A Sinking Ship': Arizona Docs Say Ducey Steered State Into COVID-19 Surge

https://www.thedailybeast.com/arizona-doctors-say-gov-doug-ducey-steered-state-into-covid-19-surge?ref=home


Matt Heinz, a hospital physician in Tucson, Arizona, remembers the day he knew a coronavirus surge was coming. Or really, it was two days: a night shift that stretched from the evening of June 3 into the early hours of June 4, when Heinz admitted four patients suspected of having COVID-19, instead of the usual one or zero. It was a little over two weeks after Gov. Doug Ducey allowed the state’s lockdown order to expire, Heinz said, and “it was like someone flipped a switch.”

“And someone did flip a switch,” said Heinz, a former Democratic state representative who also served in the Department of Health and Human Services. “It was the governor.”

As cases in Arizona skyrocket, physicians told The Daily Beast they feel increasingly abandoned by Ducey, who was one of the first leaders in the country to lift lockdown restrictions this spring. Despite the state’s record-setting spike in cases—and the urging of hundreds of health-care workers and multiple mayors—Ducey so far has refused to re-institute a lockdown order or issue a mask mandate, leaving doctors and nurses feeling helpless.

“You can’t bluff this virus,” said Quinn Snyder, an emergency physician in Mesa. “People keep trying to find shortcuts around the issues at hand, but the virus just doesn’t care about those kinds of shortcuts. It will win.”

“I have been trying to talk to people and speak up as much as possible,” he added. “And it feels like we are on a sinking ship.”

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