Can You Guess Who The First Governor Is To Contract COVID-19?

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has COVID-19. I hope he recovers without getting any of the horrific side-effects and without passing it along to his family. I don't know a lot about Stitt's family, although I do remember when, on March 14, he tweeted a picture-- now deleted-- of the gang eating at a restaurant, as if he deserved an award for defying the coronavirus panic. "Eating with my kids and all my fellow Oklahomans at the @CollectiveOKC. It's packed tonight!" he enthusiastically shared.

Stitt, who has aggressively pushed to reopen Oklahoma businesses while flouting experts' health recommendations, is the first governor to come down with coronavirus. He is still totally opposed to a mask mandate. "I know that some businesses are mandating masks and that's great. But you can't pick and choose what freedoms you're going to give people," he said. "So if the businesses want to do it, if some local municipalities want to do it, that's fine. But again, we also respect people's rights to stay home if they want, to run their businesses, or to not wear a mask." He also said that he's not planning to roll back any of the state's reopening plans. Even Kay Ivey, governor of Alabama, did that yesterday as her state continued spoking out of control (1,710 new cases Tuesday, 1,812 new cases Wednesday, 2,021 new cases today).

Few politicians have been as stupid and destructive to their own states as he has. Oklahoma was one of the states that gave Trump one of his biggest wins in 2016-- 949,136 (65.3%) to 420,375 (28.9%). Since then, Trump's favorability has dropped in Oklahoma by 20 points but he still enjoys a 56-42% job approval rating, one of the strongest anywhere. When Trump says COVID-19 is a hoax, normal people know he's lying-- but not Oklahoma Republicans."

Oklahoma has already had 438 COVID-19 deaths-- not many, but with Trump having brought the plague into the state in a big way with an ill-advised rally, deaths will surely follow the big uptick in cases. Yesterday Oklahoma had it's worst one-day case report-- 1,075 (up from 993 Tuesday), bringing the state total to 22,813 (a rapidly increasing 5,765 cases per million Sooners). Today there were 628 more cases and a grand total of 23,441. Now even Arkansas' governor has mandated masks statewide.

Stitt once boasted that "We've got six children and we don't vaccinate." Brainwashed by Fox, Hate Talk radio and evangelical charlatans, Oklahomans chose Stitt (and Trump and a state Senate with 39 Republicans and just 9 Democrats and a state House with 76 Republicans and 25 Dems). What did they get for it? A full blown totally avoidable COVID pandemic.

That curve steepened dramatically after Trump brought the circus to Tulsa