Reeves chooses ‘economics over public health’ in COVID-19 crisis, former MEMA head says
Lee Smithson watches the coronavirus pandemic spread from the safe remove of his family’s two acres on a lake in Madison.
He watches with the trained eye of a warrior and emergency response leader, having served his nation overseas and at home.
He shakes his head in disbelief over what Gov. Tate Reeves has done and, more importantly not done, as he follows President Donald Trump’s lead.
“I’m so frustrated by the whole thing,” said Smithson, the former director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and, before that, director of military support for the Mississippi National Guard. “The only thing I can do is minimize my outings and take care of my family. I think it’s going to get a whole lot worse.”
“We’re looking at economics over public health.”
Smithson is one of thousands of Mississippians who have implored Reeves to issue stay-at-home orders for all but essential operations, including health care and emergency response.
Instead, Reeves has signed an executive order that allows all manner of businesses to continue operating, including restaurants with limited seating, retail stores and auto dealerships.
In a Facebook post, Reeves referenced the state’s pandemic response plan, adopted in 2013.
The plan’s objective is public health. The introduction says, “The response phase will include steps to activate response systems, prevent the spread of disease, prevent severe clinical outcomes in the ill, ensure that adequate support exists for response activities and ensure the continuity of operations across the state.”
Reeves suggests, rather than demands, that Mississippians stay home, saying they should lock themselves down if they want.
This is a particularly dangerous approach in the absence of widespread testing to determine the true spread of the virus and with no real surveillance plan announced until Thursday, Robert Travnicek, a public health doctor and retired regional director of the state Health Department, told the Sun Herald.
The state’s lead response agency, the Mississippi Health Department, also has been overburdened through budget and staff cuts this past decade, Travnicek said, shrinking from nine regional health districts to three.
“In my opinion, not imposing a shelter in place and clarifying what are truly essential facilities, you’re going to force health care providers to decide who lives and who dies because there simply won’t be enough bed space,” Smithson said
“The monkey is now on the backs of state health care providers.”
Lockdown if you want, Reeves says
Tate Reeves signed an executive order establishing a Mississippi coronavirus executive committee at a news conference March 4, where he also announced he would be leaving for Europe.
Mississippi’s first coronavirus case was announced March 11 while he and his family were in Spain with one of his daughters, who was playing in a soccer tournament.
Reeves cut the trip short and returned home March 13, declaring a state of emergency in Mississippi the next day.
“Since the onset of the outbreak, the Governor immediately began developing and implementing Mississippi’s preparedness and response planning, including declaring a state of emergency, extending school closures by four weeks, and ensuring paid leave for local level employees,” his office said Friday in an email responding to questions from the Sun Herald.
Since his return, Reeves has taken to Facebook for announcements, and live news conferences, statements and, on more than one occasion, photos of himself participating in video meetings with Trump and/or Mike Pence and his coronavirus task force.
On March 22, he held a Facebook Live prayer service, quoting the Christian plan for salvation, John 3:16.
He prayed for his three million fellow Mississippians:
“Please grant them the wisdom to make smart choices. Please grant them the wisdom to do what’s right, not only for themselves, but what’s right for all their fellow Mississippians.
“While they may be healthy and happy, they could put others at risk if they do not make wise decisions. Please encourage, please grant them wisdom to make wise decisions.”
Under his posts, Mississippians increasingly begged for stay-at-home orders, which had been issued by Friday in at least 23 states., including hard-hit Louisiana.
Mississippi residents are worried about losing their jobs if they fail to report to work. They are worried about their immune-compromised loved ones most at risk of dying from coronavirus.
They are just plain worried.
One commenter, Courtney Galjour of Purvis, told the governor: “If you would issue a statewide stay at home order, we can stop the spread. The longer you wait to act aggressively, the longer we will have to deal with this, and the longer it will affect our economy.
“Please go visit hospitals and talk to the people on the front line . . . they may have better advice for you. What’s more important lives or money?
“I don’t understand how you continue to ignore your constituents.”
The commenter’s Facebook page had a “Trump 2020” banner as the cover photo.
Health department resources reduced
As in most of the nation, coronavirus testing is still limited, so nobody can say how far and wide the virus has spread. The first mobile testing sites operated for the day Friday in North Mississippi, one in Coahoma and one in DeSoto counties.
Residents are screened and must display symptoms before testing, including a fever and a severe cough or shortness of breath, the latest information showed Friday afternoon on the State Health Department’s website.
Hospitals had been relying on the State Health Department’s testing laboratory, which can process results within 48 hours, as opposed to longer periods private labs were taking. But the state lab can process 185 tests in an eight-hour shift, the health department says.
Hospitals, including Memorial Hospital at Gulfport and Singing River Health Systems in Pascagoula, say they are using private laboratories to expand testing capabilities.
The Health Department also appears to be shorthanded, numbers show. It had more authorized positions 20 years ago that it does today — 2,480 compared to 2,014 — said communications director Liz Sharlot.
The budget is also $1.5 million lower than the 2015 amount of $62 million, figures from the Legislative Budget Office show.
“Now, the Health Department is an empty shell,” Travnicek told the Sun Herald. He doubted there was any thorough tracking of cases and where they originated, an essential component of disease epidemiology called surveillance.
“Quarantine is absolutely vital because we don’t have any surveillance.,” he said. “You’re going to have to quarantine because there’s no other option.”
The Health Department’s Sharlot, however, insisted surveillance was happening. She also said the Health Department had received a CDC grant of almost $5.9 million for the COVID-19 crisis response.
“The Mississippi State Department of Health conducts surveillance each and every day on all communicable diseases, emerging diseases and any other virus that can make people ill . . . “ she said in an email response to Sun Herald’s questions Tuesday.
“Surveillance is conducted using the reportable disease list (healthcare providers must report specific diseases), we then test, interview, identify contacts and treat them or, in the case of COVID-19, we advise self-quarantine and monitor for symptoms.”
And yet it was not until Thursday that State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs announced a plan for surveillance that included bringing aboard people from other agencies to get the job done.
He said the state has been formulating a plan for “quite some time” by studying what has proven effective in countries such as Singapore and South Korea. The approach includes widespread testing and surveillance designed to isolate virus carriers and break up clusters of outbreaks.
“But to be honest,” he said, “we haven’t really had the resources to be able to be more aggressive . . . That’s a hugely labor-intensive endeavor. To make sure that you find every case, that you make sure when you find a case, your eyes are on them to make sure you know who they are, where they are and that they’re properly isolated,.”
By Friday, after 23 days, the number of coronavirus cases in Mississippi had climbed from one to 579. Eight people have died.
“We expect to see more and more cases as the next week or so evolves,” Dobbs said at Thursday’s news conference, where he spoke with the governor standing by. “We have six deaths now. We will see more deaths. This is time to be aggressive. I’m glad we finally have the resources, as well as the manpower plan, to make something happen.
“It’s still going to be a rough road, but now is the time to act.”
In other words, the virus has taken hold and is spreading in Mississippi, as Lee Smithson is well aware.
He has been hunkered down in his house with his wife, son and elderly mother-in-law. But a craving for a Jersey Mike’s sandwich overcame him Thursday. He and his wife drove to the sub shop, Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer at the ready.
What he saw there astounded him. The line was out the door. In the line were three Madision police officers, he said. There was no social distancing going on.
The long line was for ordering a sandwich. He had put in his order by phone. He went straight to the takeout register.
“It was impossible to maintain a six-foot distance,” he said, “but I did the best I could.”
He believes the governor should order residents to stay home and allow only life-sustaining businesses to remain open until the epidemic is brought under control.
Otherwise, he said, Mississippi workers who want to stay home are unable to do so if they want to keep their jobs.
“Absent that order of a government-imposed quarantine,” Smithson said, “you have no re-employment rights if you take matters into your own hands.”
Smithson, 58, is retired and realizes he is fortunate to have the option of isolation.
He had served in the National Guard in Bosnia-Herzegovina as an infantry battalion executive officer and in Iraq as commander of the First Calvary Division Rear Operations Cell.
From 2005 to 2015, in his job with the Mississippi National Guard, he prepared plans and coordinated the Guard’s response with state agencies to multiple disasters, including Katrina and other hurricanes, tornadoes, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the 2011 Mississippi River flood.
Alcoholism induced by PTSD forced his resignation from MEMA in May 2018. He has been sober for two years.
Reeves prepared for shelter in place
The governor’s office says Reeves has taken extraordinary steps to keep Mississippians safe:
“Consulting with Dr. Dobbs and health officials in Mississippi and at the federal level, we have received no recommendations to issue a shelter in place order at this time.,” Reeves communications director Renae Eze said in an email. “Should the situation in our state change, the Governor is ready to issue a shelter in place — whether it be for a city, a region, or the entire state.
“Through his many executive orders to slow the spread and protect public health, Governor Reeves has enabled state agencies and businesses to determine which employees are able to work from home and send them home to do so.
“Throughout the state’s ongoing response to COVID-19, the Governor has asked businesses to let all nonessential employees go home and asked Mississippians to stay home as much as possible.”
Former Gov. Haley Barbour, a fellow Republican, presided over the worst disaster to hit the nation before COVID-19 arrived, Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Barbour spoke with the Sun Herald by telephone Wednesday.
He talked in general about dealing with the pandemic, not about Reeves’ response specifically.
He said the healthcare crisis and economic crisis the pandemic has created need to be balanced. In areas where outbreaks are more severe, he said, the healthcare crisis has to take precedence.
In areas with fewer cases, he said, leaders can keep the economy running, especially construction, manufacturing and transportation. Transportation is essential in all cases, he said, to keep Americans supplied with essentials such as hand sanitizer, groceries and medicine.
“It’s not an easy job,” he said. “Like with Katrina, a lot of elected officials are seeing things they’ve never had experience with, so they’re making up things as they go along.”
“ . . . That’s what happens if you are in a mega-disaster,” he said. “You are making unprecedented decisions and some of them may not turn out to be the best, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You might have to change your strategy.”
Reeves takes flight to National Guard bases
Reeves flew in a Blackhawk helicopter to Mississippi National Guard bases in Gulfport and Hattiesburg on Friday. He invited the media.
In photos posted afterward on social media, nobody appeared to be wearing protective gear or, at times, keeping the recommended 6-foot distance.
Smithson saw the pictures Reeves posted on social media. Smithson said the two Blackhawk helicopters used for the trip cost $6,304 each per hour to operate. He said the locations Reeves visited had been selected years ago as pandemic isolation and continuity of operation sites.
“Absolutely nothing new,” Smithson said. “How many tax dollars were wasted? Two helicopters at four hours total flying time is $48,856.”
Editors note: Mississippi has more hospital beds per capita than all but two states and the District of Columbia. An earlier version of this story included incorrect information. (Updated: 9:49 a.m. on 3/29 2020)
This story was originally published March 28, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
