ANOTHER VIEW: Press, governor have failed us on COVID crisis

By Dr. Gere B. Fulton, special to Statehouse Report  |  It has now been nearly seven months since the state Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) announced the first two cases of COVID-19 in South Carolina.  That was on March 6.   

By the middle of March, Gov. Henry McMaster had begun the “closing down” of athletics, schools and businesses, and ordered all non-essential state workers to stay home.  Public colleges and universities were directed to finish their semesters online.  The first two deaths were reported on March 20.

On April 21, McMaster announced plans to allow retail stores to reopen.  That was the beginning of his failed leadership which has now resulted in 118,116 cases and 2,626 deaths.  He decided to ignore the advice of his own public health experts, the World Health Organization and even the president’s own Task Force by opening when the number of cases was still rising and the testing, while insufficient, was showing positivity rates well above the 5 percent recommended as the minimum for reopening.  We are all feeling the effect of the virus on our day-to-day lives.  

The media, especially newspapers like The State, have done an inadequate job in educating the public about the management of the disease.  They report daily on the number of cases, but they seldom link that to the number of tests upon which those cases are based.  Without knowing the latter, it is impossible to know whether the former represent an increase or a decrease in the management of the disease.  Tests are done to find the number of infections, but the less you test, the lower the number.

Lindsay Street has recently reported (Statehouse Report, 8/28/20) that Sen. Tom Davis (R-Beaufort) has emailed DHEC reiterating that the Senate wants 10 percent of the population tested monthly.  That would be approximately 514,900 tests.  The state is currently doing approximately 13,000, far short of the number to give us a reasonable assessment of risk.  It has been estimated that there are eight to nine unreported cases for every one that is discovered.   

The health professionals at DHEC seem to understand this.  McMaster’s epidemiologist, Dr. Linda Bell, has been making the scientific case from the beginning, but the governor has both ignored and misrepresented her recommendations. 

McMaster made his first mistake on April 15, when he decided to “reopen” businesses while the number of cases was growing and the positivity rates were too high.  The shutdown soon followed and we have been paying the price for that decision ever since.  

Now he’s repeating that mistake and bullying the schools to open with face-to-face teaching while the disease is raging all around them.  We are already seeing the failure in that.  If he were the CEO of a corporation, his board of directors would have fired him months ago.

And speaking of directors, where has the legislature been?  Yes, I know it hasn’t been in session, but why hasn’t it been called back to Columbia to provide oversight on the governor.  This is, after all, a matter of life and death.  People are sickening and dying because of his failures and he has shown no indication of changing course.  He is stubbornly dedicated to “opening the economy,” but those attempts will also fail until we gain control of the virus.

There is proof that masking, along with social distancing, testing and contact tracing works.  But the governor has steadfastly refused to direct statewide masking and has agreed that restaurants could have twice the percentage of diners as recommended by all of the guidelines.  The number of tests have been inadequate and contact tracing is only as effective as the testing regimen.  Where are our legislators and why have they not been speaking out on this and holding him accountable?

The press should also be calling for accountability and stop misleading the public by dwelling on the number of cases without linking that to the number of tests.  They too should be calling out the governor for his many failures.  

Unless and until these changes take place, our hopes and visions of the good old days will remain illusory.  

Gere B. Fulton is a retired public health professor with a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and a J.D. from the University of Toledo.  He most recently taught law and ethics of end-of-life care at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.