The numbers show just how right Roy Cooper and Mandy Cohen were on COVID | Opinion

In the spring of 2020, hundreds converged in Raleigh to protest Gov. Roy Cooper’s emergency stay-at-home order that shut many businesses and limited public gatherings to prevent the deadly spread of COVID.

Cooper said he understood the frustration but, “The thing we have to put first and foremost is the public health and safety of North Carolinians.”

Three years later, the value of that early caution along with masking and vaccinations has become dramatically clear. It turns out that the county where those protests unfolded – Wake County – had the lowest per-capita rate of COVID deaths among the nation’s 88 largest counties.

The state’s second-largest county, Mecklenburg, ranked 16th, while North Carolina overall had the lowest COVID death rate in the South.

Those rankings emerged from a Los Angeles Times analysis that examined COVID deaths in counties with more than 750,000 people. The count applies through March, when Johns Hopkins University ended its in-depth tracking of COVID deaths.

Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said Wake County’s low death rate reflects the particular characteristics of the county and its largest city compared to other large urban centers. But she also credited the state and county with having “a clear strategy that was equity focused to keep people safe until we got vaccines.”

Baldwin noted that 99 percent of North Carolina’s seniors were vaccinated. “This was a huge achievement that resulted in saving lives,” she said

c Ovid Death Rates by Dan Kane on Scribd

According to the Los Angeles Times analysis, Wake County had a rate of 118 COVID deaths per 100,000 residents. Five of the next six lowest counties with low death rates were in California and one was in Hawaii. Mecklenburg County had 170 deaths per 100,000. The New York City borough of the Bronx – which also a county – had the highest rate at 601.

North Carolina’s rate of 2,711 deaths per million people was the 13th lowest in the nation and notably lower than three of its four neighbors: Tennessee, 4,285; Georgia, 4002, and South Carolina 3,807. Virginia was close at 2,773.

Even at a relatively low rate, North Carolina’s 29,000 COVID deaths are a stunning loss of life that could have been reduced further by a stronger public health system, earlier Medicaid expansion and more compliance with preventative measures, particularly masking and vaccinations.

c Ovid Death Rates 2 by Dan Kane on Scribd

Still, the numbers should also be seen for the lives that were saved by Cooper’s putting public health ahead of political popularity and his willingness to follow the advice of doctors and scientists.

Jordan Monaghan, Cooper’s deputy communications director, said, “The governor’s actions protected people’s lives and their livelihoods.”

North Carolina’s numbers also reflect the guidance provided by Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) during the first year and a half of the pandemic. She is now director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Cohen, who stepped down at DHHS in November 2021 after five years as secretary, advised the public on how to reduce the risk of a COVID infection during televised briefings, many of them along with Cooper. Her high-profile role made her a target of complaints from vaccine skeptics and those opposed to masking and social distancing requirements.

When President Joe Biden was considering Cohen as the next CDC director, North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd and Rep. Dan Bishop were among 28 House and Senate members who signed a letter saying that Cohen was “unfit for the position.”

The letter complained that as the head of the DHHS, Cohen had “politicized science, disregarded civil liberties, and spread misinformation about the efficacy and necessity of COVID vaccinations and the necessity of masks.”

Leaders in other states gave in to pressure to reopen early and downplayed the need for vaccinations, social distancing and masking. How many lives that cost is unknown, but an examination of COVID death rates suggest that relaxing safeguards took a toll.

The numbers are there for history to see.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com