How many times do we have to say that John Bel Edwards likes his coronavirus shutdowns before people start recognizing this fact? Will people recognize it when we’re still in Phase 2 after Labor Day? Halloween? Thanksgiving? Christmas?
Shutdown Culture is in full effect, Karen.
Louisiana will remain in Phase 2 of the coronavirus recovery but for how long is not certain at this time.
Appearing on 107.3 talk radio in Baton Rouge, Governor John Bel Edwards said the order that keeps most businesses at 50 percent capacity, six-feet social distancing, mandatory masks and bars closed will be extended before it expires this Friday, August 28.
“We’ve got to see an extension of the proclamation, exactly what that extension is going to be I don’t know yet,” he said but he said that an announcement would be made soon.
Edwards cited four major factors in the decision to extend that included:
- Having the K-12 and college populations returning to campus
- Possibly having to use mass transit to evacuate residents in Hurricane Laura’s path and having to use shelters
- Not having the level of information and data they normally do as many of the state’s drive-thru testing sites are shuttered this week due to tropical storms
- Despite doing better on key coronavirus numbers, the state is still seeing “more new cases over the last seven days than you want to see per 100,000 population.
“About half of our parishes are still well above 10 percent positivity.”
He said he had a call with Dr. Birx from the White House COVID Task Force and that she still had some concerns about the state of coronavirus in Louisiana.
Edwards also said that he is concerned because only hospitals and clinics are testing right now since most of the drive-thru testing has been suspended due to the storms.
“We’re going to be blind this week on data to effect our decisions,” he said.
He has more than enough data to move out of Phase 2, or at least to cut parish governments loose to move out of Phase 2 as their individual circumstances warrant. Everything in this new edict is crap.
Louisiana’s positive test rates have plummeted. It was July 26 the last time a batch of Louisiana COVID tests came back with more than 10 percent positives. And here’s the August data so far…
The latest batch of tests he has back show a 2.5 percent positive test rate. Two point five percent. And he still wants Louisiana to be in Phase 2.
Remember, he’s saying he can’t get testing data this week to know whether he should start opening the state back up.
On account of Hurricane Laura. Which is all by itself since, disappointingly, Hurricane Marco decided not to show up – perhaps Marco heard about how New Orleans had canceled all the large events for the rest of the year.
So here’s a question for Dictator Bel: how are you going to do hurricane cleanup from Laura with the state shut down for COVID? That’ll be a neat trick, won’t it?
Guess you’ll just have to have that many more federal dollars you’ll have to beg President Trump for. Pretty soon he might actually demand you endorse him if you want to keep that spigot turned on.
He says he can’t go to Phase 3 because the schools are reopening. But the kids in the schools have less exposure to harm from the virus than anybody else in the population, and around the world they’ve reopened schools with no trouble. Guess that’s just something else Louisiana isn’t capable of doing that France, Vietnam and Mali have been able to pull off.
Advertisement
Forget about the fact there isn’t a single recorded case of a school kid infecting a teacher with COVID. You’re staying in Phase 2 because he says so. And also because, science. But mostly because he says so.
By the way, the people who cooked up the idea of these shutdowns, at least the ones in the UK who for some strange reason everybody listened to at the beginning, are now confessing it was a dreadful mistake to have imposed them.
A top British epidemiologist serving on the UK’s official panel of COVID-19 advisors just admitted that imposing lockdown turned out to be a catastrophic mistake that ought never be repeated.
University of Edinburgh professor, Mark Woolhouse couldn’t have been clearer about how much he regrets his recommendations:
“Lockdown was a panic measure and I believe history will say trying to control Covid-19 through lockdown was a monumental mistake on a global scale, the cure was worse than the disease.
I never want to see national lockdown again.
I believe the harm lockdown is doing to our education, health care access, and broader aspects of our economy and society will turn out to be at least as great as the harm done by Covid-19.”
The UK may have been pushed into implementing the same suicidal response to COVID-19 as we were in the U.S. But at least some of their bureaucrats are admitting the obvious and trying to fully grasp how badly they erred to make sure it never happens again.
So this is what you have. You have Phase 2, forever. Or at least until John Bel Edwards feels like letting you have something else.
Of course, you could have a return to normal, or at least a parish-by-parish determination as to what approach to take to the virus and the shutdowns. You get that when another dozen or so of the state’s House members stop cowering behind their desks and sign the petition canceling Edwards’ emergency.
That won’t happen until people begin to realize Edwards’ trampling on individual liberties and his destruction of the state’s economy aren’t based in science or public health, but instead they’re based in behavioral pathology. He’s doing this because he’s a control freak on a power trip, and he doesn’t think anyone can stop him. And he knows when all this finally ends he’ll have to face the music and account for the damage to Louisiana’s culture and economy he’s done, and he’s deathly afraid of that reckoning.
So you’ll have Phase 2 as long as he can get away with it. Shutdown Culture lasts until it’s shut down.
Advertisement
Advertisement
