Dr. Woody Myers, Democrat Candidate for Governor: Premature to Lift Stay-at-Home Order

Former Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Woody Myers criticized Governor Eric Holcomb for his plan to begin a multiphase reopening of the state on Monday – a decision that Myers characterized as “premature.”

“We are still in the throes of increasing cases,” Dr. Myers, a Democrat who is challenging Gov. Holcomb in the November election, told the Hammer and Nigel Show. “In fact, yesterday we had the highest number of cases ever reported on record. That to me says we’ve yet to flatten the curve and this is premature at best.”

Myers argued that the state should have implemented widespread testing much earlier.

“I think we would have caught quite a few more positives early on, ” said Myers, “I’m quite pleased that we’ve increased the testing capacity throughout the state, but there are estimates that say we need about 10,000 tests per day and we’re nowhere near that yet.”

He continued: “I just know that if we had waited and planned better, we would have been able to open the economy faster and safer. So this to me is just confusing. There [are] five different stages, lots of different days, different businesses do different things in different counties. It’s just going to be hard for people to figure out what should happen and when it should happen. That’s just going to make Hoosiers less confident rather than more confident, and for the economy to restart, we need confidence.”

Dr. Myers advised that he would have brought together the state’s most impressive leaders in all sectors of the economy much earlier to address questions about the shutdown’s effect on businesses, labor, healthcare, and education.

“I would also have made it clear to the citizens of this state that these are steps that we needed to take these steps for safety reasons and I would have instituted them earlier,” said Myers. “Now the focus needs to be on what we do to safely reopen the state, how do we get ready for the pressures of summertime, and what kind of steps do we need to take to ensure that we’re protecting those who are the most vulnerable.”

Myers said his message to Hoosiers who are fed up with the stay-at-home order and protesting any further delays in reopening the economy is one of solidarity.

“I would tell them that I share their desire, but we’re just not ready yet,” he said. “There are 6.6 million Hoosiers that we have to think about.”

Dr. Myer reiterated how ill-prepared the state of Indiana was for this crisis.

“Indiana has one of the lowest per-capita budgets for public health of any state in America, and that showed,” said Myers.

Addressing the COVID-19 virus itself, Myers told Hammer and Nigel the disease was likely here as early as last fall.

“All of the experts that I’m listening to agree that it’s a zoonotic virus, which means that it is transmitted from animals to humans [and] probably in China, but we don’t know that 100% for sure,” explained Myers. “There are theories around climate change being a part of it, but we don’t really know for sure exactly when or where it occurred although we’ve got a pretty good guess.”

Dr. Myers said moving forward, antibody testing will likely become far more important than diagnostic testing in preventing the spread of the disease.

“The diagnostic test is a swab in the nose, which tells you if you have the virus in your body now,” explained Myers. “The antibody test if you had the virus in your body previously and how powerful your body has been in response to the virus.”

He continued: “We don’t know 100% for sure that people with the antibodies can’t [become reinfected], but it’s likely that the antibodies offer you some immunity. But both diagnostic testing and antibody testing are going to be crucially important moving forward until we’ve got a vaccine that works, is available to everyone, and people have that form of immunity as opposed to natural immunity.”

Click the link below to Hammer and Nigel’s full interview with Dr. Woody Myers.