For those who did not quite understand the crux of Governor Doug Ducey’s defensive Press Conference yesterday where he played Kevin Bacon from Animal House,
please recognize that the Coronavirus (COVID 19) has been on the rise in Arizona, hospitals and other health care facilities are close to reaching full capacity, and if the trend lines do not change, there can be a medical, safety, and hospitalization crisis around July 4, 2020.
Updated projections by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecast COVID 19 related deaths in Arizona rising to just under 2,000 on July 4 and a little under 5,000 by October 1, 2020.
The current death total stands at just under 1200.
According to reporting by Stephanie Innes, Rachel Leingang and Alison Steinbach of AZ Central, Will Humble, a former state health director and currently the Executive Director of the Arizona Public Health Association commented:
“I agree with him that we have hospital capacity today and probably we will next Friday. If we don’t change course and put in some simple interventions now, it might not be that way on July 4.”
According to AZ Central, Humble further recommended that:
“…interventions such as mandatory masks in indoor places, enforcing sanctions against businesses for not following CDC guidelines, and giving cities more control to take action against the epidemic will go a long way in preventing hospitals from exceeding capacity in a few weeks.”
Mayor Coral Evans of Flagstaff for one feels Governor Ducey erred when he reopened and took away the ability for local cities and towns to intervene when COVID 19 spikes occurred, commenting:
“…Mayors and local governments should have the ability to put in place policies to protect public health and the governor usurped that.”
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego was blunter and more somber than Mr. Ducey in a Center for American Progress conversation with other American Mayors on the subject of COVID 19. She said (about 13 minutes into the video (click here to access🙂
“We are not recovering from COVID 19. We have hit so many of the records we don’t want to be hitting on COVID 19 from my perspective. We opened too much, too early and so our hospitals are really struggling. The state just activated the emergency plan for hospitals. This week, we are setting all sorts of records that are of the type you do not want to have….Research at Arizona State University has been looking at the trend and they do not believe it is the result of the protests….It (the increase in COVID 19 cases) correlates with the lifting of the stay at home order and some challenges we are having with our long term care facilities….I come to you as a Mayor with a health care system that is stressed right now and I am very worried about the virus and our community.”
“According to experts, increased hospitalizations and COVID-19 cases in #AZ are the result of the rush to re-open our state without adequate precautions in place.”
“I urge Governor Doug Ducey to take decisive action to #SlowTheSpread and keep our communities safe.”
Matt Grodsky, the Communications Spokesperson of the Arizona Democratic Party issued a statement which read:
“The battle against COVID-19 is far from over. Yet the President has apparently become bored with combating this pandemic and Arizona’s Governor appears tone-deaf to the ongoing crisis in our state. A month after the Governor lifted his stay at home order, there are nearly 33,000 cases of COVID-19 in Arizona with no end in sight. Arizonans deserve leaders that will put the public’s health and safety above all else.”
Arizona needs the Doug Ducey who followed the science and medical experts in the beginning stages of this COVID 19 Emergency.
It needs the Governor who responded to some of his patrons getting vandalized at Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall by imposing a week-long curfew to actually react and treat this Coronavirus upward trend with the same degree of seriousness he exhibited when his friends were looted.
With the protests and continued unenforcement of social distancing in some public gatherings going on, the odds are that the upward trend may continue to climb (although a lot of the people marching have the good sense to wear masks.)
The Governor and his team need to be ready to meet the safety and medical needs that will present themselves in the next two weeks and maybe beyond.
For greater detail on Governor Ducey and COVID 19, please read Michael Bryan’s columns on the subject by clicking here.Â
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