Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Yet another Republican governor has decided that if the COVID dead each week simply aren't counted anymore, that the pandemic will simply vanish and everything will be fine.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Thursday that she will soon end public health disaster proclamations that Iowa has operated under since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago.

The shift will include pulling the plug on a state website focusing on COVID data, such as the number of Iowans testing positive for the disease, being hospitalized with it or dying from it. However, many of those statistics will continue to be available on other state and federal websites, Kelly Garcia, interim director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said Thursday.

Reynolds, a Republican, first invoked a disaster proclamation on March 17, 2020. In the early days of the pandemic, she used such proclamations to close businesses, limit large gatherings and encourage other pandemic responses, such as limiting nonessential surgeries and — briefly — requiring masks to be worn in certain indoor settings.

Reynolds said in her statement Thursday that she will allow the current proclamation to expire on Feb. 15 at 11:59 p.m. She said it's time to reallocate state resources.

"We cannot continue to suspend duly enacted laws and treat COVID-19 as a public health emergency indefinitely," Reynolds said in a statement. "After two years, it’s no longer feasible or necessary. The flu and other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives, and coronavirus can be managed similarly."

Her move comes as Iowa's spike in cases and hospitalizations from the omicron variant has begun to ease. Still, 794 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa as of Wednesday, while 109 patients required intensive care and 51 required ventilators.

Iowa recorded more than 150 additional COVID-19 deaths in its weekly update Wednesday, representing people who had died with the disease in previous weeks and months. The health department recorded just three additional flu deaths in its weekly flu report Jan. 28, bringing the total since last fall to 13.

 

If you get COVID and die, oh well.

 

Manage it.