By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Dave Trabert is Chief Executive Officer of Kansas Policy Institute. He wrote an opinion piece for the Kansas City Star where he asserts that officials and the media aren't giving a full assessment of the situation.
"They keep moving the goalposts," Trabert said. "Initially, this was about, you've got to have shutdowns, you want to flatten the curve, you don't want to put stress on the hospital. Thank goodness that never happened. They started letting us open up, but as soon as they saw our cases increasing, then it was, wow, now we need to maybe go backwards and case increases became the new goalposts."
The argument is as long as the health care system can handle the cases it gets, considering shutdowns based on case count alone may do more harm than good.
"There are enormous, incalculable but enormous long-term economic and emotional consequences to shutting down even part of an economy," Trabert said. "There are thousands of people, tens of thousands of people struggling to pay their rent, pay their mortgage, buy groceries. We need to have this all put in perspective."
Trabert believes the numbers say hospitals can deal with more cases, if they happen.
"According to the department of health, we've got half the ICU beds in Kansas open and over 80% of the ventilators open," Trabert said. "Half of the beds overall are still open. If there is an increase, we have the capacity to deal with that."
Trabert's piece says between July 6 and Aug. 10, the percentage of COVID-19 cases requiring hospitalization in Kansas fell from 7.3% to 6.0%.