Yvonne Moore collects specimen for COVID-19 testing outside of the Aaron E. Henry Community Health Services Center in Clarksdale, Miss., Wednesday, March 29, 2020.
The state health department reported 1,230 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, the most reported in a single day for Mississippi. The previous record for new cases was 1,092, reported on June 25.
The rolling seven-day average for new cases is now at 887, also a new high for the state. In four out of the last five days, the seven-day average has broken the state’s previous record.
Thursday’s report marks the first time the state has reported two consecutive days of more than 1,000 new cases as the total cases in the state since March nears 40,000. The total cases have increased by 97 percent, or nearly doubled, since exactly a month ago.
In what’s called its “illness onset” data, MSDH tracks the day that patients report experiencing symptoms. As of Wednesday, the agency’s website shows a record of 1,075 people becoming sick on July 6, the Monday after the Fourth of July holiday. The next-most illnesses reported in a day is 694.
As Mississippi’s top health officials attested to a week ago, the state’s hospitals and ICUs are under increasing stress. MSDH’s latest numbers show 855 confirmed hospitalizations from COVID-19 on Wednesday, a 90 percent increase from exactly a month ago. The seven-day average for confirmed hospitalizations, used to smooth out day-to-day variability, has increased for 27 straight days.
July 6 also marked a new high for deaths in a day, with 25. As of yesterday’s data, the seven-day average for deaths nearly doubled from 9 per day in late June to 16 per day on July 8. The record for that measure is 17 per day, set back in May.
The rolling average for the state’s positivity rate — the percent of tests that return positive — peaked on July 11 at 20 percent. That number’s since dropped to 15 percent, but is still higher than it was for the entire month of June.
State Rep. Manly Barton, R-Moss Point, remained hospitalized on Thursday after contracting coronavirus at the Capitol, several of his colleagues told Mississippi Today.
“He was in ICU,” said House Appropriations Chairman John Read, one of Barton’s fellow Jackson Countians. “The report I got (Thursday) morning was that he is on oxygen only, he was awake and communicating.”
Barton, 71, was reportedly hospitalized on Sunday.
Read and others on social media called for prayers and well wishes for Barton, a nine-year lawmaker, former longtime Jackson County supervisor and Vietnam combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient.
“As many know, over the two weeks since the House and Senate left the Capitol, dozens of lawmakers and staff have tested positive for COVID-19,” Read posted on Facebook. “While most have already recovered, a few are still struggling. One of our most beloved chairmen … Rep. Manly Barton remains hospitalized.
“Manly is as tough as they come,” Read wrote. “He took a bullet in Vietnam and has lived a life of services to his community, state and nation … Please join me in saying a prayer for healing and recovery for one of the finest men any of us know in the House of Representatives.”
Moss Point Alderman Wayne Lennep posted: “Please pray for our friend … Manly was admitted to the hospital Sunday. Please pray for the others as well.”
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs on Tuesday said that 41 people, including 30 legislators, have tested positive so far from a Capitol outbreak before the Legislature left Jackson on July 1. Dobbs said there have been two hospitalizations associated with the Capitol outbreak.
Both Speaker of the House Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, have tested positive. Spokespersons for both this week said they were doing well and both self-isolating at home.
The three men each said they’d feel safe attending a Mississippi State game — with normal attendance in a stadium that holds 60,000 people — come fall. At that point, Mississippi had recorded more than 10,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 500 people had died.
Dr. Cameron Huxford argued that COVID-19 “wasn’t as bad as we thought”; Dr. Jim Brown called health department orders aimed at limiting the spread “an infringement on civil liberty”; and Dr. Will Carter quipped, “You can’t isolate yourselves forever.”
By July, as deaths more than doubled, cases tripled and hospitals became overwhelmed, Huxford, Brown, Carter and 15 other local male physicians doubled down, advocating in a joint letter against a local mask requirement the Starkville Board of Alderman ultimately approved.
The position of the 18 physicians, led by Dr. Huxford, who presented the arguments at the July 7 board meeting, are not shared by the nation’s primary health associations or government health agencies.
“I believe that fear, rather than hope, is the foundation of many of the decisions being made concerning this virus,” Huxford, medical director for Oktibbeha County Hospital’s intensive care unit, said in a direct message to Mississippi Today, citing his religious convictions. He also said he did not wear a mask publicly, outside of the hospital or clinic, until the city mandated it, and that he would likely not wear a mask if he traveled to a municipality that did not require it.
Huxford — who has been vocal on social media, sharing opinions and articles that serve to downplay the severity of the pandemic, to the applause of some of his followers — declined an interview with Mississippi Today. Carter and Brown did not respond. The doctors do not specialize in epidemiology or infectious disease.
As responses to the pandemic have polarized communities across the nation, the demonstration in Starkville showed that not even medical professionals are immune to the discord.
UMMC Communications
State health officer Thomas Dobbs at a press conference at UMMC.
State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said rhetoric surrounding the virus — which, “like all things social media … finds fertile ground in groups that distrust government on a good day” — has caused Mississippians to ignore public health orders.
“It’s insanely difficult to control a pandemic when people A) think it’s not real, B) find every reason to undermine the reality of it to justify not following the rules,” Dobbs said in a recorded meeting on July 10.
The doctors clarified in their letter that they are not “against masks,” but they offered several medical reasons — such as mask usage increasing face-touching or causing health issues — against a mask mandate.
Rogelio V. Solis, AP
Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill
“That didn’t track for me,” said Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill. “That’s more of a political statement than it is a medical statement.”
Research increasingly supports the notion that wearing masks — especially universally among communities — helps prevent people who may not know they are COVID-19 positive from spreading the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reiterated Tuesday. Studies also show that states with mask mandates had a greater decline in COVID-19 growth rates after imposing the orders than states without mandates.
“I know for many of you this has become a political issue, but I assure you it is not,” Starkville physician Dr. Emily Landrum said at the meeting, advocating for the mask mandate, the Starkville Daily News reported. “We are almost six months into a pandemic of a novel, or new virus. There are many things about COVID-19 that we still don’t know and it will take time to learn, but there are many things that we have learned. We know that measures of masking, social distancing and hand washing are highly important to preventing unnecessary and burdensome spread of COVID-19.”
Dr. Jennifer Bryan, who chairs the Mississippi State Medical Association board of trustees, told Mississippi Today any opinions against the use of masks “are not in line with the general consensus of the medical community in the state.”
David Buys, Mississippi State University Extension health specialist, said in an email that doctors have a right like anyone else to share political opinions publicly, “but they should not have, nor should they in the future, use their credentials as health care providers and misrepresent their expertise to try to gain a policy outcome as they did.”
On Tuesday, the Mississippi State Medical Association, of which the Starkville doctors are members, released a statement calling for a statewide mask mandate.
“We strongly believe that without a statewide mask mandate our state’s healthcare system cannot sustain the trajectory of this outbreak, which could ultimately result in the loss of the lives of many Mississippians,” it read.
Strain on the health care system due the record high number of serious cases — nearly 1,100 people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 on Tuesday — is already occurring.
In the Jackson area, there is just one open intensive care unit bed at tier one and two hospitals and just seven total open, State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs told reporters on Tuesday. The previous week, he told doctors during a recorded meeting that he knew of four people who had died after they were unable to get into crowded hospitals.
“They died in transit or they were in the wrong hospital and couldn’t get to where they needed to and they died. And that’s just the four I know of,” Dobbs said.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Gov. Tate Reeves and Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs speak to the media about the coronavirus during a press conference at the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, March 26, 2020.
Last week, Gov. Tate Reeves imposed a mandatory mask order on 13 counties where cases are surging (to which one former lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate responded via Facebook: “I would like to see you come up here and try and make me wear a mask!”). Oktibbeha County, where Starkville is located, was not on the list.
The order took effect Monday. Reeves has repeatedly urged all Mississippians to wear a mask “as often as humanly possible.” But when asked Tuesday if he would consider imposing a similar order on the entire state as requested by the medical association, Gov. Reeves compared the tasks to a dentist trying to get compliance from their child patients.
“Some kids, if you tell them they have to brush their teeth, they just won’t do it,” he said. “It’s just the reality of where we find ourselves.”
He also Tweeted that attempting to shame people for not wearing masks “only hardens their resistance.”
Starkville officials had required residents to wear masks early on in the pandemic, but Spruill said the city lost support for the measure in the community, in large part because of the doctors’ public statements. The city is among several Mississippi municipalities that imposed additional restrictions and mask orders on its residents early on in the pandemic and again after local cases increased.
“They didn’t do it for the fun of it. They did it for a reason. They did it because their cases were getting away from them and after they did it, their community numbers improved,” said Vicksburg physician Dr. Dan Edney, who sits on the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure, which oversees doctor discipline.
The board is not going to consider taking actions against doctors for expressing their professional disagreements, Edney said, but it could intervene if clinics are not following health orders, such as requiring masks and limiting the number of people in waiting rooms.
In the meantime, rhetoric that discourages people from practicing protective measures against the virus remains one of the state’s biggest threats. Dobbs told Mississippi Today that Mississippi would be in a much better position with its cases today if COVID-19 conspiracy theories had not run rampant.
“We don’t have a cohesive society,” Dobbs said to doctors on July 10. “Actually, this is a disease of a splintered society, where people don’t trust science and run quickly to every crazy theory that they can to avoid reality.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story should have specified that there was just one intensive care unit open in tier one and two hospitals in the Jackson area.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Mike Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary, announces that he is running against U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in 2020 for her Senate seat.
Democrat Mike Espy raised nearly three times the money Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith raised in the second quarter of 2020, according to campaign finance reports released on Tuesday evening.
Espy raised $610,000 between April 1 and June 30. Hyde-Smith raised just $212,000 in that same period. Despite her poor second quarter, Hyde-Smith has still raised more money than Espy this campaign cycle: $2.1 million to Espy’s $1.4 million.
The November general election is a rematch between the two candidates, who squared off in a 2018 special election to fill the seat of the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. Hyde-Smith defeated Espy in a runoff by eight points — the closest a Democrat has come to the U.S. Senate in the modern political era.
Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Cindy Hyde-Smith, right, is congratulated by her daughter, Anna-Michael Smith, after winning the Senate runoff election against Mike Espy Tuesday, November 27, 2018.
This campaign cycle, Hyde-Smith has raised less money than every incumbent U.S. senator who isn’t retiring, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. One reason for her struggle to raise money is backlash following racially insensitive comments she made late in the 2018 special election.
Hyde-Smith made several remarks on the trail — including saying she would attend a “public hanging” — that garnered national scrutiny and inspired numerous corporate political committees to ask Hyde-Smith to return their previous contributions. Some of those PACs included Major League Baseball, AT&T, Union Pacific, Aetna, Pfizer, Google and Facebook.
As the candidates ramp up their campaigns ahead of the November election, race will continue to shape the political narrative. The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has inspired a national movement that has reached the state of Mississippi in profound and historic ways.
Espy, who in the 1990s became the first black congressman elected in Mississippi since Reconstruction, has framed his campaign messaging around his family’s contribution to racial justice and the demands of Black Lives Matter organizers. He’s criticized Hyde-Smith in recent days for her ties to Confederate imagery, and he’s highlighted her silence on the contentious debate over whether to change the state flag.
Successful fundraising, while vital to statewide candidates, does not necessarily translate to broad support at the polls, as Espy knows better than anyone. In 2018, Espy raised $7.5 million compared to $5.5 million for the victorious Hyde-Smith. Though he lost, he became the first Democrat in several statewide elections to outraise a Republican opponent.
One advantage to fundraising success could become national attention. After Hyde-Smith’s controversial comments came to light in the 2018 election, national reporters flocked to the state to cover the possibility of a Democrat swiping a Senate seat from the Republican Party. And as debate across the nation rages regarding racial inequities and unequal representation in government, the race could again draw national headlines and additional fundraising success for Espy.
Exactly how much national attention and funding will pour into the Mississippi race remains to be seen. In the 2020 presidential election year, Democratic Senate candidates in several Republican-controlled states are getting media attention and focused national funds as pundits believe Democrats have a shot to gain majority control of the U.S. Senate. So far this year, Espy and Mississippi have largely missed that connection.
A lot of the predictions we hear about the future involve a hot, crowded planet, one where we need some serious science to figure out how to feed everyone and control rising global temperatures. The UN’s population forecast of almost 10 billion people by 2050 is widely quoted, and with it has come much conjecture about what such a world will look like. Where will all those people live? What kind of jobs will they have? What will they eat?
But before we invest too much into preparing for an impending population boom, we should consider some factors that, though often overlooked, could have a massive impact on the world’s population 20, 30, and even 80 years from now. A paper published this week in The Lancet explores the impact on population of factors like fertility, mortality, and migration, and details potential deviations from a heavily-populated future Earth.
On top of forecasting the populations of 195 countries, the study looked at age demographics and the impact they could have on national economies and the global power structure.
“Continued global population growth through the century is no longer the most likely trajectory for the world’s population,” said the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Director Dr. Christopher Murray, who led the research. “This study provides governments of all countries an opportunity to start rethinking their policies on migration, workforces, and economic development to address the challenges presented by demographic change.”
Here are some of the paper’s key findings, and what they could mean for the future of our countries, economies, and planet.
How Many People Will There Be?
The study predicts that the global population will peak at around 9.7 billion, but not until 2064. By the end of the century in 2100, that number will plummet by almost a billion people, to 8.8 billion.
It’s a pretty huge fluctuation in 35 years’ time, especially barring events that would take out a big chunk of people at once, like world wars, natural disasters, or pandemics. According to the research, though, 23 countries will see their populations shrink by more than half, including Japan, Thailand, Italy, and Spain.
The US would reach its projected peak of 364 million people in 2062, then fall to 336 million by 2100. This would make the US the world’s fourth most populous country after India, Nigeria, and China, in that order, followed by Pakistan in fifth place. China’s population is expected to shrink to 732 million by 2100, while Nigeria’s is set to explode, more than tripling from its current 206 million to 791 million by 2100. Sub-Saharan Africa’s total population is also forecast to triple, reaching 3.07 billion by 2100.
The percentage of a country’s population that’s of working age—defined by the OECD as 15 to 64—has a significant impact on its economy. It’s part of why China was able to spur such a massive change in its GDP and poverty rates in just 30 years; high birth rates before the country’s one-child policy meant the opening of China’s economy coincided perfectly with a huge working-age population. It’s also why Japan’s aging population could be called a “demographic time bomb.”
The IHME study predicts major shifts in the global age structure, with far more old than young people by 2100; it estimates there’ll be 2.37 billion people over 65 and only 1.7 billion under 20. Moreover, the countries with the most young people will be those that are currently poorer, and their large working-age populations should accelerate their GDP growth.
IHME Professor Stein Emil Vollset, first author of the paper, said, “Our findings suggest that the decline in the numbers of working-age adults alone will reduce GDP growth rates that could result in major shifts in global economic power by the century’s end.”
At the moment, tensions between China and the West seem to be mounting, with multiple countries recently moving to ban Chinese companies like Huawei and TikTok; meanwhile, China is steadily advancing in technologies like AI and genetic engineering. The US and China are, in a sense, vying for global dominance, and the international leadership vacuum left by the current US administration’s foreign policy isn’t helping.
The study predicts China will overtake the US economically by 2035, but if the US maintains a liberal immigration policy, it will go back to having the world’s biggest economy by 2098.
The emphasis on immigration as an economic bolster here is critical. Countries that promote liberal immigration, the paper says, are better able to maintain their population size and support economic growth, even in the face of declining fertility rates.
“For high-income countries with below-replacement fertility rates, the best solutions for sustaining current population levels, economic growth, and geopolitical security are open immigration policies and social policies supportive of families having their desired number of children,” said Murray.
It’s crucial, though, that countries put women’s rights, education, and healthcare ahead of population growth; we already saw what happens when a government tries to force women to have as many children as possible, and it wasn’t pretty.
The Fertility Factor
According to the paper, the UN uses trends from the past to predict how fertility and mortality will evolve across countries in the future. But it leaves out one huge influencer: the fact that there’s not only room for improvement, but improvement is likely.
Though it may not seem like it right now—Covid-19 has thrown a big wrench in all kinds of statistics regarding both the present and the future—human well-being has been on a steady upward trajectory for the past couple decades. Infant and maternal mortality are down. Life expectancy is up, and gender equality is progressing. The widespread dissemination of technologies like smartphones, combined with government policies aimed at helping the most vulnerable, are lifting people out of poverty.
These trends are likely to continue and even accelerate, and as further gains are made in gender equality and access to education, one of the biggest knock-on effects we’ll see is fewer babies.
At present, women in poor countries are far more likely than women in rich countries to start having babies young, and to have a lot of them. This is due to cultural factors, like marrying young, as well as lack of education and access to contraceptives. The IHME research accounted for the likelihood that women will continue to have greater access to education and reproductive health services, and as a result will delay childbirth and have fewer kids.
The difference between this study’s projections and UN forecasts, then, come mainly from the associated decline in fertility rates. The team predicts that in sub-Saharan Africa there will be 702 million fewer people by 2100 than UN forecasts predict, and over 1 billion fewer in south and southeast Asia.
Less Is More?
Despite advances in technology that include bigger agricultural yields, cheaper manufacturing, and closely-linked global supply chains, the resources available to us do have a limit, and fewer people means more resources per person.
Looking again to China’s example, the country was in part able to achieve its astounding economic growth and decline in extreme poverty due to its one-child policy. The Chinese population grew just 38 percent from 1980 to 2013, while India’s grew by 84 percent and Sub-Saharan Africa’s by 147 percent in the same time period. Fewer mouths to feed means more food per mouth, more wealth per capita, and more people having their needs met.
This applies on a global scale, too, and the paper’s authors point out that their forecasts have positive implications for the environment, climate change, and food production—though they acknowledge the predictions could have negative implications for labor forces, economic growth, and social support systems in the countries with the biggest fertility declines.
Humans are pretty good at adapting, though. Whether learning to stay inside for three months straight to curb the spread of a disease or figuring out how to cope with a smaller working-age population, odds are, we’ll manage. A lot can change between now and the year 2100, but from our current vantage point, having fewer than 10 billion people on Earth doesn’t sound too bad.
House Speaker Philip Gunn, left, Executive Director of Mississippi Department of Archives and History Katie Blount, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann prepare to deliver the state flag to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on July 1, 2020.
House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann have named appointments to the nine-member commission tasked with redesigning the Mississippi state flag.
But despite a Wednesday deadline for appointments, Gov. Tate Reeves — who had pushed for voters and not lawmakers to decide whether to change the flag — on Wednesday afternoon said he hadn’t gotten to it, but he would “hopefully today, if not really, really soon.”
Lawmakers last month, after decades of debate, retired Mississippi’s old flag, the last in the nation to include the divisive Confederate battle emblem. The legislation they passed set a Wednesday deadline for the speaker, lieutenant governor and governor to appoint three people each to a commission to redesign the flag.
Gunn’s appointments:
Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill
“Robyn’s background as a businessperson in the marketing industry, and as a community leader in north Mississippi makes her a perfect member of the commission,” Gunn said. “She is known for her passion for Mississippi and for having a forward-thinking vision for her community and our state. I’m confident that she will be a vocal and active member of the commission.”
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College President Mary Graham
“Dr. Graham has proven herself to be a visionary leader for the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast region,” Gunn said. “Her dedication to preparing our students for jobs in the 21st century through focusing on and growing workforce development initiatives is exemplary. Everyone admires the work of Dr. Graham and she will be a great voice for Mississippians on the commission.”
House staffer TJ Taylor of Madison
“TJ Taylor has been a member of my staff for five legislative sessions,” Gunn said. “He is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi College Law School. He has served as policy advisor, general counsel and currently serves as policy director for my office. He has been a key figure in the success of the effort to build support and ultimately pass legislation to change the state flag and ultimately form this commission. His passion for this issue and his calm demeanor will add much to the commission’s process while representing the voice of a younger generation of Mississippians.”
Hosemann’s appointments:
Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson
Anderson served as the first African American Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court from 1985 to 1991. He received his undergraduate degree from Tougaloo College, and law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law. Anderson currently serves as president of the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
Attorney Mack Varner of Vicksburg
Varner currently practices family and business law in Vicksburg. He received his undergraduate degree from Millsaps College, and law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law. He is the past president of the Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park and Vicksburg Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, and formerly served on the Board of Trustees for Millsaps College.
Marketing and communications veteran Sherri Carr Bevis of Gulfport
Bevis was recently named Community Relations Liaison to the Singing River Health System. She received her bachelor’s degree in communications from Mississippi State University and a master’s degree from George Washington University. She previously worked as Assistant Secretary of State for External Marketing for the Secretary of State’s Office, and as a public school teacher in the Bay-Waveland and Hancock County School Districts. Bevis is the current national president of the Mississippi State Alumni Association.
Hosemann said the commission has “a heavy responsibility to bear in coming weeks.” He said he has confidence the commission “will come to a conclusion which will be respectful of our past and reflect a bright future.”
“Ultimately, the people of Mississippi will decide whether this design, or some other design, should be the flag of our future,” Hosemann said.
The law passed in late June requires that Reeves’ appointments be members of the Mississippi Economic Council, the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
Reeves on Wednesday noted lawmakers placed “very tight, very limiting” restrictions on his picks, but no such restrictions for Gunn and Hosemann.
Gunn and Hosemann pushed for the Legislature to remove the Confederate-themed flag that had flown since 1894 over arguments by some GOP leaders including Reeves that voters should decide whether to remove it in a referendum.
The new commission has a deadline of Sept. 14 to select a design to put before voters in November for an up-or-down vote. If voters reject the new design, the commission will go back to the drawing board, and put a new design before voters in 2021.
The law stipulates the new design must include the words “In God We Trust,” and that it cannot contain the Confederate battle emblem.
President Trump told supporters at a New Hampshire rally in February that the virus would be gone by April, claiming the virus would miraculously go away when temperatures rose. I think we now have proof that that is not going to happen.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Vicksburg Warren School District employees prepare to make food deliveries to students in the school district Wednesday, March 18, 2020.
Mississippi teachers are planning a rally at the state Capitol Friday to urge state leaders not to reopen schools for the upcoming school year as the state’s coronavirus statistics continue to worsen.
A Facebook group called “Mississippi Teachers Unite” is organizing the event, and organizers list two demands:
That the Mississippi Department of Education postpone reopening schools until Sept. 1 to ensure safe environments for students and teachers. The department must also make sure schools can meet current CDC safety guidelines and not allow schools to conduct in-person classes until those needs are met.
Fully fund schools so that districts and teachers do not have to purchase their own personal protective equipment to return to work
The group identifies itself as “a non-affiliated grassroots group of Mississippi teachers, school staff, and supportive community members who are concerned for the safety of our students, ourselves and our communities in returning to school.”
“All of us want to be back with our kids is the biggest thing,” said Max Vanlandingham, a teacher involved in planning the event. “Parents want their children to be in school, kids want to be in school, teachers want to be in school, but it’s not safe at this point.”
He emphasized Friday’s 11 a.m. rally is not a strike, but a group of teachers voicing their concerns about returning to the classroom as the number of new cases and deaths continues to rise in Mississippi. Teachers cannot legally strike in Mississippi or they will be fired from their jobs and banned from teaching in the state thereafter.
The event comes on the heels of dire warnings from public officials. Last week the state’s top health officials pleaded for people to take the virus seriously as hospitals and ICUs are running out of beds and having to turn away patients. Rolling averages for patients in an ICU have increased for 16 consecutive days, and the number of patients on ventilators have increased for the past nine days.
“It makes no sense to rush back into a model that we deemed unsafe four months ago,” said Don Turner, a Mississippian who has organized the Mississippi chapter of Safe Return to Campus, a group advocating that schools do not return to campus until counties show no new cases for 14 days. “There’s this kind of laissez-faire attitude taken and no clear directive from leaders.”
Gov. Tate Reeves last week said he was still “100 percent committed” to districts starting school this fall in a “safe, responsible way.” When the pandemic became serious in the spring, Reeves closed school buildings and districts had to pivot to remote learning. As schools across the state are preparing to open up for the new school year, the state Department of Education has given them three options to choose from: in-person, traditional schooling, virtual learning, or some hybrid of the two.
Each school district has to make a decision and post it to its website by July 31. Many have already done so, making tough decisions about how and when students will report back to the classroom if at all, how lunches will be served and bus transportation will work.
However, as the number of cases in the state continued to reach an all-time high last week, Reeves announced a mask ordinance for 13 counties based on criteria of having seen 200 new cases within the last 14 days or an average of 500 cases per 100,000 residents over that time. This throws a wrench in plans for districts in those counties, which now have to figure out how to operate and comply with the mandate which limits social gatherings to 10 people indoors and 20 outdoors.
Despite the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears the state collected enough revenue, primarily from tax collections, to have ended the last fiscal year on June 30 with a surplus.
According to a report recently released by the staff of the Legislative Budget Committee, the state ended the fiscal year with “an estimated excess of $55.9 million,” though, that number could be adjusted in the coming two-month closeout period. But the surplus means that Gov. Tate Reeves and/or the Legislature will not be forced to dip into the state’s reserves funds to ensure a balanced budget for the just-completed fiscal year.
The state has a healthy Working Cash Stabilization Fund or rainy day fund of about $680 million.
After a dramatic drop in tax collections for April, it appeared likely that the rainy day fund would be needed to balance the budget. But in the final two months of the fiscal year, collections rebounded despite the pandemic, according to the report released by the Legislative Budget Committee staff.
Total revenue collections for the fiscal year were $5.82 billion while total appropriations were $5.76 billon.
Still, for only the fifth time since 1970, the state collected less revenue during the past fiscal year than it did in the preceding fiscal year. The state collected $151 million or 2.5 percent less during the recently completed fiscal year.
State economist Darrin Webb
Surprisingly, the state’s largest source of revenue, the 7 percent sales tax on most retail items, was up $18.1 million or .85 percent. State Economist Darrin Webb said the state’s sales tax collections might have been buoyed by the fact that Mississippi imposes its full sales tax on groceries and collects the nation’s largest state-imposed sales tax on food items. While some retailers have struggled during the pandemic, it does not appear that grocery sales have declined and might have increased.
Many point out the tax on food is a regressive tax that places a larger burden on the poor. But Webb said during the coronavirus pandemic the tax has been a boost for the state’s revenue collections.
“What the sales tax does, it stabilizes your revenue source,” Webb said recently. “And again, I am just a cold-hearted economist. I just look at the data and I look at forecasting. If you eliminate the food tax, that increases the amount of instability in your revenue source.”
Webb surmised during the pandemic the grocery tax has particularly helped smaller towns because people who normally might travel to a larger municipality to purchase groceries were more likely to do so locally.
“It has been the lifeblood for many small local communities…I think it has helped small communities tremendously and has helped the overall revenue stream of the state as well,” Webb said.
The state’s second largest source of revenue, the personal income tax, was down $78.5 million or 4.1 percent. But that number might be misleading because the state Department of Revenue extended the period to file taxes and pay tax liability from April 15 in the past fiscal year to July 15 in the current fiscal year. That could result in revenue collections for July being much higher than normal.
The 7 percent use tax, which is imposed internet sales, was up 4.1 percent or $13.5 million and the tax on liquor was up $7.3 million or 9 percent. Most other sources of revenue were down for the year.
