Gov. Ducey silences the scientists who told him what he didn’t want to hear (updated)

The Arizona Republic reports, State health department tells university COVID-19 modeling team to stop work, limits data access:

The Arizona Department of Health Services told a team of university experts working on COVID-19 modeling to “pause” its work, an email from a department leader shows.

The modeling team of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona was compiling the most robust public model in Arizona of COVID-19.

The email, from DHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey, came on Monday evening, after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing in the coming days.

ABC15 first reported on the email stopping the modelers’ work.

The state is instead relying on a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This model has not been released to the public [a “black box” which no one has seen].

The universities’ model had shown that reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that didn’t dramatically increase cases.

In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed.

The slowest curve, based on if the state reopens at the end of May, is “the only one that doesn’t put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve,” Lant said in April. That’s because transmission rates would be lowest at that time, he said.

“I can say, scientifically, no, it’s not safe to reopen unless you’re planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks, and we can help figure out what the appropriate amount of time is to stay open before we shut down,” he said.

Bailey wrote that health department leadership asked the team to “pause” all work on projections and modeling. The department would also be ending access to special data sets the modeling team had been using for their efforts, Bailey said.

“We realize that you have been, and continue to be working very hard on this effort, so we wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you won’t expend further time and effort needlessly,” Bailey wrote.

The team could be needed again in the late summer or early fall as the influenza season returns, he noted.

Bailey thanked the modeling team and said it “has produced very high-quality results, and these have been very helpful in guiding and informing the decision-making process.”

Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak said Wednesday that Christ, who is an infectious disease epidemiologist and public health expert, made the decision to pause the university modeling group “after reviewing all the data.”

“The modeling we are utilizing going forward is developed by FEMA and CDC and ensures our hospitals have capacity for any situation,” he said. “That is the case currently, but we aren’t taking any chances. All our decisions are guided by data as well as the recommendations of the CDC and public health officials. This will continue to be the case.”

In an interview on Tuesday, state health director Cara Christ said the modeling team wasn’t disbanded.

“We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit,” Christ said. “We are continuing to get updated FEMA models and we think that that is really representative of where we are. But we did tell them to please stay engaged, because we may need to bring them back in the fall to look at modeling during flu season.”

Christ said it should be “pretty easy to just pick up the phone and ask them to come back and help us out” later in the year if needed.

Christ said the department again asked FEMA Tuesday if its model could be released publicly, but the department hasn’t received a response yet.

* * *

In a blog post on the Arizona Public Health Association’s website, the organization’s director, Will Humble, wrote that the move was astonishing. He said the model was “very solid work being done by top talent in the field that is very useful for decision-making purposes.”

He noted that the email from Bailey didn’t cite any specific reason for the work to stop, aside from that it was at the request of the department’s leadership.

“Last night’s action to disband the Arizona COVID-19 Modeling Working Group begs the question whether the Modeling Working Group was producing results that were inconsistent with other messaging and decisions being made by the executive branch?” Humble wrote.

Will Humble was interviewed on the Rachel Maddow Show Wednesday night, and provided some insights.

Laurie Roberts in an opinion at The Arizona Republic writes today, Gov. Doug Ducey fires the scientists who warn he’s making a mistake by reopening Arizona:

For seven weeks, Gov. Doug Ducey has assured us that his decisions to reopen the state would be based not on politics or wishful thinking or even a wing and a prayer.

Data, he has said over and over again, would be in the drivers’ seat when it comes to steering Arizona through the coronavirus.

Now Ducey has tossed a significant piece of that data – public health models that predict we could be headed toward disaster – out the window.

Just hours after Ducey announced on Monday that he’s accelerating the reopening of parts of the state’s economy, state health officials told a team of university experts to stop working on models that project what will happen next.

The universities’ models had shown that the only way to avoid a dramatic spike in cases was to delay reopening the state until the end of May.

Instead, Ducey will rely on a federal model – one we aren’t allowed to even see.[a “black box” which no one has seen].

Where we are? Or where we wish we were?

Dr. Cara Christ, director of the state Department of Health Services, downplayed the decision.

“We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit,” she told The Arizona Republic’s Rachel Leingang. “We are continuing to get updated FEMA models and we think that that is really representative of where we are.”

Representative of where we are, Dr. Christ? Or where a certain governor would like us to be?

Just a week ago, Ducey extended his stay-at-home order until May 15, saying it was working and that available data didn’t support reopening the economy just yet.

“We’ve earned where we are today, and we are not going to undo this,” he said.

Five days later – with Republicans ready to revolt and a president itching to reopen the country – he began to undo this.

Ducey on Monday decreed that barbershops and hair salons could reopen on Friday and restaurants on May 11. The stay-at-home order is expected to end next week.

Ducey’s decision to end the quarantine next week made sense – to me, at least. At some point, you have to begin resuscitating the economy and considering the harm to people as a result of remaining closed. The goal in issuing the March 30 stay-at-home order was never to remain closeted until the virus had passed. It was to “flatten the curve,” to slow the spread of the virus to prevent hospitals from being overrun.

Christ said last week that goal had been met.

So Ducey is turning on the “green light,” citing a sudden “downward trajectory” on metrics tracking the spread of the virus.

GOP or scientists: Guess which side lost?

There is, however, a rather significant chance of rain on his parade.

The universities’ model – an Arizona-specific model created by 23 researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona – has projected that the only way to avoid a dramatic increase in coronavirus cases is to wait to reopen at the end of May.

“I can say, scientifically, no, it’s not safe to reopen unless you’re planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks,” Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, told The Republic on April 22.

Shortly after Ducey’s Monday announcement that he’s reopening parts of the economy, DHS notified Lant and his team that their services are no longer needed.

And not only that, but they’ll be cut off from access to state data they need to continue their modeling.

Better, apparently, not to know the dangers that may lie ahead.

One would think the governor would want to at least know what the university models show as he moves forward in the coming days and weeks, to at least factor their predictions into his decision making. But no.

“We realize that you have been, and continue to be working very hard on this effort, so we wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you won’t expend further time and effort needlessly,” S. Robert Bailey, DHS bureau chief of public health statistics, wrote in an email to the modeling team.

The email said the request came at the director of DHS’s senior leadership.

Which came at the request of … the governor?

Ducey’s an ambitious guy and he’s in a spot as he steers the state forward through the greatest threat to public health in a century. I don’t envy him. He’s got to consider both the threat in opening up the state and the threat in remaining closed.

He’s got a president up for re-election who desperately wants to reopen the country, a party that is leaning on him to reopen the state and a team of university scientists who are cautioning him to go slow.

Guess which one landed in the ditch this week?

Prepare yourselves for a second wave of infections and a surge of hospitalizations in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports, The C.D.C. prepared detailed guidelines for reopening. The White House rejected them, asking for revisions.

The Trump administration has rejected detailed guidelines from health experts to help schools, restaurants, churches and other establishments safely reopen, saying they are too prescriptive, according to several administration officials.

The White House has asked for revisions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose public health experts wrote the guidance, but some officials at the C.D.C. have privately expressed concern that the recommendations will never be posted publicly.

In a senior staff meeting at the White House last week, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, expressed concern that the guidelines were “overly prescriptive,” according to a person familiar with the discussion. Mr. Meadows’ concern, the official said, was that the guidelines were too uniform and regressive for places with minimal numbers of cases.

A copy of the guidance obtained by The New York Times includes sections dealing with child care programs, schools and day camps, communities of faith, employers with vulnerable workers, restaurants and bars, and mass transit administrators.

President Trump has been desperate to reopen the country quickly amid the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. The detailed C.D.C. guidance was seen by members of the White House coronavirus task force and other aides as a document that could slow down that effort, according to several people with knowledge of the deliberations inside the West Wing. The dissension on the guidelines was first reported by The Associated Press.

The guidance, which the C.D.C. first submitted to the White House in draft form two weeks ago, was meant to help states, local governments and businesses adopt measures that would help keep the virus from spreading once they reopened. But several federal agencies, including the Department of Labor and the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services, protested, saying it would be harmful to businesses and the economy and too prescriptive for houses of worship in particular, a federal official said.

More than half of states have begun to reopen their economies or plan to do so soon, but most fail to meet the criteria recommended by the Trump administration. [Including Arizona].

In more than half of the states that are easing restrictions, case counts are trending upward, positive test results are on the rise, or both, raising concerns among public health experts.

UPDATE 5/8/20: In reversal, Arizona announces ‘ongoing partnership’ with university coronavirus modeling experts: The abrupt turn comes after pressure from Democratic lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and local and national media attention.

Chris Minnick, a state Health Department spokesman, noted in a written statement that the department communicated on Thursday with the university modelers from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona.

“We’re pleased to announce an ongoing partnership to continue providing models,” Minnick said.

It doesn’t mean the governor’s office is going to listen to them or follow their advice.