Gov. Tate Reeves defends handling of the COVID-19 crisis; talks Medicaid expansion, Trump and his controversial Spain trip

Gov. Tate Reeves sat down with Mississippi Today on Friday, March 27, for a podcast interview about his response to the coronavirus outbreak.

In the 45-minute interview, Reeves answered questions about decisions he's made as the virus has spread in Mississippi, how prepared the state of Mississippi is for a “worst case scenario,” how he believes politics has played into criticism he's received and whether the health care crisis has changed his perspective on Medicaid expansion.

Below is a complete transcript of the interview.

Gov. Tate Reeves: Well it's been challenging. There's no question about that. This is a global pandemic, the likes of which we haven't seen in this country since over 100 years ago. There's virtually no one alive in America who saw what we went through in the late teens last century. It's certainly been a challenge. It has been ironic because when Hurricane Katrina hit, obviously we were housed at that time not far from here, a few blocks towards the Mississippi State Capitol. We lost power. While we had to do a number of things to make sure our machines were functioning properly since we were in charge of the state's finances at the time, we had to take extreme measures to make sure we were paying our debt services and things such as that.

I did spend a good bit of time in this conference room working with Gov. (Haley) Barbour's staff, preparing them and working with them on the special session that was ultimately called to deal with Hurricane Katrina. You've got to remember when Katrina hit, it was not only the largest natural disaster in American history, it was five times larger than what had previously been the largest natural disaster in American history, at least in terms of total dollar amount of losses. We've had others since then that have surpassed that, but it was something that we often said you can't plan for something that's five times larger than anything that's happened. It's beyond your ability to comprehend or imagine. This particular event is very similar to that in that it's very complicated. Fortunately, (State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs) and his team at the State Department of Health, our Emergency Management Agency personnel, our state of Mississippi, we had a pandemic plan in place. It was 440 pages long, but it was a pandemic plan that contemplated many of these things. We've tried to utilize that plan. Quite frankly, as you look at the measures that we have taken to date, we've actually been much more aggressive than that plan ever contemplated. But we also know that we're not out of the woods yet. We've got more work to do, and the number of cases are probably going to rise, and things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

Tate Reeves: I think as you look back at history, Mississippi didn't get our first case until 15 days ago. I think it's fair to say that most of us did not anticipate that we would be moving this quickly, although we have about 500 cases now. There are approximately 100,000 cases in the U.S. today. So Mississippi currently has about 1 percent of the American population, and about one-half of 1 percent of the total cases. That's not necessarily going to continue. What we are seeing is the cycle is such that it is different in various states, and it's different in various countries. So I think and hope and pray that New York is a little further advanced in their cycle, and other states, particularly more rural areas, a little bit less so.

But I'll also tell you that I think the corrective measures that we started to take were much earlier, overall, in Mississippi's cycle than many other states took, relative to when they started taking these measures in their cycle. So again, I'm not sure that anybody today knows how bad it can and will get in Mississippi. We all have models. We're looking at the data and looking at the worst case scenario and trying to plan for that. That's what I spent my entire day doing today. But also understanding that we always approach these things trying to prepare for the worst, praying for the best and expect somewhere in between. That's most likely where we'll end up.

Tate Reeves: We actually had our first conversation about the potential pandemic sometime in February. I don't remember the exact date. We also signed an order and activated our task force with Dr. Dobbs as the leader before I left to go to Europe. It was a family trip. With 2019 having been an election year, some of us in my family — a lot of us in my family — worked pretty hard throughout last year and didn't do any family trips or vacations. We really didn't get to spend a whole lot of time together. My daughter is an up-and-coming soccer player. She made a national team. She had an opportunity to travel with some friends to Europe to play soccer, and we wanted to afford her that opportunity. When we left, I will tell you that in the country of Spain, there were less than 500 cases in Spain at the time.

While we were there, obviously, was about the time (cases in) Italy blew up, and that was also about the time that we started seeing some additional cases in the country of Spain, which since that time has grown considerably. I got a call from my staff and Dr. Dobbs, and approximately 24 hours later, I was on a plane back to the United States after out first case was confirmed. We worked hard to get back and have literally made the right decision to self-isolate here on the grounds of the Governor's Mansion. I was talking to the mayor of the city of Jackson the other night and I said, “Look, I never really ever envisioned spending 14 straight days in one square block of downtown Jackson.” Now if you're going to spend 14 days on any square block of downtown Jackson, this is probably the one to do it. But no doubt that we really chose to self-isolate for a number of reasons. One, it's the right thing to do, but also we wanted to utilize that to express to people in Mississippi the seriousness of what's coming. And obviously that was approximately 15 days ago now, a little over 14, since we returned home, and we've seen just in the last five or six days an increase in the number of daily cases. And, by the way, it's my view that when you start comparing numbers from state to state, you have to have knowledge of how many tests various states are running.

I would argue at this point that the number of positive cases, particularly at the numbers we're talking now, are only a function of how many tests have been done. I'll give you an example: We've looked at the ways in which many countries have responded to this. South Korea is looked at as a model, and one of the reasons they're looked at as a model is because of the numbers of tests that they did and their very quick action in doing so. Dr. Dobbs tells me that they tested, in a fairly short order, approximately 5,200 South Koreans per million residents. Mississippi, at this point, has tested almost 5,000 people through the state lab, and we think about that many through private labs, which puts us about two-thirds of the way toward that 5,200 per million, which gives us a pretty good idea of where we are. There was a study that Dr. Dobbs and I were talking about earlier today that showed Mississippi had actually performed somewhere in the neighborhood of 30th or 31st-most tests per capita of any state in the nation. But, if you actually get down and look at the numbers, he believes that they're only counting a third of the actual tests we've completed. And so again, all of that is to say it doesn't matter if Alabama has 560 and we have 540, or if they have 540 and we have 560, my only point is simply the number of positive tests at this point in the cycle is largely a function of how many tests you've actually administered.

Tate Reeves: What I would tell you is we are as equipped to handle the worst-case scenario than any other state in the nation. The answer to that is depending on the what the worst-case scenario is, it could be very difficult. If you see some of the models out there, we could find ourselves in a very difficult spot. One of the things we were looking at today because we're really in the planning phase for this worst-case scenario is the number of beds, for instance, at the (United States Air Force Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center), as well as the number of beds that might be available to us at Camp Shelby around Hattiesburg. When you think about that, the first thing that comes to mind is that we're trying to set up temporary hospitals. Well maybe that's a possibility. But what we're really looking at is ways in which to reduce and limit the stress on our existing hospitals.

We have a significant number of beds throughout the state of Mississippi that are not currently being utilized for a number of reasons. One may be that you have a hospital system that had an old facility, and they felt that to compete they had to build a nice, new, shiny facility and did so. That doesn't mean they sold their old facility, so there's rooms available. We're beginning to see (hospital) systems across the state think about, “Should we reopen those?” What we were looking at today, we could certainly think about using those as hospitals, but there's a couple other things that we were talking about and planning about and thinking