Who, me? Missouri Gov. Mike Parson passes the buck again as COVID-19 cases surge

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says any random person walking the hallways of the Capitol — the guy who empties his trash, maybe, or the woman who sells him a coffee — is as responsible as he is for the surge in COVID-19 cases that has followed his decision to lift all coronavirus restrictions after June 15. Missouri has had 1,954 confirmed cases and 81 deaths since then. There were a record 194 new cases in the Kansas City metro on Wednesday alone.

“I don’t know that any one person’s responsible for that no more than anyone else standing out here in this hallway,” Parson said at a news conference on Tuesday.

No one else in that or any other hallway is responsible for his decisions, his policies, his actions and his failure to act. But anyone else standing out there in that hallway might have eclipsed his weak, late and often bristling, who-me performance during this pandemic. When the state needed a leader, what it got was Mike Parson.

More than once, he told Missourians that he personally would not even wear a mask, as if this simple and highly effective precaution were somehow emasculating.

Over to you, Missouri, he said, again and again stressing that it was up to each individual to do as he saw fit. Personal responsibility was the key. For other people, that is.

Because now, when asked if he takes any personal responsibility for the results of lifting the state’s social distancing recommendation, he can’t believe anyone would ask him that, and turns the question on the reporter: Does she take responsibility for it?

That wasn’t her call, she tells him.

He also says there is nothing to take responsibility for, since there is no surge or second wave.

Kansas City has had a series of days on which we’ve seen triple-digit increases. Record increases. Dr. Rex Archer, Kansas City’s health director, said just last week that we are definitely in a second wave right now.

But all is well, according to Parson.

“As we have said many, many times, the more testing we do, the more cases there will be.”

He came very close to saying that he will be taking no further action no matter what happens. Asked at what point he would reconsider, he said, “We’re just not looking at that at all, to be right honest about it.”

Over to you, Missouri, he said once again: “If it’s a mask, if it’s not going to an event, that’s up to every individual to do that, but we’re not going backwards here.”

Did fully reopening play any role in the uptick in the transmission rate?

“I think we’re fine,” he said. “I don’t think anything’s happened that we wasn’t expecting to happen.”

That much is true, especially with him in charge. But he’s not in charge, to hear him tell it.

“Do you feel any personal responsibility for the people who have been infected and don’t recover after you chose to reopen the state?” KOMU reporter Caroline Dade asked him.

“I don’t even know where you come up with that question of personal responsibility as governor of the state of Missouri when you’re talking about a virus,” Parson replied. “That’s no different than the flu virus or do I feel guilty because we have car accidents and people die every day. No, I don’t feel guilty about that. Each person that gets in that situation, things happen like that in life. They do. … I could say the same thing for the media. Maybe you don’t do a good enough job really telling people the facts. Do you feel responsible for that?”

When Dade started to answer, he cut her off: “I asked you a question. Do you feel responsible about it?”

“I personally don’t have the ability to reopen states,” she told him.

Parson also claimed not to know that President Donald Trump said at his Saturday rally in Tulsa that he has asked officials to slow down testing so the numbers wouldn’t be so high. Since then, aides have said he was kidding and he has said he was not kidding. This has been all over the news for days.

“I haven’t heard him say that,” Parson insisted. “Is that a media report?” The reporter then read the governor the president’s exact quote. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “I didn’t watch his campaign rally.”

Doesn’t know, didn’t watch, never heard of it, not me. Never me.

This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 11:29 AM.