St. Louis top lawyer says city health director 'not quite' qualified for position

[TexasTowelie]

ST. LOUIS — The official in charge of the city’s response to the coronavirus does “not quite” meet the qualifications for the job, the city’s attorney told members of the Board of Aldermen on Wednesday.

Responding to questions during an online hearing, City Counselor Julian Bush said the city’s health director, Dr. Fredrick Echols, “almost” met the requirements in the city charter for the position.

“I will have to say, very regretfully, because I think he’s done a splendid job as director of health and hospitals, I think he almost satisfies those requirements, but he’s not quite there,” Bush said.

Christine Ingrassia, D-6th Ward, said neither Mayor Lyda Krewson nor Echols warned them about how the virus could affect the city until several weeks after Echols now claims he knew there would be a significant impact. And Sharon Tyus, D-1st Ward, said the health department had not devoted enough testing to ZIP code areas with high infection rates, including in her ward.

Read more: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/st-louis-top-lawyer-says-city-health-director-not-quite-qualified-for-position/article_cd8d4099-d29c-5b5d-9705-a2dc660ecacc.html

[SWBTATTReg]

1. I think a lot of people were caught off guard by the CV and just how serious it truly was. A ...

failure of the republican administration under rump to both act and inform the American public as well as American institutions such as cities, states, etc. of the truly horrific nature of this virus and just how poorly prepared the rump administration (and fellow republicans) were.

The city of STLMO went into lock down pretty early in the game, in mid March, 2020. However, I do feel that we could have went into lock down perhaps a week earlier (myself, I went into my own lockdown anyways, my SO, being deemed an 'essential' employee didn't have much choice though to still be exposed in dealing w/ the public in 'an essential business').

Really nice, eh? Kind of defeats the purpose of isolation to keep some retail outlets open still, eh (not groceries or medical in nature), and you wouldn't believe just how many idiots still had to go out and browse the retail outlets anyway, wandering around the store during an epidemic, without any specific item in mind to buy.

Even when such retail outlets had pretty comprehensive websites to do one's browsing, even when there were 100s waiting outside to get into the retail establishment, some would take their time to get whatever their business was done, if any.

Thanks a lot idiots for putting other people at risk for your idiotic behavior (the browsers that had no business or purpose in being out, they were just bored). I can certainly can imagine the fear that a lot of 'essential' retail workers are going through (as well as their families too).