The editorial board of Utah’s largest newspaper – the Salt Lake Tribune – which is controlled by the family of former Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., has called for the deployment of the National Guard “to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.“
The draconian measure was suggested in a Saturday op-ed titled “Utah leaders have surrendered to COVID pandemic,” suggesting that elected officials have failed to mandate the vaccine for all citizens, and that if Utah was a “civilized place” Governor Spencer Cox (R) would treat the unvaccinated (and no mention of the naturally immune) as lepers with severe lockdown mandates.
“Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere,” the editorial board writes.
The board blames “Government officials, mostly but not exclusively Republicans, were apparently determined not to be caught governing in the face of this challenge,” adding that “Any move or recommendation to mask up or, when safe and effective vaccines became available, to make vaccination a requirement of admission to public places and society in general was shouted down as an unwarranted imposition on individual freedoms.”
In response to the op-ed, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson tweeted: “The truth is Omicron is out of control everywhere. Even in places with mask and vaccine mandates. We always push vaccines, but even vaccinated ppl [sic] are catching it. It’s easy to take shots from the cheap seats but this is the sort of nonsense that makes editorial boards irrelevant.” (h/t Fox News)