Coronavirus recommendations ignored as case numbers rise
WASHINGTON POST
Coronavirus infections continued to rise in many parts of a divided nation on Monday, with public health recommendations under attack from communities tired of staying home and officials eager to restart local economies.
Even as the number of infections rose and hospital beds filled in some places, voices clamored for an end to mandatory mask-wearing. And relaxation of restrictions designed to curb the novel coronavirus continued.
“They’re either just over it, or they’ve come to believe it’s a phony pandemic because their own personal grandmother hasn’t been affected yet,” said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, in Orange County. Elected officials last week forced the county health department to scale back a mask-wearing order. “People just think this is a nothingburger. So they think the risk is exaggerated.”
Two associations of local health officials released a statement warning that “public health department officials and staff have been physically threatened and politically scapegoated,” and “the vital work of public health departments is also being challenged.”
“Public health departments are facing lawsuits over their authority to close businesses, schools, and places of worship in order to protect the community at large — the very action that is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of American lives from this virus,” the National Association of County and City Health Officials and the Big Cities Health Coalition said.
Ten states — Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — hit new highs for hospitalized patients on Sunday, according to data maintained by The Washington Post.
“While we are coping with it now, this is not sustainable in the long term,” said Don Williamson, president and chief executive of the Alabama Hospital Association and a former state health officer. “We’re sort of at a tipping point. . . . What I am concerned about is that we are not seeing the response to that from the citizens that we have to [have] if we’re going to get this under control. We are not seeing people wear masks, we are not seeing social distancing in the way that needs to happen.”
Experts said a combination of factors is sharpening the tension between warnings issued by public health experts and the reality in places where cases are increasing. People are moving around more in good weather, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, which produces an influential model that predicts future deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 80,000 registered nurses, said “the idea that we are going to tolerate a certain number of deaths as a nation is outrageous. . . . It’s irresponsible of these governors to be so blasé about the idea that more people are going to be infected and die because they made a decision to reopen without the safety precautions that workers and consumers need.”
However, an Axios-Ipsos poll shows that, nationally mask-wearing has not declined in about a month. In a poll conducted June 5-8, 48 percent of Americans said they wear a mask “at all times” when they leave home and 28 percent said they wear one “sometimes, but not all the time.” That figure does not vary significantly from the responses in a survey taken May 8-11.