Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Cases top 9 million as virus rages in U.S.
Stronger curbs meet resistance in hot spots
DES MOINES, Iowa — Even as a new surge of coronavirus infections sweeps the U.S., officials in many hardhit states are resisting taking stronger action to slow the spread, despite pleas from health experts. The virus continued its resurgence Friday, with total confirmed cases in the U.S. surpassing 9 million.
The number of new infections reported daily is on the rise in 47 states. They include Nebraska and South Dakota, where the number of new cases topped previous highs for each state.
The record increases in new cases have eclipsed the spikes that set off national alarms last spring and summer. During those outbreaks, first in the Northeast and then in Sun Belt states, many governors closed schools and businesses and restricted public gatherings.
Over the past two weeks, more than 76,000 new virus cases have been reported
daily in the U.S. on average, up from about 54,000 in mid-October, according to Johns Hopkins University. Deaths, which usually lag case numbers and hospitalizations, also are rising, from about 700 to more than 800 a day.
The virus has now killed more than 229,000 Americans.
Nevertheless, many officials have resisted calls to enact measures like statewide mask mandates or stricter curbs on the size of gatherings, casting the response to the virus as a matter of individual decision-making.
“At the end of the day, personal responsibility is the only way. People will either choose or not choose to social distance, or choose to wear a mask or not,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican. “What we can do is to remind them is that personal responsibility can protect them.”
Lee’s state is among those without a mask mandate despite a study released this week showing that areas of Tennessee where people are not required to wear them are seeing the most hospitalizations.
In Iowa, where a record 606 coronavirus patients were hospitalized Friday, one health expert said officials there had been too quick to reopen, along with several neighboring states.
“If we follow the course that the other Midwestern states like Wisconsin, North Dakota and South Dakota have, we’re going to have trouble keeping up,” said Dr. Ravi Vemuri, an infectiousdisease specialist at MercyOne hospitals.
POLITICS, RESISTANCE
The pandemic has put similar pressures on states with Democratic governors, but the politics have played out differently.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, has repeatedly tried to impose restrictions but been stymied by the Republican-controlled Legislature. She is considering calling lawmakers into a special session to impose a statewide mask mandate.
In Wisconsin, where the virus has raged since September, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers pleaded with residents this week to shelter in place to slow the spread. Evers issued a formal stay-athome order in March, but the state’s conservative Supreme Court struck it down in May. He was subsequently sued over a mask mandate and limits on gatherings in bars and restaurants.
Michelle Riipinen, a 38-year-old resident of Boise, Idaho, said state- mandated school closings, business shutdowns and mask requirements are “draconian measures” that do more harm than good. She said she chooses not to wear a mask.
“I believe in personal responsibility and that it is our responsibility as American citizens to choose if we want to wear it or not,” she said. “Our government shouldn’t be making that choice for us.”
In Utah, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert has ordered mask mandates and limited social gatherings to 10 people or fewer only in counties with the highest transmission rates, not the entire state. The latter measure includes exceptions for religious services and school events.
“This is not an easy thing to enforce. As you drive down the road, you talk about people getting tickets for speeding, but how many are actually speeding?” Herbert said when asked about his resistance to broader mandates.
Herbert said Friday that he was “disgusted” after someone shot at a state health department office. The incident was a day after anti- mask protesters gathered outside the home of Utah state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn, who recommended that the state reinstate restrictions to
avoid overwhelming hospitals.
“It’s taken a really big toll on my family and myself,” Dunn said. “I think it’s really unfortunate we live in a state where people feel that it is OK to harass civil servants.”
Herbert said protesters were within their rights to criticize him or other elected officials, but that they should leave state employees alone.
“I know we’re asking a lot of the people of Utah to be patient,” the governor said. “We know that their time is valuable. I would hope that they would put that in a constructive effort.”
LOUISIANA BATTLE
In Louisiana, Attorney General Jeff Landry is asking a judge to void Gov. John Bel Edwards’ coronavirus restrictions and declare them unenforceable, in an ongoing legal battle over a House Republican petition seeking to revoke the Democratic governor’s emergency order.
The Republican attorney general, representing GOP House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, filed court documents defending the legality of the petition that House Republicans filed trying to rescind Edwards’ statewide mask mandate, business restrictions and crowd size limits.
Edwards sued Schexnayder and lawmakers Monday, asking state district Judge William Morvant in Baton Rouge to declare that the governor’s emergency rules remain intact and enforceable — and that the petition process used by House Republicans to try to nullify them is unconstitutional.
Landry replied in his court filing released late Thursday, asking Morvant to force Edwards to terminate the public-health emergency as the petition required and rule that the coronavirus provisions are null and void.
“The governor not only rejected attempts by one of his co-equal branches of government to provide input and oversight, but he also ignored the checks and balances that underpin our government. He then filed a lawsuit in an attempt to gain extraordinary powers unfounded in law ” Landry said in a statement about his court filing.
Schexnayder and 64 other GOP lawmakers in the House invoked a never-before-used process in Louisiana law that allows a majority of legislators in either the House or Senate to sign a petition to jettison a governor’s emergency declaration.
But the Edwards administration continues to enforce the coronavirus rules, arguing the law the GOP legislators used violates the emergency authority the Louisiana Constitution grants a governor. In his lawsuit, the governor also says GOP lawmakers did not follow the law’s requirement that they consult with the state’s “public health authority” before issuing the petition.
LESSONS LEARNED IN NYC
Meanwhile, New York City hospitals and nursing homes are girding for a potential resurgence of coronavirus patients, drawing on lessons learned in the spring when the outbreak brought the nation’s largest city to its knees.
The new playbook derives from March and April, when testing and resources were scarce, emergency rooms overflowed, and funeral homes stacked corpses in refrigerated trailers.
Those insights make it far less likely that the city’s hospitals would collapse under a second wave of covid-19, health care leaders said.
Even without a vaccine, doctors are touting increasingly effective coronavirus treatments, three-month supplies of personal protective equipment and contingency staffing plans.
Similar preparations are underway at New York’s hard- hit nursing homes, which accounted for a large percentage of the state’s coronavirus deaths.
“We didn’t even have testing in February when there was so much transmission,” Dr. Mitchell Katz, head of the city’s public hospital system, said in an interview. “I can’t see how we’d ever have the same situation that we had in March and April, but we are preparing for that possibility anyway.”
Not only has critical care improved, Katz said, but coronavirus patients also are generally “not getting as intense as an exposure as they once did because of the wearing of masks.” New cases also are afflicting younger people, who are less likely than older patients to need hospitalization.
In Missouri, health department directors from across the state are walking away from their jobs after many of them were threatened and harassed over the actions they have taken to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
The St. Louis Post- Dispatch on Friday reported that at least a dozen county health department directors have vacated their jobs since March.
“It’s a common feeling among directors,” said Kelley Vollmar, chairperson of the Missouri Association of Local Public Health Agencies. “They are tired. They are trying to stand strong, and stand up for their staff, but we are mothers and children and sisters first, and those family relationships you have to make sure are kept safe. It has been challenging.”
Vollmar, who also is director of the Jefferson County Health Department, said staff members also are retiring early because of the stress and verbal attacks. Those jobs are now difficult to fill, she said.
REGENERON STUDY ON HOLD
In other developments:
■ A study testing an experimental antibody drug for covid-19 has been paused for the second time to investigate a possible safety issue in hospitalized patients. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Friday that independent monitors had recommended placing on hold enrollment of the most severely ill patients — those who need intense oxygen treatment or breathing machines — because of a potential safety problem and unfavorable balance of risks and benefits.
■ Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. pointed to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that he suggested show a declining coronavirus death rate. “I went through the CDC data, because I kept hearing about new infections, but I was like, ‘Why aren’t they talking about deaths?’ ” Trump Jr. said. “Oh, because the number is almost nothing. Because we’ve gotten control of this thing, we understand how it works. They have the therapeutics to be able to deal with this.”
■ An interim report released Friday by House Democrats blasts the response of President Donald Trump’s administration to the coronavirus pandemic, labeling it “among the worst failures of leadership in American history” and an “American fiasco.” But Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the ranking member on the subcommittee, dismissed the report. “Democrats’ latest partisan report issued just days before the election underscores how they’ve used the Select Subcommittee to attack President Trump and politicize the pandemic to the detriment of the American people,” he said. “Democrats’ scare tactics about schools reopening harm children’s learning and literacy. Their fearmongering on vaccine development and therapeutics undermines public health. And their support for more lockdowns, which are not supported by thousands of doctors and scientists, would destroy jobs and our economy.”
Information for this article was contributed by Adam Geller, David Pitt, Melinda Deslatte, Jim Mustian, Jennifer Peltz, Marilynn Marchione, Sophia Eppolito, Christine Fernando and Jonathan Mattise of The Associated Press; and by Timothy Bella and Lori Aratani of The Washington Post.