Mounting costs and falling counts
LONG BEFORE New Mexico or Wyoming identified any cases of COVID-19, even before residents began hoarding eggs and sacks of flour, state budgets were feeling the impact of the disease.
In mid-January, when the epidemic was still mostly confined to China, officials there put huge cities on lockdown in order to stem the spread. Hundreds of flights into and out of the nation were canceled, and urban streets stood empty of cars. China’s
