Steve! This Christmas, Why Not Act in a Christian Manner toward New Mexicans?

How about we stop beating a dead horse with election suits and help limit the dead New Mexicans? The Presidential Election’s over. The pandemic ain’t.

COVID-19 cases surged this fall. Here and elsewhere. Many nations responded, reimposing restrictions. The U.S. didn’t. Worldwide, the number of new cases has fallen of late. Several countries, including France, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, have seen drops of more than 50%; and other major countries have seen declines of 30-50%, including India and Norway.

By contrast, in the U.S. the number of new cases has risen 51%.

Compare the U.S. with Doña Ana County. The nation’s seven-day moving average of new cases jumped from 50,000+ cases per day October 20 to more than thrice that by November 27. In that same period, the County’s moving average rose from 100 cases per day to 320. (Similar rise, more than trebling in five weeks.) Our Governor responded with stronger restrictions. By December 15^th, cases nationally were up to more than 4x the October 20^h figure. Meanwhile, the County’s moving average dropped back down to 100 within three weeks. Maybe restrictions work.

We have a lame-duck president who could have saved lives. His administration should have developed a coherent testing policy. He could have used his bully pulpit to urge people to wear masks and observe other precautions. Instead, he mocked masks, and now tweets lame fraud allegations and insults Republican officials. Embarrassment over his electoral loss has taken precedence over citizens’ lives.

Yo, Steve Pearce! You’re a big-shot pal of Trump’s here in New Mexico. You’re supposed to be a smart guy. YOU could be urging people to wear masks and avoid crowds and indoor gatherings. Instead, we saw you in September proudly unmasked with the “Women for Trump” buses, on which everyone crowded together, mostly maskless.

Instead, you make public statements that face-covering rules “have been meeting a lot of resistance” elsewhere in the country, and “That is just a foreshadowing of what you’re going to find in the state of New Mexico.” You also spoke of “mixed messages” about mask-wearing. There were, at the start; but that’s a long, long time ago. I hope you’ve learned since then. Or are these “mixed messages” like the “mixed messages” you choose to see from scientists about global warming?

Instead you sue the Governor over health restrictions. I agree small businesses got a bum break. Some that I love may die. I shop local. But the true fix for small businesses would have been to get serious about limiting the spread sooner and more sharply. Didn’t hear you pushing your followers to do that. (Because you care about Steve Pearce, not “the little guy” you hold up as a straw man?)

Instead you waste resources helping with a frivolous election lawsuit. Trump lost New Mexico by 11 points. If you think he got defrauded, maybe you’ve forgotten that Lujan Grisham whipped some Republican by FOURTEEN points.

I get it that you see possible political capital in carping at the Governor. But, c’mon, help everyone by combining that with clear and heartfelt warnings that people should mask up. The virus is the enemy.

Urging people to act in a way that helps them and their fellow citizens, even if they resent restrictions, would resemble leadership. Urging those who listen to you to help save lives would also be a rather Christian thing to do. Particularly at Christmas.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 December 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper’s website (First Things First: the Virus Is the Enemy) and KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[I hope I’m wrong. I searched a variety of terms combining Steve Pearce with masks, or “should wear masks,” etc. Didn’t find evidence of a serious change-of-heart. The suit claiming Lujan Grisham lacked authority to impose emergency health rules was frivolous, legally, from the start. Arguments about whether she should have made somewhat different choices are anyone’s right; so far as I know, she ain’t God; but she seemed to be trying hard to act appropriately based on studying the data. All that aside, though, if I owned a small cafe or art gallery, I might be frustrated by the rules; but I’d sure be furious at folks who spurn masks instead of sacrificing a little to stall the virus spread. If we could do that, how to handle a crisis becomes an academic question. ]

[The United States Supreme Court has long held that a state legislature can give the Governor the authority to close businesses during a health crisis. The New Mexico Legislature authorized the Governor to issue such an executive order. In 2003 it enacted the Public Health Emergency Response Act. (See the statute here, on Justia.com) ]

[It has been clear for months that when a significant majority of the people in a community wear masks and observe physical distancing, the virus spread is much more limited. Specific studies have shown this for months. So have observations on the ground. Even Sweden, an outlier in Europe, letting people frolic in bars without masks and whatnot, decided that seeing way higher numbers of cases than its neighbors was no longer tenable, and implemented rules. In fact, research

published in the journal Nature Medicine in October indicated that universal mask-wearing could prevent nearly 130,000 deaths from COVID-19 through the end of February. The analysis found that even if only 85 percent of the population wore masks in public, nearly 96,000 lives could be saved.

But without universal masking, which the study defined as 95 percent compliance, more than a half a million lives could be lost to COVID-19, researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected. ] 

[NOTE: Since I sent in the column Friday, the breaking news has been that a more infectious (but not necessarily more deadly) strain of the virus is sufficiently widespread in the U.K. that folks there are experiencing new lockdowns, and several countries have banned flights from the U.K.  That it's more infectious (and COVID-19 as we've known it is not the most highly infectious of viruses) is obviously significant.  Further, if it is resistant to the vaccines so far developed (and I've as yet heard nothing indicating that's so) then our hope of some return to "normal" life by next summer would evaporate.  How all this impacts what I've written above is an interesting question.  My first thought is that it illustrates the importance of folks like Pearce and Trump and so on getting more actively on board the mask train; but someone could also argue at some point, if the vaccine didn't curb this new strain, or the next new strain, that coronavirus illnesses and deaths will eventually become just something we need to live with.  Get it and move on.  Or die.  We're not there yet, though.  I do think, though, that all of this emphasizes the importance of making decisions more solidly based on facts and science and less on superstition or political convenience.]