Why these 8 Republican governors are holding out on statewide stay-at-home orders

CNN — Just eight US governors have decided against issuing statewide directives urging their residents to stay at home as the outbreak of the coronavirus escalates and spreads across the country, the last holdouts in the nation. In doing so, they’ve collectively ignored the stay-at-home pleas of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who said in a CNN interview: “If you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that.” Absent a nationwide order, which President Donald Trump once again on Saturday declined to give, a patchwork of rules has emerged in all corners of the country that offer conflicting guidance for how citizens should protect themselves and their families from coronavirus. Kristi Noem told reporters, “The people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety.” She also pointed to the state and national constitutions that “prevent us from taking draconian measures much like the Chinese government has done.” In state after state, the Republican governors have all used the argument of government intrusion as one of the leading reasons for not following the lead of a majority of states in issuing stricter guidelines that could help sound the alarm about the serious nature of the threat. She acknowledged Friday that refusing to impose a shelter-in-place order had become a “divisive issue.” She pushed back on Fauci’s remark that questioned why all states have not issued stay-at-home orders. But he has stopped short of issuing a statewide order, saying: “We are not ordering people to stay at home, but from the very beginning we’ve been telling people to stay home.” In Utah, Gov.