Many park rangers are still exposed to the public during coronavirus

UPDATE: March 17, 2020, 3:48 p.m. EDT: The National Park Service announced Tuesday that it is now "modifying operations." Many visitor centers are closing, which will keep Park Service employees from exposure to crowds.

"The National Park Service (NPS) is taking extraordinary steps to implement the latest guidance from the White House, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and local and state authorities to promote social distancing."

California closed down its 4,765 bars and the NBA suspended its season. The CDC recommends canceling all events with 50 or more people. But many heavily-trafficked areas in national parks, like visitor centers, are still welcoming people.

So park rangers and other employees are inevitably exposed to the potential of coronavirus infection — during a time when top U.S. epidemiologists say it's unknown how many Americans are infected, but that the number is certainly "many times" higher than reported infections.

Only on Sunday did the National Park Service make its first closures of crowded places, shutting down the likes of tourist-packed Alcatraz Island and Muir Woods National Monument. Closure of the Statue of Liberty followed Monday morning. However, most visitor centers are operating normally, as of March 16.

The agency's delay in closing high-risk areas in parks has largely been caused by sluggish decision-making in the upper tiers of the Department of Interior (which oversees the National Park Service), according to a Park Service employee with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak with the media.

The chiefs of national park sites — superintendents who oversee each location — have been eager to make significant closures in places where employees regularly make contact with lots of visitors. But the Interior Department — or potentially people higher in the Trump administration — had been unwilling to announce closures, the park employee said.

"[Superintendents]have been frustrated that they have not been able to protect their employees further," the park employee told Mashable. "They’re being told they have to go through the process."

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This doesn't sit well with park rangers on the front lines — like those who staff visitor centers and collect entrance fees. "There’s growing unrest, particularly among the front ranks," the employee said.

In many cases, it wouldn't be prudent to close the entirety of a park, said Jon Jarvis, the former director of the National Park Service — as many parks provide the invaluable open spaces we need during coronavirus isolation and this bizarre period of working from home en masse. But it is necessary to close the obviously problematic places, like indoor areas.

"Why would we not shut down places where the public congregates?" asked Jarvis.

"If I was director, I would give superintendents the signal that they have the authority to close areas where the public gathers," Jarvis, who retired from his post as director in January 2017, added. (The Park Service has been without a Senate-confirmed director for three years).

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The Trump administration — led by a president who shuttered the White House pandemic office and called the spread of coronavirus the Democrats' "new hoax" — likely hopes to quell any damaging news from the mounting pandemic. There are few agencies as public-facing as the Park Service.

"Clearly, this administration doesn’t like bad news," said Jarvis, noting how it tried to keep national parks open during the infamous 2019 shutdown — resulting in significant damage.

To Susan Schurman, a distinguished professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, the federal government's slow, deficient efforts to remove park employees from harm's way is unacceptable.

"It's just extraordinary, in the worst sense of the word," Schurman said.

"I would think the safety and health of your employees and the visiting public would be paramount," she added.

Mark Cameron, an immunologist who helped contain the deadly SARS outbreak in 2003, emphasized that social distancing is critical because infected people may not have symptoms for some five days, and around 80 percent of those infected have milder symptoms, or never notice any symptoms.

"That person is flying, walking, and interacting," said Cameron.

"It takes an unprecedented public health response to put a lid on this one," Cameron emphasized, referencing the need for everyone to social distance. Social distancing means staying at least three feet awayfrom people, according to the World Health Organization, or six feet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Generally, this means avoiding gatherings and crowds. 

That's impossible for many park rangers in visitor centers or busy parts of parks. Keeping these places open also facilitates the public spread of the infection, which easily passes between people through respiratory droplets.

Society is going to need all the help it can get to limit the spread of coronavirus, which results in the respiratory disease COVID-19, something 10times more lethalthan the flu. "It’s certainly going to get worse before it gets better," Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Good Morning America.

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But Park Service superintendents, who normally have great sway over their parks, have been hamstrung by superiors. This is a management failure, according to Schurman, a labor management expert.

"When you're faced with a crisis, you need to push operational decisions down to the local level where the problems occur," she said.

"It's health officials in the Park Service that should be calling the shots," Schurman emphasized, referring to experts in the Park Service’s Office of Public Health.

The federal government has now closed down a few extremely high-risk areas like Alcatraz and Liberty Island, weeks after the coronavirus spread around the nation and after the World Health Organization labeled the bug a pandemic. But it's unclear if more visitor centers and similar areas will be shut down as the virus spreads around the country. (The U.S. has over 4,000 confirmed cases, as of March 16.)

The National Park Service did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Many park superintendents are eager to protect their employees but are stymied by higher-ups, perhaps unwilling to concede the federal government's failure to contain the coronavirus.

"There is a lack of leadership," said Jarvis, the Park Service's former leader.