Living outside lockdown: Barbers, beauty shops still open

ELGIN, S.C. (AP) — With South Carolina's first coronavirus hot spot just a short jaunt up the highway, Johellen Lee hadn't been out for anything but groceries for nearly a month.

“I looked like a hag,” she said.

So she headed to see her best friend and hair stylist Erica Nealy at her beauty salon in Elgin — one of the businesses that local and state governments across the South are arguing about whether to keep open as they seek to limit the spread of COVID-19.

“This job is essential to me. It's essential to buying my groceries and paying my bills,” said Nealy, wearing a disposable mask and gloves — one pink and one black — after spraying the salon chair with a bleach solution for her next customer Friday.

As much of the country has closed everything but food stores and medical facilities, many places down South remain open. Bars, sporting events and sit-down dining rooms are closed. But in many towns, employees of the local plant that closed for two weeks can still work out at the gym or get their nails done, hair trimmed, 15 minutes in the tanning bed and supplies for their backyard pool.

Southern governors have resisted “stay-at-home” orders that would close virtually all businesses. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said his people follow rules and are “courteous. They’re gentle. They’re smart.” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a Facebook question-and-answer session that “Mississippi’s never going to be China,” referring to the authoritarian country's near total shutdown of COVID-19 hot spots. And Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on a televised town hall that he has to “govern the whole state,” including places with no coronavirus cases.

In a country as large as the United States and even in an individual state, different responses can make sense with a virus like this one...