LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — About 20 minutes into a recent press conference, Lee Norman, the man spearheading Kansas’s response to the novel coronavirus, coughed.
People noticed.
“Is he coughing into his hand?” one person asked on a Facebook livestream. “Your cough worries me. Hope you are ok,” wrote another.
Three weeks ago, Norman was a well-regarded but little-known secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. But COVID-19 has turned the 67-year-old physician and former Air Force flight surgeon into must-watch pandemic TV for the state of Kansas and the Kansas City metro, The Wichita Eagle reported.
Like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has become a national figure for his White House briefings, Norman tries to bring facts and reassurance to a jittery public.
“I have told my constituents that he is the credible source for all information on the virus and that all roads point to Dr. Lee Norman,” said Kansas Sen. Julia Lynn, an Olathe Republican. “Obviously, we have Fauci on the national level, but on the state level he is our guy.”
Norman’s regular live streamed briefings from Topeka attract hundreds, sometimes thousands, of viewers for no-nonsense advice (often boiled down to “stay home”) and the latest case and death counts usually leavened with some hopeful development, such as an advance in testing capacity.
He can also deploy a dry wit when he wants. During a virtual town hall last month, a question about President Donald Trump wanting to reopen the country by Easter prompted a quick retort: “Did he say what calendar year?”
To the public, he is something of a cross between a family doctor calmly delivering a tough diagnosis — Gov. Laura Kelly likens him to Marcus Welby, the genial general practitioner of 1970s TV — and a professor eager to talk about new scientific developments. Others think his white medical coat, white hair and bespectacled look gives him a Col. Sanders vibe.
“I think he’s very reassuring to Kansans that he’s got their best interest in mind and that his advice is good advice to follow,”Kelly said.
Norman is a colonel in the Kansas National Guard, but that’s about where the comparison ends. His moment center stage culminates years of preparation and study spent in the shadow of past pandemics. Like many in his field, he’s been expecting a day like this would come.
“It’s never been very far away,” he said in a phone interview. “The fact that I’m in this position and it happens to be now is two lines that intersected in time and space. But I’ve been thinking and doing this kind of work for a long time.”
As chief medical officer of the University of Kansas Health System, Norman learned first hand about the havoc a pandemic can wreak. While neither H1N1 flu (2009) nor Ebola (2014) became a COVID-sized calamity, they gave Norman a preview of the current crisis, especially the lack of protective equipment and shortage of supplies.
In October 2014, the hospital treated a patient with Ebola-like symptoms. The patient ultimately tested negative, but prompted a full-scale response that put the facility through its paces. The case costs included $100,000 in personal protective equipment.
Even earlier, in 2009, Norman was forced to prioritize which hospital staff would receive the flu vaccine amid a limited number of doses amid H1N1. According to an October 2009 hospital newsletter, he also asked staff to reuse N95 masks until they were damaged or visibly soiled because of limited supply.
“It was the same questions about the number of ICU beds, ventilators and staff,” Norman said.
