Politicians COVID Hypocrisy Costs Lives
As long as politicians have special rules for themselves, people will ignore them
In the wake of the so-called second wave of COVID-19 cases that have hit in November, governments all over the world have imposed new restrictions designed to arrest the spread of the disease. Some governments and leaders have even flirted with returning to full-blown lockdowns. Some public officials have turned right around and shown disregard for their own restrictions.
In Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors voted to ban outdoor dining for three weeks, despite the lack of scientific evidence to support it. Among the supervisors who voted to ban outdoor dining was Sheila Kuehl. How did Kuehl celebrate her vote? By enjoying outdoor dining at Il Trono Trattoria in Santa Monica.
"This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously," Kuehl said at the meeting justifying her vote. "The servers are not protected from us, and they're not protected from their other tables that they're serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they're working."
Kuehl is not the only politician who is making a mockery of their own COVID-19 restrictions. Just today, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards confirmed the existence of a picture of him from mid-November socializing maskless and not social distancing at the Baton Rouge Country Club.
Kuehl and Edwards are joined by California Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed. Newsom and Breed hosted separate dinner parties within a day of each other at the famed Napa Valley restaurant French Laundry. This comes at a time when the state of California has imposed new coronavirus restrictions in order to combat the surge of cases.
Who can forget the demands by public officials to restrict the size of Thanksgiving gatherings and to not travel to see family? Denver Mayor Michael Hancock was among those officials who discouraged their constituents from traveling. But Hancock did not follow his own guidance. He traveled to Mississippi to observe Thanksgiving.
Mayor Hancock was not the only mayor who traveled for Thanksgiving while telling people to stay home. Austin Mayor Steve Adler went on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Adler also had told his constituents to stay home and avoid unnecessary travel.
Despite the blatant hypocrisy of many of our leaders, the American people have responded well to combat the virus. The vast majority of Americans wear masks and observe social distancing. Businesses that remained open have adapted in many ways to the virus by putting up plexiglass barriers, having hand sanitizer available for their customers, enforcing social distancing, and insisting that sick employees stay home, among other things.
But every time a story comes out about a politician refusing or otherwise ignoring their own warnings and not treating this virus as the serious crisis that it is, it weakens support for public health measures. Why should people take the virus seriously if the leaders won’t?
The reason why these leaders break their own rules is that they can. They are the elite, who believe they are the heroes of the pandemic. They believe they are justified in breaking the rules for their personal pleasure. Yet, if they were an ordinary citizen taking a stroll down by the street the police would have rushed to their door demanding "justice.”
The surest way to lose support for restrictions and measures designed to combat the virus is for politicians to make a mockery of the rules and set up one set of rules for them and another set for the governed. Such double standards breed contempt for the government in normal circumstances and will cost lives during a pandemic.