Page A2 Wyoming Tribune Eagle Saturday, August 1, 2020

Those simple steps can de-liver “the same bang for the buck as if we just shut the en-tire economy down,” said a frustrated Dr. Robert Red-field, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention, adding that he has studies to back that up.

Looking ahead, Fauci said he’s “cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021. I don’t think it’s dreaming ... I believe it’s a reality (and) will be shown to be reality.” As the government’s top infectious disease expert, Fauci heads

the National Institute of Aller-gy and Infectious Diseases.

Under White House orders, federal health agencies and the Defense Department are carrying out a plan dubbed Operation Warp Speed to deliver 300 million vaccine doses on a compressed time-line. That will happen only after the Food and Drug Ad-ministration determines that one or more vaccines are safe and effective. Several candi-dates are being tested.

Don’t look for a mass na-tionwide vaccination right away, Fauci told lawmakers. There will be a priority list based on recommendations from scientific advisers. Top-ping the list could be critical workers, such as medical per-sonnel, or vulnerable groups of people such as older adults with other underlying health problems.

“But ultimately, within a reasonable period of time, the plans now allow for any American who needs a vac-cine to get it within the year 2021,” Fauci said.

Fauci, Redfield, and De-partment of Health and Human Services “testing czar” Admiral Brett Giroir

testified at a moment when early progress against the coronavirus seems to have been frittered away. High numbers of new cases cloud the nation’s path. The three officials appeared before a special House panel investi-gating the government’s pan-demic response, itself sharp-ly divided along party lines.

Nearly 4.5 million Ameri-cans have been infected with COVID-19, and more than 150,000 have died. In recent weeks the virus has rebound-ed in the South and West, and now upticks are being seen in the Midwest. Testing bottle-necks remain a major issue.

Asked if it’s possible to deliver coronavirus test re-sults to patients within 48 to 72 hours, Giroir acknowl-edged “it is not a possible benchmark we can achieve today given the demand and supply.”

But rapid, widespread test-ing is critical to containing the pandemic. It makes it easier for public health workers to trace the contacts of an infect-ed person. Delayed test re-sults only allow more people to get infected.

Giroir said a two- to three-

day turnaround “is absolutely a benchmark we can achieve moving forward.”

While hospitals can gener-ally deliver in-house test re-sults within 24 hours, large commercial labs that do about half the testing for the country take longer, particularly if there’s a surge in new cases.

The latest government data shows about 75% of test re-sults are coming back within 5 days, but the remainder are taking longer, Giroir told law-makers.

The bitter politics sur-rounding the U.S. response to the coronavirus was evident at the hearing by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

As the health officials were testifying, President Donald Trump in a tweet repeated a false claim that high numbers of U.S. cases are due to exten-sive testing. Committee Chairman James Clyburn, D-S.C., tried to enlist Fauci to rebut the president.

And Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio tried to press Fauci into saying that demonstrations against police violence to-ward Black Americans spread the virus and should be curbed. Fauci didn’t bite.

“You make all kinds of rec-ommendations,” Jordan said, taking aim at Fauci. “You made comments on dating, baseball, and everything you can imagine ... I’m just asking should we try to limit the pro-testing?”

Fauci said it’s not his role to opine on curbing political protests. But Jordan shot back, noting that church ser-vices have been shut down due to virus precautions, and implying that Fauci has a dou-

ble standard on two First Amendment rights, religious liberty and freedom of expression.

“I’m not favoring anybody over anybody,” Fauci an-swered. “And I don’t judge one crowd versus another crowd. When you’re in a crowd, particularly if you’re not wearing a mask, that in-duces the spread.”

Some Trump supporters have urged the president to sack Fauci, and the presi-dent’s tweet raised the stakes.

During the hearing Cly-burn had displayed a chart showing rising cases in the U.S. juxtaposed with lower levels across Europe. That caught the president’s eye.

Trump tweeted: “Some-body please tell Congressman Clyburn, who doesn’t have a clue, that the chart he put up indicating more CASES for the U.S. than Europe, is be-cause we do MUCH MORE testing than any other coun-try in the World.”

Clyburn turned to Fauci for a real-time fact check.

“Now Dr. Fauci,” the chair-man intoned, “do you agree with the president’s state-ment, or do you stand by your previous answer that the dif-ference is caused by multiple factors including the fact that some states did not do a good job of reopening?”

Fauci answered directly.“I stand by my previous

statement that the increase in cases was due to a number of factors,” he said. One was “that in the attempt to reopen, that in some situations, states did not abide strictly by the guidelines that the task force and the White House had put out.”WWW.SERVEWYOMING.ORG

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Vaccine: There will be priority list for who gets it firstContinued from A1

The governor’s office is looking at a similar plan to provide student aid from the CARES Act funding, Harshman said. The governor has broad control over that funding, and it is possible grants to students could be secured without any action by the Legislature.

“I would love to see a press con-ference Monday that this is happen-ing,” Harshman said.

It is also possible the Legislature could hold a special session in the next few months, especially if Con-gress passes another stimulus bill, Harshman said. His proposed legis-lation could be considered at a spe-cial session.

Some discrepancies remain be-tween the proposals by the Legisla-ture and the governor’s office, according to a presentation at the Friday hearing by UW President Ed Seidel and Neil Theobald, who was the acting president at the universi-ty through June.

The governor’s office is consider-ing a grant of about $3,250 to UW students who can certify that they have faced financial difficulty due to the pandemic and the recession, Theobald said. He and Seidel met recently with Wyoming Attorney General Bridget Hill to discuss the possible student aid.

The attorney general believed CARES Act funding could not be used to cover tuition, but it could pay for room and board, Theobald said. The CARES Act restricted what this money could be used for so that it generally has to pay for direct costs of dealing with the pandemic or necessities. The attorney general felt college tuition was not a necessi-ty for students, but room and board are.

The legislators on the task force indicated they might still seek to use the CARES Act funding for grants to cover tuition, even if the attorney general has expressed doubts.

“In the end, the governor and the Legislature decide what the law is,”

Harshman said. “We’re going to go forward with the best policy we can.”

The current legislative proposal would give a far greater amount of aid by distributing money to more students and doubling the size of the aid. Seidel said the university would welcome any tuition assistance.

Whereas the governor’s office would give UW students about $20 million under current proposals, the draft bill in the Legislature would appropriate $66 million for UW students.

“We want to find any way we can to help our students,” Seidel said. “We are facing an uphill battle.”

Projected undergraduate enroll-ment at UW is down nearly 19% for this fall compared to last year, ac-cording to a presentation Theobald and Seidel gave Friday. University officials have repeatedly warned this summer of significant enroll-ment drops due to the recession.

Graduate enrollment could tum-ble even more. Current projections

show it could fall by up to 40%, with larger losses at some of the profes-sional schools, Theobald said.

Seidel warned that Colorado State University has already started giving students aid from CARES Act distributions it received from the state. Colorado State has distrib-uted $8.8 million to students this year, with payments up to $1,500, according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

The task force discussed how widely the grants should be distributed.

Rep. Albert Sommers, R-Pine-dale, asked whether the grants should be restricted to in-state stu-dents. In addition, he expressed concerns that giving grants to all American students might be unnec-essary, as opposed to focusing the grants on students with significant financial need.

An earlier draft of the proposal had restricted the grants to Wyo-ming residents, but students from other states affect Wyoming, as

well, Harshman said.Senate Minority Leader Chris

Rothfuss, D-Laramie, said that as long as the money is available, ex-tending grants to out-of-state stu-dents could produce good returns for the state.

“Any investment we make in edu-cation is a strong investment,” Rothfuss said. “It’ll be our best re-turn on investment, I think, from the CARES Act funding.”

House Minority Leader Cathy Connolly, D-Laramie, proposed an amendment that would remove the bill’s restriction that grants only be made available to United States citi-zens. UW has more than 780 inter-national students in a typical year, according to the university’s web-site, and they would not be eligible for the aid offered in the bill.

Rothfuss supported the amend-ment. Everyone else on the commit-tee voted against it, however, including Jubal Yennie, superin-tendent of Albany County School District 1.

Grants: CARES Act funding could go to student aidContinued from A1

By Margaret AustinWyoming Tribune Eagle

CHEYENNE – According to James Johnson, the ac-countability for elected offi-cials has declined since the start of the COVID-19 pan-demic. He said residents have lost trust in their gov-ernment, with elected offi-cials at all levels acting like they have no power.

Recently, Johnson said the left-leaning agenda has

taken a strong-hold be-cause

conservatives aren’t as vocal, but he wants that to change. Johnson hopes to bring that powerful, conservative voice to the Cheyenne City Coun-cil, so he’s running for a Ward 2 seat in this year’s election.

Ultimately, Johnson said he wants to help the council start doing the jobs they were elected to do.

“The City Council – their power is to control the expen-ditures and to hold the execu-

tive in check, and our current council is not doing either one of those things,” Johnson said. “I wanted to give the vot-ers an alternative – somebody who will stand up, somebody who will put that effort in there to do those two roles.”

Johnson originally had his eyes set on the mayor’s of-fice, but as “the new guy in town,” he decided the City Council would be a more via-ble way to have an impact. If elected, he said accountabili-ty will be one of the top issues he hopes to address.

By actually enforcing the policies on the books and ac-tively questioning suspicious

spending, Johnson said the council could prevent irre-sponsible or illegal spending of taxpayer money. He said his experience at the Wyo-ming Department of Audit makes him well-suited for catching misspending, though he noted his political campaign is separate from his job as a senior auditor.

“We can’t have a system where the mayor is able to spend whatever he or she wants to spend without any sort of accountability in re-gards to what is spent, how much is spent, and that sort of thing. The number one thing that a council can do is keep

track of that and hold the mayor accountable if they’re spending beyond their au-thority,” Johnson said. “What’s the point of having a city council if they have no power, or if they feel like they have no power? If their only role is to say yes to the mayor, then there’s no real point of having a council at all.”

If elected, Johnson’s first move would be to lift all re-strictions related to COVID-19. While the orders currently in place are from the Cheyenne-Laramie

County Health Department, he said the council can choose not to enforce those orders.

He went further, calling the orders “draconian” and say-ing that health officers have taken over the roles of gov-ernment officials. Johnson also voiced concerns that the health orders will be perma-nent until there is a vaccine, and when there is a vaccine, he said it will be mandatory.

“I personally oppose that; the people who support me oppose that. But unfortunate-ly, conservatives aren’t very vocal, so ultimately, this is going to pass. Our health offi-cers will be our governments for the foreseeable future, and we will have mandatory masks and mandatory vac-cines in Wyoming, because that’s the vocal side that’s going to make that case.”

Along with being vocal about his beliefs, Johnson also plans on bringing a vi-sion for Cheyenne’s future to the council. Having recently moved from Colorado, John-son wants to lead the city

away from becoming like places like Portland and Denver with “(Black Lives Matter) riots and Antifa riots every night.”

“A lot of people here in Wy-oming, a lot of people here in Cheyenne, don’t want to see Wyoming turn into Colorado, don’t want to see Cheyenne turn into Denver. I stand strongly for that, considering the fact that I came from there, and I don’t want to see Cheyenne turned into the same thing that I just left.”

Johnson is running against Tom Segrave, Boyd Wiggam, Keren Meister-Emerich and incumbent Bryan Cook for one of two open seats in Ward 2.

Wyoming’s primary elec-tion is Aug. 18, and the gener-al election will take place Nov. 3. Absentee and early voting are underway now.

Margaret Austin is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s local government reporter. She can be reached at maustin@wyomingnews.com or 307-633-3152. Follow her on Twitter at @MargaretMAustin.

Johnson seeks Ward 2 seat on City CouncilMore informationArea served: Ward 2, which covers the northern portion of Cheyenne.

Compensation: Council members make $12,000 per year.

Important dates: Wyoming’s primary election is Aug. 18, and the general election will take place Nov. 3. Absentee and early voting are underway now.

Age: 38

Hometown: Aurora, Colorado

Occupation: Senior auditor for the Wyoming

Department of Audit

Education: Bachelor’s degree in politics and public administration from University of Texas at San Antonio; master’s degree in business administration from Colorado State University.

Elected office experience: None

James Johnson bio

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