The right wing’s economic livelihood versus public health argument is a false choice

With this week­end’s demon­stra­tions appar­ent­ly hav­ing not result­ing in the desired out­pour­ing of frus­tra­tion, anger and com­mit­ments to open wal­lets for the cam­paigns of Don­ald Trump and his acolytes, sev­er­al rest­less Repub­li­cans have decid­ed to cook up more schemes for thumb­ing their noses at Gov­er­nor Inslee.

Franklin Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Clint Didi­er — a failed Repub­li­can can­di­date for statewide and fed­er­al office — put togeth­er a res­o­lu­tion on April 20th to “…end the Stay at Home Emer­gency Procla­ma­tion…” and pro­nounce it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al (some­thing that leg­isla­tive bod­ies iron­i­cal­ly have no author­i­ty to do).

In Gbbons v. Ogden, decid­ed all the way back in good old 1824, the Unit­ed States Supreme Court stat­ed that a giv­en state has the abil­i­ty to reg­u­late inter­state com­merce with­in its juris­dic­tion through its pow­er to quarantine.

Back when Ebo­la was a grave con­cern in 2014, Pro­fes­sor Michael Dorf, a Con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ar at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, gave a more exten­sive expla­na­tion of the deci­sion and what’s come to pass since which is worth reading.

(This activ­i­ty of the Franklin Coun­ty Com­mis­sion is con­cur­rent with the announce­ment by Franklin Coun­ty Sher­iff J. D. Ray­mond, also announced today, that he would not only decline to enforce Gov­er­nor Inslee’s stay at home orders, but also any guide­lines ”that infringe on your con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.”)

Didi­er appears more inter­est­ed in ral­ly­ing the troops, fundrais­ing, and get­ting news cov­er­age than he is in actu­al­ly prac­tic­ing civ­il disobedience.

Mean­while, in Cowlitz Coun­ty, offi­cials took the more sen­si­ble approach of lodg­ing a request to Gov­er­nor Inslee that asks him to mod­i­fy his orders to per­mit a greater num­ber of activ­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly hunt­ing and fishing.

What vocal right wing activists and elect­ed offi­cials don’t seem to want to acknowl­edge is that we’re not deal­ing with just any con­ta­gious disease.

This virus (SARS-CoV­‑2) is capa­ble of killing twen­ty to thir­ty times more peo­ple than an aver­age out­break of influen­za. There is no vac­cine available.

And many peo­ple who have the virus have no idea that they have it.

Even it were pos­si­ble, return­ing to the past would not make peo­ple whole. We can’t for­get that before COVID-19, income inequal­i­ty and cli­mate dam­age were prob­lems that were going unsolved. We can­not for­get that our econ­o­my was in no way made more resilient after the Great Reces­sion that began twelve years ago.

We can­not for­get that our soci­ety has suf­fered from struc­tur­al weak­ness­es for decades that have gone unad­dressed, with tremen­dous ramifications.

And final­ly, we should not for­get that women, the black com­mu­ni­ty, and Lat­ninx peo­ple are suf­fer­ing most from the nov­el coronavirus.

No one should fall vic­tim to false canard of econ­o­my ver­sus health.

We must col­lec­tive­ly rec­og­nize that by mak­ing respon­si­ble choic­es, we can save most every­one and can have an econ­o­my to which we can return.