Lamont’s Meskill moment
Despite a “state of emergency” declared by Gov. Ned Lamont that has lasted almost two years now, Connecticut residents were left wholly unprepared for the latest COVID surge over the holidays. Residents afraid of spreading the virus to friends and family at holiday parties waited in lines for hours to get tested.
As the week went on, the lines got longer and longer. In Vernon, more than 100 cars had to be turned away after some waited in line for two hours. A New Britain site scheduled to be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. closed at 11 a.m. after running out of tests. A testing center in the city of Bristol was forced to close after a desperate crowd became unruly and a woman threated to shoot people.
What’s gotten so many scratching their heads is why were we so unprepared. We’ve been in a state of emergency for nearly two years. Billions and billions of dollars have poured into our state’s coffers to respond and prepare for this seemingly unending pandemic.
Realizing frustrations were high, Gov. Lamont announced that 3 million home COVID testing kits were coming to Connecticut. What we know now is that the state of Connecticut was outbid, and those tests were not coming.
From his vacation in Florida, Gov. Lamont had urgently called upon municipal leaders, putting the onus on them to distribute the tests immediately. He even activated the Connecticut’s National Guard to help. But those tests never showed. The state finally found another source for a much smaller amount of tests at a much higher price by Friday.
When questioned by the press, Gov. Lamont’s take on the week was that “we got a little ahead of ourselves, to tell you the truth.” Really? Municipal leaders canceled holiday plans to distribute tests the governor never had and then had to tell frustrated residents that the tests weren’t coming — and the governor shrugs it off ?
Everyone makes mistakes. And everyone deserves a vacation. But it is hard to imagine how the governor, who insists on maintaining unprecedented emergency powers, could be on a vacation while the state’s COVID cases hit historic levels so severe that he’s forced to call up the National Guard.
It’s like the time that Republican Gov. Thomas Meskill went ahead with a planned ski vacation to Vermont despite the worst ice storm to hit the state in decades bearing down on Connecticut in December of 1973.
Leadership is about being present, being accountable and delivering on promises. No excuses.
Many still remember the image of Gov. Ella Grasso trudging through the snow to the State Armory to lead the state through the blizzard of 1978. That was leadership! Blaming a failure to deliver tests on “brokers” he did not name while he was in Florida is not.
Every metric the governor has used to evaluate the state’s performance on COVID crashed this past week. The positivity rate went from 9.02 percent just before Christmas Eve to an alltime high of 20.33 percent before New Year’s Eve. The number of people hospitalized went from 837 to 1,151. Tragically, another 83 residents died.
And after two years and billions of dollars in federal aid, people couldn’t find a simple COVID test.
We are all weary from this pandemic. It has been a long two years, and most people are absolutely worn out. People feel like they have done all they have been asked to do. They have worn masks. Many have been jabbed three times now. They have tried their best to get their kids to learn from home. They canceled vacations and holiday plans.
But the reality is that it’s not much better now than when Gov. Lamont exercised his emergency authority nearly two years ago — in fact, it seems worse. Residents deserve access to COVID testing without waiting hours to get it. They deserve to be able to plan a trip or party — and be able to go. They deserve to feel protected.
As importantly, they deserve their leaders to understand what they are going through, to care and to live it with them.
Is it the end of the world that Gov. Lamont fled from Connecticut to Florida while people with fewer means struggled with COVID under his self-proclaimed state of emergency back home? Probably not.
But at a time when small businesses are scrambling to stay open, first-responders are working around the clock and residents are trying to cope as best they can, their governor should be here to help them — not watching them while he relaxed in Florida.