Recent Missouri editorials

The Joplin Globe, April 17

Gov. Mike Parson’s “virtual press briefings” - held every day but Sunday - are not legitimate news conferences, though they should be.

The format the governor is using for briefings during the COVID-19 pandemic makes it difficult for journalists to do the vital job of informing the public fully and in depth. Unlike news conferences held by other governors and even the president, these events are staged without journalists actually being present. Instead, with a sign-language interpreter nearby, the governor and whatever other officials or experts the governor calls address the camera in turn from a lectern while maintaining their spacing. Needed support staff are likely outside the video frame operating the camera, sound, etc. The format is ostensibly to protect against transmission of COVID-19, but has the effect of diminishing the transparency of our state government and increasing the likelihood of missing, incomplete or inaccurate information being relayed to the public.

The rules for these briefings require that all questions for the governor be submitted at least an hour in advance of the briefing. This guarantees the questions are never responsive to the information actually provided during the briefing, giving no opportunity for journalists to ask the governor to clarify or expand on a point or to challenge inaccuracies. Furthermore, the questions submitted - which are read aloud during the briefing - can be edited in ways that defeat the questioner’s intent, journalists can ask no followup questions to any response and the topics Parson and his handlers do not wish to address can be blithely ignored.

The argument that these measures are essential for safety during the pandemic is specious. The goal of keeping the governor, his staff and journalists safe can be achieved without excluding questions that actually address the content of the briefing. Journalists could be present with precautions such as temperature screening, masks and appropriate distancing. Or questions could be asked by having journalists participate within a group online video conference format. The governor announced Thursday that he will be available to journalists after the news briefing today while following some of these precautions. That is a step in the right direction.

Information is essential during this dangerous and challenging time. We rely on the governor for leadership, open communication and accountability during the pandemic. The governor’s briefings held every day but Sunday would be more effective if they were responsive in real time to journalists seeking to inform the public. The public needs legitimate news conferences, not managed, scripted dog-and-pony shows.

News briefings can be made safe without locking journalists out of the room.

______

The Kansas City Star, April 20

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson keeps saying things about the global coronavirus pandemic that are just not true.

More than once, he has said that the current guidance on wearing a mask is this: “It’s up to the individual what they want to do.”

No, it isn’t. The current CDC guidance is that if you have to be in close contact with others in places where social distancing is not possible, you should absolutely wear one, to protect them in case you have it yourself and are asymptomatic. This is no substitute for social distancing, the guidance stresses, but is a necessary additional measure.

At a news conference last week, Dr. Rex Archer, Kansas City’s health director, was wearing a mask himself when he explained that doing so is key to stopping the spread: “That’s why wearing the mask is important. It’s not just to protect you. The main reason we want people to wear masks is so that if you have this” and don’t know it, “you’re not spreading it to other people.” The prospect of fatally infecting others is nothing to be cavalier about.

Yet when Parson was asked if he’d wear one, he not only said no but behaved as if the question was an affront to his manhood. Maybe ask British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who boasted that he intended to keep right on shaking hands with COVID-19 patients, how being too tough to take precautions worked out. He is still recuperating after contracting the coronavirus and spending three nights in intensive care in a London hospital.

Parson has consistently set expectations based on hopes and dreams rather than on science.

“The truth is,” he said last week, “this virus is going to be around several more months.”

No, the truth is it will be around a lot longer than that. “We’re going to have to close down at least three or four times over the next 24 months if we do this well,” Archer said.

And that’s a big if.

Some of the governor’s statements are merely a self-serving rewrite of recent history. “The numbers were projected to be so much worse in Missouri,” he said, “had we not taken fast and decisive action to implement social distancing.” Good one, sir.

The numbers often cited by the White House Task Force were projected to be so much worse everywhere, even in New York. That model, out of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, initially said 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die of COVID-19 by August. That’s now been revised to about 60,300 in the first wave of infections - more Americans than there are names on the memorial wall honoring those we lost in Vietnam.

As for “fast and decisive action,” Parson was among the last governors in the country to issue a shutdown order, and when he finally did, put out one so porous as to be almost meaningless. The number of cases and deaths in Missouri is still climbing: On Sunday, the tally of COVID-19 cases in Missouri jumped by more than 100, to 5,667 cases, and the total deaths reached 176. To speak as if the crisis is mostly behind us now is incorrect and irresponsible.

“We face a doleful future,” Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, a former president of the National Academy of Medicine, told The New York Times. A report surveying more than 20 top scientists said Fineberg “and others foresaw an unhappy population trapped indoors for months, with the most vulnerable possibly quarantined for far longer. They worried that a vaccine would initially elude scientists, that weary citizens would abandon restrictions despite the risks, that the virus would be with us from now on.”

Though so much depends on scientific breakthroughs, a lot does depend on us: “If we scrupulously protect ourselves and our loved ones, more of us will live. If we underestimate the virus, it will find us.”

You won’t hear a hint of a whisper of even that possibility from Parson, of course.

Ever so briefly, good sense did poke its little head up: Last week, on his Facebook page and in interviews, Parson said that when we have 40,000 to 50,000 coronavirus tests a week in Missouri, we’ll be in a position to gradually and carefully reopen non-essential businesses. This was in keeping with White House guidance, and for that matter, all known public health advice.

“Once testing is where it needs to be,” he said last Wednesday, “then we can open the state back up.” On Thursday, he said data from that testing would allow us to look at the situation and make informed decisions. Excellent.

But then, on Friday, in answer to a question about what exactly he thought could reopen right away on May 4, after the current statewide stay-at-home order expires, he said well, just about everything, expressing hope that most businesses would open.

What happened to gradually, carefully, and once there’s widespread testing that we do not now have?

Parson insists that such testing is right around the corner, saying that he expects testing to jump up significantly in the near future. Members of Congress have told him, he said, that “testing and availability are coming more and more online by the end of the month, and when we do that we’ll be able to move forward much more quicklier.”

We keep hearing that, and hopefully at some point it will be true.

But by May 4?

Last Thursday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said that if Missouri needs 40,000 tests a week to reopen safely, we have a long way to go. “Right now the state of Missouri has 3,000. So we’re about 37,000 short right now in Missouri to match our testing goal.”

To keep the contagion from roaring back, Archer said, everyone exposed to someone who’s tested positive would need to be quarantined and tested at least twice. “We don’t have that capacity,” he said. Not even close.

In an interview last week with Springfield’s KOLR10, Parson threw some more fairy dust in the air: “Hopefully, the vaccine comes out before the fall” so we can all “get back to a little bit of (what) we consider normal life. I want to get them people back out.”

Everyone does. But no one in a position to know has ever said an effective vaccine might be ready before fall, so why say something so fanciful? If we’re lucky, we could have one in a year to 18 months. Even then, ramping up production of enough to vaccinate everyone will be a major hurdle.

While Missourians continue to die of COVID-19, our governor continues to whistle and talk nonsense. He’s distinguishing himself in his handling of this crisis, but not in a good way.

—-

The St. Joseph News-Press, April 16

Every year, the Missouri legislature passes a supplemental spending bill to cover state expenses at the tail end of the budget cycle, before the next fiscal year begins July 1.

Early in March, the House was looking to spend $413 million. Then came the coronavirus, with lawmakers eventually returning to the capital to pass a $6.2 billion supplementary budget. About $5.6 billion comes from the federal government, much of it from the coronavirus stimulus bill, although state Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer points out that presently available money is probably closer to $2.3 billion when considering nuances like future funding authority granted to the governor.

Either way, it’s an eye-opening appropriation that shows just how much the health crisis and the economic shock waves have rocketed to the top of the political agenda.

The budget contains $300 million for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, $200 million for the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, $90 million for nursing home reimbursement, $33 million to support hospitals and $20 million for child care facilities.

Total spending authority for schools and meals for children is $1.8 billion, with another $1 billion to support local governments.

Action on the supplemental budget comes at a time when Missouri projects a $500 million budget shortfall and 2,100 U.S. cities are expecting a similar impact from lost wages and reduced tax collections. St. Joseph, planning for $1.8 million in lost revenue, might not open public pools this summer. (We wonder if maintenance costs made pool openings unlikely even without a pandemic.)

A critical need exists for this funding. A 147-4 vote in the House and a 28-1 vote in the Senate illustrates that lawmakers in Missouri have a capacity to avoid partisanship when their backs are against the wall, a refreshing anecdote to this charged political environment.

The vote also shows that’s it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money, especially when that someone has the federal government’s capacity to deficit spend.

Deficits, though, are an important issue for another day. We believe Missouri’s legislature did its job last week in passing this important funding measure for our local governments, schools, hospitals and services.

We also suggest there’s more to be done. Just look at 339,000 in Missouri unemployment claims filed in the last month, since the social distancing and stay-at-home orders curtailed business activity.

The harder task for the legislature, governor and other state policymakers is figuring out a way to get Missouri back to work. That should be the next priority.