The delta variant is no excuse to return to COVID-19 authoritarianism
The approach of those pushing for big government has always been to “never let a serious crisis go to waste,” as Democratic operative Rahm Emanuel famously put it . “[It is] an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
While serious indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic was exploited by proponents of big government in exactly this manner. It was used to usher in unprecedented restrictions on individual freedom, mind-boggling levels of government spending, and an expansion of the welfare state that would make FDR blush.
And, now, even with huge swaths of the public vaccinated and case counts and deaths a tiny fraction of what they once were, some power-hungry government officials aren’t willing to let this crisis end. In Los Angeles County, for example, officials just reinstated an indoor mask mandate , even for vaccinated residents. They cited the spread of the “delta variant” of COVID-19 as justification for the renewal of this invasive government mandate.
But the delta variant is no excuse for a return to COVID-19 authoritarianism. While it appears to be more contagious and is wreaking havoc in some other countries, there’s nothing about this strain that really changes the situation here in the United States. For one thing, the vaccines we have are still highly effective against the delta variant.
“A new study from the U.K. found that vaccines are still incredibly effective at preventing serious illness with the Delta variant circulating,” Dr. Leslie Bienen and Dr. Monica Gandhi write in the Wall Street Journal. “The Pfizer vaccine was 96% effective after two doses at preventing hospitalization. Studies from Canada and the U.K. show 79% to 87% effectiveness against symptomatic infection with the Delta variant.”
Meanwhile, almost all in the U.S. now hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated. “The vaccines are as good as first heralded, even against new variants,” the writers conclude.
There is simply no validity to the argument that the delta variant somehow justifies a return to emergency measures. Indeed, the only somewhat coherent argument in favor of the drastic government measures has been entirely eliminated by the widespread availability of effective COVID-19 vaccines.
While I don’t subscribe to it, a legitimate argument was made that the lockdowns and other orders were justified as a way of limiting the external costs of spreading COVID-19. Simply put, it wasn’t just a matter of personal responsibility or individual decision-making. Your decisions weren’t just affecting you but were endangering others, so the government curtailing your liberty was justified, in this telling.
However, now that COVID-19 vaccines are free and widely available, there is no longer any such case to be made. Any future COVID-19 hospitalizations or deaths are directly and solely the sad result of individuals who made the decision to take a risk by not being vaccinated. So, with there no longer being any issue of infecting others against their will in play, we should accept nothing less than a full and immediate restoration of our liberties.
“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek famously explained . “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.”
The COVID-19 emergency was real. But it has passed. Now, desperate attempts from would-be tyrants in government to cling on to their expanded powers should be seen as the naked power grabs that they truly are.
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