Arizona Eagletarian: Ducey succumbs to the Wing Nut faction and tries to cover his tracks

Five years ago, the Arizona Eagletarian speculated out loud on whether it might be a good idea to start a recall of the (then) newly elected governor. I dubbed the governor, Scrooge McDucey because he came to power proclaiming his intent to eliminate the state income tax.

Ducey then speaking out of both sides of his mouth when Democratic candidate Fred DuVal called him on it, denied making the claim. Dougie was already highly skilled in "double talk" by then.

Lo and behold, with the astroturfed wingnuts now actually taking out petitions to conduct such a recall, people have been searching the Interwebs for information on the movement. I have no way of knowing who has been doing the searching, but I do know that the Google machine has directed hundreds of them to my five-year old post on the subject.

However, it seems to be reasonable to infer that the wingnuts (who have been showing up at state capitols across the nation to intimidate governors) are getting their wish granted by McDucey.

As reported in the Arizona Republic:

On Wednesday, Sinema tweeted in support of continued social distancing: "To reopen strong, we must be safe and smart. For now, that means continuing to social distance and stay home — as well as increasing testing and infection-tracking."

Arizona State University will continue to provide COVID-19 models to the public despite instructions from the Arizona Department of Health Services to "pause" the work, the university confirmed.

A tweet from U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Wednesday afternoon said that she was grateful the work would continue.

Sinema said the decision to "disregard the science that should be the basis of Arizona public health policies — and the White House's guidelines for re-opening — is concerning and disappointing." [...]

In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed.

The slowest curve, based on if the state reopens at the end of May, is “the only one that doesn't put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve,” Lant said in April. That’s because transmission rates would be lowest at that time, he said.

“I can say, scientifically, no, it's not safe to reopen unless you're planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks, and we can help figure out what the appropriate amount of time is to stay open before we shut down,” he said. [...]

Now comes Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak with the beginnings of what my mother described to me when I was still a child as "double talk." Also in the cited Arizona Republic story above,

“We now have two months of on-the-ground data,” Ptak said. “We’ve been able to see which models are accurate — which match the actual facts and are most useful — and which are not.”

Ptak noted that ADHS Director Cara Christ, who is an infectious disease epidemiologist and public health expert, made the decision to pause the university modeling group “after reviewing all the data.”

The decision drew criticism from Democrats, including Sinema, other members of Congress and state lawmakers.

Earlier, the Ducey regime (with ADHS Director Cara Christ taking the heat) had shut down the work of the ASU/UofA public health modeling team and restricting the team's access to state data.

The modeling team of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona was compiling the most robust public model in Arizona of COVID-19.

The email, from DHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey, came on Monday evening, after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing in the coming days.

ABC15 first reported on the email stopping the modelers' work.

Journalists, for better or worse, have to pretty much refrain from expressing judgment on the subject of their investigative reporting... unless they are writing an opinion column, or analysis piece. Which is why it can be so frustrating when reading lines like this,

The decision drew criticism from Democrats, including Sinema, other members of Congress and state lawmakers.

Well, DUH! Why would they NOT criticize such decisions, when there is clear DATA to show the decision is not supportable for anything other than political reasons (i.e. the wingnut protesters)?

Today's Yellow Sheet Report has more.

WHEN TRUMP COMES TO TOWN, SCIENTISTS GET FIRED

The Dept of Health Services yesterday unexpectedly fired a volunteer COVID-19 modeling group made up of ASU and the UA scientists that had offered assessments critical of the governor’s plan to reopen, in a move one modeler called a politically motivated attempt to justify reopening. Dr. Joe Gerald, director of Public Health Policy and Management at the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health, told our reporter that the reasoning is clearly political and a step towards a half-baked justification of reopening Arizona as soon as possible.

Gerald said he believes the decision came from the Ninth Floor and Christ. The researcher suspects Ducey may be falling in line with Trump, who visited Arizona yesterday and recently discontinued the White House coronavirus task force. In his Monday press conference announcing the return of restaurants, barbers and salons, Ducey used unreliable data “that no one” in the group has been talking about to say Arizona had a “green light” to reopen, Gerald said.

“It’s difficult to reconcile the governor’s new messaging on his social distancing decisions with the data that’s been reviewed and thought about by all the members of our working groups and ADHS itself,” Gerald said. “Many of us are concerned that this change in direction has been prompted by ... the Governor’s Office on what they want to do with regard to social distancing and an attempt to blur the message coming from public health officials.”

By the way, "double talk" as employed by the Ducey regime on this subject over the last couple of days is defined as,