Why does Ducey even talk about COVID-19?

A day after President Donald Trump came to Arizona and proclaimed “we are rounding the turn” on COVID-19, Gov. Doug Ducey on Thursday acknowledged that … we aren’t.

In fact, Ducey, in his first COVID-19 press briefing in more than a month, said he expects the novel coronavirus to get worse in Arizona, as it has across the nation, in coming weeks.

“We know there is a storm ahead of us,” Ducey said.

Then he defended the state Department of Health Services’ quiet loosening of its guidelines for when schools should return to virtual learning, saying it was done at the request of school leaders (which is news to school leaders) and it was done transparently (which is news to reporters, including the ones at ABC15 who spotted the change on DHS’s website this week).

Then he defended his appearances at multiple Trump rallies where thousands of people, many of them unmasked, stand shoulder to shoulder to cheer the president.

“People have rights under the Constitution,” he said. “They will be protected.”

Here’s what Ducey didn’t do: Anything really.

With COVID-19 spreading at its fastest rate since June and Banner Health saying we could be headed toward another June and July if current trends continue …

● Ducey didn’t impose a requirement that people wear masks, even though some cities are beginning to repeal their masks ordinances.

● He didn’t relax state liquor requirements to make it easier for restaurants to serve more people outside in parking lots or in streets, where appropriate.

● He didn’t offer any help to the state’s dying hospitality industry as we enter what should be Arizona’s high season.

● Or to the hundreds of thousands unemployed Arizonans who now must get by on the pittance the state offers in unemployment pay. (“It’s on Congress,” Ducey said in early September, never mind that Congress has done nothing and it is now late October.)

Meanwhile, Ducey is sitting on a $1 billion rainy-day fund and about $400 million of CARES Act funding.

The governor of the state does, however, recommend that you continue washing your hands.