MORGANTOWN —
At the past few virtual COVID-19 press briefings put on daily by Gov. Jim Justice, Czar Clay Marsh has been seen back in his white lab coat, speaking from his Health Sciences Center office instead of his desk at home.
On May 26 – two months to the day after Justice announced he’d appointed Marsh as COVID-19 czar – WVU announced Marsh would continue serving the state while transitioning back to his regular job as vice president and executive dean for Health Sciences.
That doesn’t mean the czar is abdicating. “I’m probably going to divide my time more efficiently, I think is what’s going to happen.”
In the wake of WVU’s announcement, The Dominion Post talked with Marsh, Justice and WVU President Gordon Gee about his time as czar.
Marsh said he’d gotten to know Justice after coming to WVU. And he’d been active at university making decisions about WVU’s COVID response. So Justice reached out to WVU to inquire about borrowing him to serve the state.
Justice explained what led him to make his request. “It’s easy to see that here’s a man that deeply loves community,” he said. He recalls Marsh talking about developing ways to embrace small communities across the state and move them forward holistically, from health to economics.
“I knew right then that he was a different doctor,” Justice said. “His love and his sincerity is unbelievable. He really genuinely loves and cares for our people. That in itself drove me directly to him.”
Gee said he got the call from the governor’s office about lending Marsh out to coordinate the state’s COVID response. “I thought that was a wonderful opportunity for Clay and [he is] a great dean for the university to become part of the solution.
Those who’ve watched the daily briefings saw Marsh as both a font of information – regularly citing the current research and COVID trends – and as head cheerleader urging everyone to take the right precautions to keep themselves and their communities healthy and curb the spread of the virus.
Behind the scenes, Marsh said he worked with the leadership group coordinating strategies, expanding test, conducting internal discussions about setting thresholds and contact tracing. He took lots of calls form health systems and other leaders and helped them coordinate their reopenings.
Asked to descibe an average day, he picked the day of his interview with The Dominion Post. It usually starts about 8 to 9 a.m., he said.
That day began with a call about Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute and leverage discoveries there to help with the COVID crisis. Then came a conference call with university leadership, followed by a call with Jeff Coben, associate vice president for health affairs and dean of the School of Public Health, who’d been filling Marsh’ Health Sciences role in Marsh’s absence.
After that came the daily press briefing, a call with John Campo, WVU assistant dean for Behavioral Health, a texting tree about community testing, the news interview – slotted for 30 minutes, a call with the COVID leadership group, and some texting with the governor’s office.
And that was a lighter day than many, he said,
“One of the beautiful things about my job is I get a lot of new things to learn all the time. I really enjoy that.”
Justice referred back to Marsh’s love for the state in its people in describing Marsh’s role. “We’re one and the same,” he said. “We don’t have words of disagreement, we have words of discussion.”
Marsh was able to out organizational problems and other issues that helped improve the state’s response. “I could never be more proud of the job he has done. … He has been an absolute cornerstone to what we’ve been doing here every day.”
We asked Marsh if he’s been amazed positive performance during the pandemic. He said, “I’m happy. I don’t know if I’m really amazed. One of the things that really has struck me since I’ve been back is the incredible community and caring of our people.”
Population centers are inherently set up to have huge amounts of problems, he said, but people in West Virginia are thoughtful and aware of others. And the single best predictor of success or failure is a community’s ability to stay together and not fracture down the middle.”
Marsh cited a New York Post report on four possible COVID-19 response scenarios that helped guide West Virginia’s shutdown and restart.
One, do nothing. The virus spreads quickly with an overwhelming surge. Two, forced quarantine. Peolple then see suppression and their rights taken away, and rebel. This scenario also produces a overwhelming surge but not as bad as the first.
Three , people cooperate at about a 75% level. Everyone does OK and there is survival.
But four was the best: 90% cooperate, people thrive and it’s barely like anything happened.
“It really convinced me that the key for us is not to edict things – and obviously sometimes you have to – but really try to help convince people that doing the appropriate protection, it’s not just you demonstrating your right to protect yourself or not … you’re really helping care for other people.
“In many ways,” he said, “caring for yourself is a function of altruism, of community or courage, and I think our citizens have done incredibly well.”
Marsh said he decision to transition back to more time at WU came because WVU is working on its fall plans and it was important to be available to the leadership. But Gee and Justice agreed he should still also be available to the state.
Gee commented on Marsh’s dual role, “He’s a very capable guy and keeps his fingers on the pulse.” It’s important to get him back as WVU enters this second phase. The academic medical center looks to him for leadership and he’ll be back providing that.
The relationship of WVU – a land grant university – with the state has been very close, Gee said. “This is just another example of how, when the university and the state come together and work very closely, we really can be very effective.”
And the nation has taken note, Gee said. Marsh has written and spoken widely of how we’ve been dealing with the pandemic. “He and his university colleagues have brought real distinction to the state and the university.”
We asked Gee if Marsh’s prominence might lead to some head-hunting. “He has been recruited several times” even before the pandemic, Gee said. “He is devoted to this institution and to this state. That’s one of the reasons he returned. He had a fabulous job at Ohio State.
“This is a return home for him,” Gee said. “It’s not simply a job, it’s a responsibility and an opportunity.”
Marsh offered some thoughts on the future and the lessons we’ve learned from the pandemic, and reflected on what the pandemic has meant to the state.
“In many ways we’ll get back to a different normal,” he said. “People can work from home and they should.” If it’s mixed home and office, that’s great too.
But the virus still with us, only a small percentage is infected, and that means a lot of people are still vulnerable. Flattening the curve gave more time to get PPE and work toward a drug regimen and vaccine. “We want o be really smart. We want to protect our people.” And enhance our flexibility and balance our lives better.
Reflecting, Marsh said “I’ve been blown away by three things.”
One is Justice’s grasp of the pandemic. And he says that in an apolitical way. “He’s learned a lot. He’s got a great heart for the state. I think that he really has found his lane.”
Two, “I’m really impressed with the team we have at the state level and the level of cooperation everyone in the state has shown during this pandemic.” That includes citizens, business leaders health system leaders.
It would have been easy to refuse to close businesses, Marsh said, but everybody pitched in to do the right thing.
Three, “I’m really impressed by how much COVID has really affected our country and our world and how quickly that happened.” We wouldn’t have thought in December that the whole world could shut down.
“I just see this as a time of immense challenge, immense fear from many people but also immense change and immense opportunity. The script for what happens afterwards is really up to us to write.”
We stand at an inflection point, Marsh said, and can choose the road we want to take. We can brothers and sitters instead of enemies; we can pursue love and community instead of fear; we can shift the narrative from scarcity to abundance, from we can’t to we can.
“I am deeply optimistic that West Virginia will really thrive through this and thrive much into the future, but it’s really up to all of us to write that story.” West Virginia is “a very unusual place and maybe we felt like we got left behind but maybe we didn’t really get left behind. Maybe we were just protected to be able to shine in the time that the rest of the world needs some bright lights.”
Tweet David Beard @dbeardtdp
Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
