Libertarian: NY’s Punishing Push for Jabs
“When will New Yorkers ever be vaccinated enough to have their pre-COVID freedoms back?” asks Reason’s Matt Welch. Gov. Hochul just ordered “every business in the state . . . to have every employee and customer show proof of full COVID-19 vaccination, or make everyone inside their doors over the age of 2 wear a mask.” Yet “the two-shot vaccination rate for New Yorkers ages 12 and older currently stands at 81 percent,” and the last gov “lifted almost all statewide COVID restrictions” six months ago because the state “had crossed the [CDC’s] 70 percent threshold . . . for single shots among adults” — and New York’s now at 91 percent for that. Blame the blue-state “palpable desire to punish the unvaccinated.” Indeed, “what happens after the two-shot vaccination rate goes from 81 percent to 90 percent, maybe even 95 percent, and yet the cold weather and latest variant still increases case rates? How much government force will Democrats be willing to exert to achieve full compliance on minority communities that have lost trust in authoritative institutions? I guess we’re about to find out.”
Pandemic journal: Our ‘Distorted’ COVID Picture
The picture of our COVID situation “sold to the public” is “badly distorted,” rails The Wall Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. While the feds estimate that 146 million Americans were infected as of Oct. 2, the media are “trumpeting America’s 50 millionth ‘confirmed’ case as the latest milestone.” They also push a misleading “case fatality rate,” which Bloomberg News last week put at 1.9 percent — a “needlessly terrorizing” estimate, because it doesn’t include infected people who aren’t tested and ignores the fact that those who are tested “tend to be the sickest and oldest.” Alas, Americans are “stuck adapting to Covid partly by feel,” which only spreads “more confusion and mistrust.”
Gadfly: Dems’ Wrong Risk Assessments
“On COVID and crime, Democrats assess risk very differently,” notes David Marcus at Fox News. For two years, they’ve “urged strict restrictions and obedience from the nation in all matters regarding COVID” if “it can save just one life,” but on crime, they “have more risk tolerance than a drunk 22-year-old at a Vegas craps table. What gives?” Well, “sacrificing Americans to COVID serves no social justice purpose, but sacrificing Americans to crime does.” Dems “lack the serenity to accept what they cannot change about COVID” and “lack the courage to change what they can about crime” — “and are severely lacking in the wisdom to see the difference.”
Crime watch: Blame the ‘Soros Effect’
Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm “holds what many in the law enforcement community consider a radical belief in setting low bail amounts for even highly violent arrestees,” the WABC-Radio News Team reports at RealClear Politics. His “sympathy for the criminal class and apparent indifference to those who obey the rules of civilized society reflect the philosophy of the billionaire investor who helped finance his election and those of many other progressive district attorneys across America: George Soros.” Indeed, “Soros-backed DAs in major U.S. cities have instituted brazenly lax enforcement policies that have helped unleash an unprecedented wave of crime across urban America.”
Conservative: Warren Wants To Destroy SCOTUS
Sen. Liz Warren (D-Mass.) now demands expanding the Supreme Court by four seats just because she “likes three of the current justices and dislikes six . . . and because adding four or more new justices would ensure that the people she likes would have a majority. That’s it. That’s the case,” marvels National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke. Indeed, “Warren’s message is that she’s a tyrant.” Consider: When FDR pushed the same thing in 1937, with far larger majorities in Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee said the idea “violates every sacred tradition of American democracy” and would “make this government one of men rather than one of law.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
