We at the Hotline have long warned that many officials would use the pandemic as an excuse to extend lockdown measures far beyond where they made sense because they can’t abide losing their emergency powers.

Exhibit A is Philadelphia, the nation’s 6th largest city, which just announced it will require indoor masking again next week.

This makes no sense.

Daily cases in the city are at 3.2 percent of the January peak.

The city is at roughly 25 percent of the case/hospitalization levels that would trigger such a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control. But the bureaucrats in the City of Brotherly Love have a much more stringent standard.

The city has been bleeding businesses and people since the start of the pandemic. Botched bureaucratic moves like this will only encourage more of that outmigration.