by Hunter Dawkins

Wednesday afternoon, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves discussed the state visitation from White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Deborah Birx, who met with Mississippi leaders in Jackson in the morning.  The governor expressed his concerned over the amount of people on ventilators and claimed the amount has doubled from where it was months ago with the recent spike in cases on the weekly press conference from the Woolfolk Building in Jackson.

Governor Reeves said Birx and others on President Donald Trump’s task force agree that masks work and are needed to slow the spread of the virus.

Reeves firmly defended his stance against enforcing a statewide mask mandate.

“If people don’t comply, it doesn’t matter,” stated the governor. “Fewer people would wear masks in the counties.”  Reeves believes that his mandate of 13 counties last week is working.

Additionally. Reeves stated that a new hub for Mississippians to purchase masks, hand sanitizer and other protective equipment that is made in Mississippi and can be found online at ms-ppe.org.

Another website was launched in an effort to prevent unemployment fraud, which Reeves is a problem as more people have had to apply for unemployment as a result of the pandemic.

Officials say more than 400,000 people applied for unemployment between March and July 4.

Earlier in the week, Governor Reeves went on a social media diatribe attack on the new scientific notion of “herd immunity.”

According to the governor, the hospital system has “started to become stressed to the point of pain” at 36,680 confirmed cases and conservatively estimated that herd immunity would require 40 percent of the population to become infected, which he said would require more than 3,000 new cases daily for the next year.

In the response to a question asked by The Gazebo Gazette, Reeves expressed, “We would need to TRIPLE our worst day—every day—for a year,” Reeves tweeted. “I’m not one of these guys that immediately dismisses any idea that challenges the expert status quo talking points. I’m pretty skeptical by nature. That’s healthy. But herd immunity is not anything like a realistic solution in the short or mid-term. I wish it was.”

Before closure of the press conference, Governor Reeves announced his appointments of Senator Sally Doty as Staff Director for the Mississippi Public Utilities Staff and former State Senator Grady Franklin Tollison as circuit court judge for the 3rd Circuit Court District, Place 1.

Six appointments have been named to the Mississippi State Flag Commission  Wednesday afternoon by Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn and Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann.  These individuals were:

 -Robyn Tannehill, mayor of Oxford

 -Dr. Mary Graham, president of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

 -TJ Taylor, policy director for the Speaker of the House

 -Reuben Anderson, former Mississippi Supreme Court Associate Justice

 -J. Mack Varner, President of Vicksburg National Military Park

 -Sherry Carr Bevis, Community Relations Liaison, Singing River Health System.

Governor Reeves has yet to announce his appointments.