Local leadership deserves credit

Posted 4/10/20

by Pete Mazzaccaro The national story of coronavirus is one of poor planning and mistakes. With months of lead time, as the virus spread through Asia and then to Europe, the President and many other …

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Local leadership deserves credit

Posted

by Pete Mazzaccaro

The national story of coronavirus is one of poor planning and mistakes. With months of lead time, as the virus spread through Asia and then to Europe, the President and many other prominent pundits and political leaders called the threat no big deal, contained and even a hoax. It was time that could have been spent preparing tests and ramping up hospital capacity wasted.

In the last two weeks, many of those skeptics have been pulled, reluctantly, toward admitting what experts have been saying all along: This pandemic is dangerous and requires extraordinary resolve from Americans everywhere to upend life as we know it in order to keep many more thousands from dying than would have had we allowed the virus to run its course. Initial estimates predicted more than 2.2 million people might have died in the United States had we done nothing.

As the counter measures to coronavirus have been put into place – from keeping people at home to fighting for desperately needed medical supplies – figures like Governor Andrew Cuomo and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have become national heroes. Cuomo has been credited for being forceful and decisive, particularly in standing up for New York City, the hardest hit area of the country. Fauci has been praised as a steady, honest broker of information in a White House for which that is rare.

Despite a multitude of stories on Cuomo and other state governors managing this unfolding crisis, I’ve seen no mention of Pennsylvania’s own Governor, Tom Wolf. I think this is an oversight.

While many other states delayed action as cases of coronavirus spread, Wolf was swift to close schools and issue stay at home orders. In Pennsylvania, where infectious cases, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID -19 have remained under projections. Wolf’s swift actions deserve a lot of credit. While the United States has seen roughly 20 percent of those hospitalized for COVID-19 die, Pennsylvania has experienced a rate of about 12 percent fatality.

Locally, while slower to act than the state, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, the city’s Health Commissioner Thomas Farley and Managing Director Brian Abernathy, also deserve a ton of credit for leadership during this crisis. Every day at 1 p.m., this trio provides a comprehensive update on the state of the city’s fight against COVID-19. They have been honest, informative and responsible – a reliable source of order in a chaotic time.

It’s still early days in this pandemic, with the peak predicted to still be days away, so it’s too early to claim any victories, moral or otherwise. And there are so many, many people –from grocery store employees to emergency department docs – doing heroic work. But if Philadelphia and Pennsylvania avoid the worst, it’s in no small part thanks to our local leaders who’ve provided that which we haven’t received from the federal government.

opinion