration.
“As a gun owner, I am outraged that these protesters use their firearms as an agitprop. The implication that they are armed and ready to ‘open fire’ if they don’t get their way is disrespectful to Law Enforcement,” he said via email.
Mercuri is CEO of Propheta Communications, which is located in New York City — a hot spot for the coronavirus, where citizens have firsthand experience in combating the spread of the disease.
“I think the protesters are fools who willfully ignore the larger picture — many claim that the virus is a hoax, and they’ll argue that no one in their circle have been affected — yet the reason they have not been affected is due to the quarantine measures mandated by the government. They’re protesting the very policy that is saving their lives and their families,” he said.
