How to respond to this pandemic has never been as simple as choosing to risk contracting COVID-19 or go out of business.
And the damage from those promoting this false dichotomy is that it works to portray those who prioritize the public’s health as being against those concerned about their pocketbooks.
But the two groups are not mutually exclusive. Business owners need their employees to be healthy, after all, and want their establishments to be safe places to do business.
So it’s not a black-or-white issue and, fortunately, Gov. Laura Kelly is not a you’re-either-with-me or against-me type leader.
Kelly’s first priority has been to keep people safe by preventing the spread of the virus.
To that end she shuttered public schools and high-contact businesses and eventually ordered people not to congregate in groups larger than 10.
She’s also kept her eye on the data, tracking the trends of infection. As long as the number of hospitalizations continued to increase, the restrictions would remain.
It wasn’t until the third week of April that the tide began to turn, according to Dr. Lee Norman, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and Kelly could feel confident in cautiously easing up the restrictions and begin waking up our semi-comatose economy starting Monday.
Statewide, fatalities and hospitalizations from the coronavirus are waning, though in Southwest Kansas they are decidedly on the rise. As of Friday, Seward, Ford and Finney counties have witnessed dramatic increases with a combined 1,500 confirmed cases. The chapel at Liberal’s Southwest Medical Center has been converted into patient rooms in their effort to handle the load.
On Thursday evening, Kelly issued her three-step program to ease out of crisis mode over the next six weeks — if the overall trend continues to improve.
The onus of success is on us.
I APPRECIATE Kelly’s leadership and her willingness to take responsibility for the debacles that ensued when tens of thousands Kansans overloaded the state’s computer systems as they filed for unemployment.
I also give Kelly credit for keeping a cool head while Republicans try to tear her down and issue their own orders, such as the case when Susan Wagle, president of the Kansas Senate, on Tuesday issued her set of guidelines.
Because Wagle has no power over the matter, her attempt to upstage the governor only served to sew division — her objective all along.
On Thursday afternoon I watched hundreds of armed protesters storm the Michigan state capitol as their legislators debated their state’s coronavirus measures. Some of the lawmakers were wearing bulletproof vests, fearful for their lives.
