There are many indications that the Democratic Party is trying to stave off complete disaster in the November 2022 election.
One of the most significant signs is that Biden is suddenly moving to a non-crisis approach to handling the coronavirus. But another, and I would argue more intriguing indicator, is that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is attempting to portray California as the first state in the union to have an endemic covid plan.
California became the first state to formally shift to an “endemic” approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Thursday of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.The milestone, nearly two years in the making, envisions a return to a more normal existence with the help of a variety of initiatives and billions in new spending to more quickly spot surges or variants, add health care workers, stockpile tests and push back against false claims and other misinformation.“We are moving past the crisis phase into a phase where we will work to live with this virus,” he said during a news conference from a state warehouse brimming with pandemic supplies in Fontana, east of Los Angeles.
I have a few quibbles with two terms: “first” and “endemic.”
To begin with, an endemic disease is like the flu and chicken pox. A disease reaches the endemic stage when the virus still exists in a community but becomes manageable as immunity builds. Therefore, no emergency measures would be required, and routine and sensible precautions (e.g., wash hands, stay home when sick) would be the order of the day.
Yet there is no date-certain when school children would be allowed to attend school without masks. Furthermore, emergency orders appear to be remaining in place, and there is, technically, “no finish line.’
And there will be no immediate lifting of the dozens of remaining executive emergency orders that have helped run the state since Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide stay-home order in March 2020.“This pandemic won’t have a defined end. There’s no finish line,” Newsom said….Newsom’s plan sets specific goals, such as stockpiling 75 million masks, establishing the infrastructure to provide up to 200,000 vaccinations and 500,000 tests a day in the event of an outbreak, and adding 3,000 medical workers within three weeks in surge areas.
I would like to remind the media that at least seven states had a far more sensible approach to covid, based on “science,” appropriate risk assessments, and politicians who didn’t put their party over real public health issues: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. However, six of those states did place some restrictions on businesses in 2020. Only South Dakota did not close businesses as a result of pandemic panic.
Beyond those seven, Texas and Florida have been on the forefront of creating meaningful endemic policy following the robust initial response to covid. In fact, Biden and Newsom have both chided Desantis for Florida’s path.
Asked by Yahoo News to respond to Republican attacks, Newsom didn’t mince words.They’re performance artists, some of these people,” the governor snapped. “All you have to do is watch Fox and then just decide to plug in. I mean, it’s about the easiest thing I’ve seen in politics. It’s just, ‘What’s the ticker on Fox primetime?’”“With respect, we’d have 40,000 more Californians dead if we took [DeSantis’s] approach,” Newsom continued.
As a reminder, here is what Biden said about DeSantis when Florida’s governor announced he was not going to impose a vaccine mandate.
Beyond Texas and Florida, Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis declared his own endemic policy when he declare the pandemic emergency over…in the summer of 2021.
Political leaders and some scientists have expressed hope that omicron’s pervasiveness means the virus has become endemic, or a permanent part of life that people manage without too much disruption. Before the omicron surge, Gov. Jared Polis reiterated that he believed the pandemic “emergency” was over — a declaration he’d first made last summer — and said Coloradans would learn to live with the virus as they do with the seasonal flu..
The claim that Newsom was first to this dance is laughable, ludicrous, and another clear example of Democrat gaslighting.
Democrats and the American press won’t be able repackage Newsom as an exceptional leader during the pandemic of 2020-2022. Too many of us have all the receipts.
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