Politics, COVID spike point to Lamont mask mandate
We’re in an odd sort of moment here at the intersection of politics and public health, with temperatures rising in both arenas and Gov. Ned Lamont pulled in lots of different directions with one powerful irony.
Lamont’s unfortunate week between Christmas and New Year’s gave Republicans a welcome start to 2022 against a popular Democrat seeking reelection.
The governor’s loss of a much publicized deal for 3 million at-home COVID-19 tests, combined with a spike in the coronavirus numbers, all while he was in Florida on a family vacation, definitely set him back a bit politically.
Unfortunately for the Republican candidates for governor and the party insiders cheering them on, residents of the state just aren’t watching the details like those of us who do it for a living.
Several active voters, have told me they had a vague sense that Connecticut was supposed to get some tests and we got a smaller number, a day or two later.
Some who were following the news blamed Lamont for promising a huge cache — even going on CNN to crow about it — before the tests were secured. Others credited the governor for trying and for coming through in the clutch with more than 1 million tests and counting as of Tuesday.
All in all, a setback for Lamont but hardly the fatal one Republicans are prancing about on Twitter, in op-eds and in news releases.
Spiking numbers force a reversal
How do the state’s COVID numbers tie into all this? Republicans have criticized Lamont for exercising too much power in the coronavirus crisis, for ordering too many shutdowns and restrictions, such as the current mask mandate in schools.
Lately, with hospital admissions — though not deaths — rivaling those of the horrible spring of 2020, the GOP finds itself in the hazy territory of slamming the governor for lack of preparation and poor strategy.
Progressives on the left as well as public health experts not on the state payroll have said the centrist governor hasn’t gone far enough with rules, notably by refusing in recent weeks to re-up the statewide mask rule for public, indoor places such as stores. They’d also like to see a vaccine mandate for restaurants.
Teachers, a crucial Democratic Party linchpin, are pissed off and want action. Nurses are sick and tired, literally.
The facts on the ground, chiefly the 1,562 people in Connecticut hospitals with COVID, clearly support a statewide mask mandate, crowd-size limits, probably more vaccine rules and maybe some cancellations.
And here’s the irony: Suddenly, even though his challenge is from the right, not the left, it’s in Lamont’s political interest to tighten the screws.
That would help him quell Republicans such as Bob Stefanowski, the 2018 nominee for governor and 2022 hopeful, who are razzing Lamont for waffling more than reigning, and Themis Klarides, an equal GOP hopeful for governor, who’s making a “broken promises to towns” charge.
Funny, we haven’t heard the old King Ned saw in a while, have we? Republicans are going with what they have, but it certainly is rich hearing a party that has downplayed the need for COVID action suddenly all in a dither over a test kit hiccup as if it’s the Vietnam War.
I have zero inside knowledge of Lamont’s next move, and you all know I wouldn’t be able to resist hinting at it if I did. But all the signals point to him making a move he said he wouldn’t make unless absolutely necessary. A simple mask mandate for all public indoor spaces has to be Option 1.
Ranking the charges against Lamont
Let’s look at how some of the events of the last week have led up to this, and whether specific charges against Lamont are on point or off base.
From his vacation in Florida, Lamont couldn’t resist announcing just after noon on Monday, Dec. 27, that he had a late Christmas present for the state in the form of 1.5 million pairs of tests.
The ill-fated sale agreement may not yet have been printed when the governor jumped, and to make matters worse, he told cities and towns to warm up the old handout lines, then went on CNN with Anderson Cooper.
Bad move, and that’s exactly what Lamont admitted when I asked him what he’d have done differently at his sullen news conference on his return last Thursday in East Hartford.
But how about that trip to Florida? Stefanowski and other commentators are calling it Lamont’s version of former Gov. Thomas Meskill’s infamous gaffe in 1973, exiting the state for a skiing holiday as an ice storm approached and then hit. By lore if not actual fact, that did in Meskill’s career.
Lamont’s trip to Florida was poorly timed as cases rose, as sick people filled hospitals, as worried residents looked in vain for the tests they hadn’t bothered to care about for months. We all agree, bad optics. A gaffe.
But to compare it to Meskill? Utterly, patently ridiculous on every level.
First of all, Lamont not only worked every day he was away — he announced an end-of-year expansion of the tax credit for low-income workers when he wasn’t wrangling tests and contacting hospitals — but he worked with equal effectiveness as if he has been in Milford, optics aside.
Unlike leading a state in an ice storm in the predigital era, the work is largely remote.
Second, unlike a sudden, catastrophic storm, coronavirus has been with us for two years, rising and falling and rising and falling, with Lamont making decisions and showing his face, for better or worse, every hour of every day.
And third, Lamont did return in person and nailed down 426,000 tests by calling the CEO of CVS, then hundreds of thousands more from other sources. Not enough to make up for the loss, but a significant effort.
A national problem
Another criticism is that Lamont was ill prepared for the spike in COVID by failing to secure tests months or weeks ago despite having access to billions of federal dollars.
Well, let’s look to Massachusetts, where Gov. Charlie Baker announced on Dec. 13 that he had acquired 2.1 million iHealth rapid home tests, the same brand Lamont tried to buy in the ill-fated order of 3 million.
Baker was one of the first governors to order the tests, but as it turns out, 2.1 million tests in Massachusetts is the same as 1 million tests in Connecticut, and guess what? Our neighbors to the north are seeing the same long lines and angry residents as we are. Google it.
The test shortage is a national crisis with national causes just like the PPE shortage, the ventilator shortage, the hospital bed shortage and the vaccine shortage that came before it.
Saying Lamont danced too soon is accurate; saying he had a “Meskill moment” is debatable but fair in politics. Saying he was unprepared is just plain gaslighting.
We could go on. The pattern is clear. Lamont has handled the latest spike less than masterfully but not catastrophically. His political recovery requires bold action and so does the runup in hospitalizations. Thus the likelihood we’ll see some statewide rules — and soon.