“Frankly, I think we’re in a bad spot right now where there’s a lot of pressure on our elected officials who ultimately make the decisions on the stay-at-home orders. I don’t think we’re giving them the level of information and material either to convince them to continue the dates that have been put forth, or to help them understand all of the risks that are involved.”

Several Missouri counties that include parts of Kansas City said last week that their stay-at-home orders would be extended to May 15. But this week, Clay County reversed course and announced it was ending its orders on May 3, which Cass County also decided to target. Jackson County has kept its stay-at-home order effective until May 15, as has the city itself.

Carson Ross, the mayor of Blue Springs, Mo., in Jackson County, worried about the conflicting dates.

“I am getting pushback from my constituents. All these different stay-at-home dates makes for confusion. I’m also afraid that after May 3 there will be a compliance issue. People will start to reject the May 15 date, and when that happens, I have to ask what will we accomplish? My guess, to answer my question, is absolutely nothing. We’ve got to get on the same page. That’s the problem. Sometimes, if it’s confusing to us as elected officials, it’s certainly confusing to our constituents.”

Carol Suter, the mayor of Gladstone, Mo., which is in Clay County, said the decision to reopen on May 3 was based not on politics but on recommendations from the county’s health department. That date aligned with states like Kansas and Colorado, she said, and most communities in the region were on board with May 3.

“There seems to be a lot of macro regional consensus around the third. What we’re starting to see is that lack of voluntarism. There’s no way to enforce this stuff, so you have to have the confidence of the population to voluntarily comply with these rules. As I drive around and as I’ve observed, even in my own neighborhoods, we’re starting to lose that.”

“We already know there are businesses in the region who are open who shouldn’t be. We can have great medical, very technical explanations, which we’ve just gotten, which are impossible to communicate to the population in general as justifications.”