‘We do feel like we are here by ourselves’
Shelby County officials summoned to neighboring region to offer advice on how to stem tide of high COVID-19 rate
BROWNSVILLE – In the basement of the city’s emergency operations center Monday, the mayor of the small city about 60 miles northeast of Memphis bowed his head.
Bill Rawls, Brownsville’s mayor, thanked God for the food and asked for strength along “the twists and turns of this rocky road.”
Those who knelt their heads alongside him had come from about 60 miles down the road — Shelby County.
They had come to lend expert advice, consult and listen to Rawls and Haywood County Mayor David Livingston as they continue to battle what is one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Tennessee.
Like Shelby County, and elsewhere in the state, Haywood County has seen the speed of the novel coronavirus’ spread subside somewhat in recent weeks, but its rate of new infections remains nearly triple that of Shelby County at 57.3 new cases per 100,000 residents daily.
On Monday, people walked into and out of Downtown Brownsville storefronts without masks, something that wouldn’t be allowed 60 miles to the southwest.
Rawls and Livingston remain at odds over whether to enact a mask mandate. However, over the course of an hourlong meeting, they asked Shelby County Health Director Alisa Haushalter, Chief Epidemiologist David Sweat and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris how to increase compliance with wearing masks and enforcing quarantines and for help communicating the severity of the pandemic to the public.
They also voiced much of what they voiced to The Commercial Appeal two weeks ago — they feel more help from Tennessee state government is needed. Rawls and Livingston are looking for detailed data on the age of those infected; where they were infected and the ability to quickly quarantine.
Livingston said the West Tennessee branch of the Tennessee Department of Health, which uses an outside firm to contact-trace, has contacted people three to four weeks after diagnosis to begin the contact tracing process. He also said he’s had county employees, who have been diagnosed with COVID-19, come back to work without quarantining.
Rawls noted that compliance and adoption of masks has been a struggle since the state of Tennessee recalled masks that had been treated with a pesticide.
Taken together, the two rural mayors’ comments to the leaders of the state’s largest county show the gulf in resources between the two places, which is what brought Haushalter, Sweat and Harris to Brownsville in the first place.
Rawls is a vocal member of the Memphis and Shelby County COVID-19 joint task-force, one of several mayors outside Shelby County who have joined the group.
Last week, Rawls asked Harris to bring help. And Harris did.
Beyond 1,000 masks that came up with Shelby County employees, the Shelby County officials mostly listened and offered a few solutions: Starting the contact tracing process early, mailing a letter and masks to all Haywood County residents and offering to help find Brownsville more assistance at the state level.
After the meeting, the Shelby County officials talked of how the pandemic is a regional, not local effort and did not criticize the state of Tennessee’s response.
Sweat said he would talk to his contacts at the state department of health and “Let them know what I heard: They’re feeling under-supported.”
Haushalter was just as diplomatic, noting that the pandemic had thrust public health infrastructure into the spotlight and during good times people “don’t know that we exist,” and, nationwide, there is a need to invest more in public health.
And Harris took the same measured approach to describe why Shelby County leadership came to Brownsville, noting that the virus knows no borders and what happens in West Tennessee affects Shelby County.
“We can’t bury our heads in the sand. We’ve always said since the beginning of this thing that data would drive action and we have seen some data to suggest that there is a burst of the wrong kind of activity in some of our rural areas in West Tennessee,” Harris said. “To the extent we can deepen our partnership with some of those communities, and more aggressively confront COVID, we’re gonna do it.”
On the other hand, Rawls, acknowledged how isolated he feels his community is during the pandemic. He said the regional bureau of the Tennessee Department of Health in Jackson is trying to serve a host of counties, not just his city of about 10,000.
“We do feel like we are here by ourselves,” he said.
Samuel Hardiman covers Memphis city government and politics for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by email at samuel.hardiman@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter at @samhardiman.