Mississippi is battling an outbreak of C. auris, a fungal infection resistant to medication, which the Department of Health says may be responsible for the deaths of four people.
“Our investigation is ongoing and fluid,” said health department spokesperson Liz Sharlot.
Sharlot said the department has identified 12 clinical cases of the infection and four “potentially associated deaths.” Both those numbers doubled since State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers last gave a report about the infections to the Board of Health in January.
C. auris is still rare in the United States. The people most vulnerable to an invasive infection – such as in the blood, heart or brain — are already sick from other medical conditions.
At the center of the Mississippi outbreak is a long-term care facility in central Mississippi. Some patients with the infection have also received care at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
When patients with a C. auris infection arrive at the hospital, they are each assigned one nurse who cares for them exclusively, according to UMMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lisa Didion.
“That’s how dangerous this is,” Didion said last week during a Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Health Affairs Committee meeting.
Doctors first identified C. auris — or Candida auris — in Asia in 2009. It has quickly become a cause of severe infections around the world with some strains resistant to all three available classes of antifungals.
Dr. Paul Byers, State Epidemiologist
The yeast — a type of fungus — can be carried on patients’ skin without causing infection or symptoms, allowing it to easily spread to others.
The Department of Health says it has identified 53 “colonized” patients, meaning patients who aren’t sick with an active infection but were found to be carrying the organism somewhere on their body. That number was 37 about four weeks ago.
“When we get patients from that facility (in Central Mississippi), we really have to be sure that we isolate them appropriately,” Didion said of the care at UMMC. “This particular organism is extremely transmissible and has a very high mortality rate.”
The CDC has found that C. auris spreads most often in long-term health care facilities among patients with severe medical problems. The fungus can cause bloodstream infections and death. More than 1 in 3 patients with an invasive infection of C. auris will die, according to CDC research.
Mississippi’s first cases were identified in November 2022, Byers wrote in a January update on the outbreak.
“This is a rapidly expanding and serious situation,” Byers said at the time.
The majority of cases are based in one long-term care facility but a second central Mississippi facility has some patients with detected colonization. A handful of other cases have been reported at other health care facilities across the state, according to Byers’ update.
C. auris is resistant to some commonly used disinfectants. In response, the health department has asked health care facilities across the state to obtain the appropriate products in preparation should the outbreak grow.
Didion said while they have treated patients with the infection, they have had no transmission of the fungus within the hospital so far.
At the time Gov. Tate Reeves appointed a Flowood neurosurgeon to the State Board of Health, the doctor said he was committed to “sound, science-based policy.”
But two years later, he has at least three times made dismissive and what other health experts see as ill-informed commentary on social media about public health issues.
Gov. Tate Reeves in 2021 appointed Dr. John D. Davis to the State Board of Health to fill the six-year term of Dr. Ed “Tad” Barham, who had died.
At the time he was appointed, Davis said he was “committed to sound, science-based policy with efficient execution” and looked forward to addressing “important matters that impact the health and lives of Mississippians,” according to a Health Department press release.
In a now-deleted tweet, however, he seemed unconcerned about the rise in Mississippi babies with syphilis.
“It’s not hard to go a lifetime and never contact syphilis. It doesn’t fall out of the sky. And it’s easy to treat if you have sex with someone who has it and gives ot (sic) to you,” he tweeted in response to a Mississippi Today story about a 900% increase in congenital syphilis cases in the state.
After Mississippi Today reached out to Davis about this and other statements last week, he deleted the tweet and updated his Twitter bio to state: “All opinions provided are mine alone, and they should not be construed as representing any other individual or organization.”
Mississippi now leads the country in cases of the sexually transmitted infection. Syphilis can cause miscarriages and death. Children born with the disease can have major malformations and life-long complications.
In 2016, eight babies in Mississippi were born and hospitalized with syphilis. In 2021, that number hit 106, according to data former State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs shared based on Health Department and hospital discharge numbers. While syphilis cases in infants have gone up nationwide, Mississippi’s rate of increase is nearly five times the national average.
Several messages left with Davis at his office in Flowood were not returned.
Reeves’ office did not respond to a request for comment on Davis’ statements.
The State Board of Health is an 11-member board that provides policy direction for the health agency.
Dr. Khalil Ghanem, president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association and a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins medical school, shared a response to those tweets with Mississippi Today.
“While some people do live their lives without getting syphilis, others do not. What these two groups have in common is the desire to have healthy children who are afforded an opportunity to achieve success and happiness in their lives. Unfortunately, syphilis often robs the parents and their children of these opportunities,” Ghanem, whose expertise includes HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, said.
“With more than an 900% increase in the rates of this cruel but completely preventable infection, more children are being robbed of these opportunities and that should be deemed unacceptable and intolerable by all members of society who care about the welfare of children. It is critical to invest in these kids by putting an end to this senseless and preventable infection,” he continued.
Ghanem and others also point out that syphilis is not always “so easy to treat,” and many people who have syphilis do not have symptoms. According to the Mayo Clinic, people may be infected for years without ever seeing symptoms.
During pregnancy, Ghanem said, it is critical to identify the infection before the 20th week of pregnancy for best protection of the baby. If pregnant patients aren’t screened and treated early, complications may still arise even with treatment.
Davis expressed a similar attitude toward HIV: “It’s not difficult at all to avoid getting HIV. Does someone need government intervention to live a long life HIV (-)?”
He made the comment in response to a news story about the state of Tennessee rejecting HIV funding from the federal government – funds that Mississippi itself accepts.
One of the Health Department’s primary roles is prevention programs for HIV. It is also tasked with disease tracking and outbreak management; lab testing for syphilis, TB, and other diseases; and prevention programs for other STDs and communicable diseases.
The Health Department and the Mississippi Public Health Association did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Davis has also argued with the notion that contraception can be difficult to access for some Mississippians. In response to a tweet citing Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd explaining the problems women on Medicaid have accessing long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), Davis responded on Feb. 10: “Fine. While we work on improving access to longer acting contraception, use the pill or condoms. ‘I can’t help it that I got pregnant’ is not valid in 2023 (aside from the less than 1% that tragically result from rape.)”
Birth control pills are 99% effective at preventing pregnancy when taken consistently every day. About nine out of 100 women who use the pill have unintended pregnancies every year, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Condoms are 98% effective when used perfectly but can leak, tear or come off, resulting in reduced effectiveness.
Norris Ashley died last week, and, sadly, many readers will not know of him. You should.
Norris Ashley, 75, was a high school coach, a truly great one, for Ingomar Attendance Center in Union County. That’s up in Mississippi’s Hill Country, where basketball is king and where the really successful coaches are worshiped almost as deity. Ashley won 1,697 games and nine state championships in 43 years of coaching — 41 were at Ingomar, his alma mater.
Norris Ashley , who won 1,697 games and nine state basketball championships at Ingomar, will be laid to rest Tuesday. (Ashley family photo)
Most of you who don’t know about Ashley will know about Norman Dale, the character Gene Hackman played in the iconic 1986 movie “Hoosiers.” In the movie, Dale coached tiny Hickory to the overall Indiana state basketball championship against all odds. Simply put, Norris Ashley was Mississippi’s Norman Dale.
“I’ve watched that movie at least 10 times, probably more,” Ashley once told me. “That one hits pretty close to home.”
In 1978, back when Mississippi public high schools still played the Grand Slam, matching the champions of all the high school classifications, tiny Ingomar, with 150 students in grades 9-12, won the Slam defeating much larger schools. James Green, who was listed at 6 feet, 2 inches tall, but might have been 6-1 in his sneakers, was Ingomar’s tallest player.
Rick Cleveland
“They listed me at 6-2 because it sounded better,” Green said last week. “We weren’t very big but we knew how to play. We had played together for Coach Ashley since we were in junior high. When I say we knew how to play, I mean we really knew how to play.”
As all of Ashley’s Ingomar teams did. They guarded fiercely, shared the basketball and took only the best shots. Ashley once said of that team, “We sure don’t make anybody shake in their sneakers. We don’t have a lot of height, jumping ability or physical strength, and we’re not eat up with a lot of quickness either. Sometimes when we play teams that haven’t seen us, by the time they stop laughing at us, they’re too far behind to catch up.”
Those Ingomar Falcons won 47 consecutive games over two seasons.
The first time these eyes ever saw Norris Ashley was when he played basketball at Delta State. He scored a basket at the buzzer to help the Statesmen defeat Southern Miss. He was a 6-4 forward who could jump into the rafters. In his last game for Delta State, he scored 24 points and grabbed 20 rebounds. He also played left field for Boo Ferriss, another Mississippi treasure, in baseball. He played on Boo’s 1968 team that lost in the national championship game of the Division II World Series. Says Langston Rogers, then DSU’s sports information director and now a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer, “Norris was just a phenomenal athlete. At Union College in Jackson, Tennessee, I saw him rob a home run. I mean he must have jumped four feet high over the fence to reach up and grab that ball.”
Ashley was nicknamed “Stalk” at early age by a cotton-farming uncle who said every time he saw his nephew he had grown a few inches just like one of his cotton stalks.
After Ashley graduated from Delta State and coached the DSU freshman team one season, he coached two years at Coahoma High School before returning home to Ingomar. Ashley once recalled an older coach advising him to take the Ingomar job, saying it would be a good place to coach a year or two before he found something better. Said Ashley, four decades later, “I never found any place better.”
James Green, who played at Ole Miss and once coached Southern Miss to the Conference USA championship when the league included Louisville, Memphis, Cincinnati and Houston, believes Ashley would have been successful at any level. “He would have hated recruiting but he could coach with anybody,” Green said. “He was as fundamentally sound as any coach anywhere. He was my John Wooden.”
Norris Ashley, seated, with son Jonathan and the state championship trophy Jonathan’s Ingomar team won in 2020. (Ashley family)
Ashley’s son, Jonathan Ashley, now coaches Ingomar on the basketball floor that is named for his father. Jonathan’s Ingomar Falcons won a state championship in 2020 with his father cheering from the stands. “People tell me my teams play like his did,” Jonathan Ashley told me. “For me, that’s the ultimate compliment.”
Through all the nearly 1,700 victories and nine state championships, Norris Ashley remained as humble and endearing as he was when he graduated from Ingomar at age 16.
“I guess I had a little influence,” he said upon retirement in 2012. “I got them to the game on time and made sure they had shoes and uniforms and stuff to wear. I’ve been lucky to have players who worked hard and wanted to win.”
Ashley’s funeral will be held Tuesday, appropriately, in the gym on the hardwood that bears his name. The place will be packed as it was for so many of those 1,697 victories. Surely the good people in Ingomar will see fit to name the gym after him, as well.
Note: This analysis anchored Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive access to legislative analysis and up-to-date information about what’s happening under the Capitol dome.
Rep. Bryant Clark, a Democrat from Pickens, stood on the House floor last week for what looked to be a routine amendment to a Republican-authored bill that would create an $80 million grant program for financially struggling hospitals.
All session long, Democrats have hammered Republicans for not doing more to address the Mississippi hospital crisis, which threatens to shutter dozens of medical facilities across the state. Hospital leaders, doctors and nurses, local elected officials, and many everyday Mississippians have begged lawmakers to step in to save the system.
Clark explained that his amendment would increase the Republicans’ proposed $80 million grant program to $275 million. His amendment would also have added an additional $25 million program for hospitals with 75 or fewer beds. With a $4 billion budget surplus, Clark argued, Republicans could do better to keep hospitals open than a one-time, $80 million grant program.
But as soon as Clark finished explaining his amendment, Republican Speaker of the House Philip Gunn recognized Republican Rep. Steve Massengill, who made a motion to table Clark’s amendment. That motion passed by a vote of 70-44, killing his amendment and abruptly cutting off what could have been — and perhaps should have been — a longer, earnest debate about the amount of money lawmakers should provide struggling hospitals.
In the end, Republicans did not have to vote on Clark’s amendment. They instead simply killed it and later passed exactly what they wanted: $80 million for struggling hospitals, and $80 million only.
House Republican leaders, who have nearly complete power to act without any true dissent or opposition, appear to be further tightening their grip on the legislative process by motioning to table amendments offered by Democrats. It’s a seldom used procedural move, but Republicans did it twice last week. And smart money would be on them continuing it in coming days.
The procedure allows Republicans to avoid taking tough votes. And in the process, they can stifle debate about issues that large majorities of the state’s voters want them to address — like the state’s critical hospital crisis and other health care-related issues.
When a bill comes up on the House floor for a vote, any lawmaker can propose an amendment to that bill. This is a critical step in the legislative process that often improves pieces of legislation and ensures that the public can fully understand why or how laws are passed. Often, this is when some of the most important Mississippi political debates occur.
In the Mississippi Legislature, where Republicans have supermajority control of both the House and Senate, amendments live or die based on what the Republican chair defending the original bill says on the floor. But even under GOP rule, there is almost always fair consideration and debate of any amendment in question.
That is, until last week, when House Republicans tabled Clark’s amendment on the hospital grants bill. The move is an escalation of tension between Republican leaders and Democrats, who have virtually no voting power inside the Capitol but have implemented a pesky and persistent political strategy this session.
Here’s how Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader from Natchez, explained it:
We introduce legislation, they kill it. It doesn’t even get a debate in committee. A lot of times, the committees don’t even meet. Republicans have a supermajority, so they’re able to do that and anything else they want to. But when we go home and constituents ask us how the Republicans voted on something, we can’t answer that question because they didn’t even allow it to come up for debate, let alone a vote. You don’t really know where Republicans stand on anything because of how they conduct business.
They’re killing all our bills — bills that would do common sense things like help hospitals keep their doors open and help poor, working folks afford trips to the doctor and help poor mothers not die after giving birth. Our next step, then, is amending legislation on the floor. That puts Republicans on the board, so to speak, on the record with the public.
All we can do is try to make sure every Mississippian sees what’s happening. We want Republicans to be transparent with their constituents. We want everyone to know exactly where they stand on the big issues. It’s about transparency and knowing what the people you elect are doing at the Legislature. If 70-80% of the electorate wants Medicaid expansion and Republicans kill it over and over again, they’re effectively voting against the interests of the electorate. We want to put them on the board about that.
Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez
HouseRepublicans, apparently, have caught on to the Democrats’ strategy. It’s evident that Democrats aren’t going to stop proposing amendments about additional hospital funding, about expanding Medicaid to provide up to 300,000 working Mississippians with health care coverage, about extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to help new and expecting mothers afford decent health care.
And looking ahead on the House calendar, there are several Republican bills dealing with health care issues that Democrats could attach germane amendments to and continue trying to get Republicans “on the board.” How Republicans handle those amendments in coming days — and whether they’ll motion to table them — could inspire some high drama and further escalate tension between the party leaders.
“It’s a complete abuse of power,” Johnson said. “Republicans are just neophytes when it comes to the legislative process. They’ve got enough votes. There should be a mature way to handle everything, one that doesn’t keep Mississippi taxpayers and voters in the dark. But they take shortcuts. They go into caucus meetings and rig votes, then they cut off debate on the floor. It’s an abuse of a great deal of power, and I don’t think that’s something Mississippians will appreciate in the long run.
“We’ll continue to expose them,” Johnson continued. “People are picking it up, and I take it as an indication that our strategy has been effective. Republicans don’t want to take another vote on Medicaid expansion. I wonder why that is. Then they’re talking only $80 million for hospitals? It just pisses people off. I hope they keep it up, I really do. I just don’t think they can see how bad they look.”
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Trailblazing engineer Raye Montague Credit: Good Morning America
On Good Morning America, the actresses from the 2016 film Hidden Figures honored another hidden figure — trailblazing engineer Raye Montague.
When she was 7 and visited a captured Nazi mini-submarine in Little Rock, Arkansas, she saw the dials and was mesmerized. In 1956, she began working for the U.S. Navy as a clerk typist and quickly became more, learning engineering skills at work and computer programming at night school. She became the first female programmer of ships there and a computer systems analyst at the Naval Ship Engineering Center, creating the first computer generated rough draft of a Navy ship, the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate.
She also served as program director at Naval Seas System Command and was honored with the Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1972. During her career, she not only taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, she briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff each month. Many of her ship designs continue to be used.
In 2017, the Naval Surface Warfare Center honored her. “I didn’t realize that I was breaking glass ceilings back then,” she told those gathered. “I was just doing what had to be done.” She died in 2018 at the age of 83.
Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender talk with Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, about how legislative leaders are trying to address issues dealing with crime and water in Jackson without getting input from lawmakers who represent the capital city. She laments how legislation is taking power from Jackson residents and their elected representatives and is causing more harm than good.
Described by Klassik Begeisert as a “master of intense sound waves with a pioneering spirit” Mississippi’s own William Garfield Walker is an emerging young conductor quickly establishing himself on the international stage. Chief Conductor and founder of the Nova Orchester Wien(NOW!), Walker is a 2022 recipient of the Sir Georg Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award and the 2022 Third Prize winner of the Only Stage International Conducting Competition. Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey catches up with William and finds out what he has been up to and what the future holds for this rising global conducting star.
Elaine Defendants, Helena, Phillips County, Ark., ca. 1910 Credit: Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art, Central Arkansas Library System
In Moore v. Dempsey, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that mob-dominated trials violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
On Sept. 30, 1919, Black sharecroppers had gathered in a church at Elaine, Arkansas, to discuss fairer prices for their products. White men fired into the church, leading to three days of fighting and the reported killing of five white men and more than 100 Black men, women and children. It was part of the wave of violence against African Americans during “Red Summer,” and one that crusading journalist Ida B. Wells wrote about.
Two days after the attack, U.S. Army troops arrived, and several hundred Black Americans were placed in stockades and reportedly tortured. A grand jury eventually charged 122 black men, but none of the white men responsible for the violence. The first dozen were sent to death row. The next 65 pleaded guilty.
On appeal, attorney Scipio Africanus Jones, the NAACP and others represented the “Elaine Twelve” on appeal, winning when the Supreme Court concluded that the trial had been prejudiced by a white mob outside yelling that if the Black men weren’t sentenced to death, the mob would lynch them. A memorial now honors the victims of the Elaine Massacre.
Two guys on a hike see an angry bear and turn tail to run in the opposite direction. One guy proclaims helplessly, “We can’t outrun a bear,” to which the other replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.”
Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves hopes to make the 2023 general election, where he is likely to face Democrat Brandon Presley, like that hike in the woods.
Reeves hopes to make the race one where he does not have to convince the electorate to like him — he just has to convince voters to dislike him less than they dislike Presley.
No matter how often Reeves and his supporters want to shout “fake news” or “rigged polling,” the evidence is clear that the incumbent governor is not well-liked by Mississippi voters.
A recent Tulchin Research poll revealed that 54% of respondents had an unfavorable view of Reeves compared to 42% who viewed the incumbent governor favorably.
His favorability was even lower when respondents were quizzed about Reeves’ role in the ongoing scandal where at least $77 million in welfare funds were misspent, resulting in criminal convictions for some state officials, including people close to Reeves.
Perhaps more telling is a Siena College poll commissioned last month by Mississippi Today that found that 56% of poll participants would support “someone else” for governor this year, while 31% would support Reeves.
Recurring polls conducted by Morning Consult find that Reeves, since he’s been elected, is among the nation’s most disliked governors.
In the Tulchin poll, Presley surprisingly led Reeves 47% to 43%, while the incumbent led 43% to 38% in the Siena poll. At the very least, it appears right now the election will be close — surprisingly close for a Republican incumbent in Republican ruby red Mississippi.
These pollsters are not out to get Reeves. They are all legitimate national pollsters. Siena has been viewed as one of the most respected pollsters in the nation and was deemed as the most accurate in the 2022 midterm elections by the FiveThirtyEight blog, which compiles and analyzes polling data.
In the 2019 election, Reeves even seemed to acknowledge that a lot of folks did not like him, conceding that his willingness to say no to requests for state funding have made many people mad, especially as lieutenant governor where he presided over the Senate. Others say the fact that he is always in attack mode — often taking shots at political opponents when cooperation and humility could be a more appropriate response — turns off some voters.
The same Tulchin Research poll found that 39% had a favorable view of Presley while 18% viewed him unfavorable. The key is that most Mississippians do not know Presley, who has served as Northern District Public Service Commissioner since 2008. Reeves, on the other hand, is about as known a commodity as there is in Mississippi. He has run and won five statewide elections and is completing his 20th year in statewide elected office.
Reeves will strive to ensure that by the time he completes his sixth statewide campaign that Mississippi voters view Presley more negatively than they view him.
Reeves certainly has the money to create any negative narrative he wants. According to the January filings with the Secretary of State’s office, Reeves has about $8 million cash on hand. He raised $3.5 million during 2022.
That is a lot of money to create a narrative about an opponent.
Presley has just $723,800 cash on hand, including $365,000 raised during 2022.
Reeves’ huge cash advantage is one of the primary reasons he is viewed as the heavy favorite despite what polls might say right now. And the last quarter of a century, Mississippians’ default vote seems to always be Republican.
Presley will work to introduce himself to the state’s electorate as a conservative Democrat who is focused on improving health care, the economy and other state issues. Reeves will focus a lot more on social issues like abortion and immigration. He will publicly question whether Presley is more focused on LBGTQ issues, on open borders, on tearing down white Mississippians while trying to uplift African Americans, and on trying to close all police departments across the state.
But the real question of the 2023 campaign is whether the unfavorability bear will catch Presley or Reeves first.
