The other side of the COVID-19 story in Alaska

Both the governor and the mayor have said in press conferences that they need more testing and more assurances that opening the economy would not trigger a surge in the COVID-19 virus.

If only we had some way to test their concern about a surge in cases if we reopen the economy. Well, we have a way. Here it is.

Grocery stores, building supply stores, office supply stores, pharmacies and a few other essential stores in Alaska have been open for the duration of the shutdown.

These stores are a good way to test a large sample of people (the employees) who have daily contact with many members of the general public. Did they experience a higher-than-normal incidence of coronavirus cases? It also gives us an opportunity to measure whether the shoppers at these stores have created a surge in the virus. Stick with me. I’ll tell you how we’ll get to these conclusions.

I have encouraged the mayor and the Assembly to visit these stores and talk to managers and employees to determine if a higher-than-normal incidence of COVID-19 occurred in their employees.

Since I got no indication that anyone did that, I decided to do it myself. During the past three days, I visited 30 of the stores that have been open for the duration of the shutdown. I talked with multiple managers, assistant managers, customer engagement specialists and cashiers of these stores in Anchorage and Eagle River: Carr’s, Fred Meyer’s, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Office Depots, New Sagaya and Office Max.

My first impression was all the stores were taking the social distancing and other restrictions seriously. They’re cleaning cart handles and repeatedly cleaning all the stores during and after hours, and many give free hand sanitizers as customers enter. In summary, they were following the guidelines imposed on them.

What were the results of my survey? How many cases of the virus among their employees? Twenty-nine of the 30 stores proudly reported no cases of the virus with any of their employees. One store, the Dimond Costco, had four cases shortly after its two busiest days on record, just after the shutdown was announced last month. They reacted very quickly and are now the most restrictive store I visited. During their busiest time, the lines of customers — socially distanced — go down one full wall of the building. Only when 20 customers exit can 20 more enter. They have had no new cases since March 31.

The 30 stores I surveyed have an estimated total of around 7,000 employees, many of which have daily contact with hundreds of customers. Those employees are a generally good reflection of the general population of Anchorage, not a perfect sample, but a good and sufficiently large sample.

So 29 of the 30 stores had no cases among their employees in March or April, and none of the 30 has had a case in April. I have no doubt that the rest of Anchorage’s and Alaska’s companies can reopen with the same conscientiousness as these big stores, with the same results.

Since most of the print and television stories on the virus originate from New York, we get stories that are heavily influenced by what’s happening in the New York City metropolitan area. To get a better sense of where Alaska stands, the next time you go to any store that’s open for business, ask the folks who work there how many of their employees have caught the virus. The answers you get will go a long way toward assuaging your fears and giving you confidence that we can safely reopen sooner rather than later.

So, the employees of these 30 stores are safe. How about their customers?

I may be wrong, but I think more than 90% of Anchorage’s shoppers have probably visited those stores one or more times during this shutdown. I also don’t think that all the other retail stores in Anchorage combined can come close to those 30 stores’ customer counts. These stores have had a combined total of thousands of customer visits daily for the duration of the shutdown. Has there been a surge in cases of the virus? No. No surge here. In fact, Anchorage’s cases have mostly been going down steadily for two weeks.

According to the ADN COVID-19 report, all of Alaska had only 7 new cases Saturday and 7 recovered cases, 5 new cases Sunday, and 2 new cases Monday. Clearly no surge caused by the thousands of customers per day visiting these stores.

In fact, Alaska has the least number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. All states have done similar shutdowns. Why have we done so well?

If you look at Montana and Wyoming, the two other states with the fewest cases, the pattern is clear. They are the second- and third-least densely populated states in America; Alaska is the least-densely populated. Like Alaska, those two states also have just two or three centers of population and don’t rely heavily on mass transportation for commuting to and from work.

The three least-densely populated states in the U.S. have the least transmission of the virus. It’s logical and it happened.

When the mayor talks about reopening the economy, he relies on advice from his medical experts. He’s correct to do that. He should carefully consider their advice.

But their advice is only one side of the equation, one side of the story and one side of the suffering. The job of the mayor is different from the job of his medical advisers. The mayor needs to balance the suffering of the victims — two more Monday — with the suffering of the hundreds of hundreds of thousands of Alaskans who are shut in, shut down and shut out of work. They also are living with distress, despondency and frustration.

Many will not get their jobs back because their former employers in both general retail and food service will not reopen, and many who do reopen will fail.

Having owned an advertising agency for about 20 years, most of the time and effort we spent was trying to change people’s buying habits.

People’s habits have changed dramatically during this shutdown. Even more Alaskans are buying online. They must. They have no choice. These folks are not likely to go back to buying locally without a lot of costly effort by Alaskan retailers.

For the food service business, because all of Anchorage is eating at home -- either cooking or getting takeout -- reestablishing their restaurant habits will be a long and slow process. Even if all restrictions were lifted at the same time, it will still be a slow return to normalcy. It would not happen instantly.

My proposal: Because the start of many businesses will be slow in any case, we should open all businesses at the same time with the same restrictions of stores I surveyed.

For restaurants, start with allowing opening under the following conditions:

1. No more than half of the allowable occupancy at any time.

2. Still practice social distancing.

This would allow restaurants to begin restarting supply lines more gradually, and gradually start rehiring staff.

For general retail, start with similar conditions:

1. Maybe no more than half of their standard staff.

2. Still practice social distancing

For general office work, the same concept.

I appreciated the comment the governor made a few days ago when he said, “I hope and pray — and I think most Alaskans do — that this is the pandemic that wasn’t.”

I, for one, believe Alaskans, in time, will look back at this pandemic in Alaska and describe it just that way.

To both the governor and mayor, I sincerely hope these ideas help your decisions.

Rick Mystrom is a businessman and a former mayor of Anchorage (1994-2000). He lives in Anchorage.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.