States are going back into lockdown. As we face down this winter and flu season with a rising tide of positive Covid tests coming in, the question becomes: could you be a governor and do nothing?
My Governor here in Minnesota just put us back into a 30 day lockdown. As restaurants are throwing away food that they won’t be able to sell as carry out fast enough, I find myself wondering what would I have done. Below is my address to the state. I humbly submit it to this community for commentary.
My fellow Minnesotans-
We find ourselves at an uncertain and, for many, scary moment in history. We are eight months into a global pandemic that every one of us has paid some price for. We have lost friends and family members. We have lost members of our incredible state whose lives were cut short by this virus.
I stand before you today as a humble man who doesn’t have all of the answers. But here’s what I do know. I know that more than 3000 Minnesotans have died due to COVID-19. I know that 70% of that group were living in long-term care facilities. I know that our previous responses across these great United States have gone from the most strict lockdowns on our personal liberties in NYC to the most lenient via warnings and advice in South Dakota. I know that it’s still not clear which one of those was correct.
I know that when we lockdown our communities it hurts us all and none more than the small business owners who have poured their hearts and souls into building our small town main streets. I know that despite what everyone tells you every day — we just don’t know what the right answer is here.
The reality is that I am not your king. I was not elected to lord over you and protect you from yourselves. I was elected to uphold the self-evident truths of our constitution that you each have inalienable rights that cannot be taken by people like me and your governments.
So as your Governor — I am here to give you transparency and guidance in these hard times. I commit to you each day that we will make available every piece of data that we have around our infection rates, testing rates, hospitalization rates, death rates, etc. I have directed my head of infectious disease as well my head of data science to come up with clear metrics and indicators that we can all use to understand whether we are moving in a safer direction.
In addition, I commit to you my honesty and my fight against hypocrisy. I will do my best to wear the mask. I will do my best to keep a good distance from others. I will isolate myself if I’m symptomatic for anything that resembles the flu. I will take care with those around me. And I will ask each of you to do the same.
For those of you who are expecting or demanding action and restrictions. I refer you to your local governments. Your city, town, and county officials are the best positioned to assess your community and come to agreement on the best course of action. Your school boards are closest to you and the problem and can decide to stay open or shut down.
This is the heart of federalism. This is what makes our country great. It isn’t dictates from on high from people who half of you didn’t even vote for and whom few of you believe you could find a way to run against and overturn. It’s instead local decisions made by involved communities that can be more quickly overturned and altered by you, the people.
Make no mistake — this virus spreads. It can kill you. We should be cautious and act with care. But none of this is an excuse to abridge that which makes this country, and if I can say this state!, the greatest the world has ever known.
Get off twitter and Facebook. Turn off CNN and Fox News. Call your neighbor. Reach out to your county officials and talk about what makes sense for your community. In addition to keeping everyone informed — that is what I’ll also be doing everyday. We’re in this together and we’ll get through this together.
3 replies on “Could you be Governor and do nothing?”
Perhaps you can’t run for Governor, but you might be able to get onto your school board or local council. These bodies need decent people too.
I stand by something I have said elsewhere:
When we all went into lockdown, suicide, domestic abuse, drug abuse, depression, all soared. People were under an intolerable strain, not knowing what the future held, basically just having to wait for the axe to fall, day after day after day.
The economy took a nose dive. Part of the stress of the lockdowns was watching their jobs disappear, then watching their entire careers disappear, then watching entire sectors of the economy disappear.
Some of them haven’t come back. Some of them may not come back ever.
So you take people, put them into lockdown, let them deal with emotional trauma as their entire world goes into the toilet, being utterly dependent on the largess of people that they know, from decades of experience, will sell them out in a moment if it suits their purposes.
And then one day you take these emotionally shattered people, cut off their largess, and turn them back out into a now shattered economy…..
…do you think you have really done them any favors?
Nobody is happy about the death toll. But as my niece, who is a charge nurse of an ICU, tells me, “It’s a virus that attacks the elderly and the immune compromised. It’s not even in the top 5 killers. It sure as hell ain’t Captain Trips that everybody is making it out to be.”
The bottom line is that you can speak of the horrors of death all you want… but if death is the worse thing you can imagine, you have a very limited imagination.
Even the governors, like Kristi Noem, Abbot, and Scott from Florida who are not imposing lockdowns are actually doing something.
Just hearing that flurry of fear and questions and saying: “I am going to play ping pong with my child.” is doing something.
Just not what you are expected to do.
Which is REALLY something under these circumstances.