Speaking to a camera, Col. Seth Graham assured the more than 900 people watching him on Facebook Live that, even though it doesn’t look like it on camera, he does indeed have hair.
“Maybe some day we’ll actually get close enough where you can see I actually have hair,” joked the new commander of Columbus Air Force Base, who spent about 45 minutes Tuesday afternoon speaking to base personnel and others in the Columbus community who tuned in to hear him. “I’m so happy to be here and excited to be a part of this team. … It’s just amazing what we do here. We’re making people’s dreams come true. We’re producing pilots for the best Air Force … in the world.”
Graham has been on base for 10 days, replacing Col. Samantha Weeks, who retired earlier this year. He said he has spent that time so far getting to know personnel and others on base.
Still, coming to a new command in the middle of a pandemic has meant being socially distant from the student pilots, officers, other military personnel, their families and everyone else who works and lives on base, which was part of the inspiration for holding the Facebook Live event, one he hopes to replicate a couple of times a month. He spent most of the first event Tuesday answering questions about the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the base.
It is important that the base balance the health of its personnel and their families with the mission to train pilots, he said. He urged his audience to wear their masks, practice social distancing and check on their friends and coworkers in their squadron, many of whom may be feeling more stress than usual because of the pandemic.
“The No. 1 thing we can do is take personal responsibility,” he said.
In particular, he stressed that personnel contact their supervisor and not come to work if they don’t feel well.
“Just in the last 10 days that I’ve been here, we’ve had a couple of instances where people have come to work and they have had symptoms, or at least haven’t felt well,” he said. “This is not the time to gut it out, to tough it out. This is the time to stay home if you don’t feel well. I will be the first person that’s guilty of wanting to come to work when I don’t feel good. That’s just how I live my whole life, but I promise you if I had any symptoms, I’m not coming to work either.”
‘We have to continue to train pilots’
Since the pandemic began in March, efforts to stop its spread have affected work and life on base, he acknowledged. At the highest since the pandemic began, pilots have been flying at about 85 percent the rate they normally would be.
New policies on the base have also meant the closure of gyms and restaurants, working from home, closing the base to visitors — though Graham pointed out base officials “routinely” make exceptions in some cases, such as when a family on base has a new baby and grandparents want to visit — and curbing the ability of those on base to eat at downtown restaurants and otherwise interact with the wider Columbus community.
While he said there are cases of COVID-19 on base, he declined to answer specific questions about the numbers of patients and tests. Officials from the Department of Defense have urged commanders not to release those numbers for the security of the military bases, Graham said.
He also urged his audience to take whatever numbers they see in context. Numbers of cases will continue to rise as the pandemic goes on, he said. The goal was always to flatten the curve — control the number of cases at a time, so as not to overwhelm the health care system. He pointed out that “the nearest hospital” — Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle — currently has about 30 percent of its beds in intensive care unit taken up by COVID-19 patients, meaning the hospital has not been overwhelmed.
“Our expectations should never be that we have to be at zero to operate,” he said.
He said the base will stay in operation and that he cannot foresee a future in which pilot training would be completely shut down, even temporarily.
“Our mission is mission essential,” Graham said. “If we stop training for one month, there is no capability to make that month up. Those are pilots that don’t enter the force. We are already operating at a deficit as far as pilots across the Air Force, and we just can’t do that. Now some people will paint that as pilot production as opposed to safety.
“I don’t see it that way,” he added. “We are going to produce pilots in the safest manner we possibly can. … The safest thing to do would be to shut ourselves in the basement and just not come out, but that’s just not realistic or practical. As United States Air Force, we have to continue to fly airplanes. We have to continue to train pilots.”
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