The Gathering Storm in America's South

Thankfully, over the last decade and especially since 2017 Virginia has effectively ceased to be a southern state and has embraced modernity and Democrat political control.  Thus, Virginia was the first state in the South to see a gubernatorial "stay home" order - Kentucky, North Carolina and Louisiana, also with Democrat governors followed suit.  Only much later did a few other states - e.g., Georgia and Florida - issue such orders although Florida's order exempts church gatherings from the restrictions.  Why the difference?  Simple: all the other states are "red states" with Republican governors eager to kiss Donald Trump's ass and beholden to Fox News and fearful of their knuckle dragging base.  We have yet to see the consequences of these failures to act as urged by medical experts.  A piece New York Times looks at Tennessee as a case study of the Republican failure to heed medical experts.  Note the governor's idiotic call for mayors and other local leaders to pray even as he ignored medical experts. Here are article excerpts:

NASHVILLE — On March 22, when Nashville’s mayor John Cooper closed nonessential businesses here, it was a terrible blow to companies and shops still reeling from the tornado that tore through Middle Tennessee on Super Tuesday. Small businesses struggle in the best of times, and a one-two punch like that — a natural disaster followed by a lethal pandemic — will almost certainly force some of them to close for good.

But it had to be done. Nashville’s courts and schools were already closed, but the crowds on Lower Broadway, the heart of Nashville’s tourist district, showed no sign of dissipating . . . Even after the Nashville Board of Health voted unanimously to shut the honky-tonks down, several bar owners said they would not comply unless ordered to do so by the governor of Tennessee.

Such orders have been slow in coming here, and in nearly every other state in the American South. Tennessee governor Bill Lee was slow to end the legislative session and send members of the Tennessee General Assembly home to their districts, slow to close public schools, slow to suspend church services, slow to shutter restaurants and gyms.

Many city charters in Tennessee prevent local leaders from issuing their own orders, and mayors begging for a statewide directive got none. . . . . On March 16Mr. Lee told local leaders around the state that mandates weren’t necessary to enforce social-distancing guidelines: “We’re not issuing orders, we’re issuing guidance and strong suggestions,” Mr. Lee said. “We don’t have to mandate people not do certain behavior because Tennesseans follow suggestions.”

As it turns out, they don’t. . . . where I expected to find a deserted parking lot, it was business as usual on a sunny spring Saturday. Nashville has received hundreds of reports of similar violations.

On March 30, when Mr. Lee issued an executive order shutting down nonessential businesses, he stopped short of requiring Tennesseans to stay home. “It is deeply important that we protect personal liberties,” he said, ignoring tens of thousands of health professionals who argued that nothing less than a stay-at-home order would save this state from disaster. And not just this state.

Fort Campbell, a U.S. Army base that straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky border, restricted travel to Nashville. And Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, urged his citizens not to enter Tennessee . . . . If you ultimately go down over that border and go to a restaurant or something that’s not open in Kentucky, what you do is you bring the coronavirus back here.”

Kentucky, which not only elected a Democratic governor but also expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, is an outlier in the South.

What does it mean to live though a pandemic in a place with a high number of uninsured citizens, where many counties don’t have a single hospital, and where the governor delayed requiring folks to stay home? Across the South, we are about to find out.

Viruses are not partisan. Science itself is not partisan. Nevertheless, Covid-19 has become a partisan issue here in the South because our governors have followed the lead of both [Trump] the president, who spent crucial early weeks denying the severity of the crisis, and Fox News, which downplayed concerns about the pandemic as Democratic hysteria. That’s why every governor who has issued a deeply belated shelter-in-place order is a Republican.

In that March 16 conference call with mayors and county leaders around Tennessee, Mr. Lee offered some advice: “I want to encourage you to pray. . . . . I want you to know that you’re being prayed for as leaders in your community that you will have wisdom and discernment.”

I, too, pray for my fellow Tennesseans. I pray for the success of researchers racing for a vaccine. I pray for the safety of every medical team working to save lives. But I also pray for our leaders to lead, to put the safety of their citizens far, far above partisan pandering. And when the entire medical community — people who are putting their very lives on the line for us — are begging for help, the answer isn’t prayer alone. It’s also action.

 One can only hope Republican idiocy doesn't lead to tragedy, but if it does, I hope citizens will hold their foolish, partisan governors accountable.