El Paso-Juárez-Southern Doña Ana County and Coronavirus  Please!

 Take the Lead from Governor Cuomo in New York and Start Making Common Cause Against Coronavirus:  How About a Joint Announcement by Officials Laying Out What steps the three Sub-regions Have Made in Common to Fight Coronavirus?

Opinion:

Appearing to show leadership, Mayor Dee Margo of El Paso a few days ago asserted the coronavirus crisis needs to be tackled from a regional level.  NorteDigital reported today (click here) that Margo met with Juárez Mayor Cabada on Thursday and told him Juárez should implement the same measures as El Paso to fight the pandemic and that Mexico was not taking the same precautionary steps as the US.  Cabada, in turn, asserted that he and Margo had agreed to view the pandemic from a regional perspective and had agreed to have officials meet to coordinate efforts on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

 I cannot vouch for NorteDigital's sketchy reporting of these events.  The report might or might not have conveyed what really went on.  Sensitive discussions between leaders should be kept confidential. But two major cities along the busiest border in the world face an unprecedented crisis which threatens the health and economic well-being of the 2 million-plus persons living here.  Citizens here, as everywhere else, are highly concerned.  Given the failure of the twenty-year-old US-Mexico Border Health Commission to lay out a framework and infrastructure for a common region-wide set of protocols in case of an epidemic, it falls on local officials to do the best they can under the circumstances.

How about organizing a virtual meeting--even if only through Skype--among the mayors of El Paso, Juarez, Las Cruces, Sunland Park, and the two Anthonys to discuss next steps to be taken in common throughout the region?  How about having health officials in all of these municipalities being present to update what they are doing and what their local needs might be?  This is precisely what Governor Cuomo and the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut have done practically overnight:  exchanging information, explaining critical needs, coordinating common protocols.  How about the news media keeping these discussion confidential until agreements have actually been reached and announced simultaneously for us, the citizens, to know?  We can't control Washington or Mexico City, but we know our region and we can control our response to the crisis for better or worse.  Is any public official in the region--on either side--going to step up to the plate and make something good for all of us happen?