If I didn’t already have an ingrained suspicion of government, the Covid fiasco would have driven me to that stance. Our Bishops covered themselves with disgrace during the time the Faithful needed the Church most.
Memory Lane
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Jay Inslee, the Governor of Washington state, declared a state of emergency at the end of February 2020; and did not yield his sweeping Covid emergency powers for 975 days.
Unfortunately for the people of that state, their laws don’t place a limit on the number of days their governor can claim a state of emergency exists— and Governor Inslee developed a taste for ruling by executive fiat.
After over two and a half years, even Inslee and his supporters had to agree that there was no reasonable excuse for claiming Washington was still in a state of emergency and he finally yielded his emergency powers.
I always thought it chilling, but not actually surprising, that an American politician who was given a chance to exercise dictatorial powers would decide he rather liked not having to deal with a legislature, that he preferred being dictator rather than being just one branch of a state’s government.
What’s really astonishing is that after Inslee’s retirement, the state tried to pass legislation putting time limits on how long a “state of emergency” can be declared without the legislature’s continuing approval— but last I heard, they haven’t been able to pass anything yet…
Clinton, In Ohio, the Republican led Legislature approved a time limitation. However, Governor DeWine, the Little Dictator, vetoed it. He was one of the first Governors to unilaterally usurp all power.
What is more horrifying to me about the COVID years is how most of the mainstream people kinda pretend it didn’t happen.
Overblown government overreach that almost wrecked democratic government, the supply chain AND expert credibility yet you can’t get legislators to limit executive powers. Instead woke shibboleths remain the “important” topics of the day.
Most people didn’t even learn the basics of the overblown fiasco. People still go to work sick. People still have no groceries in the house.
I’m less distressed about it than you all are, but it did pretty much discredit the country’s public health mavens and the laid bare the fruit of interaction between public health mavens, politicians, and physicians. We knew due to the Diamond Princess data that the virus was no danger to those under 45, we knew by the middle of 2020 that the mode of transmission was indoor air, we had a fairly good idea by the summer of 2020 that the ‘risk factors’ were all correlates of age and body-mass-index, and we knew by September 2021 that the vaccines were about as effective as flu shots. We learned in the spring of 2020 that the CDC and the FDA bungled the approval and distribution of testing kits, we knew in the summer of 2020 that a large bloc of public health mavens are actually political activists (demonstrations in re George Floyd ‘necessary’, churchgoing ‘bad’); we learned toward the end of 2020 that at the head of the line for vaccines would not be vulnerable people but Democratic Party clients (schoolteachers, blacks); we learned at a later point from Dr. Atlas that Fauci, Redfield, and Birx wouldn’t read studies being done on the operations of the virus and the effects of various treatments; and we eventually learned that the social distancing hoo ha was derived from some juvenile science project. We also learned that the authorities would be very slow to respond to new information if it meant they had fewer excuses to boss people around (see the servicemen bullied over COVID shots which were useless for them).
Covid was, and is, very bad for a certain small segment of the public. The reaction to it was so overblown and we are stuck with the aftermath of it even now.
Other than working at home, I went about my business as if nothing happened.