NORTH CAROLINA OPEN THREAD for Sunday, March 8, 2020
251st Weekly Edition
This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue. We hope this regular platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we work on taking back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please join us every week as we try to Connect, Unite, Act with our North Carolina Daily Kos community. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads.
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The practicalities and policy implications of the coronavirus
By Rob Schofield - 3/6/2020 NCPWAs the coronavirus continues its slow and stress-inducing march across the globe there are several things – both from a practical, public health standpoint and from a public policy perspective – that all of us would do well to keep in mind. Here are five: (First paragraph of each point)
#1 – This is a deadly serious matter that we all need to treat as such. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson, North Carolina’s State Health Director and Chief Medical Officer for the state Department of Health and Human Services on the Policy Watch radio show News and Views and she offered several important reminders about where things stand and what we all should do to minimize the risk.
#2 – It’s important not to panic and to keep things in perspective. As contagious and potentially deadly as the coronavirus is, we are already experiencing large numbers of deaths from other vexing causes. Here in North Carolina, for instance, 11 people died from the flu virus just this past week. That brings the official state death toll to 127 during this flu season. There have been more than 1,300 confirmed cases in the state and many others that were never diagnosed. National estimates put the number of flu deaths in the tens of thousands this season.
#3 – Having more than a half-million North Carolinians without health insurance at this moment is a lousy situation. Opponents of Gov. Cooper’s push to close the state’s dangerous health insurance coverage gap by expanding Medicaid to cover several hundred thousand uninsured adults claim that the better course is to rely on lowering the cost of health care and expanding telemedicine. The current crisis makes clear why this is utter nonsense.
#4 – All workers should have access to paid sick days and family medical leave. Like Medicaid expansion, these are two other “no-brainer” policy changes that have been fully and effectively implemented in numerous locales and are only held back in North Carolina by the carping of so-called “free market conservatives” and lobbyists in the employ of shortsighted businessowners. Again, the last thing we need right now is for workers to put other members of the public at risk because they literally can’t afford to miss a few days of work.
#5 – Big pharmaceutical companies should be prevented from profiteering on the crisis. As veteran public health expert Lynn Carey explained in an excellent op-ed earlier this week for the Wisconsin Examiner, drug companies have frequently failed to develop useful and necessary vaccines expeditiously because of concerns about profitability. Right now, however, the federal government is affirmatively subsidizing big pharma to develop a vaccine for coronavirus at the same time that massive demand is sure to produce big profits. As Carey rightfully observes, the federal government should place conditions on the deal so that these giant corporations don’t get monopoly power to set the price for a vaccine.
Thanks again, stay safe out there!