Who’s playing politics with COVID-19? Everyone
When Gov. Doug Ducey lifted arbitrary and wholly unscientific capacity restrictions on the remaining businesses on which they had been imposed, critics brayed that he was ignoring science and playing politics with the management of COVID-19.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego was as blunt as any: “The governor clearly cares a lot less about the people of Arizona than his political future.”
Now, is Ducey taking political considerations into account in the management of COVID-19? Undoubtedly. That’s what politicians do.
Is he ignoring science and just placating populist elements on the right who think COVID-19 is no big deal and government should do nothing about it, which is the charge Gallego and other carpers on the left are leveling?
Clearly not. Ducey established and maintained restrictions on business operations for over a year. The community risk profile for COVID-19 is dramatically different than it was when the restric
tions were imposed.
Far from being placated, the populists on the right are furious over how Ducey has managed COVID-19. Bills were filed in the Legislature to overturn his emergency declaration and strip him of his emergency powers.
The notion that there has been some clear “science” that rendered every decision about how government should respond to the spread of COVID-19 obvious and unarguable is itself unscientific. Scientists didn’t, and don’t, speak with one voice. We’ve learned a lot about the disease as it has progressed. Recommended responses have varied and changed.
What’s truly remarkable about this ruction is the complete absence of any acknowledgement that Ducey has actually put a scientist in charge of the state’s response, Dr. Cara Christ, the director of the Department of Health Services. In addition to being a medical doctor, she has a master’s degree in microbiology with an emphasis in virology and working experience as an epidemiologist. Christ matches or exceeds the expertise of the academic critics, much less the carping politicians.
It’s actually pretty amusing watching the likes of Gallego accuse the governor of playing politics with COVID-19. Her statement was hardly a reasoned appeal for a different policy approach. Instead, it was a political blunderbuss transparently designed to elevate her stature in Democratic circles as having really given it to Ducey.
Ducey counterpunched, blasting Gallego and the city of Phoenix for closing the parking lots to the parks over Easter weekend, as a practical matter closing the parks for most people.
While there was undoubtedly some politics involved, he had a point. Gatherings at homes over Thanksgiving and Christmas are thought to be large contributors to the state’s second COVID-19 wave. One of the things we’ve learned along the way is that outside is much safer than inside. It would have been better, and safer, to leave the parks open.
The silliest political kerfuffle is over masks. Ducey supposedly ignored the science by not imposing a statewide mask mandate. But he did make them a requirement of staying open for the businesses subject to capacity restrictions. So, there was a statewide mask mandate where it mattered most.
He also allowed counties and cities to adopt their own mask mandates.
Which they did, but then didn’t enforce them. In fact, publicly acknowledged that they weren’t going to enforce them, just respond to violations with persuasion and education. A mandate that isn’t enforced isn’t really a mandate.
In his recent order, Ducey purported to preempt counties and cities from having mask mandates. Gallego and some other liberal local officials howled and are vowing to defy the governor’s preemption and keep their nonmandate mandate in place.
Ducey misplayed the politics on this one. He gained nothing, substantively or politically, from the preemption. In fact, he fed the narrative of his critics.
He would have been better off letting local politicians such as Gallego who want to pretend to have a mask mandate deal with the political turmoil associated with them. Don’t like mask mandates, he could say. Go talk to your mayor.
When you sift through all the politics, however, there’s no substantive difference between the positions of Ducey, Gallego and other politicians posturing over masks. Everyone should continue to wear one. But no one is going to be punished for not doing so or not requiring others to do so.
So, who’s playing politics with COVID-19? Utterly unsurprisingly, everyone who holds office as a result of politics.