Hutchinson agrees with Fauci as Arkansas' COVID cases rise

Steve Barnes
Steve Barnes

There was a time when most everyone, and certainly every optimist, would have agreed that ‘tis better, always, to laugh than to cry. Even now, amid a viral surge that our best minds tell us was essentially beckoned by our dimmest and most cynical minds, gallows humor is easy to find and the chuckles are hard to resist.

For example, one might joke that Gov. Hutchinson’s stature among fellow Republicans, not to mention his political future, was demolished last Sunday when he was praised by none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci. Yes, the Fauci of social distancing and hand washing and masking and vaccines – surely a socialist, Fauci, possibly even a communist. Or, Antifa?

“(I)t's very heartening and positive to hear people like Governor Asa Hutchinson ... go out there in their own state and say, hey, let's get vaccinated, because that's really the solution to this,” Fauci said.

It gets worse: A few days earlier, Jeff Zients, President Biden’s coronavirus coordinator, was quoted (in The Washington Post, of all places) praising Hutchinson as being “especially passionate” about urging his constituents to vaccinate.

In contrast: The essay published the other day, in the statewide newspaper, by the woman widely viewed as Hutchinson’s presumptive successor, who was not at all passionate about vaccination even as she acknowledged that she and her family had taken the needle. There should be no government mandates for masks or anything else, she wrote, especially the vaccine. (Mandates for vaccines such as polio, measles, mumps, etc. are presumably okay with her, the mother of three, and whose father, a Hutchinson predecessor, made it much easier for kiddies to be vaccinated against polio, measles, mumps, etc.) Her decision to take the coronavirus vaccine after discussing it with a doctor whose name is not Fauci, she wrote, adding: “I was also reassured that President Trump and his family were vaccinated. If getting vaccinated was safe enough for them, I felt it is safe enough for me.” Whether she is also taking Trump’s hydroxychloroquine supplements she did not say.

And this, also from the former Trump aide: Arkansas has one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates because Biden and his vice president aren’t giving her old boss the credit he deserves for the vaccine that fights the virus he said would “magically disappear” 18 months ago. You can follow that logic, surely. Don’t laugh; it explains why the 20 states (and the District of Columbia) with the highest vaccination rates were all carried by Biden. And, on a more granular basis, why the vaccination rate in counties (including, and especially, Arkansas’) that voted for Trump was an average 35%, at least 10% below the immunization level in the counties that went blue. Which seems to validate a poll from last week that found only about two in five self-identified Republicans had confidence in the vaccine compared to the more than 80% of declared Democrats who believed it to be both safe and effective.

Decide for yourself whether it’s funny that the once and forever Trumper and the head of her party are sometimes at odds with one another and sometimes with the dreaded Fauci. And sometimes not, even when they say they are. As when the gubernatorial candidate sneers at “Dr. Fauci and the ‘because science says so’ crowd of arrogant, condescending politicians and bureaucrats” whose “mandates and shutdowns ... have inflicted incalculable harm on our people and economy.” (And you thought it was the virus.) And, she adds, it was politicians and TV ‘experts’” who spooked Americans away from the vaccines (especially those who watch the cable “news” network that until recently employed her and on which she still frequently opines, and which showcases “anchors” who are vaccine skeptics – or pretend to be).

Fauci notes that the pandemic is almost entirely among the unvaccinated, “which is the reason why we're out there practically pleading with (them) to ... get vaccinated.” Both Hutchinson and his likely successor agree that the crisis is among the unvaccinated. “(I)t isn’t my place to tell them what to do,” says the potential governor, even as she notes that critical care beds are being increasingly filled with COVID patients; the incumbent governor, meantime, believes pleading, or something near it, very much is his place, and in his understated way, is doing so. The next thing you know he just might throw his weight behind efforts to return to local governments, including public school districts, the authority to impose mask mandates.

Arkansas: The death count rises, as does the overall case count, and the case rate increase has soared past 160% in 14 days; COVID-19 admissions have increased to a six-month high; and fewer than four in 10 Arkansans are fully vaccinated.

You’re not laughing?

Steve Barnes is the host of "Arkansas Week" on Arkansas PBS.