#Heavy-handed COVID-19 lockdown rules are an all-around disaster

“Public hypocrisy fuels public rage and undermines the rules.”

Across the nation, businesses are defying governors, such as California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Andrew Cuomo, and refusing to shut down. The owners of Mac’s Public House on Staten Island, for example, declared the place an “autonomous zone.” When sheriffs arrested them Tuesday night, crowds cheered the owners.

This pandemic isn’t the time to glorify civil disobedience. People need to wear masks and follow safety rules, and the sheriffs were doing their job. Even so, owners resisting lockdowns are giving voice to a powerful message that shouldn’t be lost. If government and public-health officials want to maintain public trust, they need to enforce rational rules consistently and obey the rules themselves.

The Staten Island “autonomous zone” was a playful reminder of the kind of protest activity blue-state governors and mayors too often tolerated and encouraged through the summer and into the fall — even as they cracked down on anti-lockdown protests, religious services and assorted activities often thought of as “conservative.”

Most recently, the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot partied it up with liberals in their cities celebrating Joe Biden’s apparent victory in the November election. Then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to her hairstylist in San Francisco, Gavin Newsom’s fine dining with lobbyists in close quarters and Austin Mayor Steve Adler’s Cabo vacation — even as he urged people to stay home.

Public hypocrisy fuels public rage and undermines the rules.

There also has to be some scientific basis for the rules, something sorely lacking in the case of restrictions on restaurants.

Since last March, governors have shuttered restaurants, gyms and other businesses, destroying what owners have built and putting employees out of work. As Mike Coughlin, owner of the Village Tavern and Grill in Illinois insisted when he defied Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s suspension of indoor dining, “I’m not going to be the guy with the boarded-up building because I follow somebody else’s science.”

He had a point: Some of the science is flimsy.

Scientists disagree on whether restaurants are dangerous. Stanford researchers identified them as superspreaders based on mobile-phone data from last March to May. But Johns Hopkins’ Amesh Adalja suggests most restaurants have installed more safety measures now. “If you went to a restaurant in early March, it’s a very different experience from going to a restaurant” now.

Amazingly, most cities spending millions on contact tracing are failing to use the data to identify restaurants causing superspreading to notify the public. That’s more scientific than shutting them all down, but in most places, officials don’t care about destroying businesses. They’re getting a paycheck no matter what.

Forcing businesses to close arbitrarily violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which bars government from “taking” your property without just compensation. Yet Sunday, New Jersey’s Gov. Phil Murphy announced that a shutdown “has to stay on the table.” Murphy should have to explain why, when thousands of health ­experts recently signed a declaration to alert the public that lockdowns don’t work — though, they do put people out of work.

Five of the six states with the lowest unemployment rates, according to the Associated Press, have the fewest COVID restrictions. That’s a compelling argument for getting state legislators involved in pandemic decision-making, instead of allowing governors to continue to wield emergency powers by decree.

Legislators, after all, have to answer to the local constituents they force out of business. They will have to balance competing priorities, including controlling the pandemic and local business survival, not to mention other concerns associated with prolonged lockdowns.

In March, the New York state Legislature gave Cuomo vast emergency powers. It was appropriate then, but not any longer. Unfortunately, the Democratic majority is MIA, content to collect their paychecks and defer to Cuomo.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, state lawmakers sued to force their governors to work with the legislature. Wisconsin’s chief justice warned that “in the case of a pandemic, which lasts month after month, the governor cannot rely on emergency powers indefinitely.”

Listen up, Cuomo. Listen up, too, Albany Democrats.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.