Kentuckians, it’s time to cancel your big Thanksgiving plans. It will save lives.
If you’d like to look at COVID-19 from a perspective outside of politics, listen to Daniel Roche, an ICU nurse at Baptist Health Lexington, who has been taking care of critically sick COVID patients since March.
“I served in Iraq, and I’m seeing a lot of parallels between this and the COVID battle we’re facing,” he said in a recent interview. “It was seven months and there was no reprieve. It feels like I’m back over there again.”
Roche’s boss, Dee Beckman, executive director for outcomes, says that unlike much of Kentucky these days, the ways we try to stop COVID-19 are not political nor are they aimed at curbing freedom. Just illness.
“What people need to understand is that’s it’s bigger than an individual,” she said. “When people wear masks and practice social distancing, they’re protecting the people who will take care of them.”
And that’s why, as the United States, home of the free, has suffered 250,000 deaths from this pandemic, we need to cancel our big, wonderful Thanksgiving dinners. And stop going to church again. And put up with remote school. And wear masks. And social distance.
We have to do these things because we clearly have not been doing them. If we had, Kentucky would not have a positivity rate north of 9 percent. We would not be having day after day of record cases and deaths.
Yes, we are tired. Tired of not seeing our friends and family, not getting to eat in restaurants. Tired of wearing masks.
But we are not as tired as Roche and the millions of other healthcare workers who work on day after day without rest to save our lives because we refuse to take a few, simple steps.
No, Gov. Andy Beshear’s restrictions are not perfect. It’s too bad that as a state and society, we didn’t put re-opening schools as the top priority. It’s too bad school officials, especially here in Fayette, won’t look more carefully at in-person school for elementary students. It’s disappointing that the orders shut down bars and restaurants but not the college basketball season so that small business owners suffer but athletic fat cats can watch a UK ball game at Rupp Arena.
But even more disappointing are the Republican legislators who criticize Beshear without a plan of their own.
“I don’t know if you can legislate the exact policy because you need data,” said Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester. U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles and a host of other politically aspiring voices also chimed in, also without any better ideas.
In fact, we do have data. On Thursday, there were more than 3,000 cases diagnosed. So far, almost 2,000 Kentuckians have died. Republicans have had eight months to come up with superior ideas but have not because they’re trying to score political points, not save lives.
No, the people saving lives are nurses like Roche and doctors like Mark Dougherty, who explained this week that he has canceled his big family Thanksgiving because it is too dangerous.
“We’re going to see a big surge after Thanksgiving if people don’t take personal responsibility and be more careful,” said Dougherty, an infectious disease expert who’s been at the forefront of COVID-19 care at Baptist Health.
The federal government is AWOL because the president and enabling lawmakers are trying to stage an amateur coup rather than battle a deadly pandemic. We have to depend on state leadership and ourselves. 2020 has been a long, difficult year. Yes, it will be hard to have small, isolated Thanksgivings and Christmases. But it’s the right thing to do and it will save us from more hardship and heartbreak down the road.
This story was originally published November 20, 2020 at 9:53 AM.