Alaska: The state that did nothing about Covid — and liked it
Note: This column contains swearing and discussion of adult content.
Alaska lost its Covid battle long ago and those most responsible for the state’s failures will eventually claim their policies were a victory for freedom rather than what they were — a stunning failure of leadership and a complete abandonment of logic and sanity.
The nation’s largest state is currently mired in an unqualified Covid disaster — its hospitals broken, its economy sputtering, its people sick and dying at higher rates than virtually anywhere in the world. Yet rather than throwing all available resources at the problem, Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson (who was elected on a platform of being tough) has instead embraced partisan pizza parties and Holocaust imagery in an effort to further politicize a public health crisis in the state’s only metropolitan area. And instead of mobilizing state resources when requested by healthcare professionals, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy — who was elected on a platform of being tall — has dithered and equivocated, refusing to declare a disaster because he’s more scared of a backlash from his rabid base than he is of 6-foot doorways.
What’s particularly galling about these towering twin failures is that when the current wave of Delta finally subsides — and it will, eventually — Tweedle Dave and Tweedle Dunleavy will likely appear in some kind of orchestrated press event in which they’ll tell us all their strategy of inaction actually worked, and by doing absolutely nothing they in fact saved the day.
It’ll play. One look no further than the debacle that is the Anchorage Assembly over the past two days to see from whom Bronson and Dunleavy take their marching orders: the red-shirted, Star-of-David wearing, gun-toting mob of slur-slingers and snickerers who have successfully hijacked the public process through whining, meme-repeating and intimidation (one guy was arrested after showing up with a handgun). These people do not represent the majority of Alaskans, but they’re louder, angrier and more aggressive than anyone else, and they’ve been the smelly tail wagging Alaska’s wet-dog Covid response from the beginning.
Although Dunleavy and Bronson are quick to point out that Alaska was among the early leaders in vaccination rates, what they continually omit from their attempts to both-sides their way through a pandemic is how little they’ve actually done. Countries around the world have shown the only possible way to “win” over Covid is to take dramatic steps to limit the spread of the disease. This would have meant months of mask mandates, limits on public gatherings, mass vaccine buy-in, diligent contact tracing. This is the sort of thing that happened in Norway, which recently declared itself in a new phase of the pandemic and lifted many of the strict public health measures it had taken over the past two years — and where nearly 8 in 10 people have had at least one dose of the vaccine.
Alaska has gone the opposite direction. In an effort to prove their rugged individualism, many of Alaska’s most rabid Covid warriors first denied the virus was real, then when that proved futile joined in lock-step to oppose virtually any measures that would prevent the spread of the disease. Masks? Fascist. Limits on gatherings? Communism. Vaccines? Probably contain microchips. Hand-washing? That’s for pussies.
Half measures are no measures in a pandemic. Alaska’s top politicians have consistently tried to claim that temporary curbs on freedoms were a slippery slope toward totalitarianism. It’s this argument that led many Anchorage residents to show up to Wednesday’s Assembly meeting wearing gold Star of David emblems, a reference to the stars forced by Nazis upon Jews during the Holocaust. These people seem to believe that a mandate forcing people to wear masks in public is tantamount to being singled out for extermination, but the fact they wear these stars with relish and with open contempt for the Jewish community — which has decried their use in this context — betrays the true motivation for their heinous and hurtful stunt.
In a historic display of his intellectual prowess, Bronson came out Thursday in support of those who wore the stars. On Wednesday, he or someone thinking for him thought better of that idea, and he issued a half-assed apology and call for civility. Which was rich, considering he started the whole shit show by asking people to stand and cheer for his own anti-mask remarks.
There is indeed room for debate around mandates, and those who point this out deserve to be heard. In fact, placing limits on their ability to speak — such as YouTube has recently done — are counterproductive and should be watched with great suspicion by those who value First Amendment protections. But the United States and Alaska Constitutions provide a framework for determining the constitutionality of government actions, and it’s long since been settled that things like mask mandates and vaccine requirements for public service jobs are constitutional. Those who now oppose similar Covid measures do so despite never making the same claims about vaccination mandates for other diseases in the past, which has been common practice in this country for more than a century.
Although the testimony before the assembly has been wildly inconsistent and often incoherent, the debate over mask mandates seems to boil down to a couple things: whether they actually work; and whether the government is truly using the mandates to protect health or if it’s some kind of backdoor way to steal people’s freedoms. In the former case, it appears from studies that masks do indeed provide some protection against the spread of Covid, but that protection varies wildly based on how masks are worn, where they’re worn, and whether they’re used in conjunction with other measures. So they’re kind of the least we can do. The question then becomes, well, why not?
Well, because we don’t want to. We don’t like it. And we’re going to throw a tantrum until we get our way.
Those who argue against the masks say they’re tyrannical and they seem deathly afraid a mandate to wear a cloth mask during the height of a pandemic will somehow eventually lead them to a concentration camp. This is absurd and offensive and its illogic is laid bare when public meetings must be lengthened by days to accommodate their objections. These people have spent dozens of hours testifying in public — in front of a mayor that amplifies their views, in a state with a governor of their own party — that they are being oppressed and silenced. They are literally taking over public meetings, intimidating and shouting down others and holding large, public rallies; does that sound like an oppressed group of people to you? On Tuesday Bronson encouraged his supporters to stand and cheer and later treated them to a pizza party.
Bronson will say he has consistently recommended vaccination, but this is simply a way for him to set himself up for an eventual victory speech and disingenuous; when pressed, he’s said he won’t get vaccinated and has again and again loudly dog-whistled to his supporters that he’s on team antivax/antimask.
Dunleavy has similarly pretended to take the pandemic seriously while doing nothing or worse. When a reporter showed up to an interview wearing a mask earlier this year, the governor accused the radio station of “virtue signaling.” The big man (at 6-foot-7, Dunleavy’s campaign slogan was “Stand Tall”) has been conspicuously small when it comes to pandemic leadership, with his most notable policy move being to offer free vaccinations to anyone visiting the state this summer — an arguably counterproductive measure that was more a marketing gimmick rather than an honest attempt to protect public health.
Alaska was indeed one of the early leaders in vaccinations, but with political leaders such as Bronson, Dunleavy and Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce (an avowed antimask Ivermectin advocate) leading the way, the vaccine phobic have won the day. By this summer, Alaska’s vaccination rates had slipped into the bottom half of the country and, predictably, the Delta variant has run rampant. Much like in a bad wildfire season, the state has been forced to call in reinforcements from the Lower-48, contracting to bring hundreds of nurses here to help hospitals cope with a Covid-driven surge of patients that’s left them pleading for help.
The good news, as it were, is that this too will pass. Whether we take any interventions or not — and it appears that we will not — Alaska’s Covid rates will eventually subside. And at some point in the near future, Bronson and Dunleavy will trot themselves in front of the cameras and declare themselves the saviors of the state, big, brave men who stood up to the forces of oppression and single-handedly saved freedom. It will be lies, of course, but that won’t matter to their loyal flock of admiring followers, who will gobble up their heroes’ spin like Ivermectin ice cream.
In reality, what will be left in the wake of these disastrous policies will be hundreds of preventable deaths, thousands of needless hospitalizations, the abandonment of countless careers and the closure of innumerable businesses. Because the truth is that by loudly, forcefully and conspicuously doing absolutely nothing, Alaska has set itself up for failure on all fronts. We lost the war because we were too weak and scared and selfish to pull together and work for the common good; we wanted to have our cake and eat it too and all we got in the end was sick.
So now many of us are dead and dying — a dozen a day now in a state of only 750,000 people — with no immediate relief in sight. But at least we don’t have to wear masks. I guess that’s what winning looks like?
Correction: A previous version misstated the day Bronson issued his apology.
This column is the opinion of Matt Tunseth, a former print journalist who lives in Alaska. Write to him at matt.tunseth@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter.
