COVID-19 doctors are ‘deep state’? Legislature is out of control and failing Missouri

“What do you need?” — that’s one simple question we don’t ask our medical “helpers” enough.

In the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic’s arrival on our coasts, we were mesmerized with unbelievable tales of intensive care unit and emergency room staffers surviving the onslaught of COVID-19 cases. Quickly, those stories turned to patients succumbing to the virus in waiting rooms and the dire shortage of hospital ventilators and other equipment. Then nurses, doctors and front-line workers began dying themselves. Refrigerated trucks were stationed as overflow morgues in hospital parking lots and urgent calls went out nationwide for volunteer nurses, physicians and technicians.

In Missouri, the pandemic didn’t appear to be as devastating. As we focused on the growing daily case numbers and fatalities, we breathed a little sigh of relief but feared for the worst. We trusted the helpers.

Most of us also believe in the expertise and research skills of medical professionals. When we and our loved ones have a broken bone, stroke, heart attack or other diagnosis, we put faith in doctors and nurses to heal us. We cheer advances in medical science. We applaud when disease is controlled and new technologies are developed. We seek specialists after alarming diagnoses because we have an extraordinary desire to live. As humans, we simply don’t want to die.

But have we completely lost our minds now?

This month, a legislator from Lake St. Louis railed on the House floor suggesting that doctors are part of a “deep state” and insisted that COVID-19 is “nonsense.” Missouri’s legislature went back into session, disregarding public health recommendations, purportedly to pass a budget and deal with virus relief. Most of the GOP supermajority blatantly ignored public health social distancing guidelines, refusing to wear masks during long hours in the capitol as they woefully underfunded emergency aid.

Gov. Mike Parson, following the anti-science mantra of the White House, remained silent as the Missouri State Medical Association and the Missouri Nurses Association repeatedly called for statewide shelter-in-place orders. Missouri’s state medical director, a licensed gynecologist, restricted access to needed state COVID-19 testing, and continues to stay mute as overloaded hospitals and front-line emergency medical workers beg for medical supplies.

In March, state Rep. Joe Runions was diagnosed in Kansas City with COVID-19, spending days on a ventilator before recovering. While in the ICU, his physicians at St. Joseph Hospital asked Runions to call the governor for badly needed hospital personal protective equipment because they themselves couldn’t get a response.

Missouri officials turning their backs on hospitals and front-line workers and encouraging distrust of medical guidelines designed to save lives is inexcusable and unconscionable.

As a former state legislator who served for nine years, I witnessed the horrific spread of anti-science ideology in the Missouri Republican Party. In the same breath, GOP legislators would vilify nationally acclaimed medical research facilities in our state while they boasted of the lifesaving medical treatments offered the very same hospitals.

Over the past several weeks, ProgressWomen has thanked front-line medical workers by delivering meals to emergency room and COVID-19 intensive care units at St. Louis hospitals hit the hardest. Our volunteers have sewn over 1,600 surgeon-designed masks with filters for front-line workers because of their unmet needs.

Seeing the stress and exhaustion in the eyes of charge nurses has been a cold hit of reality. They thank us repeatedly for a simple meal during their long shifts as they fear for for the safety of their families and themselves.

We asked, “What else do you need?” They answered: more medical supplies, as basic as shoe covers. One hospital was wearing them long past proper protocols, and one hadn’t seen any in several weeks. It made me cry.

Now I’m livid. A governor touting personal responsibility as the answer to a pandemic crisis and ignoring statewide pleas for action and equipment, and a state legislature that tolerates vilification of medical professionals purely to serve its evangelical political base are dangerous and recklessly wrong.

By turning their backs on the helpers, whom they will rely on when their own lives are at risk? I don’t have a word in reply that is printable.

Except to say that your vote in November damn well matters.

This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "COVID-19 doctors are ‘deep state’? Legislature is out of control and failing Missouri."