Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

My wife Janie and I are small business owners. We own and operate a physical therapy practice, a 24-hour gym and a business consulting firm. We operate in both Wyoming and South Dakota.

Recently, we founded the SRT-Team, a network of regional experts on health, livelihood and small business issues. We contribute knowledge, insight and guidance to our members who access the information at http://www.surviverecoverthrive.com.

We are on top of the issues. We face the challenges of employment, business operations, healthcare – and every other challenge that as a state and nation we all are struggling to overcome. 

All around us, we are faced with government leaders and bureaucrats who have yet to show courage in the face of this crisis. I believe the ‘crisis’ we face across the majority of this country is not as a result of the pandemic threat to our health, but rather a synthetic crisis which threatens the fabric of the economy as a whole and our individual livelihoods.

As a nation, we reacted from an uncertain position. It happens. We all became experts on virality, mortality and transmissibility. We had to protect our elderly population as the virus was exceptionally deadly to the elderly. We all accepted, because leaders told us the only way to literally save our planet was to close business, stay home and cower. Remember?

But, here is the truth. No one knows the mortality rate of COVID-19, because to know that, we must test far more people for a reasonable sample. The vast majority of those who have had COVID-19 seem not to know they even had it, according to two recent studies.

Asymptomatic infection estimates are all over the map, due to lack of sampling, but The British Medical Journal just published a study that suggested 78% of COVID infected showed no symptoms. Research from the Italian village at the epicenter of the outbreak showed 50-75% were asymptomatic. And after two weeks of universal screening of expectant mothers at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center claimed, a staggering 88 percent of those who tested positive had no symptoms.

And, now it seems governments across the country are artificially inflating COVID-19 deaths by drastically expanding the guidelines to rule COVID-19 as the cause of death. Are you kidding me? Without question, it’s not being said, but mortality and even hospitalization rates are drastically lower than believed. Drastically.

Hospitals are ghost towns. Every hospital employee and administrator will confirm that the normal volume of patients with the normal ailments are inexplicably absent. And they wonder if we are now missing out on early diagnosing cancer, heart disease and other causes of death which could have been reversed or successfully prevented if people had not been too afraid or discouraged from coming to the hospital.

All of this was in the battle to ‘flatten the curve.’ Flattening the curve was meant to preserve our medical system, to ensure it was not overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases so that those who needed hospitalization, for COVID and non-COVID cases, could be adequately treated. 

For Wyoming, this was never a state-wide issue. Never. I would go so far as to say this has never been a country-wide issue. It has affected various municipalities to varying degrees, but none has been overrun. Yes, I concede that stay at home orders and business closures in some areas were necessary and have resulted in a dramatic slowing of the disease.

No, our governor didn’t issue a mandatory stay-at-home order, and I believe our state and local governments were attempting to act in our best interests, and doing so from a position of extraordinary uncertainty. But, today we all know much, much more than just 45 days ago. 

I was heartened to hear the governor was going to allow schools, daycares, gyms, salons and many other businesses to reopen. But the accompanying restrictions are simply so restrictive that compliance is economically unfeasible.

Imagine owning a small 24-hour gym that never has more than two or three people in the whole place. Now look at the restrictions. It’s ridiculous. And, sure we can ask for a variance, but Crook County has already announced they are following the governor’s guidelines, and don’t plan for variances.

And, why should I have to jump through those hoops, when there are truly no justifiable reasons for continued restrictions in Crook County, WY? None. No community spread. No upward trend in infections. No threat to overrun the medical system.

COVID-19 is not a hoax, but it has been completely and unforgivably blown out of proportion. The hoax is a nationwide economic shut-down that has now done irreversible damage to thousands, if not millions of businesses and families – justified by the coronavirus outbreak. We live with the threat of illness. We have many deadly diseases for which there is no vaccine, and even the flu vaccine is hit or miss to guess the correct strain each season.

We are now smarter. As a nation, our awareness is up. But many will continue to act in fear, taking what they perceive as the moral or ethical high ground in opposition to those of us who know the world must continue to turn. 

I ask our governor to step up as a leader. Certainly, he has graciously ‘allowed’ certain businesses to open and allowed each county to apply for variances. And while I support governing at the lowest level possible, now is not the time. I can just imagine “I’m not sticking my neck out!” as the echoing battle cry from America’s elected officials.

So again, I ask the governor to please encourage leaders at all levels of government to step up and be courageous. Be courageous in the face of a media destined to latch onto every perceived misstep. And, please do not simply authorize lower levels of government to operate on a permissible variance basis.

The governor led from the top when it was time to close it all down, and he should be there to calmly guide those who need to hear him say it’s all going to be okay. Lastly, for all our elected officials, please recognize that one cannot effectively govern when fear of media scrutiny outweighs the fear of being fairly judged by one’s constituents. Our elected officials must act with courage, before the list of unintended consequences of acting out of fear grows even longer.

Dave Cromes

Beulah