A Different World

Some friends and I took our trailers up to Reno for the weekend.  What a difference a 2-hour drive makes.

No masks.  Very little fear.  People were going about living their lives.  

Yes, most of the employees at the casino/RV park where we stayed wore masks, but no one talked about them.  No one asked others to wear them.  No signs mandated wearing them.  The vast majority of the guests didn't wear them.

And bodies were not stacked like cord wood.  Shocking, I know.

Two hours west, though, here in Capital City:

With one of the lowest COVID-19 case rates in the country, a 70+ percent adult vaccination rate, and widespread reopening set for June 15, the pandemic is finally on the wane in California. But Governor Gavin Newsom is still refusing to give up his “emergency powers.”

“California is set to end most coronavirus restrictions on June 15, but Gov. Gavin Newsom is not lifting the state of emergency,” local media outlet KCRA3 reports. “Newsom is keeping emergency powers given to him by a court in his back pocket ‘in case things go south.’”

"We're still in a state of emergency,” the governor said. “This disease has not been extinguished. It's not vanished, it's not taking the summer months off"...

But Newsom is setting a timeline on his “emergency” powers that could let him hold onto them for years or even the rest of his time in office. Insisting that the state of emergency can only lapse when the coronavirus is “extinguished” or “vanished” gives the governor license to cling on to his expanded powers essentially forever. 

It’s unlikely we’ll have zero coronavirus cases in the near future, but a few dozen infections in a population where almost all vulnerable people have been vaccinated does not an emergency make...

Critics are right, and we should all hope that Newsom’s tyrannical power grab isn’t allowed to stand. But the takeaway here is broader than any governor, state, or even the coronavirus. Time and time again, we see that “emergencies,” both real and manufactured, are used as cover for would-be tyrants in government who want to break the crucial restraints on their power that keep us free. 

“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded – and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist,” Nobel-prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek famously wrote.  

So, don’t just look at what Newsom is doing in California right now with horror. Remember it next time an emergency comes around and your politicians promise that if you consent to their power grabs it will just be “temporary.”

Update, 6/16/21:  California is "fully re-opened" as of yesterday, except it's not:

Here are some of the exceptions, as reported by an NBC affiliate in California.

“As of June 15, California no longer requires physical distancing and allows full capacity for businesses. The state’s long-standing county tier system that determines restrictions has also been lifted, and the indoor mask mandate is no more,” KCRA 3 reported.

But here is some of the fine print:

• Businesses can still require people — vaccinated or not vaccinated — to wear masks inside.
• Fully vaccinated people still need to wear masks on public transit, including airplanes, buses, taxis and ride-shares.
• Fully vaccinated people still need to wear masks indoors in K-12 schools, child care and other youth settings, health care settings including long-term care facilities, state and local correctional facilities and detention centers, and homeless shelters, emergency shelters, and cooling centers.
• Unvaccinated people should continue to wear masks indoors at places like restaurants, movie theaters and grocery stores.
• California says it will require vaccine verification or negative coronavirus test results for indoor events with more than 5,000 people and the same restrictions for “mega events” of more than 10,000 people.
• Children 12 and younger who are not eligible for the coronavirus vaccine are like other unvaccinated people and must wear a mask indoors and in most public places.
• Counties in California can set their own rules and some may be stricter than state rules.

KCRA also reported that Newsom is keeping emergency powers given to him by a court “in case things go south,” according to political analyst Steve Swatt.