In addition to taking on Native American tribes, disregarding a global pandemic, and leading an awful state rebrand, one of Stitt's weirdest decisions as Governor has been his dogged determination to sabotage the state medical lab, highlighted by the moronic decision to move the facility from its home in OKC to a trailer park in Stillwater.
The move, which was opposed by most healthcare officials, laboratory workers and others who aren't rubish morons who disregard the advice and opinions of experts in their respective fields in order to win brownie points with grifters and cronies, has worked out about as well as you'd expect:
Via The Frontier:
Lab workers and other observers sounded the alarm long before federal regulators found that Oklahoma’s Public Health Lab had mishandled COVID-19 samples and had critical staffing shortages.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the facility failed to properly store and test COVID-19 samples according to the lab’s own guidelines, and didn’t employ enough staff to handle testing volume, according to a report released Tuesday. The agency began an investigation of the laboratory in September after a complaint.
Fun fact! Before I made this stupid website my full-time job 11 years ago, I was the Marketing and Communications Manager for Diagnostic Laboratory of Oklahoma. I did such a good job that they still use the "About Us" copy I wrote 12 years ago for their website.
Anyway, around the time I was laid off, the company had just started construction on a new core medical lab near Broadway Extension and Britton because we had outgrown our facilities in an industrial park near I-40 and Meridian. At the time, I remember some executives and staff voicing concerns that the new facility was 10 - 15 minutes farther away from Will Rogers World Airport than the old lab.