Sen. Jim Perry supports Counties' effort for regional reopening approach

I have been asked if I support the efforts of County Commissioners (Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Pamlico and Wayne) who have contacted Governor Cooper asking him to relinquish the emergency powers he assumed over their counties. I respectfully request Governor Cooper work with them to find the best path to honor their request.

The Governor took decision making authority away from the County Commissioners and local health departments because he feared the scale of the emergency would exceed the capabilities of local authorities. The Emergency Management Act allows that to happen in some instances when deemed necessary.

Many of us have seen the data forecast models the Governor, and others, were consulting at the time. Our hospital administrators and health care professionals were understandably concerned with those numbers. If the first NC model had been correct, we would have already seen about 384,000 cases. Almost 17,000 COVID-19 patients would have been in the hospitals, and roughly 5,000 in the ICU. When you consider we only have about 5,000–6,000 empty hospital beds and about 600–700 ICU slots available, that is a terrifying thought. As painful as they were, I believe Governor Cooper made many appropriate decisions based upon the information he had available at the time.

We still don’t know a great deal about the virus, and people will be fighting about things like lethality rates for years to come. We do, however, know a few things: We know it would take over 4.5 years to test every North Carolinian at 6,000 tests per day. We know we are currently using about 10% of available hospital beds with COVID-19 patients. We know that number may rise in the future. Why? Because we don’t have a vaccine, or cure.

We know the original assumptions were terribly inaccurate, and that is OK. All forecasts have one thing in common — they are all wrong. We start with assumptions and replace them with observations. This is a new virus, and the talented professionals working on those models have done, and are doing, the best they can. They have drastically revised estimates, cutting the number of assumed “unconfirmed positives” from 25 for every confirmed test case, down to 10. They previously assumed that 4.4% of unconfirmed positives would be hospitalized, and that was cut to 2.2%. The good news is that these assumptions are still likely too high, according to current observations.

We know the early lethality data indicates good news for approximately 98.7% of lab confirmed positive cases, according to a recent study. If we multiply lab confirmed positives times an estimated multiple, it likely pushes the lethality rate down, providing good news for approximately 99.5% of the population.

We also learned some things that we did not consider to be good news. We know anyone of any age can catch this virus. We also know COVID-19 is statistically bad news for the elderly, and the unhealthy. It appears to spread more easily in congregate, close space living arrangements and we need to take precautions.

This topic has caused unnecessary anxiety, and division among friends and neighbors. Logical fallacies have ruled the day as members of our community have been presented with false dilemmas. Neighbor has been pitted against neighbor and told they either choose to care about health or money. This situation is hardly that simplistic, and it is possible to have reasonable concerns that cover the entire spectrum.

The impacts of this virus will vary greatly in different regions. I believe the sparsely populated areas of Eastern NC do not have the ability to rebound financially as quickly as urban areas.

Governor Cooper, in his Executive Orders, expressed concerns about Health Systems being overrun, and I think we all shared those concerns at the time. I believe he was concerned the scope of the virus would exceed the capabilities of local elected officials, doctors, and health department leaders. We are fortunate to learn the forecasts which caused the initial level of concern were proven to be overly aggressive

I appreciate that we will be dealing with this issue for some time to come. Different regions of our state face differing challenges and regional leaders have the capabilities to operate a dimmer switch. Reopening can be successfully accomplished in differing steps and speeds. I personally believe local health departments, local physicians, local hospital leaders and local elected officials in Eastern NC have the same intelligence, and capabilities as those in our State Capital. As such, I respectfully request Governor Cooper work with them to find the best path to honor their request.