Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:
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May 5
The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer on Gov. Roy Cooper’s reopening plan:
N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper announced on May 5 that North Carolina will move forward with the first phase of reopening the state’s economy. It’s a welcome first step toward slowing COVID-19’s economic devastation by putting more people back to work, but it’s a move that brings some risk and disregards the governor’s own benchmarks for reopenings.
The changes, which take effect on May 8, are incremental - certainly not the “open for business” signs that some states have hung on their doors. North Carolina will allow more non-essential businesses to open, thousands of which had already been given permission to operate by Cooper’s Department of Revenue. The changes also eliminate some incongruity in the governor’s original stay-at-home order - people complained that they could buy a lawn ornament at a hardware superstore but not shop at non-essential retail outlets, for example.
The Phase 1 reopening fits with criteria laid out earlier this week by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen, who said that health officials want people to avoid activities that involve contact with others for more than 10 minutes at a time. She also noted that indoor activity carries a higher risk than outdoors, as do public activities that involve sitting for more than 10 minutes. That’s why restaurant dining rooms, hair salons, movie theaters and other businesses will remain restricted until at least Phase 2, which could come in two to three weeks if North Carolina makes enough progress on COVID-19 benchmarks.
Or perhaps even if not. Cooper’s is giving Phase 1 the nod despite the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths steadily increasing nationwide, and despite some of North Carolina’s current COVID-19 numbers lagging behind what federal and state guidelines recommend for reopening.
White House guidelines, for example, call for downward trajectory over a 14-day period of reported influenza-like illnesses and COVID-19 symptoms before states start reopening. Cooper’s own reopening checklist calls for a downward trajectory in new cases, a “continued” downward trajectory in COVID-like illnesses and a 14-day downward trajectory in the number of people currently hospitalized. Outside of a promising short-term trend on COVID-like illnesses, North Carolina hasn’t achieved those benchmarks as of May 5.
The numbers aren’t all bad. North Carolina is meeting the metric of a decline in percentages of positive COVID-19 tests, although that might be a factor of people with less-severe symptoms now having more access to tests. Add it all up and the reality is this: Things are not yet getting better in North Carolina. They’re merely beginning not to get worse.
That’s enough for Cooper to push ahead with what he called a “careful and deliberate next step.” It’s an economic decision, certainly, and it also may be an understandable political calculation. The governor is facing growing pressure to loosen stay-at-home restrictions, and North Carolina is among the last to begin reopening.
But political decisions also bring political risk. Cooper, like other Democratic and Republican governors, held a high ground of sorts by taking action to slow the spread of COVID-19 despite opposition and a president who downplayed the crisis and irresponsibly urged reopening. Now, Cooper and others are moving toward reopening without the full support of data.
We hope that doesn’t result in a coronavirus regression in North Carolina, and we urge the governor to continue to be aggressive in fighting COVID-19, specifically with increased testing and tracing. (Massachusetts, with a smaller population than North Carolina, announced the hiring last month of 1,000 new COVID-19 contact tracers. North Carolina wants to increase from 250 tracers to 500.)
We also hope Cooper is more attentive to his COVID-19 benchmarks before taking the more significant step of Phase 2 reopening. The governor has said regularly that science would drive the decisions he makes with the coronavirus. North Carolina’s health may depend on it.
Online: https://www.newsobserver.com
Online: https://www.charlotteobserver.com
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May 2
The Winston-Salem Journal on preparing for upcoming elections amid the pandemic:
The aftermath of Wisconsin’s recent in-person election should encourage North Carolina’s lawmakers to act favorably on the State Board of Elections’ requests for major changes in how we hold the November election here.
Alarmed about the dangers of spreading the coronavirus among crowds at the polls, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued a last-minute order to postpone in-person voting set for April 7 until June. Republican legislators filed suit, and the Republican-majority state Supreme Court ruled that the election must go on as planned.
About 400,000 Wisconsin voters cared enough about this election - the presidential primary and an important statewide race for a seat on the state Supreme Court - to turn out and vote despite the dangers to their health.
Now the Wisconsin health department is starting to tally the election results - not in terms of who won, but in terms of how many people became infected with COVID-19. The first tally is that about three-dozen voters and poll workers have tested positive.
Those numbers are expected to go up.
The health department isn’t sure whether all the people who tested positive contracted the virus at the polls, or whether some might have already been carrying it without showing symptoms. In practical terms, it doesn’t really matter. The nature of the virus is that it spreads quickly and quietly from person to person.
If some voters already were carrying the disease, they might have spread it to others they came into contact with on Election Day. And those people might have spread it to others, and so on. The potentially deadly ripple effect proceeds.
Citizens should not have to unnecessarily risk their lives and those of others to exercise their right to vote.
Now Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the N.C. Board of Elections, has asked the legislature to consider 15 changes to the state’s elections procedures to make the November elections as safe as possible.
November might seem a long way away, but absentee ballots go out in September. Gearing up for major changes will require planning, time, money and work. Then it will be key to get the word out to voters and encourage them to use the new procedures.
High on Bell’s list is all mail-in ballots, and that would require a lot of preparation as well as action by the legislature. Bell would also like to see lawmakers approve sending out mail-in ballots with prepaid postage, and making it easier to request and mail absentee ballots. Other ideas include decontaminating polling places or moving them to places such as former grocery stores, where doors automatically open as people approach.
The board expects to get about $27 million in federal grants to help with the costs.
Other proposed changes include making Election Day a holiday and allowing more volunteers to work at the polls. Bell also wants to make it easier for people to establish their identities and addresses so more citizens can vote.
The debate is likely to be politicized, as some people cynically try to figure which rules will help their party more. It shouldn’t. For our democracy to thrive, all citizens should be able to vote, and vote safely. Bell is right when she says it’s time to think creatively and be open to change.
Online: https://www.journalnow.com
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May 2
The Fayetteville Observer on coronavirus recovery data:
Every death from the novel coronavirus is its own particular tragedy. So its easy to get overwhelmed as the number of confirmed infections in the United States climbs to more than 1.1 million and the death toll pushes past 65,000 - with some states having not yet reached their peak.
But there is another story here, and it is one of survival. The vast majority of the people who contract the coronavirus recover. Officially, more than 133,000 Americans are listed as having recovered from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. It is a figure that is hard to pin down because of patients’ different rates of recovery and the lack of a universally agreed-upon definition of what is considered recovery from the virus.
Dr. Jennifer Green, Cumberland County’s health director, was asked at a town hall last week about the number of people who had recovered. She said it was a tough question to answer.
“Do we define recovery as you are no longer hospitalized but you might still have symptoms? Do we define recovery as people who are no longer in isolation or quarantine? Do we define recovery as people who got hospitalized but are now in some long-term care because of their respiratory illnesses?
“That’s a hard number to get a consistent definition across counties, across the country. We are struggling to figure out how to define that across the state.”
Green said her department would in the meantime wait for additional guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Our goal,” she said, “is always to provide data that is consistent and accurate.”
Even when emerging data helps us pin down the number of recoveries, we want to make clear that it will in no way diminish the memories of those whose lives the coronavirus took. Rather this information helps round out the story of the worst pandemic the country has seen for some time.
We have known for some time that most people infected with the coronavirus experience mild to moderate symptoms. Some people experience none at all and, absent a blood test that shows antibodies were produced to fight the virus, will never know they had it.
This is important because it is one of a few indicators that a wide number of Americans have had the coronavirus but will never show up on any list of confirmed cases. A study of antibodies out of California showed that between 2.5 and 4.2 percent of the residents of Santa Clara County, where a big outbreak occurred, were carrying coronavirus antibodies. Researchers concluded that this means - though there were at the time 1,000 confirmed cases - as many as between 48,000 and 81,000 county residents may have actually been infected.
Another difficulty in figuring out how many people have or have had COVID-19 is related to the United States’ relatively slow pace of rolling out mass testing. We are doing better but need to do much more.
Studying antibodies can help scientists discover more treatments for the active form of COVID-19. So, in this way mass testing is not only important to safely reopen states currently under lockdown but can also help battle this disease.
Meanwhile, the recovery part of the coronavirus story passed its own milestone this weekend: More than 1 million people worldwide have been listed as recovered.
Online: https://www.fayobserver.com
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