COVID: Real lessons learned

Josef Karl Verner’s submission to The Press on March 24 was exceptionally interesting.

He recently moved here from a state where COVID restrictions were much more rigorous and their wreckage palpable. Recent reportage indicates Idaho, in the context of viral hysteria, was among the least-reactive, least-restrictive states in the nation. It turns out this restraint had significant economic benefit.

Without satire, Josef and like-minded refugees bewilderingly demand that the desirable place to which they moved be made more like the broken, totalitarian fiefdoms they fled. They assert it should be even more heavily regulated. Apparently, if government masters simply get the regulation right this time, we’ll all be safe — just wear five masks to be certain.

This lack of a sense of irony is rich beyond comprehension. These people refer to this logic as “common sense.” Presumably, most Idahoans rightfully identify it instead as nonsense.

Idaho, and Coeur d’Alene as part, is witnessing an influx of expatriates from other states.

Some of these people have learned lessons about how misdirected policy and over-governance destroys families, economies, and societies in ways far more profound and lasting than a virus that has killed 1% of those that it has infected in Idaho and less than 2% nationwide.

Others have learned no such lesson. Beware these others.

Practically anything that puts the government out of business for any time is good. If COVID hysteria does that, that’s perfectly fine among those who recognize that malevolent, interventionist governance is more pernicious than a practically non-lethal (<2%) virus. If going mask-free means the Legislature can never again meet to contrive to torment its subjects, let the good times roll.

JOE ALLANMEYER

Coeur d’Alene