With the spread of COVID-19, no corner of our daily lives or institutions has gone untouched. At The Point Being podcast, we believe it’s our job to give voice to not just our own opinions, but the knowledge of the Arizona Daily Star’s dedicated reporters.
Our latest episode featured Arizona Daily Star local government reporter and jack-of-all-trades Justin Sayers. He broke down the timeline of the city of Tucson’s and Mayor Regina Romero’s steps to effectively close most private business, his recent story on Chinese restaurants and the unique struggles they face and why, exactly, all the toilet paper is gone.
You can listen to this and other episodes in their entirety on our website, or at Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Question: Can you walk through the timeline of how we got to the point in the city where most nonessential services are closed?
Justin Sayers: March 17 was when they limited restaurants to drive-thru and takeout only, that was also the day they suspended Tucson Water shut-offs, stopped evictions on city-owned public housing and suspended all in-person meetings. After that was when the pressure on (Arizona Gov. Doug) Ducey kind of ramped up.
Then on March 24, (Tucson Mayor) Regina Romero announced that she was ordering the shutdown of all nonessential services and recommending that hair salons, nail salons and other businesses like that should be shut down.
And then Ducey finally issued his stay-at-home order on March 30. So, Tucson was pretty far ahead of the curve on its limitations as compared to the state.
Q: Did the actions of Mayor Romero and other mayors around the state aimed at “getting ahead” of COVID-19 force Gov. Ducey to ultimately act?
Justin Sayers: I genuinely don’t know. A lot was working toward Ducey making these actions. By the time that Arizona issued its stay-at-home order, there were nearly 20 states that had already done it. A lot of those states were Republican-led, had Republican governors, including Ohio and North Carolina as well.
I don’t know if it was the pressure from [Tucson]. It was the pressure from everywhere. My sense from the public is that the majority was actually in favor of something like this. A lot of the health departments across the country, the CDC, they were announcing their limitations.
Q: Many Chinese and Asian Americans have encountered discrimination and harassment. Your recent story on two Chinese restaurants in Tucson tells a slightly different story:
Justin Sayers: I heard from a Chinese American business owner who told me that he’d heard from other Chinese American restaurant owners that they’d gotten voicemails of people telling them “Why did you bring this (the virus) here?”
They’d heard comments. So I reached out to the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center president, and he told me “I haven’t heard anything specific.” I asked TPD. They said, they had not heard of a single incident.
And then I spoke to two Chinese restaurant owners. And they both said it’s actually been the opposite. They said we’ve heard a lot of support. So that was, you know, pretty newsworthy in everyone looking for news right now. It kind of qualifies that this is good news. It kind of speaks a lot of the Tucson community in general.
Q: You also looked into why there continues to be a shortage of toilet paper and other goods at grocery stores. What’s the reason for the shortage?
Justin Sayers: One word: demand.
I spoke with a couple supply chain management professors in the state, and both of them said there are no issues with the supply chain as of now. That could become a problem if Mexico and Canada prevent workers from coming across the border and limit trade, that could affect the supply chain.
But right now there’s no shortage on supply. It’s just an increase in demand. And they fully expect this problem to abate at some point. Because people are buying months’ worth of food and months’ worth of toilet paper. But now they’ll need to use that much food and toilet paper.
So the demand is increasing, but consumption is staying the same.
Their theory is that these problems are going to get better with time and the grocery stores, they’re increasing their stocking, limiting how many of these items you can buy.
But even they can’t keep up with a bull rush of people at 9 a.m. to take all the toilet paper that they have on stock for the day. So that’s kind of the issue.
