Roughly 1 in every 475 Americans has died from COVID-19 — more than 700,000 in total — according to a New York Times report using data through Sept. 29.
“The new and alarming surge of deaths this summer means that the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in American history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people,” write the Times’ Julie Bosman and Lauren Leatherby.
More than 100,000 Americans have died since June 16, while vaccines have been universally available. Many of those deaths have been concentrated in the South. What’s more, the Times notes, August deaths from COVID-19 were the highest in every age group under 55 since the pandemic began.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, recently told news service Science X that many of these deaths were preventable, because we’ve had the right tools to fight the disease all along. Dr. Adalja also said these figures reflect “how necessary it is to have political leadership that takes pandemic preparedness seriously while having a robust infrastructure to proactively spring into action, free from political interference.”
Here in Tennessee, we have not been free from political interference in fighting the virus. Gov. Bill Lee spends his energy trying to block efforts to stem the spread of COVID.
As school started back this year, some school systems decided to adopt mask mandates to protect students, teachers and staff from COVID-19. But on Aug. 16, Lee interfered and issued an executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of mask mandates. Now Tennessee leads the nation in school closures. As reported by the CDC, more than 400 schools in our state were closed for at least one day between Aug. 2 and Sept. 17. More than two dozen districts closed schools completely, some for more than a week, as COVID-19 cases escalated and thousands of students were quarantined.
Not long after the governor issued his executive order, he and his administration found themselves facing lawsuits from concerned parents. The suits contend that the order violates the rights of students with disabilities according to the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. In Williamson County, U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. blocked the executive order. That decision and the governor’s executive order were to expire Oct. 5. Federal judges in Knox and Shelby counties also temporarily blocked the governor’s order.
To ensure mask mandates stay in place or aren’t continually blocked, doctors across the state — including one who serves on Gov. Lee’s COVID-19 advisory panel — are challenging his COVID-19 policies. As reported by Tennessee Lookout, Dr. Erica Kaye — an oncologist and palliative care physician at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis — says, “Gov. Bill Lee has the power and the responsibility to protect the lives of Tennesseans, especially vulnerable young children who cannot yet be vaccinated.”
At least 14 public school employees, including teachers, have died from COVID-19 since the school year began. This is unacceptable.
We have the tools to fight this virus. But when a school district tries to mandate mask wearing, a political leader comes along and says, “Don’t listen.” In July, Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) spread unsubstantiated claims about the COVID-19 vaccine being dangerous while in a legislative hearing, but later criticized the Biden administration for limiting distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments for Tennesseans. It makes no sense that one would listen to a doctor’s guidance on antibodies but not listen to the thousands of doctors and scientists who’ve given us repeated stats on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
Meharry Medical College president and CEO Dr. James Hildreth tells The Tennessean that monoclonal antibodies “have become strategically advantageous for politicians” — they’re a means of advocating for a “defense against the virus without telling vaccine-hesitant supporters they should get vaccinated.”
It’s tough to think about the children who are being exposed to the virus because they are not yet able to be vaccinated. Statistics show that COVID-19 is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated, who are 11 times more likely to die of the disease than the vaccinated. This does not seem to register with our governor, who appears convinced that politics are more important than sound policy.
What is it going to take for Lee to understand that he is responsible for mitigating this disease? How long will he allow the people of our state to keep dying from COVID? The governor is delusional if thinks his strategy is working.
Bill Freeman
Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and Home Page Media Group in Williamson County.
