An abundance of hypocrisy

The five-year anniversary of the COVID pandemic brings bad memories of Phil Murphy's reaction to it

It’s been five years since the COVID pandemic. and these phrases our governor used still haunt my memory:

“Little baby steps.”

And,

“An abundance of caution.”

Those were the phrases that Governor Phil Murphy employed during the COVID scare of 2020 to describe why he imposed a “lockdown” on New Jerseyans and how he would eventually lift it.

Till then, I’d never heard the term “lockdown” used outside of a prison context.

So I was appalled when I heard the term being applied to free citizens who had committed no crime other than to desire some fresh air and some sun.

That bout of alarmism began in earnest on St. Patrick’s Day of 2020.

I was in Florida on that day, celebrating with my sailing and drinking buddy the Captain.

By the afternoon of St. Paddy’s Day, my fellow members of the media were calling for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to declare a lockdown and shut the beaches.

The TV’s were filled with images of spring-breakers partying on the beaches. My fellow members of the mainstream media were doing their best to spread the fear that the spring-breakers in spots like Clearwater on the Gulf Coast would spread COVID to the Atlantic beaches like the one where the Captain has a condo.

This threat was overestimated. The kids on spring break were young and healthy. Even that early in the pandemic, it was known that the main threat of COVID was to the elderly.

Ironically it was Murphy himself who proved that point. He moved elderly COVID patients into nursing homes - contrary to the advice from the CDC that the elderly should be isolated from those infected.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took the opposite approach. Florida has plenty of older people and that’s where the Governor wisely concentrated his efforts at prevention.

As for the beaches, Florida has more than 800 miles of them. So there was plenty of room to stretch out.

The only inconvenience for me was that the restaurants would only serve takeout. Meanwhile the tourists had left town, so I got a great rate on a beachfront hotel.

I figured that with a cellphone and a laptop I could do my job perfectly.

That worked for a while. But eventually I had to fly back to Jersey.

That was a surreal experience. Orlando airport, normally packed with Disney fans at that time of year, was empty. So was my flight to Trenton.

I landed in what looked like a ghost town. I drove home on an empty Interstate 195 and listened to my car radio describe the extent of the lockdown. Apparently he governor figured that as long as he mentioned “an abundance of caution” he could ignore our constitutional rights.

As I listened, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to buy that essential of life known as beer.

But at least our self-appointed dictator dictated that the liquor stores would remain open.

Good move. If we all had to sit around sober during the lockdown, there might have been a second revolutionary attack on Trenton.

This governor’s sole accomplishment in office has been to open up the state’s liquor cartel, if only slightly. So he was wise to keep the liquor supply flowing.

But I had to endure his press conferences sober. That was an ordeal.

We in the media had to have our temperatures taken and then sit “socially distanced” from our colleagues.

Then Murphy and various members of his administration would take turns channeling Florence Nightingale for our viewing pleasure.

At least we got to ask questions.

That was fun. In my younger days I edited a health magazine and got used to reading such medical literature as the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, called “MMWR” by those in the know.

Murphy was not in the know. I found that out when I asked him about a report from the MMWR warning that under no circumstances should those with COVID be placed in nursing homes.

He clearly didn’t know what the MMWR is, an unpardonable sin among those lecturing the rest of us on the need to be locked down..

The MMWR’s warning was based on the experience of a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, that had the first big outbreak in America. The outbreak was sparked when a resident returned from Wuhan, China, carrying the virus.

The CDC’s advice was to keep COVID patients out of nursing homes.

The Murphy administration’s advice was to put them in nursing homes.

“No patient/resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the post-acute care setting solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” Murphy’s Health Department ordered.

No worries, though. The Guv was keeping people out of the parks and the jogging trails.

As for Murphy himself though, he was violating his own social distancing policies by getting photographed at a “Black Lives Matter” rally and with a fan at a waterfront bar in Bayville.

That was around the time when Murphy spoke at his press conferences of finally lifting the lockdown in “little baby steps.”

I guess that’s the real reason they made the media wear masks to those press conferences – in case we threw up.

Where did the Guv get off talking to us as if we were children?

I managed to stave off nausea long enough to ask whether Murphy would agree to the legislative Republicans’ demand for a study of his handling of the COVID pandemic.

“A lot of my readers are complaining that the administration was doing things like cracking down on golfers and joggers while sending COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes. I gather there still isn't full screening of the staffs in the nursing home. Do you think there should be an inquiry into that?”

Murphy said in reply that “The uneven performance of this industry is jaw-dropping, and that's as charitable as I can get.”

The industry? The industry didn’t send those COVID patients into nursing homes. The governor did.

And note how he dodged the question of a study. We’re still waiting for it.

At the time, Republican state Senator Joe Pennacchio of Morris County demanded a study of Murphy’s COVID response, arguing that “We were forewarned by Washington State. We were forewarned by Italy when we were told that the disease was ravaging the elderly population with the average age of death being 81.”

At the time, Republican leaders called for Murphy to follow the example of countries like Sweden, which had a much lower death rate than the U.S. even while it kept its economy open.

“They should have protected the elderly and those who have health conditions instead of imposing a lockdown of the population,” said Republican state senator Mike Doherty at the time.

Plenty of other governors also went for statewide lockdowns.

But a study later showed the lockdowns were of questionable value.

A coauthor of one such study, Steve H. Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, told me that a meta-analysis of 24 lockdown studies “supports the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality. Lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

The analysis concluded that lockdowns “have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted

“Now we’re going to have one of the worst depressions ever,” said Doherty, who is now Warren County surrogate.

It sure looks that way. All those trillions that Donald Trump, and later Joe Biden, borrowed to get through the lockdowns still have to be paid back. That’s the primary reason inflation has been so bad.

Defenders of both presidents say they had no choice but to order those lockdowns.

But other countries protected the elderly and then let the free market takes its course.

The supposedly socialist Swedes were one of the few countries that had economic growth during the Pandemic.

Yet their COVID death rates were much lower than ours.

As for me, on this St. Patrick’s Day the Captain and I had revisited that bar where we spend out last free night before being locked down.

It was as lively as ever. So was the cigar bar next door.

Meanwhile New Jersey’s COVID death rate under Murphy was much higher than Florida’s under DeSantis.

There’s a lesson in that. But I fear it’s too late for the governor to learn it.