Speaking truth to power on Edwards virus policy

Louisiana Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham spoke truth to power, and the mouthpieces of Louisiana’s political left were unhappy with him.

Last week, a state House select committee held hearings on the state’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, pursuing a comprehensive overview of the mechanics of the response as well as policies enacted. Against a backdrop of admittedly maladroit administration by the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness – then under Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards – perhaps the headline revelation was a federal inquiry has been launched into the use of the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Convention Center as an overflow facility for hospitals in the early days of the pandemic. Rumors of sweetheart deals in its operations and supplies that could involve city and state officials have circulated for years, with it hardly being used at costs running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

But having a potentially higher human cost was the lockdown policy promulgated by Edwards under statutes granting the governor nearly unimpeachable emergency powers – fortunately with more checks added since – which lasted nearly two years although the most restrictive period was in the first 14 months. At its worst, all but the smallest indoor gatherings were banned and outdoor ones were restricted in size, face coverings were mandatory except in many but not all outdoor settings, vaccinations (really prophylactics) were required for a number of workplaces, and social distancing was enforced in certain situations and suggested in others.

The pity was that research, emerging even while the tightest restrictions were in place, increasingly showed the nonpharmaceutical interventions as policy had little or no positive effect, and the pharmaceutical ones had extremely questionable benefits given the cost probability for the vast majority of the population, especially children. Yet Edwards kept in place a set of policies more restrictive than almost all states longer than most states.

The erroneous nature of this policy, Abraham, the former Fifth Congressional District representative, in no uncertain terms testified to the committee. He made it clear he, who had run against Edwards in 2019 and barely missed the runoff whereupon Edwards would go on to attain reelection in the second-closest gubernatorial race in the state’s history, would have done things completely differently, recognizing the costs to individual autonomy as well as willingness to practice sound science.

Congregate limits for religious worship eventually were declared unconstitutional, and fortunately schools didn’t fall under Edwards’ domain although many adopted his draconian policies, but the damage was done. The state suffered economically, children fell behind in school, but the worst of all was data showing, at least through the first year or so of the pandemic, that Edwards’ restrictive policies likely cost more lives than they saved.

This the left and its media stenographers never will admit. For example, one media account of Abraham’s testimony tried to intersperse counterpoints, such as dragging out a source involved in advising New Orleans and the state back then who declared the heavy-handedness saved lives and tried to back that up by noting Jefferson Parish, which she claimed had less restrictive policies, had worse outcomes than Orleans which had the most restrictive in the state.

However, this apologetic view discounts that state policy drove restrictions in the main, with individual parish policies affecting things only at the margins. And it completely ignores inclusion of excess deaths prompted by pandemic policy, which increased sharply in Louisiana during this time period because restrictions, among other things, induced depression and hampered treatments for other serious medical conditions that led to such deaths – with the data showing significantly more excess deaths than the typical annual baseline even subtracting out coronavirus deaths in states like Louisiana with more restrictive policies than in the least restrictive states.

The left attempts to defend the restrictive policies of the pandemic as that validates big government, not just in terms of collecting power but in hoarding resources as aspiring to minimize all danger presented by the virus was prohibitively expensive besides extremely controlling of human behavior. But science and data evaluation demonstrate the net harm such policies caused. We need more political figures such as Abraham to point this out and cut through the media bias.