Biden plays politics in Covid
Joe Biden never misses an opportunity to politicize any topic, including the relatively benign Delta Indian variant of Covid. Today, Biden I tried to blame Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, coincidentally, both Republicans, for the inevitable spread of the Indian variant:
United States President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged Republican leaders in Florida and Texas, where about a third of all new COVID-19 cases are found in the United States, to follow public health guidelines on pandemic or “getting out of the way” as the country struggles to contain the rapid spread of the Delta variant of the disease.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has opposed strict COVID-19 restrictions. On Friday, he issued an order blocking mask mandates in schools across the state. Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an order last spring that would impose fines for mask mandates.“Some governors are unwilling to do the right thing to fight this pandemic, and they should allow businesses and universities that want to do the right thing to do so,” Biden said, without mentioning the two men by name.
Of course, there is no evidence that the mask commands do anything to prevent any variant of covid from spreading. Rather than criticize Abbott and DeSantis, Biden should try to learn from them. Both Texas and Florida have been more successful than neighboring states with regard to covid. Here’s the map, according to the CDC, of deaths per 100,000 residents. Click to enlarge:
Texas, with 179 deaths per 100,000 residents, has a lower covid death rate than any other neighboring state. Similarly, Florida, with 181 deaths per 100,000, has the lowest rate of not just any contiguous state, but of any state in the southeast. Rather than trying to score political points with these very successful red states, whose economies are booming even as they leave most of the blue states in the dust regarding covid, Biden should look to them for lessons on best practices.
But that begs the question: are there states that have done unusually wrong with regard to covid deaths? Yes, in fact there are. They are mostly in the liberal northeast, but one southwestern state stands out. Arizona has suffered 250 covid deaths per 100,000, more than three times the rate in Utah, more than twice the rate in Colorado, and far more than Greg Abbott’s rate in Texas.
Why could that be? The obvious answer is that under Joe Biden’s anti-American immigration policies, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Central Americans, Mexicans and others who have not been vaccinated and in many cases are infected with covid cross the border from Arizona. Joe Biden has deliberately allowed COVID to spread to many thousands of Arizonans and other Americans, in flagrant violation of his constitutional duty to ensure that the laws of the United States are faithfully enforced.
It’s tempting to say that Biden is so slow and so senile that there’s no point trying to hold him accountable for anything. But he is the president of the United States, and we should hold him to the same standard that would apply to a normally functioning politician. If Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in 2022, as seems likely, they should indict Biden for his flagrant violation of the Article II care clause.
