Governor Reynold’ COVID edicts, took a lot of liberties with the Iowa and Federal Constitution, and consequently from people. Their livelihoods were adversely affected and consequently their general health. The benefits to lock-downs and general mask mandates are not evident and inflicted suffering on many people, curtailing needed human interaction.
The precedent if the wrong lessons are learned are troubling. Instead of referencing the precedents her administration set for its excesses and avoiding those, versus building on them to even more authoritarian control and be even more aggressive would be horrid.
Frankly I believe the legislature should visit the emergency powers authority vested in the governor and limit them more, imparting time limits and oversight procedures and an onus on the legislature of prompt emergency sessions to exercise basic oversight.
For the record Reynolds was better than most governors (of course a lot of them are Democrats). That she has been quicker to put a stop to to false political correctness regarding the disease as regards most mandates is good . . . but then don’t we pay her to be on top of this stuff . . . to know when the public health cure is worse than the disease?
Politically I do not know how much different she might have been, more toward Governor Noem and DeSantis at the outset. Critics of Noem regarding South Dakota’s death rates per 100,000 are based on poor statistical modeling that constricts time frame when the disease has not played out and frankly cherry picks causes of death. What is South Dakota’s overall death rate per 100,000 seems more relevant because of iatrogenic diseases caused by excessive public health responses to the disease — especially as regards lock downs — which result in forgone care and diagnosis, depression, suicide drug addiction and more. Attribution of the disease as cause of death is also rightly ridiculed in many cases. States with draconian measures have fared worse.The so called curve analysis regarding communicable disease progression is also appropriate. Responsibly one can favor Noem’s approach.
Certainly Reynolds could have been more skeptical of the CDC and her own Health Department. The “experts” and the data regarding general or extensive mask mandates have been all over the map and the latest studies (for months really) unsupportive. Many of the mask-Nazis “experts” have been hypocritical or poor examples or both. The Iowa Health Department was so politicized (orange man references a certain cure therefor bad) so as to in knee-jerk fashion promptly pull hydroxychloroquine from the medical community to be used as a COVID cure, sending out notices to every physician and pharmacist that use was not authorized. Months ago the efficacy was more than sufficiently established demolishing arguments of cures being isolated or “mere” anecdotal. While they have quietly removed the restrictions they unconscionably have not advised physicians and pharmacists as aggressively or uniformally as they denied it.
Hydroxychloroquine is not a panacea but for the general population in combination with other treatment regime or substituted by them if they are efficacious this writer favors focusing on cures rather than experimental vaccines. The disease is 99% survivable for the largest swath of the population almost on its own. The right cures stop it and subsequently provide immunity. Vaccines are not as effective generally. The most vulnerable are a different story. And of course, as always, consult your physician.
R Mall
