Why They Want To Keep the “Health Emergency” Going Forever
By Ryan McMaken
Last month, Colorado governor Jared Polis ended statewide mask mandates and social-distancing provisions, stating that “the emergency is over.” This, of course, does not mean Colorado is now laissez-faire in terms of covid. Public higher education institutions—thanks to Polis’ tacit approval—still have free rein in terms of imposing vaccine and mask mandates, and in forcing classes to “go online” whenever the college bureaucrats grow sufficiently alarmed about covid. Moreover, local officials were quick to react to the governor’s non-emergency by imposing a variety of mandates of their own. More than 80 percent of the state’s population still lives in counties with mask mandates.
For even this extremely mild and timid move in the direction of personal freedom, Polis was raked over the coals by the state’s left-of-center activists. Within days, The Sentinel, a newspaper out of Aurora, Colorado issued an unsigned editorial declaring “No, Gov. Polis, the pandemic emergency is not over.” The column excoriated the governor for daring to end mask mandates and for categorically refusing the idea of future lockdowns.
Perhaps predictably, the Colorado Association of Public Health Officials opposed the move, as did numerous county government officials. Many of these local health bureaucrats even demanded the statewide imposition of vaccine passports.
In the Colorado Sun, a Democratic Party activist and college professor has now published at least two columns attacking Polis for the lack of statewide mandates, employing words like “abominable … ignorant … callus” [sic] to describe Polis’s lack of commitment to imposing mandates.
Polis was also forced to walk back comments he made about how it’s not the job of health officials to “tell people what to wear” in an apparent reference to mask mandates. Polis rather unconvincingly “clarified” that what he really meant was this was not the proper role of state health officials; it’s fine for local officials to tell people what to wear.
The fact that Polis himself had earlier claimed this was, in fact, the role of health officials is now beside the point. Incoherence and inconsistency from politicians is a given. The point now is that when a governor—even a Democratic one—tries to slightly scale back covid mandates, he or she is likely to meet furious opposition from the Left.
This was acted out at the federal level as well. When the CDC reduced the recommended quarantine period for those who test positive, the CDC was denounced for allegedly being a tool of corporate interests worried about workers taking too many sick days. Supposed health experts also declared the change in policy “reckless.”
The lesson here is that no matter what the policy is, there will be no shortage of covid-obsessed college professors, politicians, and activists who will vehemently demand that more draconian policies be imposed immediately and everywhere. No moderation of any kind is to be tolerated.
Indeed, so many bureaucrats, politicians, and technocrats have doubled down on covid mandate maximalism, it’s difficult to see them ever letting go. We should expect them to search out new ways to extend current “health emergencies” indefinitely into the future by forever moving the goal posts and finding new diseases that justify continued mask mandates and social distancing rules.
Moving the Goal Posts
Back in January of 2021, Karol Markowicz at the New York Post warned that there are many out there who want the covid emergency state “to go on forever.” Nearly a year after the initial covid panic, when it was clear covid was not a civilization-ending disease and hardly “the plague of the century,” these technocrats were pushing for more masks and more isolation for children.
full story at https://www.activistpost.com/2022/01/why-they-want-to-keep-the-health-emergency-going-forever.html