On Thursday, May 21, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey held a news conference at the State Capitol in Montgomery, and announced that most limitations that had been in place on large entertainment venues, athletic activities, schools, and child care facilities would be lifted effective 5:00 PM Friday, May 22.
According to an article by Bryan Lyman in The Montgomery Advertiser, the Governor's announcement came as the Alabama Department of Public Health was recording steady increases in the number of new cases of Covid-19 in the state. The state as a whole is averaging 82 cases per 100,000 people over the preceding two weeks; but our predominantly African-American "Black Belt" counties in the middle of the state are at almost triple that rate at 239 cases per 100,000.
Ivey said that while there were "a legitimate number of concerns" with the number of people being hospitalized, the state had to live with a "new normal" when it came to Covid-19.
First, I need to say that I do not envy Ivey's situation. She, along with the other 49 governors, has been thrown under the bus by our President, who has spent all of his time and energy trying to shift the blame for our predicament to someone else -anyone else but himself. Also, when many red-state governors began to "open up" their states several weeks ago, Governor Ivey, at least for a few days, resisted the pressure and stayed the course with the lockdown. Now, though, I'm afraid she's caving, and unfortunately she's doing it without much of a plan.
Why was there no mention of increased testing of asymptomatic Alabamians, for instance? We know that this virus can infest a person's body without that person ever showing any outward signs of being sick. Despite the lack of symptoms, the host is still highly contagious, and can pass the disease on to others he comes in contact with. We need to have a program of regular testing, with mandatory isolation for anyone who tests positive.
And what about contact tracing? The technology is readily available to trace our movements through our cell phones, and often to determine if we have come in contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus. Those with such contacts should be immediately tested, and if they test positive, they should be isolated. Surely we should all be willing to temporarily give up that amount of privacy in order to reduce the number of deaths.
The combination of a robust testing capacity, plus diligent contact-tracing, would enable us to send our healthy citizens back to work, while protecting the general population from additional outbreaks.
Instead of such a thoughtful, careful approach to restarting Alabama's economy, Governor Ivey is proposing a "new normal" where highly contagious people wander through society, infecting as they go. She proposes to release human time bombs into the community, with no attempt to identify and isolate them. This will almost certainly extend the worst of the epidemic beyond what it might otherwise have been. The societal costs of such a thoughtless strategy will far exceed the costs of a reasoned, science-based phase-in of economic activity.
Until now, Governor Ivey has faced this crisis with much more maturity, courage, and good judgement than most of the members of her party. Unfortunately, I believe she acted hastily on May 21. Unless she now moves quickly and decisively to establish a testing regime with wide coverage of asymptomatic individuals, and an effective contact-tracing program, I fear that Alabamians will pay a heavy price for her rashness.
Thomas R. Borden Waugh, Alabama June 2, 2020Comments? Send us an email