END THE MANDATES: NY NEEDS NORMALCY

IN her State of the State Address, Gov. Hochul claimed her focus is keeping “New Yorkers’ lives as normal as possible.” She’s not: That’s why 400,000 New Yorkers fled the state in the last year. It’s time to end all the mandates. Hochul can keep trying to evade responsibility for her role as lieutenant in the Cuomo administration’s nursing-home scandal, prolonged school closures, crippling lockdowns and botched initial vaccine rollout. But she’s solely to blame for the ludicrous decisions she’s made since taking over from the disgraced gov last summer.

New York is one of the few states that still needlessly mandates masks in schools. And Hochul went further, mandating them at day-care facilities for children as young as 2. Even the World Health Organization opposes that.

Continuing to place political science over actual science, she reimposed a universal indoor mask mandate despite evidence it’s ineffective. CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen has gone so far as to call most masks “little more than facial decorations.”

On top of vaccine and booster mandates on health-care workers and SUNY students, Hochul threatens to impose one on K-12 students, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admits that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission. They do reduce severity of illness. But simply put: Your vaccination status affects only you and your health, which is why I and many others support COVID vaccines as a matter of personal choice.

Hochul’s mandates have obviously not worked; the proof is in the data. Despite the constant rules and restrictions, New York has one of the nation’s highest COVID case rates, the sixth-highest death rate and the second-worst job losses, including

30% of small businesses closed. And we just suffered our largest singleyear population loss ever.

Our kids, especially from lowerincome families, have lost years of critical learning and development by going remote even though they are not vectors of transmission and have a 99.998% COVID survival rate (per the CDC).

After two years, we better understand the virus and how to treat it. Yet Hochul stubbornly sticks to her divisive and subjective failed fiats. None is justified because we have vaccines for those who want them (95% of New York adults have received at least one dose), effective therapeutics (monoclonal antibody treatments, new and existing antivirals) and broad natural immunity. Plus, dominant variant Omicron is far milder than its predecessors.

Big Government, Big Media and Big Tech’s perpetual fear and false narratives must stop. The CEO of Northwell Health — New York’s largest hospital system — appealed for calm, saying recently, “There is no crisis.”

I agree. And on Day One as governor, I will lift all mandates because I’d deal with COVID using data-driven and common-sense strategies.

I would bolster hospital capacity by rehiring the nearly 34,000 health-care workers forced out by Hochul’s mandate. I would also ensure that doctors have the discretion to treat patients and prescribe medicine they deem necessary, not handcuffed by politics.

We would shift to a focused strategy aimed at reducing COVID mortality by better protecting high-risk populations such as the elderly. We would make available vaccines and boosters, but no one would be coerced into getting them to work, attend school or participate in our free society. We would target outreach at those over 65 who are neither vaccinated nor COVID-recovered, especially those harder-to-reach lowerincome seniors in rural areas and inner cities. And available treatments will be based on need, not skin color, as it is with Hochul’s team.

I would commission a group of health professionals from varied fields (including epidemiology, pediatrics, public health and pulmonology) to meet and work publicly to discuss and establish earlytreatment protocols by risk category for COVID, all guided by evidence and data. That there isn’t one already is mind-boggling.

The strategy of vax/boost/mask and stay home until you can’t breathe isn’t a winning one. As with many illnesses, early treatment is critical, and each patient is different. New Yorkers need to know what to do when they get sick — whether they are vaccinated or not — and what risk category they fall into.

There is light at the end of this tunnel if we choose to walk toward it. It starts with leadership. After two years and counting, it’s high time to advance in the battle against COVID as most other states and countries have successfully done and finally restore normalcy in New York.

Rob Astorino, a Republican candidate for New York governor, was Westchester County executive 2010-2017.

‘

Hochul stubbornly sticks to her fiats.’ divisive and subjective failed