Tribune says Cox should deploy National Guard to confine unvaccinated Utahns

In an op-ed published by the Salt Lake Tribune, their editorial board talked about the state and national government’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic in light of the recent testing shortages through the omicron surge.

Gov. Spencer Cox made an announcement on Friday to address the testing shortages, omicron surge, and current mitigation efforts being made by the state.

In his brief, Cox said, “We knew that we could increase the number of tests from an average of around 10,000 per day (and) up to 20,000 per day during Delta to 45,000 to 50,000 tests a day. So, we can double that capacity or triple that capacity”.

Cox highlighted the testing shortages aren’t necessarily due to the government’s decisions on the matter but are because of personnel shortages and testing shipments that either haven’t arrived or are on backorder due to the high demand.

Cox said this strain on staffing was predicted and plans were put in place to use home testing kits. 

Another issue, though, has been the number of available tests. 

According to Cox in the brief, the delay in shipments of tests has put additional constraints on testing capabilities, but these shortages should be resolved within a week.

“Over the next week or two, we’ll be getting hundreds of thousands of tests that we have ordered,” Cox stated. “But, in the meantime, until those tests come we have to look at things a little differently.”

Utah’s new state epidemiologist Dr. Leisha Nolen was alongside Cox at the press conference. Nolen said to manage the current shortage they’re recommending people who have symptoms, to stay home, act as if they have the coronavirus and not necessarily feel the need to go get tested.

This change in protocol worried and upset many, including the Salt Lake Tribune’s editorial board, which said in its op-ed that the statement was, “the sound of the state of Utah waving the white flag of surrender in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Tribune then went on to list all of the alleged failures the state and federal government had undertaken since the start of the pandemic—including children losing educational opportunities, businesses closing, and vaccine mandates not gaining traction.

The editorial board’s article, however, was of the idea that “the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.”

While the Utah National Guard was called upon to assist in the testing and vaccination efforts in Utah in both 2020 and 2021, the governor has yet to ask them to exercise such unfamiliar power.

One USU student, a human intelligence collector in the Utah National Guard — who has asked to remain anonymous — shared his experience in helping with the testing and vaccination efforts. 

“I helped out with the Utah County and Bear River Health Departments. I did contact tracing and clerical work at vaccination sites but I was able to do all the work locally in Logan,” he shared. 

When asked about his time commitment and the people he worked with, he said over the course of eight or nine months, the number of Utahns he helped out varied day to day, ranging from 30 to several hundred.

He added that a lot of his job training specific to the vaccination and testing sites was on-the-spot training with healthcare staff, but was a great experience for him as he got to play a role in his community.

When contacted for a comment about the Tribune calling on the Utah National Guard to take on a much larger, authoritative role in the management of the pandemic to the extent of keeping those without proof of vaccination confined, Mayor Holly Daines declined to share her thoughts on account of it being “such a politically charged issue on all sides.”

Whether or not Cox will call upon the Utah National Guard to ensure Utahns without proof of vaccination will be forced to remain home is yet to be seen but is unlikely. 

No other state has exercised such power since the start of the pandemic despite continued protests from Americans against the Coronavirus vaccine and vaccination mandates.

-Michael.Popa@usu.edu