Kansas, Missouri officials quickly changing positions on virus as health advice evolves
On Saturday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas munched on wings at a local dive bar. By Monday night, he had banned gatherings of more than 10 people.
Missouri health director Randall Williams suggested over the weekend that young people could go to church. Now he says large gatherings should be avoided.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly this weekend recommended schools close for one week. But she didn’t go as far as other states that have ordered schools shut.
As the coronavirus spreads, the nation’s response — including in Kansas and Missouri — has turned into a rapidly-evolving patchwork of messages and directives from local, state and federal officials.
In some instances, leaders are contradicting advice they gave days or even hours earlier as they seek to reflect the latest recommendations from public health experts. In others, their personal behavior doesn’t always adhere to guidance from health authorities. And leaders in Kansas and Missouri haven’t always taken aggressive measures seen in states like Illinois, where restaurants and bars have been shut.
All of it creates the potential to confuse members of the public, who have been asked to radically reorder their lives inside a matter of days.
Take Lucas’ messaging over the course of the weekend, for example. On Saturday, he spoke with St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson about coronavirus response.
That afternoon, Lucas tweeted: “Just had a great late lunch at The Peanut on Main. Keep supporting local! And of course I had the wings.”
By Sunday evening, Lucas adopted the CDC guidance to limit gatherings to no more than 50. On Monday, Lucas further restricted gatherings to 10 people, following new CDC recommendations.
Regarding his evolving messaging, he said the city’s response to the coronavirus is “a fluid situation.”
“To the extent that our advice may shift on Monday vs. what you heard on Saturday or even last week, I understand there was some concern a week ago we were going to have a Big 12 tournament played in Kansas City,” Lucas said. “That ultimately did not happen.”
Asked whether the patchwork approach from Kansas City and other regional jurisdictions and his own evolving messaging risked sowing confusion among residents, he said yes, but that officials were communicating with one another and the public in an effort to provide clear guidance.
Lucas said his administration is prioritizing public health and safety first and making its policy decisions on “solid, sound, scientific recommendations.”
“If (Health Director Rex) Archer’s advice today is that we do not need to close schools in Kansas City, then I’m going to listen to it and not substitute just either crowds, Twitter, anything else to give me some form of direction,” Lucas said.
On Sunday night, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly recommended that schools close this week, but didn’t order a closure as some other governors have. Asked about whether businesses should close, she said that was on a list officials can take up “when and if we think that is necessary.”
By Monday afternoon, she had issued an order banning gatherings of more than 50 people, in line with guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday night.
But even that was quickly overtaken. Minutes after Kelly announced the ban, President Donald Trump and federal health officials advised Americans to avoid gatherings of more than 10.
“I think we are doing the best we can to get the message out, to make it very clear and very consistent,” Kelly said.
She acknowledged that “things are going to continue to evolve.”
“I don’t think that we are finished putting in place strategies to deal with fallout from the coronavirus,” Kelly said.
Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, on Sunday suggested young people could attend larger gatherings, such as church.
Williams said during an interview on This Week in Missouri Politics that “this is a time which if you’re older or you have any kind of chronic health conditions, I’d limit my attendance to any type of mass event. If you’re young and healthy, that’d probably be a different situation.”
But after the CDC advised avoiding crowds larger than 50 on Sunday night, Williams changed his position.
“You’ve probably seen the Governor’s news release about large gatherings. Dr. Williams saw this in the CDC’s latest guidance just after today’s interview, and we support the recommendation,” DHSS spokeswoman Lisa Cox said when asked about the director’s comments.
Guidance vs. posturing
Eliot Hoff, a New York-based expert in crisis communications, said the different messages coming from around the country and the world mean communicators — whether in business or government— need to be “really clear” about what they’re saying and who they’re addressing.
“This has impacted different areas in different ways,” said Hoff, who is the global crisis practice lead at APCO Worldwide.
Everyone is “really looking for fact-based supportive guidance vs. any kind of posturing,” he said.
Other disasters have a more well-defined beginning and end. Not the pandemic, where it’s unclear when life will go back to normal.
“The unknown here is what is very concerning to everyone, but it’s also the reality of dealing with something like this,” Hoff said.
Brett Bricker, a communications studies professor at the University of Kansas, said government officials should push for “absolute transparency” in an unprecedented time. That requires officials to do more than state the facts, but to explain the rationale behind some of the decisions they make.
Bricker pointed to the array of measure businesses, states and cities have taken against COVID-19, like shutting down restaurants or restricting travel. Government officials should explain why they’re taking some actions and not others.
“There’s this unclear hierarchy of what news applies to someone,” Bricker said. “Even in instances where people aren’t lying or false claims, there’s a possibility for mixed messaging because of how fluid this information is.”
Reactions vary
As the situation changes, reactions to the threat of the virus have varied among the area’s lawmakers.
Both Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, have announced that their staffers in both Washington and Kansas have been instructed to work from home. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, has instructed Washington staff to work from home and some of his staff in Missouri is doing the same.
Rep. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, who is mounting a campaign for U.S. Senate, has scaled back campaign events, but has continued to meet with county farm bureaus.
“We looked through our calendar for the next two weeks and anything that’s over 20 (people), we’re canceling,” Marshall.
Marshall, a physician, told reporters last Thursday that he thought children could still attend school, but by Monday he had changed his mind and said every district in the state should temporarily shut down.
“The difference between this week and last week is now we have a positive test in Butler County, a positive test in Franklin County, six or seven in Johnson County, so we have to assume it’s in our communities,” Marshall said. “I think it’s time that we all need to be acting in unison.”
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, held a digital news conference Monday with officials from the University of Kansas Health System.
Moran and the hospital officials addressed reporters through a livestream and asked for questions to be submitted via email, a sign of the effort lawmakers are making to socially distance amid concerns of coronavirus spread.
But just two days before, Moran participated in Rush Center’s St. Patrick’s Parade, a two-mile parade in the western Kansas town of 170 that bills itself as the “Biggest and Best Parade in the Area.”
Moran’s office said he used the visit to the area to also meet with the Rush County Health Department.
At the news conference with Moran, Dr. Steve Stites, the chief medical officer, urged Kansans to avoid large groups regardless of whether the state restricts gatherings of more than 50 as some states and cities have done following CDC recommendations.
“Whether the state of Kansas cancels them or not, the socially responsible thing is to not go to large gatherings. Some people would say the number is four to six not 50,” Stites said. “The smaller, the safer. And I think we just need to follow that, don’t wait on the government to tell you to do it.”
The Star’s Jason Hancock contributed reporting
This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Kansas, Missouri officials quickly changing positions on virus as health advice evolves."
