WILL GOV. LEE TOUT TENNESSEE’S ‘FREEDOM’ TO BE SICKER?

On Monday evening, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee will deliver his fourth State of the State address to the General Assembly and Tennessee.

“I look forward to sharing my vision for Tennessee, including my budget and legislative priorities for the year,” said Lee in a news release announcing the event. “Tennessee shows the rest of the country that America hasn’t lost her way, and with the support of the General Assembly, we’ll continue to ensure Tennessee is a national leader for opportunity and freedom,” he added.

A national leader for freedom?

As in the freedom to be once again more exposed than most Americans to COVID-19 because our governor and lawmakers thumb their noses at common-sense disease prevention?

As in the governor and the Tennessee Department of Health’s freedom to seize any opportunity to be less-than-transparent about our still surging, not-plateauing COVID spike — simply by not reporting the numbers for days on end?

As in taking away the freedom of local mayors and health departments and school systems to manage the pandemic as is needed in their own communities and classrooms?

There is some good news: We are not the only Tennesseans concerned about this.

A group of nonpartisan physicians and pastors, ProtectMyCare, also beg to differ with Gov. Lee and state health Commissioner Lisa Piercey, who last week declared the virus “starting to plateau.”

In a zoom webinar on Wednesday, a ProtectMyCare member called on Lee “to address his failed COVID response in his state-of-the-state address.”

Katrina Green, an emergency medicine physician who practices in Nashville and Lawrenceburg, said in Tennessee, where our political leaders have allowed politics to take “an unmistakable negative role in our public health,” the spread of this virus is “higher than it has ever been” during this pandemic.

“Our positive test rate is almost twice as high as it has ever been. Yesterday, we learned that Tennessee now leads the country in death rates 121% higher than the previous week, which is now more than double the national average.”

Chattanooga’s Rev. Laura Becker, pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church, said the new state law that forbids school systems from making their own decisions about remote learning is wreaking havoc on families and businesses — as well as everyone’s health. It’s a problem that doesn’t need to be, and likely would not be if Lee and our lawmakers had not gotten in the way of common-sense masking requirements, she said.

Meanwhile, the Nashville Tennessean reports that lawmakers are using COVID school problems as a new way to further the GOP’s push for the state’s school voucher program, which allows families to use state dollars to send their children to private schools.

The new school voucher bill, SB1674, would allow families to tap into the program beginning Sept. 1, 2025, if their local district didn’t offer a full year (180 days) of in-person instruction during the previous three school years, starting with 2022-23. The bill cleared a key Senate panel last week.

Tucker McClendon, chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Education — and a Republican — told The Tennessean he doesn’t think school districts should be punished for pivoting temporarily to remote learning if they do so responsibly. He said Hamilton County Schools recently requested a remote learning waiver for 16 [later 17] of its 75 schools.

“Right now we are fighting a surge in COVID and it’s like nothing we’ve seen before,” McClendon said. “We are having staffing problems in schools with 200 or 300 positive cases and schools with 20 or 30 teachers out. We can’t have schools open if we don’t have teachers.”

If our school district’s COVID dashboard is any indication, even just a few days of isolated learning can make a dent in COVID’s spread. This week, the dashboard listed about half as many active cases and close contacts — 2,574 — among students and teachers as were listed the week before — 6,667.

As of Wednesday only three schools were continuing remote learning (the state-imposed limit is five days).

We suspect that all of this will fall on deaf ears in the state Capitol. Instead we feel sure Lee will beat his chest about how well managed Tennessee’s COVID response has been and how wide open — or in his view “free” — Tennesseans have remained.

As the physicians and pastors conducted their webinar Wednesday, the Tennessee Department of Health’s COVID dashboard listed 1.65 million Tennessee coronavirus cases — “16,226 new cases a day last week” proclaimed the page under a heading of “Weekly summary: 01/09/22 - 01/15/22.”

By the end of the day, the dashboard at long last was updated by one week — through 01/22/22. By that time 1.77 million cases of COVID had come to light. Now, the data showed “16,968 cases per day last week.”

Other striking numbers in that data referred to testing. According to the dashboard, the previous week saw 30,916 tests per day with 41.19% being positive. After the update, the positivity rate had risen to 43.1%. Health officials have told us that 5% or less is what we should be seeing if things are good. So much for plateauing. And bear in mind: Even now, all of those numbers are out of date and will remain so as you read this.

We have freedom, all right. Freedom to be misled. Freedom to be lied to. Freedom to be sicker.