MEMPHIS, Tenn. — In Tuesday’s Ransom Note: our reasonable governor.
More nights than I care to count, I stand here questioning why politics keeps being injected into the middle of this health crisis. Just today the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement that, while not calling out Tennessee Governor Bill Lee by name, clearly showed concern about his firing of the health department’s top vaccine expert Dr. Michelle Fiscus Monday.
Pediatricians also despondent over Tuesday's Tennessean newspaper investigation uncovering internal e-mails that revealed the health department bowing to pressure from republican state lawmakers, and now stopping all adolescent education on all vaccines --not just COVID-- but for all diseases. Then in Mississippi Tuesday, Governor Tate Reeves said his biggest regret of the pandemic was not letting all businesses just stay open.
Then there's our area's only reasonable governor, Arkansas' Asa Hutchinson, who Tuesday stopped in several eastern Arkansas towns telling folks not to believe all the myths and not see this as a republican or democrat issue.
“The longer this virus exists, the greater the potential for another variant to develop. Right now the vaccine covers all the variants,” said Gov. Hutchinson.
He's right. Cases are climbing fast in all Mid-South states, but Arkansas is slowing down, maybe because its governor realizes what's at risk.
Join the conversation by email (rransom@localmemphis.com ), Facebook, or Twitter.