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Arkansans must commit to tame covid-19’s spread

The governor came to Springdale last week for a “community meeting” to “focus attention and develop local action plans to fight the current surge of covid-19 in Arkansas.”

The meeting looked every bit as much a search for answers by a governor who seems to have exhausted his armory of responses to the pandemic’s spread within the Natural State.

It’s not that there aren’t additional options. What’s reasonable tends to depend on how one views government’s authority or ability to dictate behaviors and how successful such measures can be.

In an address to the state Thursday night, Gov. Asa Hutchinson acknowledged calls from some Arkansans to close businesses and advance a shelter-in-place order that would attempt to limit residents’ interactions with others.

As the new wave of post-Thanksgiving covid-19 cases wash over the state like a storm surge, Hutchinson is getting plenty of pressure. People not responsible for governing from a statewide perspective find it easy to declare “more” must be done.

We’ve appreciated Hutchinson’s even-handed approach through the pandemic’s first eight months, one that recognizes there is more than one way for people’s lives to be damaged or destroyed. Covid-19 is a serious one, but economic hardship can have as daunting an impact for some as illness.

Hutchinson’s series of community meetings seemed to some a sign he was preparing a big move in his Thursday address to the state on prime-time television. Those folks were disappointed.

“That speech would have been a C+ in March or April. Tonight, in December, it was an F,” tweeted Jared Henderson, the Democratic challenger Hutchinson bested by 33 points in the last gubernatorial election.

We disagree with Henderson’s assessment, and can’t help but observe that about the same percentage of Arkansans who voted for Donald Trump last month gave Hutchinson a victory in the 2018 gubernatorial race. That might suggest a majority of the state’s residents may not be willing to swallow heavy-handed dictates of the governor’s office. Arkansans who forget that might ought to spend some time in the deer woods, in the duck blinds or down some dirt roads.

Anyone who governs in Arkansas had better have some grasp of the environment in which they’re governing. Just because Andrew Cuomo can impose some stern measure doesn’t mean Arkansas’ governor can.

And speaking of Cuomo, he announced on Friday that 74% of his state’s covid-19 cases have been spread at households gatherings. He also noted that when a state shutters businesses, it will drive people where? To their homes.

“Don’t waste time on areas that are not generators” of significant numbers of cases, Cuomo advised. Then, almost inexplicably, he shut down indoor dining in restaurants, which are linked to 1.43% of the cases between September and November.

Is it wise to create further job losses and economic uncertainty for business owners to have a minuscule effect on case numbers? Shutting down restaurants is certainly “doing something.” It’s putting employees out of work, denying them an income and in some cases threatening the very survivability of the businesses so many rely on.

So, do we just give up? Not at all, but Hutchinson appears to grasp the reality of where Arkansas’ cases are coming from — household or family gatherings, exacerbated by the holiday season that draws Arkansans together in environments perfect for the spread of the virus. Christmas and New Year’s festivities, if treated as usual, promise a new wave of covid-19 cases.

And that’s why Hutchinson’s speech Thursday night wasn’t about unenforceable mandates or about shutting down gyms, restaurants or other locations. Instead, he looked the people of Arkansas in the eye and implored them to shed whatever objections to responsible behavior they’ve conjured up.

Before Thursday’s speech, state Sen. Greg Leding of Fayetteville commented on Twitter: “Judging from my inbox— ‘END GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON’S DICTATORSHIP’— and my timelines —‘this governor is evil for not doing enough’ — the one thing we can be pretty sure of is that he’ll make few people happy tonight.”

And he didn’t. But what Hutchinson did was call on Arkansans sense of civic and family duty, to take responsibility for the health of those they love. To adopt the now well-known measures to slow the spread. To practice self-discipline.

“Let me assure you that to those of the Christian faith, I have confidence Christ will understand a little deviation from the norm this year,” Hutchinson told the state. “And for our Jewish community or other faiths, the greatest joy would be the gift of safety to all the family.”

To those who demonstrated in Springdale and other cities, suggesting masks don’t do anything, Hutchinson said, “My response is that I have to be guided by the science and medical experts, who say the mask is our principle defense and the best way to keep businesses open.

“This is not the time to dismiss the advice of scientists and public health professionals.”

Hutchinson made the plea for personal action from every Arkansan because he knows that’s the most likely way this state will defeat the virus. Changed attitudes will be foremost in limiting the spread until vaccines can rein in the threat.

The governor isn’t all-powerful. His authority has its limits. That’s why after eight months, he’s asked the state Legislature to stand behind the public emergency declaration that empowers the steps he’s taken and let it continue into 2021.

We know the petri dish in which this virus thrives isn’t the schools; it isn’t the restaurants, bars and stores that keep people employed. It’s our family and social gatherings, where protective measures are in many cases either ignored or poorly executed.

So yes, we need a mandate, but not from a governor. The mandate must come from individual Arkansan devoted to do their best to protect their loved ones. Arkansans willing to draw down on an intruder — and many are, as unpleasant as it may be — need to recognize there’s a more likely intruder ready to harm their families right now. The medical experts say the mask is our best weapon to fend it off.

Now is not the time to fail your families.

Now, a quick return to those “community” meetings, which are not to be confused with public meetings. The governor touted his tour of Arkansas — starting with Benton, Jonesboro and Springdale last week — almost to the effect that he was a political Frasier Crane, the fictional TV character who began each call to his radio show with “I’m listening.” Sticking with that analogy, Hutchinson also relied on a sort of call screener.

The meetings, apparently designed to take the pulse of Arkansas, excluded anyone without an invitation. There’s certainly no law against that, but clearly the governor’s purpose, in part, was to earn some political support through reaching out, for gathering ideas from people outside his normal set of advisers.

He might have been seeking feedback, but he didn’t want to open himself up to public comment or even public scrutiny of the comments he received from the chosen few. It was safe, but we can’t blame anyone for questioning whether they can really be called “community” meetings.

When covid-19 reared its foul head nearly a year ago, I was like many Americans who saw the virus more as a severe cold or a case of seasonal flu, rather than a killer.

Also like others, I initially didn’t fully embrace wearing a mask, even at times scoffing that I’d had the flu over my lifetime and recovered just fine after a miserable week.

“What’s the big deal?” I recall telling a friend one afternoon as we zipped around the Harrison Country Club without masks. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the severity of this has been amplified mostly to tighten controls over freedom-loving citizens.”

Others reading today might have felt similarly during those early months. Only the weak feel the need to wear masks, and I’m not weak, nosiree bob, I thought. Back then, some accounts put the fatality rate from this novel coronavirus at close to that of the flu.

Now fast-forward to the end of 2020. Man, was I ever ignorant.

As of last week here in Harrison, I’ve had a dozen or more friends test positive, and two of them died shortly after being hospitalized. Their days were numbered as soon as they entered the hospital door.

In our neighborhood alone, the neighbor to our right contracted covid while those living on our left side were exposed after two co-workers at her workplace tested positive.

Two corporate leaders I know tested positive, along with a golfing buddy who began coughing uncontrollably less than a week ago. A 73-year-old friend who worked at the Harrison Country Club Pro Shop died within three days of being diagnosed and admitted to the local regional medical center.

Suddenly, valued readers, it seems no one is dismissing this killer as some kind of temporary inconvenience. Masks have become the norm, as has hand-washing and maintaining a sixfoot distance from others. And now, a frightening realization has struck.

The thought barged into my consciousness about 4:30 the other morning as I realized just how precarious our personal situation has become. And I fault myself for not recognizing it much sooner.

At 74, I have type 2 diabetes and A-fib, along with a few extra unwanted pounds, which puts me in the highrisk category for possibly dying from a covid infection. But more concerning to me is that Jeanetta, while appearing much younger than her 71 years, has preexisting lung ailments that restrict her breathing capacity on good days. She occasionally finds herself taking a deep gasp to fill her lungs. Her four grown children have teased her for years over the high-pitched sound she makes at those times.

Today, this situation is no laughing matter for anyone in the family, especially where I’m concerned.

I now realize all it may take to claim her life in short order is simply contracting the lung-clogging disease and entering the hospital door.

And that becomes a realistic possibility with this scourge swirling ever closer. All it would take is a single unknowing contact and resulting infection to set that possibility into motion.

Our friends who’ve lost loved ones to the virus know this scenario all too well; once you say goodbye at the hospital entrance, there will be no personal visits, only isolation, as our dear friend, Mary Patrick, her husband Ronnie, and daughter Casey discovered after Mary, who’d been coughing and feeling poorly for two days, was loaded into an ambulance at the North Arkansas Regional Medical Center as they stood at considerable distance and watched her loaded and whisked away to Washington Regional in Fayetteville. “I love you. See y’all soon,” Mary shouted to her daughter and husband over the drone of the ambulance engine.

Only weeks earlier, Mary’s favorite brother who lived an hour away had succumbed to covid.

Mary was treated for a few days and actually “appeared” to be stabilizing, even showing improvement (an especially diabolical aspect to this disease) before suddenly spiraling downward until requiring a ventilator where she steadily slid ever further into death.

The Patricks sadly lived the very thing that chilled me when I realized the similar potential situation our household finds itself facing today. Even if I were to contract covid, there’s no place in the house to adequately seclude myself and prevent Jeanetta from becoming exposed. This disease is everywhere today.

I wrote this to make everyone aware as of mid-December how serious and personal this pandemic has become in all our lives, even more so since the holidays have arrived. Just 10 months ago, most of us knew very few who’d contracted covid. That made it easy to dismiss.

How wrong was that when we see what’s happening here at year’s end to those we know and love? For increasing numbers, it’s become a reality and increasingly a matter of life and death.

The last thing we want is being forced to bid final farewell to our loved ones at the hospital door.

Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.