Iowa governor's resistance to prevention has led to a nation-topping COVID-19 rate

Since Iowa's first COVID-19 cases started to surface some six months back, Gov. Kim Reynolds has doggedly insisted the pandemic could be controlled without her requiring significant preventive measures of the state's businesses and communities.

Many of us have warned, repeatedly, that the strategy was backfiring. We've implored Reynolds not to reopen parts of the state even as new cases arose. We've begged her to mandate masks in public places — much less to not forbid Iowa mayors from requiring them in their own cities. We've urged her to require the closure of bars, churches and meat-processing facilities, and argued against her requiring most schools to reopen at least 50% in person, with no mask mandate.

Early on she declared a public health disaster, briefly closing restaurants, bars and entertainment facilities or limiting their numbers. But she never issued a stay-at-home order for the public.

Now that the White House Coronavirus Task Force is making some of the same recommendations after announcing Iowa has the nation's highest rate of coronavirus infections, is Reynolds ready to get serious? The task force recommended the state close bars in 61 of Iowa's 99 counties. That's 10 times the number of counties in which she just recently ordered bars closed. The experts said that all returning college and university students should be tested, and that there should be a uniform reporting process for those institutions, with those cases posted on the state's website. Iowa hasn't been doing that, and lets the academic institutions choose how they want to report.

And now, even as Ames, home to Iowa State University, is dubbed the nation's biggest hot-spot city for COVID-19 rates, the state is silent about Iowa State letting 25,000 people into a football game at Jack Trice Stadium on Sept. 12. That, appropriately, has the chairman of the Story County Board of Health seeing red. This at a time when the county's two-week positivity rate has been a whopping 21.3%.

Athletic director Jamie Pollard put responsibility for a successful football outcome on the backs of attendees, when it actually belongs with the institution and the state.

The task force also said that nursing homes should have access to rapid testing of everyone when a resident or staffer tests positive, and that those testing positive be isolated.

She has implied the elderly and people with underlying health conditions were the only ones to worry about, but the recent outbreaks in college towns have disproved that. She hasn't required businesses to report their outbreaks. She has said the state would only supply the names of those where 10% of the workforce had confirmed cases — but only if a reporter asked. And she doesn't see a need for the state to report outbreaks in schools.

And most businesses can't be sued over COVID deaths if that was where the virus was contracted, unless they can be proved to have acted maliciously or showed "reckless disregard" to the risk.

There are quirks in the state's reporting method, which lists people as "recovered" if they were diagnosed 28 days earlier and public health officials got no follow-up reports on their status. The Des Moines Register has recently reported on flaws in reporting system and claims of underreporting. The former spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Public Health, who was ousted in July, said the press was not getting timely and complete answers to questions on the pandemic.

What's behind Reynolds' approach? Is it wishful thinking? Refusal to heed the science? Fear of being accused of government heavy-handedness? An alliance with President Donald Trump or just prioritizing of businesses over individuals' well-being? In an op-ed piece in the May 3 Register, Reynolds wrote, "The reality is that we can't stop the virus. It will remain in our communities until a vaccine is available. We must learn to live with that, without letting it govern our lives."

That's wrong. Strict measures could flatten the rate.

That was magical thinking. By the end of July, Dubuque and Scott counties were seeing their highest COVID numbers ever; the median age of people testing positive in Scott County had fallen below 30; Iowa had had 843 COVID-19 deaths; and hospitalizations had more than doubled since June. On Tuesday, the deaths totaled 1,121.

This might have been avoidable had we had a three-month mandatory lockdown, like Wuhan, China, did. Experts have said we'd now have an infection rate under 1%. But our leadership has to be willing to make a persuasive case for short-term sacrifice over long-term gain, and then order it.

Hopefully the White House task force has given Reynolds the wake-up call she needed.