That was my biggest issue with the whole situation in the USA. All of these emergency measures were done without any mention of timelines, all the while a vocal part of the population was saying "fuck your freedoms", and "millions of people will die if they lift the lockdown". It's like everyone forgot about the Patriot Act overnight, and doesn't realize that the government doesn't like giving up control after whatever "emergency" situation happens. Something needed to be done, but this whole situation made me lose a lot of faith in the government and my fellow Americans.
I genuinely don't understand this fear re: COVID.
Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID? What do mayors gain by forcing people to wear masks post-COVID? It's in the government's interest, as an institution, to open things up ASAP. They're hemorrhaging money.
The things I'd actually worry about -- using COVID to justify suppressing protests and speech, for example -- aren't happening even now.
The only way this theory makes even the remotest bit of sense is if elected officials are malevolent villains hell-bent on literally any arbitrary form of control even in cases where it undermines their own self-interest and happiness. Believe it or not, governors and mayors enjoy eating out, some go to the gym, and no one enjoys wearing masks.
I do believe there's a very real danger of emergency powers being extended indefinitely in general. But not in the case of health orders related to COVID. Because the powers being exercised aren't the sort of things even the most power-hungry person would want to enforce indefinitely. There's just no motivation to do so. And, for anyone not experiencing a literal and extreme psychotic break, lots of even completely self-interested incentives to get things back to normal.
Theories by which it is in a government's interest to delay reopening longer than optimal:
1. The Governor's political interests lie in "doing something," to contrast with "do nothing" political approaches. Ceasing to "do something" erases this advantage.
2. Masks and closure become a political symbol to certain classes -- almost a political advertisement -- and those classes tend to see the burdens as insignificant and a "community responsibility." Efforts to reopen, then, are seen as opposed to the good of the community.
3. Industries and activities that support the Governor will increase COVID cases, so the Governor decides other industries and activities are "nonessential," shifting costs from supporters to non-supporters.
4. The Governor is politically or legally risk averse, and defers to the most conservative health authorities to avoid responsibility for outcomes.
5. The Governor underweights economic impacts, because it believes the Federal Government should use tax policy or welfare to socialize the economic costs of the "required" costs.
Granted, these aren't fears the government will remain irrational forever, just that it will stay irrational longer than people can stay liquid.
I do think some people will swap roles after the US election, and they will rediscover a patriotic duty to muddle through, as our elected officials do the best they can.
I think your lack of understanding is because you frame the question as nuanced to keeping two types of establishments closed. Instead ask questions like: Why would governors want to keep overriding city-level authority? Why would governors want to maintain control over federal funds and subsidies related to health crises? Why would governors want to be able to selectively close certain types of businesses (e.g. close bars, allow restaurants, differentiate between the two based on arbitrary number, disallow one to become the other)? Why would governors want to disallow certain medical procedures (e.g. abortion)?
I can go on and on. The general question is whether executive power at any government level begets more executive power, and the answer is almost always "yes".
Do you live in the US? The situation is exactly the opposite here.
Downplaying the significance of COVID is practically part of the GOP platform at this point. It's gotten to the point in the last 2 months where even extremely mild and all-volunteer public health measures are political suicide in the majority of US states.
But also, even in the small number of very left-leaning areas like mid-sized/large cities, mayors and governors are under intense pressure to get things back to normal.
Hell. Even universities, which take tons of heat for being hotbeds of leftism even relative to left-leaning cities, are pushing forward with campus openings despite contrary advice from public health experts.
As far as I can tell, being too prudent for too long would be an enormous political liability in literally every US jurisdiction. In fact, being prudent at all is a political liability in >25 states even with new cases hitting highs. Here in rural PA I get harassed for wearing a mask into the grocery store.
The "permanent COVID emergency" concern is ridiculously disconnected from political reality in the USA. So much so that it's more of an unhinged conspiracy theory than a legitimate concern.
I do. I live in the Bay Area. Your local situation may be different.
I stand by what I said. I’m surprised to hear some think there will be a permanent COVID emergency. I’m not really doing the whole partisan thing, so I don’t know the state of that debate.
We are in a pandemic; of course there will be pressure on our leaders. My conjecture is that career concerns may be leading some to ignore principles of good governance to minimize the risk that things will turn out poorly for them. I think it is not uncommon for political leaders who call all the shots to back themselves into such a situation. We need a way out.
Talking about hypothetical pressures that a theoretical government might face is a lot less interesting when we can look outside and see that the exact opposite of your hypothetical is actually taking place. Empirically, the pressure to not bankrupt the government and have to lay off police, firefighters, and teachers, to let people go back to their lives, and to not be seen as job-hating nanny-state bureaucrats is the dominant force in state and local decision-making, only barely being held in check by a sense of civic duty and concern for long-term consequences. And in places where civic duty and long-term planning aren't in vogue, we see that the former has won out entirely. Mayor Breed and Governor Newsom are doing what they do despite the political consequences of shelter-in-place, not because of them.
I am active in our local community and contributing my own interpretation.
Edit: and if you are implying that Newsom and Breed and others are holding the line because they know in their hearts to do the right thing, well, this pandemic proves nearly every politician on the planet must have a really big heart.
I don't agree though that it's out of a sense of charity or morality. I think it's a matter of self preservation, just acting on a longer timescale than others. Politicians don't want to live in a blasted hellscape any more than the rest of us. And I think a fair number have realized that taking unpopular actions now is the only way to avoid that.
The refusal of the GOP (Senate, mostly, though the White House seems to be on the same page and perhaps the main motivator) to provide state/local aid, given that there are legal, practical, and other restrictions limiting state borrowing for emergency costs, especially non-capital costs, and structurally they have since not long after the founding relies on the federal government to backstop them for that is a big part of this.
Disease transmission is a communications and network problem -- there are the unobserved opportunities for infection, the known observed cases, the transmission rates, incubation and course-of-illness periods, acquired immunity, mortality, morbidity.
In periods of outbreak you need hightened disease surveillance, increased blocking of transmission, and reduced opportunities for infection. Barriers, reduced crowds, improved sterilisation and surface cleaning, fewer shared-touch interfaces (from touchscreens to bannisters), and the like.
These will likely be instituted through building and health codes, not so much activity restrictions. Some high-contact activities (bars, nightclubs, theatres, amusement parks) may well be subject to temporary closures. But expect these to be contingent on infection levels.
Do expect to see massive changes in office/work, retail, and transport designs, hoever. Possibly travel and quarantine restrictions.
Why would they have to? It certainly wouldn't be in their electoral self-interest.
A completely corrupt mayor could use this newfound power to solicit some political donations. There are plenty other possibilities, like the need to be seen responding to the crisis or "tough on the virus".
...dear god, from who? The Big Mask Cabal? Sorry, this makes no god damn sense.
The possibility of bribes to reopen sooner make me even less worried about dx87's concerns.
Now if we expected our government to set conditions of the lock down ending, that would be better. Something based around the pandemic itself, such as new infections per day and test positivity would probably be best. But time? That’s not how this works.
I'm sure the legislature will have no problem forgoing a game of golf with lobbyists in order to vote to extend a bill that gives government more power. They have no problem doing that every time the Patriot Act comes back up.
There's no good reason emergency measures can't have sunset clauses.
Well, in a lot of states the legislature can do that today if they want. It's completely within state legislature's capacity to force action from municipalities, either directly or through the purse strings.
Most don't want to because they're publicly supportive of shutdowns. Or because they're publicly courting anti-maskers but privately know shutdowns are necessary and therefore don't want to take responsibility.
No one is arguing whether the virus is on our clock. The argument is whether we’ve granted our governments the right to indefinitely extend their emergency authorizations.
And if such a bill can't be passed - i.e. the person holding emergency powers is using them to do things our elected representatives aren't willing to sign off on - surely that proves how important it is that the powers be limited.
(Of course, if you believe our elected representatives would risk killing people to make the other side look bad, or would stuff unrelated pork into the must-pass bill, you might not follow this line of reasoning)
“After X days responsibility should transfer from the executive branch to the legislative” is completely different from “the governments ability to take X measures to stop a pandemic should be limited to Y days”. I am only responding to the latter.
My fear about the former is the implicit assumption that the legislature won’t also close gyms, bars, and other businesses that a vocal minority want re opened immediately.
That's the risk and price of democracy and freedom, the people (or their representatives) aren't supposed to do what's best, they're supposed to do what the public wants
First of all, we’re a representative democracy. We do not elect people to implement our exact will, we elect people who we expect to use their best judgement to use the powers vested in them. If the expectation was that elected members do exactly what their constituents wanted, we would be a direct democracy instead.
Second, I find the notion that “the price of freedom is the risk of just not bothering to solve a pandemic” to be a serious insult to democracy. I question the legitimacy of any democratic system that would just ... not bother to protect citizens.
And finally, calls to return to normal represent a narrow minority of the population. In fact a majority of Americans are worried about the virus, a majority wants schools to remain closed, and a majority think we opened back up too soon. If we’re talking about “popular will”, then we would be talking about extending shut downs, not ending them.
Do you have a source for those numbers?
Its interesting because Gallup has shown remarkable consistency in people self isolating. The percentage of the population visiting restaurants, bars, and their friends homes remains down in the mid 20s. Only 34% of Americans have returned to the office, only 5-6% of Americans are going to their place of worship. 5% of Americans have returned to a gym.
People are by and large self enforcing the lock down. According to Gallup the percentage of Americans who would return to normal “right now” is 28%. The vast majority of Americans want at least to see case numbers fall first, with sizable groups expecting no new cases in their state (28%) or a vaccine (23%) before returning to normal. 67% of Americans say they will enforce social distancing “for as long as necessary” before their mental health begins to suffer, up 13% since April.
The groups shouting about ending the lock down and returning to normal are about 28-30% of the population, according to Gallup.
That's a key phrase and begs some questions:
- Do the "extraordinary measures" have to be proven effective?
- Do the "extraordinary measures" have to be proven effective than doing nothing?
- Has anyone announced what metrics we're even tracking to determine "effective"?
- How long does something have to persist until it's no longer an "extraordinary situation"?
- Are the "extraordinary measures" persistent or limited by time, risk, etc?
Asking for the War on Poverty, Drugs, Terror, etc, etc.
> - Do the "extraordinary measures" have to be proven effective?
That's how it's been handled here. We went through a phase of virtually absolute lockdown this spring, loosened restrictions this summer, and locked a few things back down again (bars were especially bad). The governor also ramped up mask mandates as we learned more about their effectiveness.
> Do the "extraordinary measures" have to be proven effective than doing nothing?
Not sure exactly what you mean here, but the regions that have done nothing have seen worse results.
> Has anyone announced what metrics we're even tracking to determine "effective"?
Number of confirmed cases, number of tests administered, percentage of tests being positive, number of deaths. The last metric is the one we really care about the most, but we can mitigate it by tracking leading indicators. Nothing more than statistical theory at play here.
> How long does something have to persist until it's no longer an "extraordinary situation"? > Are the "extraordinary measures" persistent or limited by time, risk, etc?
Michigan has a phased approach based on various metrics and indicators: https://www.michigan.gov/documents/whitmer/MI_SAFE_START_PLA...
I would love to see this sort of prudence for other crises.
And the legal justification by which those measures apply to a situation that is going on half a year is dubious at best. The legality of those measures themselves is also generally dubious from a constitutional law perspective. Most of them have never been meaningfully challenged because they've mostly been used for short term emergencies at this point. The legislatures need to nut up and to their damn jobs. They've had nearly 6mo at this point.
I don't really buy the power grab angle here. Most of the flack the federal government got was for explicitly _not_ doing any country-wide coordination or restriction. "Leave it to the governors". And it's hard not to find the "assault on freedom" angle disingenuous when it comes primarily from the socially conservative parts of the country that have historically worked to constrain individual rights.
"We believe in science" is a fine mantra, though it doesn't directly lead to "liquor stores are essential". Our political elites were unable to resist politicizing every decision, gloating over others' misery and/or misrepresenting outcomes for political gain.
So, yeah, basically now it seems like many people are deciding for themselves.
There is also the sense of an ongoing crises, in the sense of a threat in which there is a very real likelihood of either a very bad, or very positive outcome. The Covid situation strongly resembles this.
Too there is the situation that even after the immediate onset of some emergency has passed, dealing with consequential effects carries great significance. To call on one of my preferred nonmedical disaster scenarios, in the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure (China), 170,000 people ultimately lost their lives. "Only" 25,000 or so drowned in the initial deluge. Over 150,000 perished due to an inadequate, ineffective, or incompetent rescue, recovery, and relief operation, due to starvation and disease.
Historical epidemics, even within the past century and certainly prior to it, have lasted years to decades. Come to think of it, the HIV/AIDS, TB (including TDR variants), MRSA, and hepatitis outbreaks also match this description.
The notion that six months is an excessively long response window fails any experiential comparison. It does howevee reflect failures of education, communication, leadership, and comprehension.
That said, it's perfectly reasonable for a government to keep exceptional procedures for an year. That's the minimum planning granularity they use. The GP's 6 months limit does not seem reasonable.
What happens where a long-term crisis endures requiring rapid decisionmaking, faster than legislative deliberative practice allows?
The point is that that's impossible. If the crisis is ongoing for months then there is ipso facto enough time for the normal legislative process to apply. Applying some emergency decisionmaking process that bypasses the normal checks and balance is only justifiable for novel events.
In a pandemic, lockdown, or quarantine, really is the only effective tool of control without immunity-bosting therapy (vaccination), or possibly, effective treatment (antiviral therapy). Not having people get sick in the first place is your best option, and, due to exponential growth, the faster you respond to outbreaks or rising Rt, the better.
Add to this delays in disease surveillance --- by the time you start seeing cases and they are reported, you're already 1-2 weeks behing the curve, and for COVID-19 that means two orders of magnitude more spread than you've detected, there simply is not time to convene a legislature, undergo debate, deflect disinformation, misinformation, and faulty models, to legislatively reimpose tighter movement controls.
We're seeing this in China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Italy, Germany, Spain, and in numerous other countries and US states as the pandemic is brought under control, controls loosened, rates start rising, and controls are reimposed immediately as the resurgence is apparent. And by doing so, several of these countries (Taiwan, NZ, AU, South Korea) have avoided mass outbreaks, others have limited those to specific locations (China) or brought generalised outbreaks under control (Italy, Spain, Germany). Ongoing vigilance and vigorous response remain necessary, shown by experience.
By direct analogy, an ongoing siege remains an emergency though it continues for months or years. Ask the citizens of Leningrad. And this virus is a siege, it remains outside the gates.
An executive acts, a legislation deliberates.
Both are parts of the government. Systems vary, but in most democratic states, both are ether directly (presidential model) or indirectly (prime minister) the peoples' representatives. The power is not absolute, and legislators act as a check on the executive, increasing or decreasing powers, perhaps removing from office if fully incompetent or abusive.
Again:
- Previous pandemics have lasted years, decades, and centuries. Your imposed timeframe is utterly divorced from reality.
- The principle mechanism for pandemic control is vector and transmission reduction. Reduce numbers and rates of contacts, likelihood of exposure, amount of contagious agent shared, viability of that agent: Stay home, wash your hands, wear masks. It's not high-tech or sexy. It is effective.
- Rapid and effective executive decisionmaking is required for response, there is no time for parliamentary delay.
- In democratic states the executive remains a representative of the people.
- Powers granted are neither absolute nor without check.
- Such governance and response is proved effective in numerous regions.
- Emergence refers not merely to the initial appearance of the threat but to the situation as a whole. If it has rapidly-emergent characteristics and properties, it is an emergency. "A condition of urgent need for action or assistance: a state of emergency." (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/emergency) But the case that all issues must be resolved in a single prime-time commercial broadcast segment, or a few scant months, is parlous poor made here.
And for the record, I've made similar arguments since the beginning of this crisis:
Six months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22273830
Five months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22528060
The executive has emergency powers to respond to novel developments - and that would include unexpected outbreaks or anything that demanded a radical change in our thinking. But at this point the existence of a pandemic is not an emergency. We know it's there, there's enough time to consult experts and debate appropriate responses.
We managed to have legislative oversight when conducting wars. The president is allowed to unilaterally authorise military action for 90 days, but past that point Congress has to approve it. Surely we can manage the same thing for a disease.
If not now, then when? Seriously, this could go on for years; at what point is this just the "new normal"? Before the pandemic people were talking (with good reason) about a "climate emergency"; should that give the executive grounds to make arbitrary decrees for an unbounded time?
I don't doubt that these governors have the right intentions and are doing what they think is best. But our processes and safeguards are there for good reason, and it's not just about protecting us from moustache-twirling villains. When the stakes are high it becomes even more important to have debate, oversight, and review.
It may last for a longer term than most emergencies; but still operates on a smaller timeline than legislatures are used to operating. The only analogous situation I can think of is wars, and those are already given special treatment (and have seen a steady growth in executive authority over the past decades).
Additionally, I am not aware of any executive (within the US) that has suspended or directly contradicted the legislative branch. If your issue is that the situation has gone on for too long to be dealt with using emergency authority, then your complaint is with the legislatures that have failed to either issue the rules themselves, or override the executive orders.
I could see an arguement for updating the various authorizations for executive orders to allow them to be repealed by a simple majority vote not subject to veto; or even by a minority vote. However, as far as I am aware, there has not been a major conflict at the state level where these powers would be relevant.
Right now it's unclear if COVID-19 will behave like the 1918-19 Spanish flu and disappear after Winter 2021 because most everyone subceptible will have gotten it, or of it will be more like Picardy Fever, which hung around for two centuries.
much of what you say is reasonable, but those two examples are actually quite different, and it's important to be careful with generalized pronouncements because of those important differences.
folks going to a gym can still distance properly, and so can still reasonably curtail transmission. the primary purpose of the gym is a personal workout, not sharing indoor airspace with others for prolonged amounts of time with abandon.
most (large) parties on the other hand are willfully defiant and reckless, with no intention of containing transmission.
gyms are fine, small get-togethers are likely fine, all-night ragers are overwhelmingly unlikely to be fine.
Michigan has a procedure that may let the legislature do exactly this without even worrying about a veto:
I think perhaps a better attribute for what you are going for is temporary, and temporary is relative. The changes due to the emergency of COVID-19 are temporary, but longer lasting that some other emergencies, like a fire for example. Although I've now gotten used to fire emergencies lasting weeks, which is entirely new as of the last few years.
An emergency is an emergent situation, which must be new, evolving, and carry the risk of serious harm. Emergency orders are based upon the idea that executive authority must be wielded to quickly mitigate an emergency situation. But a key attribute of an emergency (by definition) is “new” - if emergency powers are extended month after month then they are based on a situation that is no longer an emergency.
Now before you get angry, consider that we can agree that COVID-19 is a serious threat that requires government action _without_ it necessarily being an emergency or emergent situation. The threat has long since emerged.
Now we have a lot of governors issuing decrees based on emergency authorities that they’ve been using for six months. This is quite simply a conflict with our basic notion of democracy. We do not have rulers, yet our governors are issuing rules purportedly carrying the weight of law with no oversight from legislature.
Whether or not you agree with the orders, I think it’s intuitively likely that you can see how this is essentially a disruption in the relationship between people and their government, and as such it’s at least understandable how many people would feel these orders carry no moral weight (even if they’re not thinking from a legal perspective). And so the existence of gray market gyms and parties is at least understandable, even if we don’t condone such behavior.