Yes it was on Friday the 13th, a day steeped in mythology as a day of ill omens, in March of 2020, that President Donald J. Trump speaking in the White House Rose Garden, declared a national emergency that could free up $50 billion to help fight the pandemic and said that he was empowering the secretary of Health and Human Services to waive certain laws and regulations to ensure that the COVID-19 virus can be contained and patients treated.
“To unleash the full power of the federal government … I am officially declaring a national emergency,” Trump said.
“Two very big words,” he added.
Yes, they were and marked the beginning of the end to his presidency. The concept was to institute on a state-by-state basis lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing so that COVID-19 cases would be spread over a longer period so that ICU beds and ventilator machines would not be overwhelmed. All we had to do was go on a stay-at-home vacation for 15 days and all would be well. Approaching the two-year anniversary of that declaration we cannot be amazed at our overwhelming naiveté.
The result was a long-term worldwide recession, the loss of personal freedom, and liberty throughout the once called “Free World” from Italy to Australia, and the imposition of the “dictatorship of the public health bureaucracy.” If Karl Marx had only realized that the overthrow of democracy and capitalism did not require a bloody revolution but simply a public health mandate, we could have saved tens of millions of lives. In China, the apparent source of COVID-19, and the only remaining major country with a communist government, perhaps they did. They closed the city of Wuhan, China, from the rest of China but opened Wuhan up to the rest of the world. No COVID-19 recession for China but a recession for the rest of the world. Brilliant!
Of course, Trump was not the only politician to egregiously suffer due to that fateful Friday the 13th. Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo initially rode the COVID-19 wave to great adulation, even garnering an International Emmy for his daily COVID briefings. In the end, however, he had to resign in disgrace in part from of the discovery that his dictates that nursing homes had to take in contiguous COVID-19 patients cost thousands of lives, which he fraudulently tried to hide. The coup de grâce came with the revelation that the so-called “LuvGov” was, in fact, a serial sexual harasser.
But what if Trump had ignored the advice from ever contradicting Dr. Anthony Fauci and the highly political Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and rode through the Ides of March doing nothing but shepherding through the development and distribution of vaccines for COVID-19. The one European country that ignored all of the lockdown mandates and impingements on civil liberties was surprisingly, Sweden, headed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Agency, Folkhälsomyndigheten, embarked on a de-facto herd immunity approach, allowing community transmission to occur relatively unchecked. There were no mandatory measures taken to limit crowds on public transport, in shopping malls, or in other crowded venues, while recommending only a limit of 50 people for gatherings. Sweden’s mortality rates were lower than the European Union and the United States and its economy prospered.
In America, states like Nebraska, Wyoming, and Florida, which limited and quickly lifted COVID-19 restrictions appear to have weathered comparatively well when put up against highly restrictive states such as New York and California. Colorado, under Governor Polis, took a somewhat middle ground and at least did not go with the Draconian measures adopted by states such as Michigan, under the leadership of Governor Whitmer. In Denver we did get to see up close and personal the hypocrisy of the political elites when Mayor Hancock was at DIA texting to city employees not to travel over the Thanksgiving holidays, while he was heading to Texas and Mississippi to spend the holidays with family.
Was it all worth it? The autocrats and authoritarians and their admirers on the left and right will tell you it was. They certainly learned how easy it is to cower and control a populace. But at least for some the lesson learned is that next time they tell us the equivalent of it is just “15 days to flatten the curve” we know what they mean. It is time to again destroy liberty and freedom for as long as they can possibly get away with it.
— Editorial Board