Gov. Doug Ducey fires the scientists who warn he’s making a mistake by reopening Arizona

Opinion: Gov. Doug Ducey wants to reopen the state, and it seems he’d rather not let anything stand in his way.

For seven weeks, Gov. Doug Ducey has assured us that his decisions to reopen the state would be based not on politics or wishful thinking or even a wing and a prayer.

Data, he has said over and over again, would be in the drivers’ seat when it comes to steering Arizona through the coronavirus.

Now Ducey has tossed a significant piece of that data – public health models that predict we could be headed toward disaster – out the window.

Just hours after Ducey announced on Monday that he’s accelerating the reopening of parts of the state’s economy, state health officials told a team of university experts to stop working on models that project what will happen next.

The universities’ models had shown that the only way to avoid a dramatic spike in cases was to delay reopening the state until the end of May.

Instead, Ducey will rely on a federal model – one we aren’t allowed to even see.

Where we are? Or where we wish we were?

Dr. Cara Christ, director of the state Department of Health Services, downplayed the decision.

“We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit,” she told The Arizona Republic’s Rachel Leingang. “We are continuing to get updated FEMA models and we think that that is really representative of where we are.”

Representative of where we are, Dr. Christ? Or where a certain governor would like us to be?

Just a week ago, Ducey extended his stay-at-home order until May 15, saying it was working and that available data didn’t support reopening the economy just yet.

“We’ve earned where we are today, and we are not going to undo this,” he said.

Five days later – with Republicans ready to revolt and a president itching to reopen the country – he began to undo this.

Ducey on Monday decreed that barbershops and hair salons could reopen on Friday and restaurants on May 11. The stay-at-home order is expected to end next week.

Ducey’s decision to end the quarantine next week made sense – to me, at least.  At some point, you have to begin resuscitating the economy and considering the harm to people as a result of remaining closed. The goal in issuing the March 30 stay-at-home order was never to remain closeted until the virus had passed. It was to “flatten the curve”, to slow the spread of the virus to prevent hospitals from being overrun.

Christ said last week that goal had been met.

So Ducey is turning on the “green light”, citing a sudden “downward trajectory” on metrics tracking the spread of the virus.

GOP or scientists: Guess which side lost?

There is, however, a rather significant chance of rain on his parade.

The universities’ model – an Arizona-specific model created by 23 researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona – has projected that the only way to avoid a dramatic increase in coronavirus cases is to wait to reopen at the end of May. 

“I can say, scientifically, no, it’s not safe to reopen unless you’re planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks,” Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, told The Republic on April 22.

Shortly after Ducey’s Monday announcement that he’s reopening parts of the economy, DHS notified Lant and his team that their services are no longer needed.

And not only that, but they’ll be cut off from access to state data they need to continue their modeling.

Better, apparently, not to know the dangers that may lie ahead.

One would think the governor would want at least know what the university models show as he moves forward in the coming days and weeks, to at least factor their predictions into his decision making. But no.

“We realize that you have been, and continue to be working very hard on this effort, so we wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you won’t expend further time and effort needlessly,” S. Robert Bailey, DHS bureau chief of public health statistics, wrote in an email to the modeling team.

The email said the request came at the director of DHS’s senior leadership.

Which came at the request of … the governor?

Ducey’s an ambitious guy and he’s in a spot as he steers the state forward through the greatest threat to public health in a century. I don’t envy him. He’s got to consider both the threat in opening up the state and the threat in remaining closed.

He’s got a president up for re-election who desperately wants to reopen the country, a party that is leaning on him to reopen the state and a team of university scientists who are cautioning him to go slow.

Guess which one landed in the ditch this week?

Yes, Steve Bannon Should Terrify You

a new protégé, Michael Grimm, who is hoping to reclaim, from a fellow Republican, the congressional seat that he had to vacate a few years back when he was convicted of felony tax fraud and sent off to the clink. Bannon apparently wants to help.

Why? Excellent question. Grimm’s botched effort to enrich himself by hiding $1 million of his restaurant-business earnings doesn’t exactly scream populism.

.. Bannon’s real intent, which is to inflict as much pain and ugliness on the G.O.P. as he can. He’s not an ideologue. He’s an arsonist. And he doesn’t care who or what is reduced to ashes.

.. For Bannon, Moore is an instrument of torture, and after he won the Republican primary less than two weeks ago, Bannon and his allies made clear that the scheming and dark fun had only just begun.

.. Nick Ayers, who is Mike Pence’s chief of staff. According to an audiotape obtained by Politico, he recently urged major Republican donors to “purge” Trump-bucking lawmakers by denying them any money and instead funding Republican challengers.

.. “Republicans’ two toughest Senate races — Nevada and Arizona — are winnable with the incumbents but are going to be very, very rough if the Bannon-backed candidates are the nominees.”

.. “Republicans’ two toughest Senate races — Nevada and Arizona — are winnable with the incumbents but are going to be very, very rough if the Bannon-backed candidates are the nominees.”

.. Moore, McDaniel and Grimm aren’t perfect ideological companions, but they’re chaos candidates, and if they manage to get to Congress and the G.O.P. maintains its majorities there, heaven help us all. Just think about what they’ll inject into the formal debate on Capitol Hill; just think about how much further they’ll warp it. It could make the Tea Party’s ascent in 2010 seem tame.

Trump can’t just be defeated. He must be humiliated.

Donald Trump is running against democracy itself.

.. “We are fortunate to live in a country where the voters decide our elections,” the first lady said. “The voters decide who wins and loses. Period. End of story. And when a presidential candidate threatens to ignore our voices and reject the outcome of this election, he is threatening the very idea of America itself, and we cannot stand for that. We do not keep American democracy ‘in suspense.’ ”

.. As a matter of math, Arizona is irrelevant: If Clinton is doing well enough to win here, she will already have locked up the election elsewhere. But if Trump is to be denied in his bid to subvert democratic institutions by claiming a rigged election, he needs to be defeated resoundingly, removing all doubt. Clinton needs to run up the score.

.. The need to deal Trump a humiliating defeat has a sociological basis in the “degradation ceremony,” in which the perpetrator (Trump) is held by denouncers (officeholders and others in positions of influence) to be morally unacceptable, and witnesses (the public) agree that the perpetrator is no longer held in good standing.
.. Psychologist Wynn Schwartz, who teaches at Harvard Medical School, explained to me that what’s needed to have a successful degradation of Trump is an epic defeat.
..Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the anti-immigrant icon and Trump backer, is trailing his Democratic opponent by 15 points inpolling by the Republic. The newspaper endorsed Clinton, its first embrace of a Democrat for president in its 126-year history.