EDITORIAL: Gov. Polis keeps calling COVID a crisis

Feb. 7—Mayday. We have a crisis, right here in Colorado.

It is not the matter of young adults and children dying from fentanyl poisoning. It is not Colorado's soaring murder rate or the flood of illegal immigrants overwhelming social services.

The "disaster emergency," as Gov. Jared Polis declares it, is not the ever-growing dilemma of tents, shanties and drug needles throughout Colorado's cities and towns. It is not inflation, the decrease in real wages, the housing shortage or a labor scarcity that has Colorado's unemployed outnumbering unfilled jobs by 2-to-1.

Our "disaster emergency" is not the climbing rate of traffic fatalities involving drug and alcohol impairment. It is not a communist spy balloon.

Colorado "disaster emergency" — as declared again Monday — is COVID-19.

"Governor Polis Takes Action in Response to COVID-19," says the headline of a statement issued Monday — yes Monday, Feb. 6, 2023 — by the governor's office.

The declaration quotes The Colorado Disaster Emergency Act's "disaster" definition as "the occurrence or imminent threat of widespread or severe damage, injury, or loss of life or property resulting from any natural cause or cause of human origin, including but not limited to ... epidemic."

COVID remains with us, as it will for the foreseeable future, but Americans long ago got on with their lives. Restaurants, resorts, hotels and nearly all other businesses that survived the pandemic are open for business as usual.

Competitive sports long ago resumed regular play. On airplanes and in workplaces, the masked masses long ago became the masked minority.

The seven-day cumulative incidence of COVID for every 100,000 Coloradans was 47.8 last week. Numbers will go up and down from week to week, but nearly all the infected will survive and lead normal lives. Many will have no symptoms.

Sadly, we cannot pretend COVID has passed and throw caution to the wind. We can stop pretending this virus constitutes an ongoing public health "disaster emergency." Ask the boy who cried wolf about the problem with false alarms.

Gov. Polis cannot sincerely consider this an ongoing crisis. He is far too smart for that. Even his party's top-ranking member, President Joe Biden, considers the pandemic a thing of the past.

So why the ongoing declarations extending the "disaster emergency"? As explained in Monday's declaration, "the governor has authority to take any action 'in prevention of, preparation for, response to, and recovery from disasters.'"

The authority to "take any action" comes in handy, so we understand the temptation to keep this crisis alive.

There is one other explanation. Just follow the money.

"...to maximize federal benefits," says the declaration's rationale for extending the "disaster emergency."

COVID-19 killed more than 1 million Americans and left nearly everyone devastated by the loss of one or more loved ones. It cost people their livelihoods. It devastated our country's economy.

The virus is not gone, but life goes on. We live with the remnants of a pandemic, but we aren't in times of crisis — let alone a "disaster emergency" — no matter what the governor chooses to declare.

The Gazette Editorial Board

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